Occasionally, running your own show can get chaotic, overwhelming, and even your most careful plans can fall short of your expectations.
So, why share my rather dismal month for income and growth?
Because even with the internet’s 100k stories on the subject – they tend to leave out all the ugly bits.
Failed attempts. Repeated struggles. Daily hardships. Hell, unforeseen success can even bring with it a tidal wave of overwhelm and stress..
I want to show you that it’s not all rainbows and butterflies – you’ve got to grind for mere peanuts before you can cash in on the big money.
Sometimes, that involves a tremendous amount of trial and error, and some hella hard work to rack in a few thousand a month from your online business or blog.
So, let’s recap October and chat about where things are going for November.
Traffic Goals
October Goal: 1750 pageviews.
I almost laughed as I typed that seeing as I only closed out October with 1153 pageviews.
Not the best month.
What happened: I had my slacker pants on. Well, moreso, I had so many ideas of things I wanted to accomplish during the month but one of my ideas ended up taking off which left me with an inadequate amount of time for everything else.
I decided to offer free website audits and ended up spending more time doing those than I did creating or promoting content.
Don’t get me wrong – it was a great experience that yielded informative results. However, I did learn that if it’s something I want to continue doing, I’ll need to alter the details a tad to better align with the rest of my schedule.
Lesson learned: Don’t overextend yourself. Piling extra stuff onto my plate this month meant something else was bound to fall off.
And for future reference, leave room for adjustments in your schedule, so if your brilliant new ideas do take off, you’re not ill-prepared to handle them.
November Goal: 1500 pageviews
My plan for November is to get ahead with my content.
I’m going to plan everything out, so that I have plenty of time to get my blog posts written, sent off for edits, and scheduled to be published without anything being rushed.
Social Growth
I scaled down my goals for social growth in October.
I don’t want to put as much emphasis on the number I reach as much as how many are actively engaging and involved.
However, when your numbers are teeny tiny, growth does matter a bit for engagement to happen. So, my new goals are to hit a particular number of eyeballs and pay attention to their level of engagement..
October Goal: 500 fans, 100 group members
As it stands now, I’m only about 75 fans away from my goal of 500.
I didn’t see a huge jump in growth to my Facebook page, but I added about 20 new folks with minimal effort and ended the month only 30 members away from my goal for the group.
What happened: I know that for a big portion of October, I was spending more time on website audits than actively promoting new blog posts and engaging within other groups on Facebook.
I know that my goals are still feasible, but due to the increase in audits, they’re happening at a slower pace than I had anticipated.
Lesson learned: Persistence is key.
I simply need to stay on the same path, but make sure I stay consistent with engagement and interaction.
I’ve also noticed that my growth rates are actually quite good when looking at them as percentages vs individual numbers.
The Facebook page saw a boost of 5.5% and the Facebook group had an increase of 9.8% in October.
November Goal: 460 fans, 75 group members
These are set just slightly higher than the growth percentage I saw in October.
I believe this method gives a realistic number to expect while still aiming just a tad higher without stretching myself too thin trying to take on more than I can handle.
Although in some areas, I may be narrowing down my goals, it will give me more chances to hit my numbers and be successful in the months to come.
This is the greatest benefit of keeping track of everything – by gauging what’s working and what’s not, you can better determine what to build, expand, eliminate, or change.
October Goal: 600 followers.
I ended up with a total of 500 followers this month which was a growth of nearly 15% from September.
What happened: Setting this goal was difficult as I was unsure of how much of a growth rate to expect.
But as it turns out – despite not being active on Instagram for the majority of October, I still saw a pretty decent investment. Not bad.
Lesson learned: If I had continued to press on with a consistent schedule, I’m betting I would have surpassed my goal.
I believe that making sure I block the time to batch content and schedule it with SmarterQueue will be the only way to ensure I get it done every week.
November Goal: 640 followers.
Now that I have a better understanding of a realistic goal I have based this number on goal of about 17% which a slight bump from the 14.3% that I saw for October. I have also added a reminder to my calendar to batch create content every week.
October Goal: 1000 followers. I ended the month just shy of this goal with 943 followers. I gained over 50 new followers for the month which I would still consider a win.
What happened: I don’t think that anything really went wrong with October, my goal was a bit of stretch and I anticipate it happening this month.
Lessons Learned: I have created some more niche boards and created a more consist pinning schedule with BoardBooster. I believe this is still the right method and am excited to see where it will go.
November Goal: 1020 followers
I know I’ll surpass the 1k mark in followers this month, but I want to strive to see an extra 20.
I’m looking into moving from BoardBooster to Tailwind as I’m now spending about $20/mo with BoardBooster, so it may help to shave a few expenses.
In addition to the savings, Tailwind offers a feature called Tribes that I’ve been interested in learning more about.
I never actually cared about, nor thought I would track Twitter.
But during October, I wondered what type of impact it would have on my business if I did give it a shot. Therefore, I spent the last quarter of 2017 testing to see if my audience actively utilizes Twitter.
For the month past month, I saw a 211% increase in followers, and while this is a new thing to track, I’m excited to see how it plays out for traffic to my website.
Currently, Pinterest holds about 60% of my referral traffic with Facebook making up another 30%.
