April 2022 Income Report: $23,228.44
New here? Start with February's Income Report and read a little bit about why I started doing them. 🙂 You can also read March's Income Report, which was down from February (and I explain why in the post).
April showed an increase of income from March, by $6,511.23. Because of my launch, I was expecting an increase but WOW! We totally surpassed expectations!!
This month, at least after realizing my income decreased from February to March, I decided to be a bit more mindful of how I spent my time. I did a time audit (something I have all of my PIPs+ and VIPs do), and kept on track during my work hours. I worked less than 15 hours a week this month and am happy with how things went.
I still had a ton of time to spend on the beach, with my family, and even took a vacation to Vegas – and that's the whole point! I also had more time to volunteer feeding the families and I created a page to share updates. Please go like Serving Baja if you're interested in seeing how the families are doing!
Like last month, we donated more than $3,000 to the local community (feeding kids, helping set up businesses, etc) with your help. Letty's business launched, but April is a very slow month here in our little corner of Baja, so she has not yet made a profit. We will continue to support her business for the next few months, until she can do so on her own.
Rosita's tutoring business is going well. School started up again (after being closed for almost 2 years), right when she was launching. This was bad timing, but she has been busy every day with tutoring and has added some online sessions as well.
Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. I earn a commission when you make a purchase through them. 🙂 Click to learn how to increase your affiliate earnings on your own blog.
Lessons From April
1. I can get everything done in 10-15 hours per week. 15 hours a week right now because I'm onboarding 30 new VIPs, but 10 hours a week is sufficient otherwise. 5 hours of coaching each week, and 5 hours on all other tasks. If I write more than one blog post, though, the time will go up closer to 15 hours. I'm okay with that, because writing blog posts is my favorite thing to do! 🙂
2. I have some major money blocks. I make a lot of money, but then I push it all away. Whether it's donating to businesses, feeding the kids, giving people free products when they really should work for them, or whatever else… too much money is going out and if I don't want to have a sinking ship, I have to work on my money mindset.
Manifesting has helped me a LOT with my mindset on other things, so I'm going to dive in this month specifically to work on the guilt I have surrounding money. Because I grew up on food stamps, have been in poverty my entire life, and especially because I was homeless, I have empathy for those who are currently in any of those situations.
While being empathetic is healthy, feeling guilty is not. The guilt weighs on my body as well, and manifests as physical pain. It is my top priority to work through improving my money mindset this month, because I deserve to enjoy the money I have and the guilt really does not belong in my life! I have worked HARD to get where I am, and have every right to be proud of it.
I also have every right to spend money when I want something – even if it seems unnecessary. There has to be a balance, and I know the course I'm taking can help with it.
3. Becoming the employer I've always wanted to be is something I have to work on daily. I tend to overwork people, so I have to make sure I respect their boundaries and not make them spend too many hours working!
Because of that, I hired an assistant for Pam. Pam is my … I am not sure of her title but she runs my entire business! Without her, it would not exist… so I hired an assistant for her so she can get some tasks marked off of her never-ending to do list.
I also planned a trip for us to Las Vegas! We spent a week in Vegas and mostly just ate lots of food, talked shop, and relaxed. It was wonderful and I can't wait to do it again. The next trip will be in December, and she will be visiting me in Mexico for our VIP Retreat!
Time OFF is just as important as time ON!
PIPs
I have PIPs Plus, and PIPs VIP.
PIPs is my membership, which includes my Etsy course, my writing course, my affiliate marketing course, and more.
VIP is my group coaching program. It includes everything PIPs offers, plus group and 1 on 1 coaching with me. I charge $297 per month for VIP. Yes, that is a big jump from the last price of $167, but I know it's worth 10x that much, so I'm comfortable with the raise and this is my “happy price” 🙂
Last month I said:
My launch will bring that number up substantially as my goal is 25 new VIPs.
We got 30 new VIPs, as we were closing the cart because we reached 25, 5 more slid in – and we are so happy they did! 🙂
MANIFEST THAT SHIT, Y'ALL!! I did this WITHOUT a huge list, WITHOUT a funnel in place, and WITHOUT ads. It was all organic, word of mouth from my Facebook group and my blog.
