Hey all! I’m back with another income and traffic report to share with you today. I started doing income reports as a way to be more transparent about my online business and hopefully shed some light on ways that you can grow your own business, too.

In most other fields of work, you have the opportunity to “Google” what a typical salary is for that type of career. You can also choose a university major directly related to your line of work. But if you’re an online entrepreneur? You’re faced with a guessing game. You’re left to wonder how much money you can actually make online and what strategies you can use to get there. With these monthly income and traffic reports, I hope to answer some of your questions and nudge your own business or blog in a direction that brings you the most benefits. Let’s get to it!

Now, imagine Nicholas Cage riding up to us on a motorcycle with the sun setting in the background. He whips off his aviator sunglasses 😎 and says only one thing:

August, you’re one crazy SOB.

Did that give you a good mental image? I sure hope so, because that’s exactly how I felt about last month. Prior to August, I was working one-on-one with clients as a web designer and blog coach. In July, I decided to completely stop taking on new clients in order to finish up and launch my first e-course, Pinfinite Growth. I had no idea how the launch would go and I found myself pinching pennies, skipping Starbucks, and saving as much as possible, because I assumed August would be my slowest month in business and I’d need to live off of canned soup and leftover dog kibble to survive. Something like that. 😉

But crazy surprises are nice right?

Instead of confirming my fears, last month was the most profitable and imaginative month I’ve ever had in business. *Insert crazy dance moves here.* It also confirmed to me that I’m on the right track in my business (and if we’re getting extra mushy…in my life, too!).

I talked all about my e-course launch right here, including the different marketing strategies that I found to be the most successful. I also wrote a detailed post about how I earn several thousand dollars from affiliate commissions each month.

So, in this post, I’ll be sharing the numbers and explaining my income and traffic, which I hope will help you, too. Also, I decided to stop drinking coffee starting today, so it’s highly possible that the rest of this will be complete gibberish. 😀 #youvebeenwarned.

August Income

• Pinfinite Growth E-Course Sales: $13,516
• Web Design Clients: $2,740
• Affiliate Commissions: $3,018
• Google Adsense: $240

Total Income: $19,514

August Expenses

• Credit Card/PayPal Transaction Fees: $516
• Independent Contractors + Contributors: $290
• LeadPages (Annual Payment): $281
• Headshots: $250
• Wistia (Annual Payment): $240
• Zippy Courses: $199
• Bluehost Webhosting: $104
• KingSumo Giveaways: $99
• Amanda Genther’s Irresistible Sales Pages Course: $97
• By Regina’s Self-Published Book Workshop: $97
• CAOC E-Course Installment Payment: $97
• Mailchimp: $75
• Logitech HD Webcam* (on Amazon): $74
• Facebook Ads: $62
• Passionfruit Ads Membership: $50
• Freshbooks* Invoicing Software: $30
• GoDaddy: $26
• Edgar Social Media Scheduler: $25
• BoardBooster*: $23
• Google Apps*: $13

Total Expenses: $2,648 (Anything with an * next to it is an affiliate link)

Net Profit: $16,866

 

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On Pre-selling My Course

My e-course, Pinfinite Growth, officially launched for pre-sale orders on August 10th. It wasn’t until August 24th that the course was actually released. Comparatively, I made around $11,000 during the presale period (August 10th-23rd), and around $3,000 after the course was launched and until the end of August. Sales picked up quite a lot in September, but I’ll get to that next month. 😉

I wasn’t sure about preselling my course, but now I can absolutely see the benefits and will likely do it for future launches, too. It’s also very motivating to have a hard deadline when the course needs to be finished. A big reason why my presale earnings are much larger is because I marketed my course much more during that time, with consistent emails and a webinar. Now, sales are still coming in pretty regularly and I’m planning to keep the course evergreen (meaning it will always be available). Since I’m not really “launching” the course anymore (read: not stressed out of my mind 😉 ), I plan to create a sales funnel, which will show people the benefits of the course and provide free trainings in an automated system.

On Quitting Client Work

It’s a little bit strange to have my schedule completely flipped over, but so, totally awesome. Last week, I was able to take three days off of work for a vacation, which resulted in no casualties, a tremendously slimmer inbox upon returning home, and less of those desperate pangs of “must.check.email!” I’m still finishing up a couple projects, but nearly everything is finished and I have a partner who is helping me tidy the final ends.

Now that I’m not working with clients, I’ve found it a little difficult to get back into the swing of things. It reminds me of when I first started my web design business and had no idea how to productively structure my day, so I’d jump between tasks every 10 minutes and calm my confused brain with a healthy dose of Twitter. I have a bit more business prowess now, so I’m not quite as useless as I was back in the day, but it still has taken some getting used to. One thing that has motivated me? It’s going to sound really simple. You ready? I force myself to get busy. Sometimes all it seems to take is a stern pep talk and just getting to work. Who knew? 😉

This month’s expenses

Since my revenue for the month was increasing, I decided to switch as many of my monthly fees over to annual payments. Usually when you pay annually, you receive a bit of a discount. I always hesitated to do so in the past, both because I wasn’t sure if I’d use those products for an entire year and because they were larger up-front fees. But as a business owner, I always recommend that if you have a good month of income, you should make the types of investments that matter. It’s nice to watch your bank account grow, but it’s even nicer to eliminate monthly fees or up-level your business with a tool or service that will push you further.

I also enrolled in a couple new courses. One is by Amanda Genther and it’s about how to create great sales pages. The other is by Regina, and it’s about creating a self-published book. I honestly didn’t make it too far into these courses yet, but I know they will both be awesome. Sometimes I buy courses that I know I’ll need one day, even if I don’t need them right now.

I also purchased headshots! 😯 I’ve never gotten professional headshots before, but I felt like it was something that my business was missing as my current photos are kind of grainy and I don’t really feel like they include my personality. I’m actually getting the headshots taken this weekend — gasp! — so hopefully I’ll have something to show next month. 🙂

Traffic Report

Traffic Overview

Users: +14% (Also the first time I received more than 100,000 unique visitors in a month! Woo!)

Pageviews: +8.5%

Top Sources of Traffic for the Month

Not too long ago, I privatized 150 old blog posts which now feel irrelevant to this blog’s main mission and audience. Those posts received a lot of traffic, but it didn’t feel worth it to me if they’d read one post and then leave, confused. So, while my traffic did increase a bit in August, I expect it to level out or decrease in September while it works on compensating for all those missing posts.

I hope you found this report useful, friend! Thanks for stickin’ with me.

Got any questions? Comments? Insights? I’m all ears! Let’s chat down below.