It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but I’m finally getting around to it! I want to break down the numbers as specifically as I can so people who are trying to scale can understand the nuances of the “numbers”.
Total Revenue = $116,910.81
Where did all that come from? Well, here’s a breakdown:
Affiliate Revenue $14,873.85
I earned affiliate revenue from ConvertKit, Clickfunnels, Teachable, WebHosting Hub, Proofread Anywhere, and also got some referral fees from other contractors and a Google Adsense payment. I earned $504 from Hosting commissions, about $500 from ConvertKit, another $500 from Proofread Anywhere, $1000 in referral fees, and the rest? CLICKFUNNELS. If you’re not in the Clickfunnels Affiliate Mastermind, hop to it!
Other Revenue $100,355.96
The rest of it was all course sales, coaching clients, and a few done-for-you service clients.
Total Expenses $42,125.37
Alrighty, so here’s the part that I know everyone wants to know. How much do you pay yourself, your contractors, expenses, and the like.
Cost of Goods Sold (this means what did I pay out in course creator fees, coaching fees, and affiliate commissions to people who are JVs)
- 1:1 Coaches = $1050.00
- Affiliate Payouts = $1898.70
- Course Creator = $293.72
- JV Payouts = $2826.25
Advertising (All done on Facebook) $10,013. 85
Bank Charges + Fees $2987.55
Contractors (my whole team) $16,329.00
Education and Training (it was a slow month LOL) $44.00
I pay everything in full to avoid payment plans.
My Payroll Taxes $2590.72
My Salary $6021.28
Online Software and Expenses (memberships and tools) $1904.45
This was higher than normal because I bought an iPad
Net Profit $69,839.02
That’s a 59% margin, and I’m looking for anything above 35%-40% in an online business. That means, this was a REALLY good month!
A couple things that are causing these high numbers:
Overlapping payment plans. Once hundreds (like 300 or so) of people finish paying for their courses (a bigggg swing in December 2016 will end in the next couple of months), my revenue will drop. I imagine I will have to watch my expenses carefully to remain in a 35-40% healthy range for an online business. I’m preparing for this by creating a nice business savings cushion to handle a $20-30k monthly drop in revenue.
Less than normal expenses. I will be traveling a bunch in Q4 and that will raise my expenses significantly. I also plan to turn up the heat on some advertising campaigns since a $10,000 ad spend isn’t that significant. Finally, I have some project expenses to pay out for videography and whatnot, and these one-time expenses happened NOT to hit in July.
If my business drops below 35% profitability, I need to look at what I’m doing and make adjustments. Online businesses should have a healthy margin like this, unlike physical businesses that have tremendous amounts of overhead. If your business doesn’t have a healthy margin, it may be time to cut expenses or raise your prices or find a new revenue source!
Whether you’re trying to get to $1000, $5000, $10,000 or even $50,000 a month, The Digital Gangsta is the program that will help you build an online business and scale. It teaches you how to do research, how to blog, how to plan your offers, how to list build, how to build a course and launch, how to do funnels, how to use social media and content strategy, and even gives you a behind the scenes look at how I build proposals, manage my money, build my team, and more. It’s my ENTIRE business blueprint on a silver platter, with the option to have me for dinner with you. 🙂 Find another program on the Internet that does that, at that level, and I’ll give it to you for free.
What are you doing with the near $70k in profit?
Here is my general plan.
- I save 25% for taxes. $17,500
- I save another 25% for business savings (for the lower months). $17,500
- I take a 50% distribution to my personal account at the end of the quarter. $35,000
And I know the next question is — what do you do with your distribution? A couple things (none of which are very sexy)…
For those of you who know my story, I was a stay at home mom for ten years which means, NO RETIREMENT saved AT ALL in all of my 20’s. So I’m trying to build that back up. And because I’m an entrepreneur, I don’t have a company that’s matching my contributions. I put a couple thousand in as often as I can. Right now, I have $5000, which is pennies. I need to build this up quickly.
Next, college. I have three kids who are only two years apart and I have NO MONEY saved for college. So I’m working on finding tax relief for some of my money and putting it into a college fund. Even though I’m unsure of where they will go in life, I need a solid $120k per kid AT LEAST for college as I’m sure I will get NO financial aid whatsoever.
Next, emergency savings. You know how you’re supposed to have three months of expenses saved up? That’s something I always want to be mindful of and have available. For us, that would be about $22,000 since it costs us about $7k a month to live in CT. This includes mortgage ($2k), health insurance ($1.5k), utilities ($1k), cars, kids activities, clothes, food, yada yada….
Next, investments. I’m SO new to this arena, but I’ve started using Betterment and dipped my toe into Cryptocurrencies. I might even write a blog post about it soon! The idea is to get as much of my distribution away from my hands as possible, and in a diversified set of investments that will grow over time.
Next, mortgage. We’d like to pay one to three extra payments a year so we can shave about 10 years off of our 30 year mortgage.
Next, a car. We’re saving for the down payment on a car so we can get one and have Clickfunnels pay for the monthly payments. Since they only allow dream cars (aka high end), we need a solid $20,000 to put down so the monthly payment matches what Clickfunnels will give us.
The bottom line is that I know I won’t be able to hustle like a mofo forever. 🙂 So if I can’t get my money to work for me, I’m a foolish person who didn’t learn how to manage wealth. So in every spare minute I have, I’m trying to learn how to grow wealth, and how to make investments rather than buying toys. With four children – I can’t afford to be silly with my money. And frankly, if I’m going to be coaching others in the areas of business and wealth, I want to make sure I’m walking the talk that I preach.
My goal with Create Your Laptop Life™ is to help people create financial security and freedom. That to me is more important than a lavish lifestyle or a 4 hour work week. If you’re looking for a coach who can help you with that, I’m not the right one. I am not the type of person in search of endless pleasures or a high end life. I care about meaning, purpose, and impact, and not just for me…but for my entire family.
Dave Woodward says
Your transparency, authenticity and clarity are so appreciative in a world of smoke and mirrors. It is great to see you explain the reality of business. Paying yourself first. Saving for a rainy day and wanting to someone who walks the talk. Congratulations on all of your success.
Patrick F. Sullivan says
Way to go. Clarity City.
Rose says
Your posts and monthly income reports have always been inspiring. Right now, I know I need to look at an additional revenue stream so I can cut down the number of hours I work per day.
Katherine says
I noticed your CF Affiliate revenue is not as much as some of your other product lines. Is that on purpose? Are you more focused now on your own product sales?
Create Your Laptop Life says
I am focused on it a ton! I just make more through my own products than affiliate revenue.
Tyler Jorgenson says
Amazing! Thank you for sharing this and being so genuine.