You’re nosey?

ME TOO!

I love reading other people’s business reviews, especially when they get right into the nitty-gritty number-crunching stuff.

So I thought hey, why not do one myself?

Turns out it’s a bit scary, putting it all out there 😳

But *deep breath* here’s my 2024 business review.

It’s my first year of this business (after earning online since 2007, and solely from digital income streams since 2015).

It was also a very busy year in many other ways – travel, part-time work, premmie goats, and all sorts of other stuff has kept me very much occupied.

But I think I still managed to make pretty good progress.

Listen on the podcast here

Carry on for the photos, screenshots, and other juicy details!

My 2024 life overview

2024 was actually fairly calm for us – but I think we still crammed in more than most people.

And by us I mean myself, my husband Daniel, and my two teen sons, Rex and Forrest. We also have three adult daughters, who don’t live with us.

I started Business in your Backpack on January 1, after selling my last online business in October 2023.

We were still travelling at the time, and spent most of January at my nanna’s place near Melbourne, hanging out with family.

Near the end of January we left Melbourne to spend 4 months in Greece and Italy. We’re pretty relaxed travellers and usually spend at least a week in each place, but we’re out and about a lot exploring and visiting sites and just soaking up other places and cultures.

We’d booked in for the Alexander the Great marathon in Thessaloniki, (myself, the husband, and one son), and we ran SO MUCH for training, then did the marathon in mid-April. We also did 3 half marathon events and a 22k trail run in Europe, which were all heaps of fun.

Plus another two half marathons back in Australia – it’s been a year of running! I looked at my Coros stats for 2024 and I ran 1118km overall, with 203km just in March, which is pretty huge for me.

Because we were overseas and I knew it would probably be our last longer trip for a while, I didn’t want to commit to anything big. I focused on content, making a great free resource, the Business Idea Blitz course, setting up an evergreen email sequence, and launching the Online Business from Scratch podcast.

I also did paid Business Idea Reviews as an upsell from the Business Idea Blitz, but overall I didn’t want to commit to anything that would tie me to a schedule. I wanted our travel time to be as free as possible, so I didn’t want to beta test courses, or do big projects, or take on anything that I couldn’t just drop.

It worked well – we had a fantastic time while I put down a really good foundation for my business, and after eating my bodyweight in spanakopita and bougatsa we reluctantly returned to Australia in mid-May.

We came straight to a rented house in northern NSW. We got offered it while we were in Greece, and with Australia’s housing crisis thought it was a really good idea to take it rather than risk being homeless for months. So we hadn’t even seen it, not even a photo, before we started paying for it, but luckily it worked out well.

It’s a rural house on a few acres, so we set up an instant farm – cows, goats, chooks, quail, rabbits, pigs, huge vegie garden, all the things in a very short time. We didn’t have any furniture either, we tend to buy secondhand then sell it before we head off travelling, so we had to source and buy all of that too, so the first month was pretty busy.

I created and launched my first paid course, Master Your Minutes, in June. It’s a small course, but I wanted SOMETHING to sell! So I took my messy Google doc, turned it into a course, and launched that. I then added mentions into my evergreen email sequence and set it up as a tripwire, so it would make passive sales.

I was also tossing up whether to nurse. I hadn’t for 2 years because we’d been travelling and it’s a job that needs to be done regularly, so opting out for a long time means I become less employable (and find returning to work VERY stressful). I’d just decided not to nurse, and to go all in on the business…when I fell into a nursing job.

I’m now a clinical educator for a disability organisation 3 days a week.

And I’m about to start making online courses about health stuff like epilepsy first aid, so my business experience has come in very useful there!

I had a month off business when I started the job, then at the end of the month decided to test a big course on evergreen business foundations. I launched and sold that, did it along with 8 awesome testers, (check out this podcast episode for the full breakdown), and so for four months I had no time to do anything except that and my 3 days of work.

Especially because everything else seemed to happen – like my goat having triplets, freaking out, and refusing the feed the tiny little runt. Which ended up being my newborn for a few days, sleeping in a box next to my bed, until her mum took her back.

She’s like my puppy now.

I wrapped up the beta test a few weeks before the end of 2024, and since them I’ve been tidying up, doing the tester reviews for the beta test, and having a well-earned break. 

In 2024 I also participated in 3 summits, 4 bundles, featured on 2 podcasts, and did a live workshop for a worldschooling group.

