April 2015 Income Report | MayaElious.com

Hey, there! If this is your first time stumbling across my income reports, please start with January 2015 to see why I’m doing this and how I plan to break each month down.

Each month I would like to share:

  • How much I earned
  • How many payments I received (Ex: 10 payments for 5 projects instead of 47 flyer design payments)
  • How much I spent/invested
  • What I spent it on (resources)
  • What I learned
  • How many hours I worked
  • YTD Earnings

Please let me know if there’s anything you want me to include in the income reports. If it’s a general question about my finances, I’ll be happy to write a blog post on it.

The number in parenthesis will indicate the difference from the previous month

Red = Lower Than Previous Month
Green = Higher Than Previous Month
Black = Stayed the Same as Previous Month

Here’s Month 4.

April 2015: $3,860.18
Last Month: 
$6275.27

Year-to-date (YTD): $24,196.28

April 2015 Earnings (19 Payments Received):

Consulting: $325.00 ($75)
Contributing: $50.00 ($25)
Blogademics: $560.00 ($35)
Photography: $75
Design/Branding Projects: $2,925.18 ($2,405.09)

Total Gross Revenue: $3,860.18 ($2415.09)

April 2015 Expenses:

Design Intern/Contractor: $180 ($120)
DropBox: $9.99
Facebook: $11.56 ($6.49)
Twitter: $2.69 ($2.69)
CoSchedule (Social media automation): $10.00
Domain/Hosting: $56.02 ($35.86)
MailChimp: $15.00
MacBook (installment payment): $0 ($335)
Microsoft Office: $10.71
Envato (premium themes & plugins): $60
Creative Market: $20 ($20)
Adobe Systems: $32.16
Wistia: $25
Stock Images: $79
Google Storage: $1.99
Educational Workshops/Conferences: $275 ($41.80)
Coaching: $1,000 ($1,000)
InfusionSoft (CRM System): $898.50 ($898.50)

Total Expenses: $2,687.62 ($1,706.74)
—-

Total Net Profit: $1,172.56 ($4,121.84)

What I learned:

Well the first thing I learned is to copy and paste my post in a separate document before trying to save because WordPress deleted my entire income report after I tried to save the draft.  *sigh* Anyhow… this month’s income was pretty low (in comparison to the last 3 reports). It’s kind of funny because I was sitting with my friends one day and said “I don’t even think I made $4,000 this month,” and they gave me a death stare. I understand that $3,800 is a lot of money. I think the number just freaked me out because of my expenses. Dishing out over $2500 in expenses was kind of scary, but fortunately the first 3 months of the year I was saving money like crazy and I never splurged on anything so I was covered.

This month I left town for 10 days, fired a client (which meant forfeiting almost $1,000 to keep my sanity), ended a contract with my corporate client (also to keep my sanity) and stopped accepting client requests until June. After attending a 4-day conference in Atlanta, I was motivated to move forward with things in my business that I had been contemplating. It’s literally the craziest thing I’ve done (this year), but while trying to make a transition into something bigger, I needed to be serious about moving forward and leaving some things behind.

The main thing I learned is that I love coaching and design, but I don’t like one without the other.  I don’t like telling a client the best route they should take with their online brand and then seeing them have an ugly website.  I don’t like building beautiful websites for clients but the copy on it is terrible. I’ve been working with a client on coaching and design, and it’s really fulfilling.  In order for me to guarantee my clients real results, I feel best offering both services as a package.

I feel like I have stepped out of a comfort zone to experience something bigger, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it pays off. I’m learning that as you build your business, you will grow, you will get comfortable and then you have to leave that comfort zone. It’s all about pressing forward and refusing to get complacent.

[Tweet “In life & business you must press forward and not get complacent.”]

[Tweet “A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.”]

Things I need to improve on:

  • I still need to be more open to being on the phone. I’m finally going to utilize my marketing plan that I wrote about last year, and offer to speak to these people on the phone.

Things I did well:

  • I offered consulting with design.
  • I made some big decisions that were scary but necessary… even in my personal life.
  • Began planning a workshop on how to make money with your personal brand.
  • Started #InfoBoMo by some awesome biz owners ReginaBrittanyAshleyJenna and Elizabeth.

Hours worked:

I’m still horrible at tracking hours, but I can say that I didn’t work that much because I left town for 10 days, ha. It was a good month.

YTD Earnings: 24,196.28

This month I encourage you to do something that is worthwhile especially if it scares you. What has been your biggest transition in business? What’s the last thing you’ve done to stretch and challenge yourself?  I’d love to hear from you for some encouragement!