Sustainable Online Business Income Report December 2025: How I Made $85k in My ‘Slow’ Month

Last Updated on February 7, 2026

As part of the $1K/Day Experiment, I’m continuing my online business income reports for Success with Soul, this time covering December 2025. Discover how I made $85k in December 2025 with a sustainable online business. See my income report, profit margin, and strategies to scale without burnout.

Welcome to the 13th installment of my Income Reports—part of The $1K/Day Experiment, my behind-the-scenes journey to making $1,000 per day in pure profit without relying on social media.

(Yes, if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that after we exceeded my original goal of $1k/Day in revenue, I updated the experiment to be $1k/Day in profit for 2026).

If you’re new here, these reports are equal parts income transparency and behind-the-scenes business therapy as I attempt in real-time to scale my sustainable online business profitably. Think: if your business journal and your bank account had a baby, and that baby loved spreadsheets and cycle syncing.

December 2025 turned out to be the month that shattered every “slow season” myth I’ve ever believed. Historically, this month is typically the “quiet” month for me, especially as I close our entire office for the last 2-3 every year and do NO work.

But this year, I made $85,755.52 in revenue (cash collected)—my highest month since 2020—while working less, managing chronic illness, and focusing on systems, not hustle. Here’s exactly how I did it, what I learned, and the tangible strategies you can copy to scale your own six figure online business (or beyond) without burning out.

Note: 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.

The Numbers: Healthy Online Business Profit Margins

• 12-Month Rolling Revenue (Dec 2024–Nov 2025): $348,483
  • → This is the total earned in the last 12 months. I now lead with this number because it’s a more accurate picture of the health of my business. Income flows seasonally, and single-month snapshots are misleading.
• 12-Month Average Monthly Revenue: $29,040
• 12-Month Rolling Net Profit: $228,248
• 12-Month Rolling Profit Margin: 65.5% (pre-tax)
  
• Dec 2025 Total Revenue: $85,755.52 (20% was recurring)
• Dec 2025 Expenses: $23,031
  • Team expenses (I’ve increased Rachel’s hours and also hired a 2nd marketing assistant/tech VA, so these shot way up during this period and will likely stay up here as we scale).
  • Paying out my affiliates (want me to pay you too? sign up here! it’s free!)
  • Software (like Fathom, Descript, Poppy AI, ClickUp, and Kartra)
  • Meta ads
  • Training and education (Rick’s AI Playbook membership, mixermind and my ads mentorships)
• Dec 2025 Net Profit: $62,724 (73% profit margin pre-tax)

Note: I am not counting my payroll and distributions as an expense for the purposes of these reports. But now that I’m an S-corp again, I am legally required to pay myself a salary as a W-2 employee of Success with Soul. I also do not include taxes in my profit margin, but they are about 20% of my revenue.

Here’s what that revenue looked like broken down by source:

Six-Figure Online Business Breakdown

One thing that was amazing to see in December was the our average revenue per day was over $2,044, not including affiliate income. This comes out to an average order value of $68.74 (a 68.70% increase from August)

Some other fun stats:

• Maintained a 220-day streak of $1k+/day in gross revenue
• Last 90 days of the year averaged $1,800/day
• Last 135 days of the year put us on track for $500k+ annual revenue
• Week of Dec 15–19: $18,240 in revenue, working only 22.25 hours = $820/hour

Traffic Without Social Media: 8.2k pageviews…kind of

Note: this screenshot comes from Fathom Analytics, which I much prefer to GA4.

Earlier this year, I shared that my Kartra pages stopped being tracked by Fathom Analytics. I still haven’t been able to fix this, so that’s still true.

However, you can see that my pageviews in December were down from 14,700 pageviews per month, to just 8,200 this month. That’s still higher than my previous average of 7k pageviews/month, but I think this is large part due to me cutting ad spend in December while I focused on a few other things behind the scenes.

This traffic came from three main sources:

1. Email: Strategic campaign promotions that drove existing subscribers back to key pages
2. Facebook ads to the Beyond the Scroll Challenge (my best-performing lead magnet)
3. Google: SEO baby

One thing I’m noting here is that my blog posts still aren’t ranking in the top 10 pages, and we’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into creating new blog content the past couple months. So I’m making a note to analyze SEO and Google Search Console to see if there’s been any uptick.

My top-performing pages were:

1. Beyond the Scroll Challenge (running ads to this, so the upsell and hub page are also in the top 3)
2. My Homepage
3. MBA Sales Page
4. Black Friday Deals Page
5. Everything Page

Growing Email List Without Social Media: 607 new subscribers

Note: this screenshot comes from my dashboard in Kartra.

