This post is going to be an inside look at the REAL truth behind six figure freelancing.
You’ll need to read the whole post to understand the exact numbers that exclude passive revenue from online courses, or revenue from mentoring other freelancers. We want to see direct to client…design, copy, and tech.
This way, you can see how it might relate to your business.
We teach all this in our mentorship program, and will be expanding more in 2017. Without a doubt, if you want to make $5k and beyond, freelance marketing, design, and copy are the way to go. You can make a decent living as a freelance admin VA or EA, but the big money is in the marketing.
Here is my “at a glance” revenue numbers. This means, TOTAL money coming in for everything.
This is combined monies from client work and mentoring. So if we take OUT monies received from mentorship and passive revenue, THEN…we’ll have an accurate picture of true client and freelancer work.
$37,533.00 is all revenue from anything related to Create Your Laptop Life from June 2016 onward. Prior to June 2016, I earned an additional $32,000.00 from passive revenue on my own school courses. There was an additional $6000 in consulting only.
That means…$75,533.00 is not applicable.
$159, 930.00 is the number we’re working with for actual client/ freelancer work.
Since it’s only December, we can just divide that evenly by 11. It’s about $14, 539.00 a month.
What kind of work does this entail?
- Facebook Ads
- Building Sales Funnels
- Copywriting
- WordPress Web Design
- Digital Media
- Launch Services
- Project Management
- Tech Support
So what type of pricing are we looking at?
- Facebook ads run about $997 a month.
- Sales funnels start around $4k for the simple ones, and up to $7k for more complicated ones.
- Copywriting starts at about $1k per sales page (less for ad and landing page copy).
- Web Design is about $4-5k.
- Digital Media are services for PDF’s, workbooks, etc. We charge $60-90 an hour depending on the project.
- Launch services are around $15k for 4 months.
- Project Management services are $100 an hour.
- Tech support runs the gamut and is usually billed at $90 an hour.
Over and over, we’re getting responses that our services are priced SUPER reasonably. There is no reason to suggest we can’t bump up these prices in the new year.
How does this break up month to month in terms of actual work? Here are a few combinations….
- One sales funnel $5k
- Two Facebook Ad clients $2k
- One website $4k
- An additional 40 hours of PM work, digital media, tech help, etc.
Or….
- 2 websites $10k
- 4 Facebook clients $4k
Or…
- Three Sales Funnel Build Outs $14k
Or…
- 10 Facebook Ad Clients $10k
- 4 Sales Pages $4k
What skills do you need?
- Facebook Ad Strategy and Skills
- Writing Skills
- Design Skills
- WordPress Skills
If you don’t have all those skills, you’ll need to subcontract out work to VAs who can do it. You may also need to sub work out if you get too many clients! Or…better yet, learn them. That’s what we want to help you do!*
*We currently do not have advanced copywriting courses in our program yet.
Expenses
If you are running your business as a sole proprietor, you’ll need to take your revenue, subtract your subcontractors, tools, home office, insurance, etc…and the REST is yours.
If you are running as an LLC, you’re a bit more removed from the business. This means that you want to track your revenue, your expenses (including your payroll to yourself) to see if your business entity is in the black each month.
That’s how my expenses are tracked (after April 2016 when I went from sole prop to LLC).
Here’s a closer look at July, and what it takes to run a business like this…
The payroll? That’s my paycheck. I take slightly less than $4k a month for my salary. As you can see, with subcontractors and payroll taxes and all expenses, this business is in the black an additional $7740.00.
What do I do with that extra?
- Some people take it as a distribution. I could have done that, and simply beefed up my $3700 salary with an additional $7700.
- Some people leave it in the bank account to invest back in, or to build a cushion. This is what I choose to do most months.
As my income grew, so did my expenses. This is something you must become comfortable with…spending money to make it.
As you can see in May, I took an additional $3000 in distributions to chunk out my salary. The business was still in the black.
What does it all mean?
It means that with the right skills and the right mentor, there’s no reason why you can’t easily make $10,000 a month as a freelance designer and marketer.
PLEASE….if you are shopping around for a coaching or VA mentorship program, understand the numbers they tout. If they talk about six figure VA results, be sure it’s six figures of CLIENT work only, and not the monies received from teaching others how to make money.
I can say, with confidence…that Madelaine and I offer the BEST program for mentorship in this field. You will get a tremendous amount of skills, support, and training.
But most of all…we’ve done it ourselves.
We ARE doing it.
…even when you take out all the revenue from mentorship and passive revenue.
And…..
When you get to the point in your freelance career when you want to ADD passive revenue, you can learn that from us too.
If you haven’t talked to us yet about joining the program, what are ya waiting for? 🙂
Tonya D says
Thanks for sharing. Inspiring and motivational.
Chido says
I am in my early stages, but I am always working on my value ladder and aim to get to that my back offer. Thank you for all the hard work you and Madelaine do!
Bianca Osbourne says
This is a great post and ever so thorough!
Thank you for this 🙂