Behind the scenes: March 2022
March 🌸
March in Austin, Texas, brings blooming mountain laurels, peach blossoms, and spring break. I took a week off while my daughter was home from college and enjoyed the downtime. I’m taking another week off next month to travel with my mom to celebrate her 80th birthday. One of the perks of working for yourself!
Income Streams
This month had three income streams: 1:1 work, course and template sales, and affiliate income.
1:1 Work
This month I did a template buildout using the SWAY template for Packaging Chic. I also had a custom build for a client working on NYC building compliance, plus I had 5 one-hour Squarespace help sessions and 2 Designer for a Days® in March.
Course & Template Sales
I sold 3 Squarespace templates (all SPICE) and had 1 enrollment in the Make Money with your Blog course this month. I was planning to record new lessons for Make Money with your Blog in March, but I had a personal loss and just couldn’t. It’s on the agenda for April/May! I’ll be ramping up marketing efforts when I add those lessons.
Affiliate Income
I count affiliate income when I receive the payout, so depending on the affiliate terms some payouts I get immediately, some are a month or two later, and some are almost 4 months later (looking at you, Squarespace). My affiliate income was low this month at $1100. Aside from the occasional outlier I typically make about $1500+ each month in affiliate income, so I’ll do some digging and figure out why this month was lower. I’m also interested to see what the numbers will look like for April.
This month I’m highlighting tools that save me time in my business (and we all know that time is money):
1. HoneyBook helps me organize my web design projects and send out contracts and invoices automatically. Get my setup checklist here and save 50% off your first year.
2. Teachable is where I sell my Templates and Courses. With a couple of Zaps to connect to my email list and accounting software, it’s totally automated.
2. MailerLite makes email marketing easy. When you join my email list (click the button in the footer) you’ll automatically get my Squarespace prelaunch checklist and a helpful email series before you are rolled into my monthly email newsletter list.
This Month’s Income Percentages
This month I took a week off, so my 1:1 income was lower than usual. My affiliate income was lower too, but course & template sales made up a good percentage this month.
Expenses
This month I spent money on:
- RenewingTeachable ($380) where I sell templates and courses.
- Liz Wilcox email membership ($108, annual plan)
- A month of Zoom ($16) because I had a couple of projects with two stakeholders and needed longer than 40 minute calls with more than one person.
- Another month of Content Snare ($26). Loving it for templated projects.
Yeah, I still haven’t finished the copywriting course or Lizzy’s course I bought in January.
Content Creation
Blog
I enjoyed diving back into the Creator Spotlights and also wrote a reference post I’m sharing with all my potential clients about lgoos and branding.
Instagram @christypricewebdesign
Email Newsletter
My monthly email went out to subscribers in early March. You can read it here. It’s a short and sweet one.
Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn
I use MissingLettr to schedule my blog posts to automatically share on each of these platforms on a set schedule. Save 50% off the first three months with any new plan.
Tools & Tech
Here are the tools and tech I relied on this month:
- Canva for blog thumbnails, website mockups, and Instagram posts
- MailerLite for my monthly email newsletter
- Wave for accounting and one-off invoicing
- Zapier for adding transactions to Wave automatically
- Teachable for hosting courses and templates for sale
- Zoom for client calls and screenshares
- Loom for recording quick screenshares for clients & course videos
- Squarespace for my site and client builds
- SquarespaceWebsites Tools Extension PRO for porting over blogs from Squarespace 7.0 sites to new 7.1 sites
- SQSP Themes plugin bundle for related posts and blog sidebar for client sites
- Heather Tovey's Squarespace Block ID Finder Chrome extension to easily target blocks with CSS code
- HoneyBook for proposals, invocing, and all the CRM for my full website design service
The Numbers (compared to February)
Website Visitors: ~14,100 (+100). March is usually a little lower for me since lots of people here in the US are on Spring Break for a week during the month.
Email List Subscribers: 1,785 (+65). Most new subscribers sign up for my lead magnet.
Instagram Followers: 1,337 (+18). A little growth with very few posts in March. No reels.
YouTube Subscribers: 702 (+27). Picking up a few more - I plan to post more frequently here so we’ll see how that affects the number of subscribers.
The Wrap-Up
Yeah, still haven’t gotten through those courses I bought back in January. But I did have a great week off for spring break! And I worked with some lovely clients this month including Goodtype.us. Check out their free training on Three steps to turn your art into Passive Income with Art Licensing.
