How I Make Money

I often get asked how I make money. Not always in those words, but when you boil it down, that's what people mean when they ask much more polite-sounding questions like, "What else do you do?" or "What do you do when you're not teaching yoga?" 

I also know that a lot of you, my readers--some of whom have been with me since I started this journey (Wow! Thank you!)--have watched my sources of income + revenue streams change over the past 5 years, but haven't gotten much of a glimpse into exactly what those sources or streams may be...

So today, in an attempt to show you how this solopreneur pays her mortgage, I thought I'd share the primary ways that I make money. 

My hope is that by sharing this info, you'll understand that often, in order to "live the dream" (If going out on your own is in fact your dream), you've got to hustle, diversify, keep learning, growing + trying new things, and be willing to wear many different hats along the way. 

As you all know by now, the "do what you love" journey looks TOTALLY different for everyone, but if there's one thing that I've learned from working with many different solopreneurs over the years, it's that we've all got lots of irons in the fire at one time, and that's just how it works. Throughout the course of a year, different irons get hot + ready for use at different times, so it's best to keep lots going so that you're always covered.

So, here's how I make money. I've put my income sources into "buckets," because I think that's the easiest ways to categorize all of the different things I do:

Yoga Teaching Bucket

• Weekly Classes: Teaching 9 classes per week right now, which is actually a bit too much for me. I usually try to limit myself to no more than 8, but, you know, summertime on Cape Cod...
• Workshops: Teach 1-2 per month (Although I've taken the summer off from teaching workshops because things are just so crazy right now!)
• International Retreats:  Lead 1-2 per year
• Teaching Teachers/Teacher Training: Although I do this MUCH less than I used to when I was in DC, I am still teaching approx. 2-5 sessions per year for Teachers-in-Training

Painting Bucket

• Custom Paintings/Commissions: Always working on at least 2-3 commissions at a time, and I usually have a few more on deck (Note: This picks WAY up during the holiday season, so I have to account for that time-wise)
• Etsy Shop Sales: I typically sell mostly prints + greeting cards on Etsy, but also get fairly regular orders for one-off projects like Cake Toppers + other unique needs). These sales come in sporadically throughout the year and then pick WAY up around the holidays 
• Retail sales: I have my paintings, prints, and/or greeting cards in 6 retail locations and I get monthly checks for these sales (Not a huge chunk of my income, but a nice small trickle)

Consulting Bucket

• 1-on-1 Consulting Sessions: Average 3-5 per month
• Ongoing Client Work: I take on small biz clients and work with them on a variety of marketing + branding projects for an hourly rate. I currently have 3 of these clients
• Branding Workshops: New endeavor! Did one earlier this month and have another scheduled for the fall...How big of a part these workshops will play in the future is still TBD, but the first one was a success!

Design Bucket

• Website Design: I am pretty skilled at using templates to create websites, so I often do this for clients who don't have those skills and need a basic website. I am currently working on 4 sites. {To be clear, I am not a website designer and I do not know HTML!} 

• Logo Design: I take on about 5-8 logos design projects per year, so this is a pretty small part of my biz

Blog Bucket:

• Sponsored Posts: This is the only direct way that I make money from my blog. I do an average of 1-2 sponsored posts per month

Phew! I think that's it {for now}. 

So do you see what I mean? That's a lot of different hats. I actually think it's WAY too many, so am working on figuring out which buckets I should stop offering (or limit quite a bit!) in order to create more time + energy for the other buckets. But overall, I would say that this is a pretty normal number of income streams for a solopreneur. 

As you can probably gather, it takes constant tweaking to make this life manageable, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

Fellow solopreneurs: Have you taken the time to break down your income streams recently? If not, I recommend you do it, as it'a  great exercise in finding out why you might be feeling so overextended AND in figuring out where you might want to cut back or amp things up a bit. 

Aspiring solopreneurs: Please don't let this list scare you + have no fear! When I first quit my full-time job, I wasn't making money in any of these ways except teaching yoga and the occasional painting commission. All of these offerings have grown organically since I took the leap and created more time and space in my life. So be patient. 

Hope you enjoyed that glimpse into how I make money! Maybe someday I'll get my act together enough to become totally transparent + share my monthly income reports, a la Pat Flynn ;)