Welcome to my May Income Report! Each month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my side hustle and reveal exactly how much money I make, how much I spend and lessons learned along the way!
If you want to build a website and learn how to make money online, check out this blog post on how to get started!
View all of my income reports here!
Important Things That Happened in May
- I completely changed my work schedule around.
- I began time-blocking my schedule.
- I wrote my second income report that reviewed February.
- I began estimating (and then doubling) the time on every single task before it was added to my schedule.
- I had several client projects that I needed to close out and complete in early May.
- I booked zero new clients in May.
- I held webinars promoting Serious Side Hustlers, Websites That Make Money, and the Web Designer Academy resulting in no new sales.
- Every single weekend we either had a camping trip planned or family coming into town.
- In 2.5 weeks, I recorded, edited, produced, and uploaded 60 new videos for the 5 Day Website Challenge, redesigned the entire layout, built the online course with over 60 modules, created 120 graphics, wrote over 60 module descriptions and action items. BOOM.
- When I worked on a weekend, I only worked on Saturday mornings before everyone else got up.
- I perfected and documented my podcast publishing process to hand over to my VA team.
- I posted a position description for a Project Manager in my Web Designer Academy Facebook group (which I ultimately did not fill as expected, more on that later).
- My husband and I found four acres of land that we decided to make an offer on with the plan to build a house there in a couple of years.
Notes I found to myself in my planner:
“Protect your time this week, you gotta get the new 5 Day Challenge done”
(Guess what? I didn’t protect my time. I pushed the 5DC out two weeks).
“I handed over the publishing of my Pep Talks for Side Hustlers, YAY!!!”
“When would you like to have that done? What’s your absolute deadline? Let me know and I’ll get you a proposal.”
“Instead of ‘I can’t do that for you’ say ‘Here’s what I can do for you.'”
Review of My Goals
Again, my goal each month has been to generate $10,000 in revenue because my rough breakdown to replace my old paycheck, cover business expenses and pay taxes is:
- $5000 – Income to cover my old paycheck.
- $2500 – Expenses
- $2500 – Taxes
What I Focused on in May
My number one focus in the first two weeks of May was completing the remainder of those 9 client projects I told you about in my April 2018 Income Report.
My number one focus the last few weeks of May was producing the new 5 Day Website Challenge.
That being said, here’s how much money I made in May 2018:
Total Income: $9554.36
- Passive Income Total: $3759.56
- Time for Money Total: $5794.80
Total Expenses: $3898.32
Net Profit: $5656.04
Get the full breakdown of income, expenses and net profit month by month here.
Biggest Lessons Learned
The biggest lesson I learned as I reflected back on May is that when I protect my time, I feel more in control.
When I started scheduling and blocking my time in this new way, I felt more in control.
When I was able to work on the projects that I love, like the 5 Day Website Challenge and Pep Talks for Side Hustlers and marketing, it all feels right and worth it.
And that it’s very important that I write these income reports and review them sooner than three months behind. Because they help me get so much perspective and even some clarity about what to do next.
Remember how I almost spiraled out of control in April from taking on too much client work? Well, I was still hungover from that in May and it really clouded my decision-making.
I had a few Done For You proposals still out there that I decided to put some intentional effort to follow up on these projects and book them… “but if I do this,” I thought, “I’m going to need to bring on a project manager to manage them.”
And I was really torn because I know bringing someone on is going eat into my profit and I NEED to put a paycheck into the bank every two weeks…
But I’m also trying to put my time into raising my passive income, and part of that could be hiring a team to run the Done For You projects, raising prices, and me just selling them and coaching a team through the actual work.
I don’t have to be the one doing all the things, I just need to slow down enough and make space to hand things over to people who are better suited to do them than I am – and on a per project basis rather than a monthly contract until I have a consistent, stable income.
I can’t (and shouldn’t) do every single thing in my business. That’s how I end up making $15.62 an hour.
Because honestly, I feel like if I give up on client work, I gotta shut down the Web Designer Academy too. Right?
And am I ready to do that?
No, I love mentoring other web designers that are just getting started!
I would NEVER coach them to build the situation I had created for myself. But for some reason, I was just not taking my own advice!!!
So I posted a position to my Web Designer Academy students, and three amazing candidates applied!!
“Okay, so now what? How do I choose?” I thought.
Oh, and I had no guaranteed work to give to them because these proposals – where I had gotten a verbal yes that prompted me to even post this job description – hadn’t yet signed a contract or paid a deposit – which means they’re not actual jobs on my schedule.
So I asked each candidate if they would be willing to do a trial project and I told them that it wouldn’t be until I booked a new project.
Guess what? I didn’t book a single new project in May.
And I’m not at all surprised.
The energy I was putting out closed off any possibility of that happening.
In fact, I was relieved. Relief wins out over everything.
But I felt bad about getting three awesome people all excited to work with me and then womp womp, nevermind! I don’t have any projects for you after all!!
Running a business is HARD when there are other people besides me involved!
So I put my head down on redoing the 5 Day Website Challenge and adjusting the marketing, the sales funnel, and the pricing strategy.
I took a deep dive into Nathalie Lussier’s AccessAlly and implemented all kinds of new features that weren’t there when I first started using it three years ago.
It was a total blast, and things started to feel right again.
But I knew deep down, I was still going to have to make some cuts, that my expenses were still way too high especially with no new Done For You Clients coming in to cover them.
And when you look at my income reports, you can see that there’s one clear place to make a few cuts that have a big impact.
Independent contractors. The people I pay to help me with day-to-day stuff and DFY projects.
Ugh, these are real people whose contracts I need to cancel. It’s not like just canceling a subscription, it’s like telling someone “Hey, remember I used to pay you X? Well, you can’t count on that anymore… Hope you can still pay your bills!!”
And I know it’s my own hangups around money that make me feel terrible, that make me dread having those conversations because I feel like I’m putting that person in a bad spot.
And because I’m afraid of not having enough money and I’m projecting it onto other people.
But it’s not personal, it’s business.
But it is personal, to me. I’m sensitive. I care about stuff like that.
But I also have to put myself and the health of my business first.
So I canceled my Pinterest management contract and took that on myself with the goal of learning exactly what I was outsourcing. I honestly feel like I made a mistake jumping into that one so quickly, but that’s a blog post for another time.
And again, I felt relieved. Some of the financial pressure was lifted.
I had two more contracts to cancel… But those, I still had to muster up the courage and it took me until June to do it.
All in all, I’m proud of myself. I have consistently shown that I know how to make money.
When I quit my day job because I had maxed out my ability to grow my side hustle, I thought “If I just had more time I’d be able to generate $10K a month.”
And I was right.
But it didn’t turn out the way that I thought it would. It’s not all smooth sailing.
And the reasons why I love writing these income reports is because most of the time, this feels hard. Like, when I’m in the thick of it. But then when I reflect back on the month, I think:
“Wow, Shannon. Look what you were able to accomplish in 30 days.
And you’re pushing through the hard stuff and you’re not giving up.
And here’s a little perspective for you:
And in the past four years, you haven’t gone into debt, you haven’t dipped into personal savings, you’ve been profitable from day 1, and you haven’t missed a paycheck.
You are so powerful. You are going to eventually get this working the way you want it to work so that it FEELS the way you want it to feel and you’re not worried about money all the time.
I wouldn’t change a thing about this journey. Not one thing.
