How I Made $2.2M Working 3 Hours a Day Last Year

Welcome to the Digital Empires Podcast. I'm Shutei Vanke, a digital product entrepreneur and content creator. I went from being a hobby blogger to building a seven-figure business in just four years using the power of digital products and content marketing. And I'm here to help you do the same. So let's get started. Hey, hey, welcome to Digital Empires. And in today's episode, I'm going to be breaking down how I made $2.2 million in 2024. Now, this is a significant jump from 2023 when we did about $1.3 million in revenue. I'm going to be breaking down, you know, what my profit margins look like, what we spend money on, exactly how we were able to generate this, what strategies did we use and where the money came from. Now, the reason why I'm sharing this is because as a creator led business, I feel it is so important to be transparent and to really be sharing with you the real deal behind building a seven-figure business. A lot of us are attracted to shiny objects and we think, oh my god, it's going to be so great to have a bigger and a larger business. However, we don't necessarily know what it entails to have a bigger and a larger business. So in today's episode, I'm going to break down exactly where the money came from, what worked for us and what didn't work for us. So you can also apply these strategies in your business to scale. Now, before I dive into the numbers and, you know, the tactics, I want to quickly share that this is not my, you know, first rodeo in online business. I started my business in 2020, so this has actually been my fifth year in business, which was 24. Obviously, I did not start out with making $2.2 million right out of the gate, although I would have very much loved to do that, and I would have solved a lot of problems. So my income journey has been a consistent and sustainable journey, and I'm really proud of that because I never wanted to be a one-hit wonder or just a quick overnight success. I wanted to build a business that could, you know, possibly be something that I would do for a lifetime, and would also generate substantial wealth for me and my family, while also providing a lot of freedom and, you know, impact to everyone that I work with. So if you've ever been, you know, curious about how to scale digital business, what does it look like to scale a business that is run by, you know, a small team in the digital world this episode is the right one for you. So first things first, let's break down the revenue and profit. So the total revenue was $2,175,000 and $56.00. Now, I've rounded that up to $2.00 million just to give it a neater, cleaner, you know, title of this episode. The total costs were about $1.3 million, which led our gross profit to be close to $800,000. And if you just do the math there, you'll see that the profit margin was about 35%. Now, keep in mind, I also draw a salary from the business. So I did take a salary of about, I think, it was about $150,000 for the whole year. So if I were to add that in and simply take profit from that, we would be looking at a profit closer to about a million because, you know, I mean, that's just the math. And obviously, then the profit margin would go up to about 43, 44%. So I don't like to run my business with that because I think that I am an employee of the business. So I would like to have a gross profit margin, which reflects the fact that I am an employee just like anyone else. And so for me, I was really, really happy with the profit margin. Of course, it was a bit lower than what we did the year before. However, I also understand that scaling of business comes with challenges when it comes to, you know, profit margins. And keep in mind, this is all before tax. So obviously, I live in Germany. I have to pay taxes, you know, based on how much I make here and what the profit is and all of that. So keep in mind, this is all before tax. Now, I think some of the things that I felt about these numbers, I was happy with the revenue that we did because that was 50% year on year growth from 2023. However, the profit margin was not where I would have liked it to be. I think I would have preferred it to be more around 40%, you know, even excluding what I take out for my salary. And I think that would have been a really great margin for me to operate in because that would mean that I was at about 50% margin when I include my salary, however, that wasn't the case. So it was about 5% less than what I would have hoped for for this year, but that's actually okay, because I saw a lot of businesses struggle and even go out of, you know, business because of all the changes that happened post pandemic and, you know, people were not able to sustain their growth. So all in all, I was quite happy that, you know, we did have a sustainable growth year. We did continue to grow and to be honest, revenue is important, but it's also important to be sustainable and to have profitability. And so I was really happy that we were able to, you know, more or less meet the goal that we had at the beginning of 2024. My goal was about $800,000 of cross-profit, you know, which is, of course, taking out everything, all the expenses that we had for the business. So we missed that by about $20,000, so that wasn't great. And even at the end of December, my team and I were really hoping that we would hit this number, but we didn't, sadly, but that's actually okay, because that tells us that there were things that could have been improved in the business. And I'm really happy that I get the chance to work on that this year and, you know, continue to diversify the income streams instead of just relying on, you know, one big thing, right? So let's chat about what these income streams look like, where did the money come in from, right? So I think it will come as no surprise to most of you all who've been following my journey, that the biggest revenue driver was digital products. About 90% of my total revenue came in through digital products, which were, you know, sold through thrife card, through Shopify, through Stan, so we have different platforms based on, you know, what products we're selling where. These products included things like PLR bundles, marketing kits, marketing classes, templates, digital guides, done for you templates, which, you know, were based on Canva. And really, my focus here was to create products that were extremely high in demand, but also had an evergreen appeal. So I didn't want to create products that were very, very niche. And there were only 10 people who were interested, and I actually wanted to create products that were highly scalable. So some of the strategies that I, you know, used in 24 included, first of all, having a low ticket and high volume strategies. So yes, I could have continued on my high ticket model, which is actually how I wanted to start selling digital products at the beginning, which would be selling products for $300, $500,000. However, then the volume of my customers would be low. And it was also a lot harder to sell products that were $500 and above, because you needed considerable, you know, brand equity, which was again difficult for me at the beginning. So what we looked at was to have the majority of our revenue coming from low ticket. So the average auto value was under $50, which means that the average customer actually did not spend more than $50 with me. And I think a lot of people often think that because I also sell educational products like courses, that most of my revenue is actually coming in from that, but that's actually not true. Less than 20% of my overall digital product revenue comes from courses. The remaining 80% is actually low ticket, but they're sold at a very high volume. So we do anywhere between 100 to 300 sales a day, which, you know, takes our monthly transactions to about eight to 10,000 transactions a month. So obviously, it is a low ticket and a