October 2024 Income Report: $31,000+ from Passive Income Streams Without Social Media

Last Updated on November 14, 2024

As part of the $1K/Day Experiment, I’m back publishing Income Reports for Success with Soul about passive income streams for online entrepreneurs. These are separate from the Progress Reports we publish monthly as a Case Study for Rachel’s business Seeds & Stalks. Discover how I earned $31K+ in passive income in October 2024, all without social media or a team.

Well, hello there! Long time no Income Report, right? The last time I hit “publish” on one of these was 2020. So, grab a cozy drink, because we’re catching up, and I’m so excited to be back sharing a behind-the-scenes look into what I’m really doing in my business.

A Quick Recap of the Last 4 Years

Let’s rewind to where we left off. I started Success with Soul in 2019 with my first course, the Six-Figure Blog Academy. At that point, I was still running my holistic wellness blog, Root + Revel, where I spent my days writing about green smoothies and yoga’s magical powers.

But by 2021, I was ready for a change, so I quit all social media, and sold Root + Revel for multiple six figures.

Just before that, I realized that my wellness blog life and coaching life had become two separate beasts. So, I moved all things business over to its own fancy home here on katekordsmeier.com, created a new offer suite of courses and coaching, and started my podcast, Success with Soul.

The name felt like exactly what I was trying to do (both for myself and for others) and eventually I migrated my site katekordsmeier.com to successwithsoul.co, where you are now.

And now, let’s get to the juicy details you really wanna know–the money.

Passive Income Streams for Entrepreneurs

My revenue has been all over the place since then. In 2021, I made $771,877.46 from my two businesses.

But 2022 brought some bumps: no more R+R income, plus that whole recession thing, and—oh yeah—the coaching bubble bursting. My income dipped to $303,662.85.

2023 was my worst year in business since I started: I only made $231,028.79, despite the fact that I now had this team of 5 employees (read: a massive payroll expense every month) and I had to dip into a business line of credit and personal savings to make ends meet. By the end of the year, I was paying everyone but me. The phrase “running on fumes” was practically invented to describe this time.

So in Fall 2023, I made some really hard decisions. I parted ways with my entire team, except Rachel, my loyal, part-time contractor and right hand woman, who is still here today, and cut out all unnecessary expenses. Literally my monthly expenses went from over $15k/month down to <$3k/month.

And, most importantly, I decided to take a 6-month sabbatical. I needed to take a mental break from “trying to solve the problem that was my business”. I felt like the previous 18 months was banging my head against the wall, trying so hard, not getting near the results I needed to cover costs, let alone pay myself, forcing, pushing, forcing pushing.

Plus, I was finally confronting some deep-rooted personal trauma I’d carried since I was sexually assaulted in high school. It was time to focus on healing. Things got really dark for a long time.

But I can honestly say now that it’s true what they say: It is always darkest just before the dawn. And sometimes, the best way to find the light is to endure the darkness.

Fast forward to May 2024, I’d done the inner work I needed to (and continue to do) and felt ready to come back to work.

And surprise! Even though I was on sabbatical, my business still pulled in $47,480.25, thanks to the funnels and evergreen systems I set up before I left. I also kept a small handful of 1:1 clients, so I always call my sabbatical a “sorta-sabbatical” because I showed up for my existing clients for about 5 hours a month, but I didn’t do anything else including marketing, emailing, posting, writing, visibility, nothing.

So that was really cool to see that even when I was working less than an hour a week, I was still able to earn almost $10k/month. I was able to pay off all of my debt during this time, too!

And then once I came back, it was with a renewed energy, creative inspiration like I haven’t felt in years and exciting plans for where I wanted to go.

So I was very quickly able to start earning $500/day in passive digital product sales (my favorite passive income stream!). Like literally 8 weeks after I returned from sabbatical.

So here we are, starting to write the next chapter in my story, because it ain’t over yet!

The $1K/Day Experiment was born in October 2024, after I had maintained this $500/day average for over 120 days and started to set my sights higher to $1,000/day.

Anyway, as part of that behind-the-scenes offer, I promised to start publishing Income Reports again, and while these posts are public for anyone to read, if you want to get an even deeper look into exactly what I’m doing in my business to make consistent daily sales without ever posting on social media then I invite you to grab your unfiltered backstage pass here.

Now without further ado, the Income Report for October 2024.

October 2024 Income: $31,048.16

• Gross Income: $31,048.16
  • Note this amount is made up from various passive income streams including affiliate income, digital products sales, monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from my membership, coaching income, and sponsored content.
• Expenses: $2292.31
  • I’ll share what my top expenses are after I pay Rachel:
    • Bookkeeper
    • Software (you can see what I use here)
    • Coaching (yes, even coaches need coaches!)
• Net profit: $29,407.37

Here’s what’s so cool about this. After a year of high, debilitating pressure to outearn my high expenses and payroll, it feels amazing to know that as long as I make more than $3,000 a month, the rest is all profit; fun bonus money for me to either pay myself or re-invest back into the business.

