2023 Year in Review of my Squarespace Web Design Business

Behind the Scenes
Written By Christy Price
Squarespace designer 2023 year in review

2023 marked 5 years of me working full-time as a solopreneur Squarespace web designer. I’ve been working in web design for a long time, but in 2018 I made the pivot to work full-time for myself and focus only on Squarespace. It was a big leap and it’s given me more than I could ask for - a comfortable income, wonderful friends in the industry, and the best part: freedom (no boss and no set schedule)!

If you were following along back in the pandemic days of 2021, you may remember that I had a post-it note on my monitor that said “Work less and make the same or more money.” And that year I did. In 2022, I decided to experiment with taking more time off (some intentional, some not). In every month of that year, I had at least a week “mostly” off from business - aside from the occasional email check-in. I knew I needed more downtime to avoid burnout, and to take care of family, even if that meant less income than the year before. And it was amazing. In 2023, my goal was to maintain that balance and keep at least the same income.

In this post, we’ll take a close look at Revenue Streams, Content Creation, Community, and the MVP tools and apps I used in my business in 2023.

Then I’ll share a wrap-up, my plans for 2024, and my word of the year.

💰 Revenue Streams

In 2023, I had 3 main revenue streams:

And here’s how those made up my total revenue:


This was a pretty similar pie chart to 2022, but happily, my income was over 20% higher in 2023.

Now let’s dive into each of those buckets and see how the year shook out.

↕️ 1:1 Work

Squarespace web design for an Austin-based events company

  • Custom Web Design: 6 websites
    I scaled back a bit on these as they do take up so much time and I wanted to explore some other service options, but I still love them! My favorite design of 2023 was for an Austin events company.

  • Template Buildouts: 2 websites
    These were honestly super easy and I want to do more of them in the future. Perfect for the “I’ll know it when I see it” crowd since they see exactly what they are getting before the build.

  • Designer for a Day®: 26 sessions
    I’m taking a break from these in early 2024. They are a great value for clients, but they are exhausting for me, so I’m hoping to do more template buildouts instead.

  • Squarespace Help: 77 sessions
    Some of these were past custom or DfaD clients and others were people who found me on Google. These are one-hour Zoom screen-shares where we talk strategy or jump in and work together to make changes on the client’s website. For the first part of 2024, I’m only offering these to past clients.

Overall, I did a LOT of 1:1 work and it requires a massive amount of time and brainpower. I still love this kind of work, but I’m hoping to scale back to 5 custom websites for 2024, fewer Designer for a Day and Squarespace Help sessions, and up the number of template buildouts I offer.

⬇️ Affiliate Income

I’m happy to report I made over $2,000 PER MONTH in affiliate and referral income this year! If you want to learn more about HOW, I teach the exact methods I use in my course Make Money with Your Blog. I walk you through my own content creation formula that drives affiliate income and brings in more than half of my 1:1 clients. You’ll learn how to choose topics to blog about, how to write those posts, and how to monetize them without being sleazy.

⬆️ Course & Squarespace Template Sales

This number went up as well with a nice split between Make Money with Your Blog, the Building a Successful Web Design Business workshop, and Squarespace templates. I have some plans around improving or expanding each of these in 2024 and want to take some of the time I’d normally spend on 1:1 work and invest it here.

✅ What I Enjoyed Working on the Most

Empowerment and education. This year again, I found I really loved working with the templates and courses/workshops. I have plans for more of this sort of thing in 2024. So stay tuned for more resources for both web designers and DIYers. And if you’re not on my mailing list, now’s a great time to join.

✍️ Content Creation

In 2023 I blogged a lot less than in 2022. Honestly, I was coasting a bit - resting on all the work my blog had been doing for me once I had it up and running and ranking! But I created lots of other content and also had some amazing collaborations from 2023. I’m planning to make content even more of a priority in 2024.

⚫️ Squarespace Circle

I was so thrilled to be a guest on Circle Live with Sam Zelitch and Sarah Greisdorf, alongside Jeremy Schwartz. Curious about income as a web designer? Check out the recording here: (also, side note - how does Jeremy look like a model posing for the camera and I’m caught asymmetrically pre-smile?!)

2023 also marked the 2nd annual Squarespace Circle Day, in NYC and online. I gave a talk on Client Offboarding and got lovely feedback! We spend a lot of time talking about how to GET clients, but not much about how to send them on their way. In this workshop, I share 6 simple steps to create a solid offboarding experience for your clients. Stick around to the end for some special discounts…

🎙️Podcasts

Will Myers and I launched Somewhat Useful, a podcast for digital entrepreneurs. We chatted about everything from how to save time in your business, to imposter syndrome, to how to (actually) take time off from work. We had a blast and hope you find it somewhat useful. 😉

I was also a guest on a few shows:

Lex Roman’s Low Energy Leads. We unpack how I’ve found clients over the last couple decades, how I’ve diversified my income streams, and what I’ve learned about delivering great client experiences.

