July 2017 Business Report

I’m pulling the curtain back on my small business!

In February 2017, I decided to start sharing my monthly business reports. In these reports, I discuss the month’s positives and negatives as well as progress I made towards my 2017 goals. I also give a snapshot of my earnings.

I started my maternity leave on July 1 and Miles was born July 2. The only work I’m doing while on maternity leave is a paper newsletter for one of my clients. This amounts to approximately four hours of work per month. Even though I’m not actively supporting clients, I’m still working on my business while I’m on leave.

Here’s what happened in July.

Positives

• Rebranding of Freelancing Mama

Laura at Pixel Me Designs did a beautiful job designing my new website! I’m so happy with her work and would strongly recommend her to anyone looking for website design.

• Collaboration idea for a course

During a late night baby feeding session, I had an idea for a course that I want to pitch to a bigger blogger in my niche. This person has collaborated with other people on courses in the past and I think we would be a good fit to work together. I’m going to put together my idea and pitch to her in late August. I’m nervous because I’ve never done this before, but I’m excited! I’m going to feel the fear and do it anyway (my business motto!).

• Monetizing the blog

After the blog was redesigned, I took some time to figure out my options for monetization. Right now I only have enough pageviews to use Google Adsense. Once I hit 10,000 views a month then I’ll apply for Mediavine or another ad network. I’m really excited to see where this goes!

Negatives

There were no negatives in my business that I haven’t already discussed in the months leading up to my maternity leave.

Progress towards business goals

1) Increase my yearly income by $10,000

I don’t want to say this goal is impossible for this year, but it will be difficult. I have a lot of ground to make up from my lost clients before I will be at the “increasing income” level. Right now I’m trying to get back to where I was in January.

2) Get another local client

This goal is on pause until September.

3) Launch The Sturm Agency website

Hopefully, we’ll get something put together by late summer/early Fall.

4) Launch my freelancer idea

I have not made any progress on this goal yet.

5) Sponsor something in the community

This goal is on hold until 2018.

6) Finish Elite Blog Academy course

My goal is to finish the EBA course by the end of the year. I am currently on Unit 1 and plan on making major progress during my maternity leave.

Income Snapshot

This income came from a mixture of social media management, virtual assistant work, one-off organization projects, and content writing.

I may eventually share the actual numbers associated with my income, but for now I’m not comfortable doing that. I will be sharing this income snapshot to show a trend of my income throughout the year.