Hey hey friends! I’m back again with another income report and ready to divulge into what I did and learned this month.

After an exhausting September I did a lot of reflection through October and got really clear on what I want to be focusing in 2017. I decided to reaccess my goals and tweak them so that I can run a better business that completely aligns with those goals next year.

With that I spent all of October in set-up mode working on the back end of my website creating new systems that will ensure that growth and progress my business next year. I won’t cover what that is in today’s post however, I’m saving that juicy one for later! 🤓

WHY DO I SHARE MY INCOME REPORTS?

I started House of Brazen in January 2016 while still working a day job and by March I was already making my first few sales. I was growing more and more unhappy in my job each day and in june I finally quit my job to work on my business full-time.

I should mention that I did this without having any other financial back-up other than my savings and I wasn’t making a liveable amount from my blog yet. Luckily, taking that risk was the best choice I made because I was able to grow my business fast enough that I now make a full-time living from it.

My favourite thing about running my own business is the freedom you get to do what you want with your time, so I share these income reports because I want to help you grow your business and achieve the same freedom in your life so you can spend more time doing the things you love with the people you love.

Alright, let’s do this! 😀

OCTOBER INCOME:

Total Revenue: $1713.66

This post contains affiliate links.

OCTOBER EXPENSES:

Total Expenses: $87

NET PROFIT: $1626.66

So as I said above, I spent most of this month working on the back end of my website getting new systems set up (boring I know!) and I’ll also be spending most of November working on the back end of my site. What surprised me is that my income remained pretty steady this month even without me actively promoting anything. Gotta love those funnels!

So moving on the the nitty gritty of this months income report. What happened? What worked? What was off? Let’s dig in!

MY AFFILIATE INCOME ALMOST TRIPLED!!!

This was toooooootally unexpected, but a very happy surprise indeed! I did nothing on my affiliate strategy this month so can you guess how I made that sale? No? I’ll give you a hint.. it rhymes with ‘interest’..

Yep, Pinterest! That’s the power of this incredible platform (and what I show you exactly how I do in my totally affordable ebook ‘How to Make Your First Affiliate Sale in 24 Hours Using Pinterest’). I promoted the product MONTHS ago and am still able to make sales from that pin today. That still blows my mind!

I STARTED UP AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM FOR MY EBOOK

I’m getting such great feedback from my little ebook that I decided to trial an affiliate program for it. This is something I will be testing over the next couple of months to see whether it’s viable and whether it’s worth running an affiliate program for smaller digital products versus an affiliate program for my bigger course products.

One thing I want to note is the work that is involved in setting up and running an affiliate program. There’s so many moving parts like choosing a platform for product delivery and choosing the hosting your affiliate program, creating a new list for your affiliates, sending out information to affiliates, creating and designing your product etc. So if you’re considering starting your own, make sure you have the time and energy to put into it because it’s going to need quite a lot of it initially!

MY MONEY BLOCKS KICKED IN

After the stress of last months launch and deciding to give up launching for a while, the left over energy rolled into this month. And when I’m stressed or feeling anxious, that’s when the negative beliefs roll in. Yippee! 😑

I am a big believer that mindset plays an astronomical part in the success of our businesses (as well as everything else in life), and for years I have worked on my mindset slowly chipping away and habits and beliefs that don’t help my progress. This month became all about my money blocks. It felt like this entire year finally caught up with me and my limiting beliefs around money and self-worth kicked in at full speed.

I started feeling guilty about EVERYTHING. Making money, not making money, spending money, not spending money, wanting more money, feeling like it should be harder, feeling like it should be easier, feeling like I’m not good enough to have more etc..

And when this happens I always self-sabotage. I’ll either spend way too much money on things I don’t really need, or I’ll procrastinate completing important tasks in my business OR I’ll avoid everything together and binge watch Netflix shows.

So I did a HUGE clearing of emotional baggage around money and decluttered a TON of stuff in my house and coincidentally my income has increased effortlessly without any extra effort on my part!

I QUIT MAILCHIMP & MOVED TO CONVERTKIT

Yes, I am now the 4,358,765th person to switch to ConvertKit from Mailchimp. Why? Mailchimp got way too frustrating. You can’t have more than one automated email sequence, you can’t segment your lists and you get charged each time someone opts into a new list.

But that wasn’t what pushed me over the edge. What did it was getting constant emails from people saying they didn’t receive certain lessons of my free course. I did some research and found out it was a common glitch from Mailchimp.

This is a mega problem because I make most of my sales from that free course and Mailchimp offers no simple solution to resend an email like this. So basically I had to sign up for my own course, get delivered the emails and then forward whatever lesson that person didn’t receive to their email address. I really shouldn’t have to do this for a paid service!!! So I bit the bullet and moved over. Best decision ever!

PREVIOUS INCOME REPORTS

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And there you have it! Did you learn something new? Is there anything more you would want to know? What are you taking away from this report and implementing on your blog?

Elise McDowell