I’m interested to see how this third contender turns out.
November Goal: 1000 followers
In assuming the rapid jump that I saw in October isn’t always typical, I’m having a hard time choosing a number to base my goal on.
In the beginning, I’m keeping it simple and continuing my method of engaging more on this platform every day and following others in my niche, so that I have folks to engage with.
Email List
October Goal: 500 subscribers
I had planned on scheduling a webinar to help me reach this goal; however, I was so dedicated to performing the website audits that I didn’t make time to do that.
Instead of ditching my goal, I’ve just rescheduled the webinar for November.
What happened: Offering website audits provided me with valuable insight into what creatives are currently working with and how effective it is for them.
Unfortunately, I discovered that it’s not the best way to land real clients.
This could be that I didn’t assign a dollar value to the audits in hopes that it would be seen as a personally tailored example of what The Creative Boss offers, and I put my time and effort into recording and editing each video.
Upon evaluating the results, I came to the decision that it’s not the best promotion to offer as many of the videos that I’ve sent out have yet to even be opened and viewed.
This stings a bit, but that’s okay. Now I know not to put quite as much time and effort into a promotion or freebie. There are numerous other things that can be created quicker, easier, and still contain the same amount of value for potential clients.
Lesson learned: Since the website audits did get several requests, I may offer them for a low price point with the option of using that cost to put towards the purchase of a web design package.
By assigning a dollar amount to the audits, I will be able to evaluate how well they do as a paid product next month and go from there. But I know that I will no longer be offering the audits for free without a better plan in place to close clients.
November Goal: 500 subscribers
I have big ideas that are ramping up for the launch of a new course, but I’m struggling to narrow down my focus and lock in a solid plan for it.
I do, however, have a webinar in the books for this month that I plan on pairing with a Black Friday pre-sale for this upcoming course, Website Warrior.
Income and Expenses
I like to begin this section by prefacing that The Creative Boss isn’t my primary source of income. Without my other business, this one wouldn’t be able to thrive.
But, my goal is to make The Creative Boss my primary source of income by the end of 2018.
October Goal: $500
I’m not surprised that I didn’t reach this goal this month – I purchased a new course and renewed some pricier yearly expenses.
Also some of these expenses overlap with my other business, but I wouldn’t be able to run The Creative Boss without them. I like to include them to show you what I view as essential.
Income: $101.75
Digital Products: $31.05
Ads and Affiliate: $45.7
Client Projects: $25
The digital products that are currently for sale include Create the Ultimate Opt-in Offer for $39, Creative Biz Toolkit for $4 (this is an upsell when you opt-in for the Trello Editorial Calendar board), and the Get Your Blog On! eBook for $5 (another upsell for signing up for the free course – all the same content wrapped up in a neat little pdf and given to you all at once rather than waiting on the daily lessons).
I’ve created a better plan for generating affiliate income that I crafted during a major brainstorming session.
After doing quite a few web design audits during October with the hopes of landing at least 1 out of every 10 as paying clients, there are still many going through an extensive email nurture sequence.
Because of that, it’ll take some more time before they would be ready to book a service given that they’re interested.
However, as I previously stated regarding the site audits, it doesn’t look like they are capturing leads quite like I had intended which is why I’m going to try attaching a low price point to them next and see how that goes.
Expenses: $347.36
ConvertKit: $29 (monthly)
SmarterQueue: $19 (monthly)
BoardBooster: $20 (monthly)
Adobe CC: $53.11 (monthly)
Elegant Themes: $89 (yearly)
Calendly: $10 (monthly)
Education: $59.95
Independent Contractors: $55.32
My focus for Q4 is preparing to take on more client work.
This means expenses for a course that I purchased and new software for extra automation to make sure everything runs smoothly and effectively.
I’m also investing quite a bit on social scheduling tools and will be browsing for equally effective alternatives at lower costs.
I’m eager to begin the preparations to launch my brand new course later in the month and excited to see how my audience responds to it.
November Goal: Break Even
While The Creative Boss is still shy of generating a profit and would be viewed as a hobby by some, I know that huge successful businesses aren’t built overnight.
You can either use the method of investing to grow quickly and see faster results or just scrape by to not break the bank and wait longer before seeing substantial growth.
It’s all a matter of what’s best for you and your business – everyone’s circumstances and visions are different – as well as how much time, money, and effort you’re able and willing to invest to see dramatic results for your business.
Accountability
One of the most difficult things to do as entrepreneurs is to hold ourselves accountable.
I know how easy it is to move that sticky note over to the next day on the calendar.
But moving deadlines doesn’t actually get anything accomplished. We have to set big, scary goals and establish concrete ways to reach them.
I have a tendency to set ambitious goals, but I’m also good at finding the silver lining and making a note of what worked and what didn’t.
Then, I only need to replicate what works, eliminate what doesn’t, and adjust my goals accordingly.
2017 is coming to a close and I’m becoming more focused on putting together a solid plan for 2018 to better accomplish my epic goal of generating truckloads of cash with The Creative Boss. (There’s my tendency towards setting rather ambitious goals again.)
Pop on over to the Facebook group and let us know what your big, scary goal for 2018 is and how you plan on reaching it!
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