Early Exit #18: September Finances
So how exactly did I break $20k in revenue last month?
You’re reading Early Exit Club — a newsletter about leaving the 9-5 workforce to build a $20k/month solo business by Nick Lafferty.
Last week I had some fun announcements:
I launched my first product, a battle-tested growth marketing playbook
A new Early Exit Club website to organize mine and other solopreneur’s products
I hit my $20k/month revenue goal five months after quitting my full-time job
Thanks to everyone who reached out last week, it means a lot 🙂
This week we’re going to dig into the full September finances and spoiler: it’s not all good news.
This month highlights the importance of diversified income streams. When one decreases, there’s another one that can make up the difference.
The Bad News
Website Traffic
🔴 Down 34% (43k → 28k)
Yikes.
I think I’m getting crushed by the September Google algorithm update.
Do any of the 50+ professional SEOs who subscribe to this newsletter want to help me turn this around?
Hit reply and let’s chat 🙂
Affiliate Income
🟢 Up 15% ($2.6k → $3k)
This is primarily from premium Notion Templates and various SaaS products I promote on my website, nicklafferty.com
And with decreasing website comes decreasing affiliate revenue…
Or does it?
Honestly this increase is a fluke. I got paid for some affiliate income I earned in July + August, and without that this number would be much lower.
Right now my consulting income is more than making up for the lost income here, but it’s also taking up all of my time that I could be spending to turn this around.
This seems like the right case to take my consulting profits and find an expert to help fix my mistakes.
Banner Ads
🟢 Up 45% ($1.1k → $1.6k)
Display ads on my website, nicklafferty.com
This looks good but it’s payment for ads that I earned 2 months ago plus a quick sponsored post I finished.
This number will start to decrease every month going forward and every month I get closer to turning it off entirely.
The Good News
Consulting
🟢 Up 28% ($12.5k → $16k )
This is my growth marketing consulting business for b2b SaaS startups. I’m at max capacity now but reach out if you need help and I can connect you with someone I know (and trust).
Here’s something I’ve never shown before: an anonymized breakdown of my consulting income by client over time.
Starting from basically nothing in May I’ve stacked quite a few clients and I’ve gotten much better at pitching + pricing myself.
I talk about where those clients came from in a previous newsletter:
I was able to increase scope with two of those clients too, something I talk about in my last finance update:
At the start of September I had 5 consulting clients paying an average of $3.2k/month for a total of $16,000.
And next month I’ll break $20,000 in only consulting income because I’ve shuffled some clients around and raised my rates for new clients.
Project Updates
Project TikTok:
A few months ago I wrote about taking a serious swing at TikTok.
Here’s some real talk (realTok?): I failed.
But last week I talked to a TikTok expert, Jon Jon Wesolowski, who helped grow Superhuman’s (one of my fav email tools) to over 40,000 followers.
His last TikTok got 450k views 👀
He gave me some great advice that I’m starting to implement this week.
Give him a follow on LinkedIn if you want to avoid making the same TikTok mistakes I did.
Wait, before you go
There’s almost 200 more people here compared to my August finance update, and I’m grateful for every single one of you.
I promise to never take your subscription for granted.
And I’ll see you all next week for what’s likely going to be a written interview with someone who just quit their job to work for themselves!
Cheers,
Nick
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