I added 607 new email subscribers this month, bringing my active list to 11,502 leads once we factor in unsubscribes, which were 469. I’ve talked before about why I don’t care about unsubscribes.

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 as you can see a lot of revenue is missing from this figure. My actual revenue during this time was $124,818, and with 10,910 active leads, that means my subscriber value was actually $11.44.

Key Takeaways: How to Scale Your Online Business Sustainably

• Systems are your safety net—they keep your business running when you can’t
• Evergreen systems + micro-launches = consistent revenue (even in “slow” months)
• Profit margin matters more than revenue—focus on efficiency, not just sales
• Boundaries and pricing are business strategies—protect your energy and attract better clients
• Plan for scale without complexity—fewer offers, higher prices, tighter systems, same team

What’s Working: My High-Profit, Low-Maintenance Business Model

Think of this like a checklist for what to do in your business if you want to make daily sales without social media, especially if you’re an introvert or neurodivergent entrepreneur like me!

• An Everything Page and Shop
• Super juicy tripwires on every single lead magnet, plus pop-up tripwires on every single thing I sell, with bumps and 1-click upsells on EVERYTHING!
• 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, resulting in thousands of dollars every month in recurring revenue.
• 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 forver funnel 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!

A few more notes on What Worked

The Backdoor Launch

A simple, low-lift upgrade offer to a small segment (<300 people) of my existing MBA clients generated $35,562 ($12,103 banked, $23,459 booked) in just a few hours of work—outperforming my main Black Friday promo in ROI, which took me weeks to put together.

Why did this work?

• Warm audience, high trust, and a truly irresistible offer
• No complicated funnel—just a few targeted emails and a simple checkout
• Focused on profit and efficiency, not volume

Copy this:
Don’t underestimate the power of small, strategic offers to your warmest clients. Sometimes, a micro-launch to a tiny list can outperform a big public launch. Focus on relationships, not just reach. You don’t need a huge list—you need the right offer to the right people at the right time.

Closing the Caretaker Era

December marked a major internal shift: I stopped over-functioning and started designing my business around my actual capacity, not what I thought the market needed.

I’m tired of convincing people they want a business, and I realized I’m no longer willing to subsidize other people’s indecision, fear, lack of resourcefulness.

Lower prices, more hand-holding, endless reassurance — those things are not automatically more ethical. Sometimes they’re just me abandoning my own boundaries.

So, I made a plan to raise prices in early 2026, plus closing a bunch of non-performing shop offers, moved away from high-volume, low-ticket biz model, and focused on fewer, more established people who are ready, willing, and able to do the work to build their businesses.

Copy this: Growth doesn’t have to mean more complexity. Sometimes, it means fewer offers, higher prices, tighter systems, and a small, but mighty team. Accessibility isn’t always integrity. Sometimes, “helping more people” means enabling helplessness. Setting boundaries and raising prices protects your capacity and attracts more serious clients.

And it’s all part of my plan for 2026 to optimize my scale for even more sustainability and profitability. I set a revenue goal of $50k/month ($500–600k/year) with my current team, planned strategic price increases, and focused on scaling without adding complexity.

What’s really cool is that even though I was diagnosed with POTS, SF neuropathy and hypermobile CTD in December, and struggled with some very significant health challenges, I had my highest revenue month ever. Systems, automation, and boundaries made it possible. More please!

Copy this: You don’t need to feel good to run a good business—you need systems that work when you can’t. Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity; it’s part of sustainable success. Your best revenue month can come during one of your hardest health months. That’s the power of infrastructure.

January 2026 Goals: Sustainable Online Business

• Implement planned price increases and product retirements in the Shop
• Lean ALL IN on Anti-Social Messaging: Redo sales page for The Room and $1K/Day, and make it crystal clear: I help you build a profitable business without social media in 3 containers: Learn (MBA), Watch ($1k/Day), and Do (The Room)
• Launch the new $1k/Day promo: host a flash sale to increase membership
• Continue focusing on retention and value in The Room and memberships
• Maintain 60%+ profit margins while scaling to $50k/month
• Prioritize rest, boundaries, and sustainable growth

The Bottom Line: Life-First six figure online business

December 2025 was a month of quiet power, and a great reminder to me that less is more when it comes to sustainable online business growth. I shattered the “slow month” myth, ran a backdoor launch that outperformed Black Friday, set boundaries around my capacity, and planned for a $500k+ year—all while managing chronic illness and working less.

If you want to build a six figure online business (or more) that supports your life, not the other way around, start with systems, boundaries, and a focus on profit margin. Your business can thrive—even in your hardest months—when you build it to last.

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

FAQS: Sustainable Online Business Income Report