20 Years of Income & Milestones – Review

In 2002 I looked at my baby boy’s little face and decided I didn’t want to go to work for 10+ hours per day and leave him with someone else.

I wanted to be by his side! So, I did the only thing I could think to do – started a business.

I had ZERO business skills and NO IDEA how to run a business. All I knew was that it was “the way” to earn my freedom and still be an independent woman.

He was four months old.

This is us a few years later:

When I started my own business and created a website to sell from I had no idea what I was doing.

I didn’t know ANYONE doing it.
I didn’t personally know ANY “work from home” business owners / moms.
I didn’t know ANYONE making money online.

But I had this idea that sprang up from a need and wouldn’t leave me.
The idea that a business COULD be molded into a life I wanted, while earning me the money I needed.

A hunch.

So I followed it.

And it worked out.

I was looking back through my income reports over the years and thought it might be an interesting to look back over the years I’ve been “raising a business while raising a family“.

Now I have a son and a daughter. My girl Ella is 8. This is us:

My kids are my world.

I really live by the philosophy on the main page of this site… Life First, Then Business.
Everything I do is/was secondary to making sure they have all they need and that they’re happy.

Turns out I’ve learned a lot from this Bird’s Eye View…. especially when I look back to some of these years and remember how I thought I wasn’t doing that well. Looking from the 20-year view I can see the progress, the milestones and the life events. It’s pretty eye-opening.

I hope it gives you some insight and inspiration, too!

So here we go!

Just so you know – since it matters how much you keep!

• 2002 – 2005 Income – Approx $60,000 – I don’t have proper records so I lumped these years together and estimated my income. In these early years I started a Bath & Body business in 2002. I created my own website from scratch. I started learning online marketing.
• 2006 Income – $2161.18 – Started VA Business
• 2007 Income – $19,182.94 – Quit my Factory Job (May)!
• 2008 Income – $35,141.07 – Almost all VA Income. Burnt OUT at this point. Decided I needed to quit and find a job. Working 50+ hr/week on Virtual Assistant/Client work. Started my first digital product – graphics training videos.
• 2009 Income – $17, 566.99 – VA Income after letting go of many clients and not finding a JOB.
• 2010 Income – $22,364.59 – Started a signature course on WordPress. Started working with a coach. Started a membership.
• 2011 Income – $40,072.63 – Hitting a stride with my WordPress course and membership site.
• 2012 Income – $47,129.67 – We bought our first house this year – I wonder if that helped my 2013 income? (rhetorical) LOL!
• 2013 Income – $63,539.01 – I was selling my WordPress course still, working with a FEW clients and selling other digital offers.
• 2014 Income – $42,485.24 – My daughter was born this year and you can tell. I gradually got more time to work over the next few years.
• 2015 Income – $49,353.11 – This year I rebranded my membership and really got serious about the focus on the membership. You can tell over the next few years how that impacted my business.
• 2016 Income – $79,119.29
• 2017 Income – $86,373.65
• 2018 Income – $121,917.55 – My first six figure year!
• 2019 Income – $126,440.04 – Continuing to work on/build the membership
• 2020 Income – $103,457 – We ALL know what happened this year!!!
• 2021 Income – $95,536 – This is the year I CLOSED my membership and had a bit of a detour into a whole other industry (direct sales)!
• 2022 Income – TBD – This year I’m 1000% BACK into online marketing after selling off two direct sales sites.

This income is reported as Gross Income, CAD. That’s before expenses. My main business expenses have always been low – a few hundred dollars a month – and then affiliate expenses could run about 25-30% of my income but that’s not always. I’m going to estimate my profitability at about 70-80% for most of the years below. The most recent years it’s closer to 90% as I’m not doing as much with my affiliate program lately (that may change).

To date I have made over $1,000,000 CAD in my online business over these years.

That money was earned either by customer referrals, affiliate partnerships or email marketing. I’d estimate at least 80% (the vast majority) of that was earned by me sending emails to my offers. This is something I’ve done daily for over 15 years.

It’s NOT an overnight success story but as I said I was raising my business while raising a family and this was really interesting for me to lay out and see myself!

My priority was on spending time with my kids and family and I was able to achieve that while building something really awesome.

I need to remind myself of that.
I need to come back to this post when I’m feeling like I didn’t do “enough” in those years.

My goal was to raise two amazing humans and so far, as far as I can tell, I accomplished that while ALSO raising an amazing business, too.

I love what I created.
I’m so grateful for the lifestyle that was formed.
And I look forward to seeing how I can mold my lifestyle in the NEXT 20 years.

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Angela Wills

Hey! How are ya? I hope life is treating you well and letting you have all the freedom in the world! That's what this website and my business is about - freedom. I LOVE to teach people how to leverage what they know and use the internet to reach thousands of people! I got started with my first website (for fun) in 1999 read more...

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