Behind the scenes: May 2022
May 🌸
May was fun!
Will Myers and I cohosted an Ask Us Anything session. We answered questions like “How do you handle clients who aren't sticking with the timeline you've laid out in the beginning and now the project is lingering longer than it should?" and "What are your favorite Chrome extensions for Squarespace / workflow / design / etc.?" You can still register here to view the replay.
Then I took 3 days off to go to Walt Disney World. So, yeah, no complaints about May.
Income Streams
This month had three income streams: 1:1 work, course and template sales, and affiliate income.
1:1 Work
I launched a new site for Jewish Free Loan Chicago. Jewish Free Loan Chicago helps Chicagoans discover small personal loans with zero interest, in an effort to cut out the need for predatory lending, often in the form of risky payday loans and car title loans. Loan applications open in August 2022.
I also did 5 Squarespace Help calls and 1 Designer for a Day®.
Course & Template Sales
I sold 1 Squarespace template ( SWAY) and had 1 enrollments in the Make Money with your Blog course this month. I didn’t record my next lesson in the course yet, but that is on my To Do list.
Affiliate Income
So it turns out the last couple of months I thought my affiliate income was less than $1500. And I was wrong - it’s holding steady around $1500 per month, May included. Why was I wrong? Because the Zap sending affiliate sales to my accounting software failed a few times and didn’t alert me. I realized it this week when I went to reconcile the last few months of my accounts. (Yep, I should do this every month. Nope, I don’t because I hate accounting. I don’t pay someone else to do it, because as painful as it is, I want my eyes on my books.)
This month I’m highlighting a few ways I connect with clients:
1. Honeybook lets me send a proposal, contract, and invoice in one click. Use code CHRISTYPRICE to try it out for $1/month for 8 months.
2. Content Snare Stop getting lost in emails, messy hacked-together systems and confusing shared docs. Content Snare is like a checklist for your clients with automatic reminders. I used this for a recent Template Buildout and both the client and I loved it.
2. SugarWish for client gifts. You only need their email and they get to choose which treats they'd like to receive.
This Month’s Income Percentages
1:1 work made up about 3/4 of my income this month. I keep thinking that it would be nice to lean into the course and template sales, but I am abysmal at marketing them.
Expenses
This month I spent money on:
- Adobe Creative Cloud for the next year ($389)
- A month of Zoom ($16). Now that they've changed the free plan I'll need to start paying for the service so I can do hour long calls and record them.
- Biyo for portfolio sites ($49). I was curious about how this was built on Bubble and wanted to check it out.
- Client gift ($39).
- Travel expenses for two upcoming work trips ($1114). I can't wait to share more about these!
Guess what? The >$1000 I spent last month on a course and summit pass? Yeah, I have taken maybe 2 lessons of the course and none of the summit. Please stop me from buying any more courses!!!! I have a giant backlog.
Content Creation
Blog
I had 3 posts this month! Not bad!
Instagram @christypricewebdesign
Email Newsletter
My monthly email went out to subscribers in early May. If you missed it, you can read it here.
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:
- Loom for recording quick screenshares for clients & course videos
- HoneyBook for proposals, invocing, and all the CRM for my full website design service
- 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
- 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
The Numbers (compared to April)
Website Visitors: ~12,200 (-400). Still trending down. I wonder if this is something everyone is seeing with life “getting back to normal” or if it’s just me.
Email List Subscribers: 1,887 (+47). Most new subscribers sign up for my lead magnet.
Instagram Followers: 1,383 (+15). I have no reels, not expecting much growth.
YouTube Subscribers: 764 (+28). No new videos, but How to Create a Landing Page in Squarespace has been getting a lot of love.
The Wrap-Up
May was pleasant work-wise and I enjoyed some time off too. Website visits are going down a little, but I’m not sure if I should be concerned. I’ll give it a couple of months and see what happens before I worry. The rest of the numbers I track are still going up a bit.
I’m taking off more time in June and then plan to dive into a new site build and record those lessons for my blogging course. And you know, maybe actually take all those courses I kept buying.
