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 3.

March 2015: $6275.27
Last Month: $6,222.33
Year-to-date (YTD): $19,411.10
Quarter 1 Gross Income: $19,411.10 (Goal: 25,000 [Short $5,588.9])

March 2015 Earnings (23 Payments Received):

Consulting: $250.00 ($250)
Contributing: $25.00 ($50)
Blogademics: $595.00 ($175)
Photography: $75 ($75)
Design/Branding Projects: $5,330.27 ($397.06)

Total Gross Revenue: $6,275.27 (52.94)

March 2015 Expenses:

Design Intern/Contractor: $60 ($90)
DropBox: $9.99
Facebook: $5.07
CoSchedule (Social media automation): $10.00
Domain/Hosting: $20.16 (15.17)
MailChimp: $15.00
MacBook (installment payment): $335 ($335)
Microsoft Office: $10.71
Envato (premium themes & plugins): $60
Adobe Systems: $32.16
Wistia: $25
Stock Images: $79
Google Storage: $1.99
Educational Workshops/Conferences: $316.8 ($177.80)

Total Expenses: $980.88 ($73.55)
—-

Total Net Profit: $$5,294.39 ($20.16)

What I learned:

This month had it’s ups and downs, but it was a nice, balanced month.  In January I talked about how burnt out I was and in February my mind was cluttered chaos.  I try to take my learning experiences into each new month.  March was actually quite relaxing with the exception of a couple projects.

Towards the end of the month I was considering letting this be my last income report.  There was a point where I wasn’t capturing my clients’ vision, and I was wondering if it was because I was rushing through projects to make sure I was paid.  I was never so much concerned about meeting a financial deadline until I started doing the income reports, and it’s not okay if that’s affecting my work.  If any of my clients are ever unhappy it literally makes me sick to my stomach.  I take pride in sharing their vision and executing beyond their imagination.  All of the completed projects for March have ended successfully with happy clients, so I’m happy as well.

Although I was seriously contemplating ending income reports, I realized that doing these help me evaluate any pain points and opportunities for my business.  I’ve become WAY more organized, and I’ve even started to write down my projected income for the following month. That makes the new month a little bit less scary and lets me know what services I need to promote more.

Things I need to improve on:

• I need to be more open to being on the phone. I ignore any call that comes in unless it’s been scheduled. It’s horrible how much I hate talking on the phone, but it ended up costing me a potential project. Life would be easier if people all preferred communicating through email. 🙂
• I need to make sure I’m absolutely clear on my [potential] client’s expectations of me. I also need to make sure that I have all of the information I need from them in order to provide the best possible outcome. Not having the necessary resources I need not only causes me a huge headache, but it makes my client unhappy. Not cool.
• I still need to track my time to see how many hours I’ve been working.
• I need to utilize the help of interns more. I wrote a blog post about why working in your business will cause it to fail, and I need to take my own advice.

Things I did well:

• I set my first quarter goal to $25,000. I’ve never made this much money in my life, but I knew I had to set my goal at a high number that would scare the crap out of me.  Setting the goal high made me want it more.  Bringing it $19,000 within the first 3 months of the year was only possible because I set a high expectation for myself.
• I improved on the consistency of my expenses. I don’t think I purchased anything random this month.
• I did my best to communicate effectively with clients.
• I’ve been turning around proposals way faster.
• I collaborated with Alisha Nicole to host a Blogademics webinar. My membership is continuing to grow, and it was awesome to connect with my students.
• I started waking up around 4:00 a.m.  It’s a random time, but I enjoy working when it’s quiet and when no one is trying to contact me. I can usually end my work day before 3:00 p.m.
• I’ve been using my Walmart planner religiously.  I write out what projects I will work on each day which allows me to see a light at the end of the tunnel.  I’m not stressed out by the end of my work day and there’s still sunlight outside when I’m done.
• I quit BNI because it was a time waster [for my specific business goals] even though I invested almost $600 into it.
• I had two really awesome consultations this month, and I’m going to try to have one consultation client per week.

YTD Earnings: 19,411.10