Total: $17,356.82 (172 active members total)
Affiliate Marketing
I promote multiple affiliates, but the main income I make comes from three. I also included Amazon in this report just to show how shitty their payouts are in comparison and why you should take affiliate marketing seriously. 🙂
Affiliate 1: $1,562.60 (-$141.00 from March)
Affiliate 2: $625.00 (-$2,125.00 from March)
Amazon: $108.55 (+27.72 from March)
If this post helped you in any way, please pin one of these images below!
It helps my blog tremendously. Thank you!
Ads
March ad earnings: $612.94 (-$80.30 from March)
Digital Products
My digital products portfolio is pretty passive, but I do add new products throughout the year. For example, I'm doing a $7 affiliate marketing challenge soon. I will then turn it into an evergreen challenge that funnels people into my PIPs and VIP programs.
Every 12 weeks, I do a different challenge to “launch” my membership and coaching program so there is a steady stream of new members throughout the year. This makes it less passive, yes, but the return is high enough for me both monetarily and in a “feel good, I helped a lot of people grow their businesses” kind of way that makes it worth it.
PLR for Blogs: $1036.60 up $278.10 from March.
Teachers Pay Teachers: $61.86 down $4.03 from March.
Income sources not included
Smiley's Points: We sold 70% of this blog last year and now get a deposit each month for 30% of the monthly income. This is our first solid passive income investment outside of stocks. We hope to build and sell sites in the future in the same way, retaining a portion as passive income. Right now, my next project for this is Single Mom Budgeting.
Plug-in installs: I charge $50 to install PrettyLinks on my client's blogs, but that gets wrapped into donations we make.
Investments
My current Stash portfolio is sitting at $18,282.81. Last month, I was at $20,036.88. My overall portfolio is down $2,322.35. I'm not worried about it because it will go back up. Most of my money is in ETFs, TSLA, and BROS.
My investing “strategy”
Basically any time I get an impulse to go shopping, I invest $50-$100 instead. Keeps me from buying dumb shit and keeps my portfolio growing. I started by replacing my $5 coffees, and it's grown.
I can't log into my main investment account so I'm going to record the number from last month, and update again next month (instead of letting this stop me from hitting publish) -In February, our investments were at $102,244.60. Based on how much my Stash portfolio has lost, I imagine we are down quite a bit in those too.
Final Numbers: $23,228.44
This month shows an increase of income from March, by $6,511.23!! That is awesome!!
I do not share ALL of our income in this report (nor am I super specific about everything, so there are probably #s missing here), but it is the VAST majority. I never want to give an exact amount because I'll always forget something,
As most of you know, I'm NOT a numbers person and posting this is stretching me WAY out of my comfort zone, but income reports always help inspire me and I think transparency is important… so here we are, published – not perfect. 🙂
Biggest lesson learned
I'm not doing the best job juggling everything. When my PIPs+ income goes up, my affiliates go down. When my affiliates go up, PIPs+ goes down. And then the PLR income is going up, but not as quickly as it could be because I haven't been working on it.
There is a lot of juggling that goes on when you have multiple streams of income, and I'm struggling with making sure they ALL grow monthly. Probably something I need to hire out for.
I am so proud of the money we've earned but even more proud of the lives we've touched. For us, it's not about the money but about what we can DO with the money. Who we can help, who we can serve.
We've been feeding 100+ people every week for a few months now and it's more and more rewarding each time we are able to do this. It is VERY important to us that these children are fed with no strings attached. When someone tries to come in and preach to them (which happens often), we have to put our foot down.
Many times, that means those people don't help anymore or they stop donating money or food. Just one more reason we are using OUR money to fund feeding the families; that means any time someone else puts something in, it's icing on the cake – not something we rely on.
The biggest lesson to take away from all of this is to JUST DO IT!
Yes, just DO THE THING. Whatever it is, whatever you've thought of but second-guessed yourself about… it's time to do it.
Our journey to F.I.R.E. started last year and we are already so far ahead of what we ever could have imagined. Why? Because we DID THE THING.
If you aren't sure which THING you should be doing, start reading my side hustle posts. If you're ready to take it a step up, join my membership!! Afraid of commitment? Want to learn for free first? Join my PIPs Facebook group… it's FREE and I go live at least once a week! 🙂
If this post helped you, inspired you, or heck, even if you read this far… please take a moment to choose one of the pins below and PIN IT on Pinterest!