But it’s a choice, not an obligation. And I cannot tell you how much lighter that feels for me. For the longest time, I thought “solopreneur” was code for “doomed to hustle alone.” I convinced myself I needed a full team around me or I’d be miserable and overwhelmed.

But the opposite has proven to be true. It’s made me realize that even though I loved the people, I really hated managing them. My life was spent on Zoom meetings and reviewing people’s work, back-and-forthing on Slack—it was like running a non-stop customer service line for my own business.

And even though the idea of being this liberated Visionary CEO who didn’t work IN my business sounded great in theory, I personally hated it in practice.

I like getting my hands dirty, I like being able to flex my creative muscle by writing emails and blog posts like this and working directly with my clients and being the one to actually DO the work.

And it turns out, I’m really fucking good at it. I’m efficient, focused, I work fast and hard and then rest the same way. Even though I’m touching almost everything in my business today, I still only work 20 hours a week, I still take 12 weeks of vacation every year, I still drop my kids off at school and make it to their Thanksgiving luncheons (which is what I’m doing today) in the middle of the workday.

And I love it. I love the work. And without the pressure, it’s just fun. It’s just an experiment, a place for me to play, to try new ideas and not freak out if they don’t work. I’ve learned how much I’m really capable of and what I can handle. And I’m so proud of what I’ve built and who I am in it. Life feels lighter, the work feels purposeful, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I never would’ve gotten to this place if I hadn’t taken that sabbatical, dealt with my shit, healed my trauma, had the hard conversations, and truly paused to feel my feelings.

I’ve learned that when we avoid what makes us feel uncomfortable, we’re not keeping the peace. We’re keeping the tension.

Traffic Without Social Media

I’ll be honest. As much as I preach SEO, I can count on one hand how many new blog posts I’ve published this year.

But I really want to change that. I know the power SEO has and given that I’m trying to create more passive income in my business that doesn’t require the constant updates of social media, SEO is my BFF.

What’s amazing to see though is that even without many updates, SEO is still working for me. We had 18,000+ pageviews last month and nearly 7,000 people found our website.

Interestingly, our sales pages are getting the most traffic right now (because that’s where I’m sending people in emails and promos). But aside from that, our most popular webpages last month were:

• successwithsoul.co/everything
• successwithsoul.co/about
• successwithsoul.co/resources
• successwithsoul.co/blog/
• successwithsoul.co/income-reports/

So no individual blog posts, which tells me that I can be doing a better job of optimizing my site and posts for long-tail keywords and to work on on-page SEO tactics like optimizing title tags, meta descriptions, and headers to target more specific queries.

Looks like I need to go back through my own SEO course, ha!

Also, looking at this report from Google Search Console, I have a lot of work to do to start ranking higher for keywords that matter to me. Which is something I need to think more about. Sometimes what tools like Ubersuggest tell me are opportunities for me (like “how can i make quick cash”) don’t feel aligned with my mission and values. So I have some work to do in the coming months to think about my SEO strategy moving forward.

I’ll definitely be sharing more about how I do all of this in the $1k/Day Experiment.

I was disappointed to see that I’ve actually dropped in rankings for Amy Porterfield, which is a bummer because I know in years past I got a lot of affiliate sales from people who found my DCA review via Google search. That didn’t happen the same way this year, which is also a sign of more competition with that keyword.

Email List Growth Without Social Media

Note: this screenshot comes from my dashboard in Kartra.

• Email List Growth:  751 new active email subscribers in October 2024

Okay so for this report, since it’s my first in a long time, I took a screenshot of the past year. I wanted you to see that when I was on sabbatical and not doing anything to grow my email list, we got very few new subscribers.

This is why it is so important to actively get in front of new audiences. As you can see, this summer was HUGE email growth for me after I went all in on contributing to bundles and summits. I was also a guest on Amy Porterfield’s podcast talking about quitting social media and that resulted in insane list and revenue growth.

If you want to learn more about how to actively search out visibility opportunities and stop waiting for people to come to you, checkout our course: Painless Publicity! 

NOTE: Just a quick note to point out that while it’s amazing that Kartra gives us data like how much each subscriber is worth and their lifetime value, this isn’t 100% accurate for my business because we also sell through Shopify. And that isn’t counted towards these numbers.

Domain Authority

Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on Google, and is measured on a scale of 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the more traffic and better ranking you’ll have.

Clearly I have some work to do in this area! One way that I’ll be working to improve my domain authority is by following the advice and teachings found in the SEO Course (also in MBA) about publishing high quality consistent content so that I can show Google that I’m a reputable website and increase my E-A-T!