On the SQSP Themes podcast, Omari and I talk about The Truth About Passive Income.

Will and I joined Week of the Website on their No Surprises podcast to talk about Strength in Numbers, chat work partnerships, and discuss boundary setting with clients.

👩🏼‍💻 christyprice.com Blog

My blog is what has helped the most with SEO, showing my expertise, and leading to client bookings and affiliate sales. So it’s responsible for most of my income. (And, yes, you can find out lots more about HOW I do that in my Make Money with your Blog course.)

In 2023, I shared 14 blog posts (and some of these were updated older posts). My most-visited posts published this year were:

Squarespace Plugins to Level Up your Website (updated 2023)

How to Track Affiliate Sales in Squarespace (updated 2023)

Behind the Scenes January - March 2023

According to Plausible Analytics, I had 228k page views in 2023 (not including January, since I hadn’t set up Plausible yet). That’s more than last year! 🎉

🎥 YouTube Videos

In 2023, I posted 9 YouTube videos. My most popular was Building a Squarespace Website in 15 minutes.

And my channel grew from 991 to 1,442 subscribers this year. I’ve passed the 1,000 subscriber mark but still don’t have enough watch hours in the past year to monetize my channel. That’s on the radar for 2024. And that means I’ll need to do more posts that get watched.

📸 Instagram

I pretty much gave up on Instagram as any kind of real marketing strategy, but I still use it for fun! You can follow me @christypricewebdesign. I share Squarespace tips, sales, and little glimpses into my real life.

❇️ Free Webinars

In 2023, I hosted 10+ free webinars. You can still register and view the recordings:

I host these on Crowdcast, which I love. The chat is separate from the Q&A area, which lets you quickly see/upvote questions and in the recordings you can jump to the exact question you’d like to explore.

📧 Email List

A big change was that in 2023 I moved from MailerLite to ConvertKit. This was super labor intensive and I’m still working on cleaning some things up on the back-end. But overall, I’m SO glad I moved. ConvertKit works so much better for my purposes. I kept hearing horror stories about MailerLite shutting down accounts (so you couldn’t even access or export your subscribers) for using affiliate links, so I feel much better after making the move.

Check out my newsletters from the last half of 2023 here (you can join my mailing list there too).

I ended 2023 with 2,597 subscribers, gaining about 500 over the course of the year.

✨ MVP courses, code, and apps of 2023

I thought it would be fun to do another roundup of my favorite courses, plugins, and apps of the year. I’ve narrowed it down to just the top 3 in each category which was really challenging - especially in the code and apps sections!

Disclosure: Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you click through and pay for a product, I’ll be compensated at no cost to you.

Favorite Courses / Memberships of 2023

Here were the three most helpful courses/memberships I've done this year:

(1) Email Marketing Membership - Liz Wilcox's templates, trainings, and office hours to level up your email marketing game AND it's only $9/month

(2) Marketing Magic - an AI-powered business growth tool that helps small business owners grow their brands, not their to-do lists. Craft ready-to-use sales and marketing assets that use your brand’s tone of voice in minutes

(3) Will Myer's Code Curious Membership - this library of code has saved my bacon more than once. It's a steal at $15/month.

Favorite Code solutions in 2023

(1) Animated Scrolling Logos. My new fave plugin of the year. Perfect for clients that have lots of logos for social proof. I used this on multiple client projects in 2023. Chris also offers great support.

(2) Ghost Plugins. An entire library of free Squarespace plugins plus some amazing paid super plugins. Use code CP15 for 15% off any of their paid plugins or templates.

(3) Will Myers' Section Loader Supreme. Create a section and embed it anywhere (blogs, pages, etc.) Update the section and it automatically updates everywhere you've added it. Perfect for product placement, lead magnets, and more.

Favorite Apps in 2023

Squarespace.com

(1) Squarespace. Of course. It’s been the foundation of my business since 2018.

(2) ConvertKit. I moved my email marketing to ConvertKit in 2023 and it's been such a breath of fresh air. Excited to keep working to improve my welcome sequences and tagging for 2024.

(3) ContentSnare. Transforms the way you collect content from your clients. This is clutch when I do template buildouts!

🗓 The Wrap-Up

In 2023, I made more money than in 2022 while still working about 25-30 hours a week. I’m not a millionaire by any stretch, but I’m making “enough” for me.

In 2024, I want to improve and expand my template shop and focus on growing my YouTube channel.

In 2023, I didn’t have a word of the year. For 2024, I’m choosing JOY. We’ll see how it goes since live has a way of throwing curveballs, but I’m hopeful.

I’m so grateful to have this career that I love and, if you are reading this, I’m grateful you are here too! I wish you a wonderful, JOYful 2024. 🎉

Christy Price

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