And I read 111 books, which is pretty standard for me – but I do like the triple number.

So it’s been a big year overall! And I think I’ve made pretty good business progress, considering how much else I’ve crammed into my life.

OK, enough about me – I know you’re REALLY here for the numbers, so let’s get into them.

2024 Earnings Stats

Before we get stuck into the numbers, I want to throw in a disclaimer.

We had no financial stress, and no real motivation to earn money in 2024.

I sold my previous business in late 2023, so received a big chunk of money then. Plus we’re financial nerds – we’ve been debt-free since 2012 and have savings and investments.

In 2024 our goal was to relax a bit, and make sure we’re enjoying our last few years with our boys. Our girls have already moved out, so we’re very aware that we don’t have them for much longer. There will be plenty of time to work when they’re gone.

Once we settled back in Australia my 3 days per week and my husband’s casual shifts have easily covered our relatively low living costs.

So my business income was pretty low – but it was also low on my priority list.

🥁 Enough of the explanations…drumroll please….

💰2024 Total Revenue: $3196.72

Which is made up from –

🫰Product revenue: $2250.13

💵Affiliate revenue: $946.59

I don’t know what I’ve spent specifically for this business (aka. can’t be arsed digging through Paypal and bank accounts to work it out), so I don’t know my profit.

It’s also messy to work out, because I have Dye DIY (revenue not included here) so I already had things like course hosting, my Canva account, and my Filmora subscription, and I use them for both businesses. Plus I already owned my laptop, microphone, and webcam – it would be different if I was starting from scratch.

Apart from buying a new ThriveCart account I haven’t had any big costs, so I’m confident that a fair chunk is profit.

Reflection on income

Obviously, my revenue is low. And if I’d had the motivation to earn I could have made much more by making more products and offering more coaching.

I mean, most people who did a Business Idea Review wanted more coaching, so I could have put together 1:1 packages or created a small group intensive if I needed the money.

But it was a conscious choice to put lifestyle before income in 2024, and that choice will continue in 2025 – I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the last year full-time with our boys.

Overall, I’m happy with the revenue – $3200 from not much effort shows me that I have a great foundation to build on.

2024 Email List Stats

Email is my main focus, because email has always been my #1 way of connecting with people and making sales.

I’ve had big social media accounts for my other businesses, and they never got anywhere near the results of my email list. Emails always had a huge conversion rate compared to social posts.

Plus, social media just gets harder and harder because the platforms want need us to advertise, because it’s how they earn.

On the other hand, email gets easier and easier, because I can keep stacking more automations, more freebies, and more promo methods – all based on what’s already working.

Yes, I love email for lower effort but high evergreen returns!

So here are my email stats.

I took this screenshot on January 4, so it’s a little off.

I had 488 subscribers on December 31.

Subscribers have mostly come from events I’ve done (those podcasts etc.), SEO, and me sharing in response to relevant questions/problems in communities (like ‘I can’t choose a business idea’, and me saying ‘here, I have a free course for that’).

Income per subscriber

You know what I just realised?

I made $6.55 per email subscriber.

That’s pretty great, considering most of the year I either wasn’t selling anything, or wasn’t selling anything priced over $9!

My evergreen email sequence

I also set up an evergreen email sequence, which has been FANTASTIC.

Essentially, once people go through the welcome emails for the specific reason they signed up, they start the evergreen sequence.

They get an email each Tuesday. These emails have helpful tips, and usually lead to a blog post/podcast/paid resource as well.

It means that I can write a few emails at a time, add them to the end of the sequence, and they’ll just keep going out automatically.

And my open rates and click rates are pretty good, which shows me that people like the emails.

I didn’t actually keep ahead of everyone all the time (note 244 subscribers have completed the last step, oops) but it means that nearly everyone has gotten regular emails, and more recent signups have a few months of regular emails ahead of them – even if I have no time to write one that week.

I love this setup, and I’d like to get at least 52 emails in there. Imagine an entire year of automatic email goodness for every new subscriber, without effort from me!

It means that one day I can go and do the Hexatrek (a 3000km hike through France) while my evergreen emails keep working for me 🤩

2024 Podcast Stats

My podcast is my other Big Thing in terms of free content.

I launched Online Business from Scratch in April, and released a weekly episode until my 4 month break, then squeezed in a couple in December.

So I published 26 total episodes in 2024, including the welcome.