Key Takeaways

What I Focused on this Month:

• Launching: After a year since our last official, public launch of MBA, we had our 1st Birthday Party, and I actually hosted a live webinar and did a 4-day Flash Sale for the course. I also spent a lot of time refining the sales page to be more clear what MBA is (our all-access pass to everything we sell all in one place, for a fraction of the price) and who it’s for.
• Get it Done Week: I hosted my 6th Get it Done Week for the year, and have absolutely loved this strategy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s been one of the most fun, effective sales drivers I’ve done in years. In this live challenges, I lead trainings, host live Q&As, tech demos, and co-working calls to help my clients make progress and actually DO something in their business (not just think about it). Clients who participate always tell me they get more done in that one week than they do the rest of the year, and these challenges always result in a few sales of MBA, as it’s a great way to get people buying from me with an easy yes product, get a quick win, see how great and valuable what we offer is, and then feel ready to take the next step with my higher-ticket, premium program. And anyone in MBA gets free access to all of the Get It Done Weeks, so it’s also a great way to nurture my existing clients and help them take action and get results.
• Bundles and Summits: I’ve contributed to over 40 bundles and summits this year, most of which didn’t happen until after May when I returned from sabbatical and it’s added 4,600 new leads to my email list, many of which have gone on to purchase other low-ticket offers from my shop and MBA. I’m brand new to this strategy and it’s not perfect, BUT it has proven to be one of the fastest, freest, easiest ways I’ve found to get in front of new audiences and grow my email list without having to rely solely on social media or paid advertising.
• Collaborating + Affiliates: On my sabbatical, I realized how important it was to me to partner with my friends, lift each other up, borrow each other’s audiences, learn from one another, etc. So I started a peer mastermind with my friend Sage Grayson (and 6 other amazing women), and I also reached out to some other peers about doing JV Webinars, cross-promoting each other on our email lists, and it’s been so life-giving and effective to reconnect with people I care about and raise each other up. And bonus? I’ve gotten a handful of sales out of these partnerships already. Relationship marketing is my fave way to grow my business!

Results from October 2024

What’s Working: Daily Sales Without Social Media

Add these to your to-do list if you want more passive income streams!

• An Everything Page and Shopify Store.
• $7 tripwires on everything I sell, with bumps and 1-click upsells.
• Creating an all-access pass/everything offer and breaking out its components into a la carte options to meet folks where they’re at
• Asynchronous coaching; Email coaching has been going AMAZING and our weekly group coaching in The Room is growing slowly and this group may be one of my faves ever!
• A super engaging evergreen welcome series with a 50.31% open rate and 5.59% click-from-opens rate that makes sales and leads into a weekly sales sequence for my shop that’s also converting super well.
• Sending my live weekly Sunday newsletter, “The Whole Soul List” where I make multiple offers every week while connecting with my people on a much deeper, personal level.
• And finally, I think the fact that I am a Clockwork Queen (aka I manage my time really well) and have so many efficient, automated systems in place, and take such good care of my mental health and wellbeing, all allow me to show up as my best self, maximize productivity and really feel in a creative flow with endless energy and passion for the work I do. I am so so grateful every single day that this is how I get to spend my time. I absolutely adore my job!

Most Purchased Courses from the Shop

AKA, my bread and butter of passive income

• Beyond the Scroll: How to Create a Static 9-Grid (with Templates!)
• Simple + Sustainable SEO: Get Your Ideal Clients to Find You Without Social Media
• Instant Income: Sleaze-Free Sales Strategies to Make Money Today
• Browsers to Buyers: Tripwires, Bumps + Upsells
• Blog Optimization Roadmap: A Complete SEO Checklist

Least Purchased Courses

These are the underdogs that really deserve more credit!

• Fast-Track Workshop: A Feminist Calendaring + Productivity System for Time Management + Work-Life Balance
• Optimize Your Tech Stack: How to Run Your Entire Biz With 1 Tool (and ZERO Zaps!)
• Real Self-Care for Entrepreneurs: Soulful Wellness Rituals for Holistic Success
  

My Personal Faves

• Pitch Perfect: A Custom ChatGPT for Winning Sponsorships + Brand Deals
• Evergreen Funnel Formula: A Blueprint for Automated Profit
• Affiliate Autopilot: A Set-and-Forget System for Passive Profits

Most Popular Affiliate Links

• Kartra
• Digital Course Academy
• Bluehost
• Lizzy Goddard

Most Popular Coaching Offers

• The Room
• Inbox Insights
• Voxer Unstuck Sessions

Goals for November 2024

• Experiment with changing my tripwire pricing from $7 on everything to a tiered strategy
• Experiment with offering Get it Done Week for free, and charging for lifetime access instead to see if we can get more people better results, faster and guide more folks into MBA.
• Host an Anti-Black Friday sale either the week before or after actual Black Friday (I wanted to do this before, but I’m behind after getting sick in October and grieving the election results in early November)

• My guiding wisdom for next month:
  • What’s the most fun thing I can do in this moment for my business?
• My guiding feeling for next month:
  • Connected 
• My mantra for next month: 
  • I can detach with love.

Reader Questions

Each month, I feature one question about online business from a reader. Submit your question in the comments and I’ll answer one next month!

Final Thoughts: Staying Connected to Purpose

This journey has shown me the beauty of stripping away what no longer serves, embracing creative freedom, and staying connected to what feels aligned. There’s a joy in the simplicity I’ve discovered—working 20 hours a week, staying off social media, and having the energy to show up as my best self, both in life and in business.

I can honestly say I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t given myself the time and space to heal. For anyone reading this, remember:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anaïs Nin

If you’d like a closer look at how I make daily sales without social media, consider joining me in The $1K-a-Day Experiment for unfiltered insights and access to my evolving strategies.