Behind the scenes: January - March 2023
Q1 2023: January, February, March
I came back to work in mid-January this year after taking a month off over the holidays. I expected to be refreshed and ready, but I was struggling a bit to get back into the swing of things. Fortunately, things kicked off amazingly well with several Designer for a Day® bookings and I also had some time to develop a new low-cost digital product.
Income Streams
This quarter had three income streams: 1:1 work, course and product sales, and affiliate income.
1:1 Work
Most of my income this quarter came from 1:1 work. I had 18 Squarespace Help Calls, 8 Designer for a Days®, a great template buildout project, and I also moved a large site from Squarespace 7.0 to 7.1.
The help calls ranged from creating a solid website strategy to doing site updates together.
The Designer for a Day bookings were pretty varied as well. The first was a Designer for a Day® with Dr. Neff of Neurodivergent Insights. We added some color to her brand palette, introduced branded elements throughout her design, and updated her navigation and site structure to reflect her current strategy.
And another was two DfaDs paired together to create a new website for attorney Randi Isaacs based on her current logo and photos.
Another of my favorite projects was working with Business Anthropologist Drew Jones on a template buildout.
Course & Template Sales
At the beginning of February, I launched my first low-cost digital product: a Client Process Checklist for Squarespace Designers for $17, and have sold about 70 of these so far. I’m very encouraged by the feedback I’ve gotten, so I plan on releasing some more digital products around this price point.
I also sold 5 Squarespace templates and had 6 new enrollees in my Make Money with your Blog course.
Affiliate Income
My affiliate income has been boosted a bit by the new Squarespace Circle referral payments. If you are a Circle member you can apply for the affiliate program to earn a bit for each site you start that goes live.
This Quarter’s Income Percentages
Expenses
This quarter my expenses were about 10% of my income. This was higher than normal because I had to:
pay for CPA tax filing and additional accounting help
buy a new phone
I also spent money on regular expenses like:
client gifts
software (Plausible, ContentSnare, Squarewebsites Pro, Will Myers plugins)
office supplies
And I invested in some courses & memberships for myself:
Liz Wilcox’s email marketing membership ($9/mo or $108/yr)
Julie Hall’s ChatGPT training ($9)
Marketing with Menekse’s Marketing Magic Dashboards ($197)
Danbee Shin’s Globally Inclusive Websites ($37, but I can’t find it on her website at the moment)
and a $99 membership that I wouldn’t recommend
Content Creation
Blog
I revamped my 10 Best Squarespace Plugins post and had 4 new posts as well:
Instagram @christypricewebdesign
Email Newsletter
My monthly email went out to subscribers at the beginning of each month. You can sign up here.
Collaborations
I hosted Ask Us Anything sessions with Will Myers and Kerstin Martin and we always get great questions that foster good discussion. You can still register to watch the replays! Will and I are also working on Squarespace Shenanigans… this is still taking shape but is a lot of fun.
Tools & Tech
Here are the tools and tech I relied on this month:
- MailerLite for my monthly email newsletter
- Wave for accounting and one-off invoicing
- Zapier for adding transactions to Wave automatically and delivering my templates
- Teachable for hosting courses and templates for sale
- Squarespace for my site and client builds
The Numbers
Website Visitors: I hopped around from analytics providers this quarter, moving from Fathom to Plausible. I don’t have the numbers, but things have seemed fairly steady.
Email List Subscribers: 2,225
Instagram Followers: 1,615
YouTube Subscribers: 1,128
The Wrap-Up
I thought I’d start ending these posts with a Rose, Thorn, and Bud reflection.
Rose = A highlight, success, small win, or something positive that happened.
Thorn = A challenge you experienced or something you can use more support with.
Bud = New ideas that have blossomed or something you are looking forward to knowing more about or experiencing.
My Rose: (professional) I got to work with some amazing clients this quarter and loved every project I worked on.
My Thorn: (professional) I had a hard time setting consistent boundaries this quarter.
My Bud: (professional) Creating more digital products and another idea that I will share soon!