They had 1306 total plays, an average of 29 per episode, and I have 54 followers on Spotify (with 17 5⭐ reviews, thanks everyone!).

I’ve been surprised how much of an impact the relatively small numbers have had.

Let’s face it, 54 followers on Instagram would be nothing.

But virtually everyone I’ve worked with has mentioned loving the podcast, and I get messages about it pretty regularly.

It definitely has a huge ROI, so I’m really glad I did it early.

Have you subscribed yet? If not, you really should!

2024 Blog Review

Apart from my podcast posts, I only have 7 blog posts.

If you’ve read the advice that tells you to churn out 3+ posts a week, 7 posts in an entire year seems absolutely pointless.

But because I use an evergreen approach, those 7 posts are performing pretty well for me.

Each post is long, detailed, and written for a specific need, or to answer a specific question.

For example, if you check out the Quickest Way to Start an Online Business, you’ll see it’s very comprehensive.

It’s got step-by-step instructions, multiple examples, and is nearly 4000 words (without rambling).

The reasons I blog like this?

First, because it’s always worked for me. My complete guides and detailed overviews always got the most traffic. They rank well in search, and when people find them they can see I know my stuff. I get a lot of email signups from those pages.

And second, over the last few updates Google keeps emphasising quality over quantity.

They’re prioritising long, detailed posts from high-quality sites.

Having a bunch of barely-read short-form posts will actually harm your site. Many people have deleted those posts from their sites over the last few years.

So my approach is definitely less is more.

Write less content, but make it really good.

It seems to be working, because my Domain Authority hit 17, I get decent search traffic, and I consistently move higher up the rankings each month.

Pretty good considering I’m not specifically targeting keywords, trying to bump up my DA, or going all-in with SEO!

I did that for Dye DIY, because I wanted to monetise with ads – but having higher-priced products here means I don’t need to be as laser-focused on SEO. It’s a great thing to do, but not my ONLY thing.

Best bits of 2024

Being in Europe for months and running and hiking all over the place – travel is the best part of an online business for me.

We can just decide to take off for the day and do a 27km run/hike up and over Mt Vesuvius.

I still can’t quite believe that we get to live this life. The husband and I have put in a lot of work to get from our childhoods in caravan parks and commission housing to becoming adults with financial security who can travel for months at a time, but I’m so glad we did.

Especially with online business. It took me a while to learn the skills, and I had to keep going even when there was no guarantee that I’d ever earn anything from it, but now I have those skills I can earn money from everywhere, and it’s not tied to the hours I work.

While we’re planning to stay settled in Australia for 2025 because our boys don’t want to travel, we’re going to fit in some adventures somewhere. We’ve been looking up trail running events in Vietnam…let’s see what happens!

If I could redo 2024…

I’m pretty happy with my 2024 results, overall.

I feel like I have an established business with a solid foundation, and so all I really need to do now is come up with more good reasons for people to pay me.

But if I could go back, I’d increase income (the whole point of a business) by making more products, earlier.

I could have created a few smaller courses and run a couple of workshops, without seriously impacting our travel or free time.

I turned down quite a few opportunities and ideas because I wanted to protect my time.

That’s not a bad thing, but I was probably overprotective.

I’d also focus more on growing my email list.

I pretty much chucked up the Business Idea Blitz and a waitlist and left it at that. Apart from the bundles/summits I didn’t do much else to grow my list.

Seeing as it’s my most valuable resource, I need to put more effort into growing it.

I’m already onto it – I’ve got a new freebie planned that I think will convert higher, and I’ve got a few other ideas to start reaching more people.

This is where I tell you to get on my email list so you get all the good stuff – see what I’m doing here? Smart business strategy, right?!

So that’s it – my 2024 business review for my first year of Business in your Backpack.

If you’ve got any questions please drop them in the comments below, I’m happy to answer pretty much anything.

I hope you’ve found it interesting, that you’ve learned something useful from it, and you’re going to stick around on my email list and podcast to keep learning.

And I hope it’s shown you that you can do this too. If you’ve got knowledge and experience that others want to learn, you can have an online business.

You can fit it around your busy life, pick it up and drop it as you need, and build it in a way that suits you.

I want you to start 2025 knowing that you can do this, that it may take time, but if you have a great topic and build a great foundation, then the sky’s the limit.

All the best for 2025 – you’re going to smash it.

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