high volume strategy. This is something that works for me and I love doing it because I love serving customers at different levels. It might not be what fits for you, but this is something that's worked really well for me. Another thing that we've really leveraged last year is upselling and bundling products. So we tried to make sure that we were always offering complimentary products, which would, you know, be great upsells for the products that we sold on the front end. So if there was a product that we were selling in the beginning, so let's say it was a template offer, we would probably offer something on the back end, which would be a next step. So maybe a workbook that goes along well with it and that's really allowed us to, you know, get customers who have bought so many products from us and also have a great experience with the brand because the more products they buy, the more they like us and the more they continue to buy from us. So it's like a win-win strategy, right? The third key takeaway that I have here in terms of, you know, digital products is actually trend-based product creation. So we really focused on spotting what was trending and what was doing really, really well and then just launching that really quick. So I did not waste time at all on overthinking and analysis paralysis on whether my product will sell or not. I would just pick up on a trend and, you know, launch that quickly. So one of the trends that we leveraged last year was faceless marketing and it continues to still be a trend. However, I think the peak time of that trend is already gone and we really leveraged that and that ended up being a very profitable, you know, spot for us. So revenue stream number two or revenue driver number two was our Shopify store, which is digital PLR hub. If you're not familiar with it, it is a dedicated Shopify store for digital downloadables, specifically downloadables that you can use in your own shop. So you're free to edit, rebrand, you know, and customize these products for your own store and resell them. The sales for this store majorly came from email marketing and retargeting campaigns. So we would actually have, you know, people that we would find an attract on social media, which was like Instagram and then we would go out there and retarget them with specific email campaigns, you know, with optons, with freebies and all of that. We also did a lot of different promotions. So we are consistently running promotions because it is a very e-commercey store and it has a very niche audience. We love to do live in the time offers, last chance sales, you know, auto bumps, all of that. Personally, I've really loved growing this Shopify store because it's been really one of the least headache businesses that I've ever created because it is just so self-sufficient. People who are looking, you know, for certain products on Google, they find us, they buy from us and they repeatedly buy from us, and it doesn't really require me to have my face. If you go on the website of digital PLR hub.com, you're not going to see my face anywhere there. Sometimes around content, we do create videos where I may or may not be visible. But what I love about this brand is that it's a multiple six-figure brand that is entirely run on its own. There are almost no money that we're spending on ads here. I think we are currently running a retargeting ad, which is probably $10 or $20 a day. So it's really not a lot compared to what revenue we're generating are with the store. So I really, really like that we were able to grow the store as well, given the fact that it's not a very long store, like it hasn't been a very long revenue, you know, engine for us. I think what really worked here for us was, first of all, again, spotting trends and making sure our product catalog was really fresh and it was optimized for conversions, using retargeting ads, you know, once a week or one week out of every month where we would bring back attention to the products, you know, to people who didn't buy it first time around and of course running exclusive promos, you know, nurturing the email list and so on. Revenue driver number three was membership and subscriptions and we actually had a community that we launched, which was called Digital Cellar Hub on the Shopify store itself and it actually did quite well. I think we got to like 500 members in just two months. However, the challenge with this community became that we had issues on the payment provider end. It was a low ticket and high volume community. There was really a lot of transactions happening very quickly and because we were on a new payment provider, we were really not able to scale that well because there was a lot of tech issues that were coming up. So we had to shut down this community. However, towards the end of last year, I did launch a new community, which is on the digital empire side of the business and that is money moves, which was my community where I actually deliver four pieces of content slash insights of what is currently working on my business every single week. And we've recently upgraded the community and we've created a whole new platform where you can ask questions, get feedback, access all my tools, templates, things like that. So it's really become a community where we're focusing a lot on having a very curated set of customers who actually are serious about growth and are not just looking for a one-hit wonder or a quick bandaid fix for their problems, but rather they want to grow their business as we grow together as well. I believe that this revenue stream is going to be a huge game changer for us in 2025, not only because it offers a lot of stability in terms of what is the revenue we're going to be making every single month. It's a lot more profitable because we're not running any ads. There's no significant team as of yet besides me who is working on the weekly insights. It's pretty low over cost, I would say at this point. And because we have a lot of engagement in this community and I foresee that the engagement is going to continue to grow, I believe it's also going to lead to a higher lifetime value for our customers. And currently how we are really driving revenue to this is through just opt-ins and freebies and email subscriptions. So everyone who is in our email list gets made aware of this program. And if the moment and the time is right for them, then they join us. Next up is the fourth income stream. And this is admittedly not a big income stream and this is affiliate income and ads. So as you guys know, I have been around for a while and I have a blog, I have a YouTube channel. And because I have been experimenting with pretty much every single way you can make money online, I have a lot of streams that are set up passively that I don't actively work on. However, they still bring in money every single month. So one of this is affiliate income. So I'm partnered with people like Stan, ConvertKit, Everbee, Shopify, all of the platforms that I personally use and love. And in exchange for any referrals that I might drive to them through my free content, I usually get a small commission. Now these payments do not tend to be very, very large. However, they do tend to be quite passive. So I don't actively go into any campaigns to do them. They just continue to generate my money based on all of the links that are out there in my old content, whether it's on my blog, you know, or it's on my social media channel. Next up, you also have earnings which are from ads. So my blog is, you know, partnered up with media wine and honestly, I haven't posted a new blog post. Therefore, I think more or less four years. However, it still brings in a little bit of change every single month. So that's quite of nice to have that ad income. Same thing goes for YouTube as well. I'm not actively producing YouTube videos. However, because I have YouTube monetization on, I can't need to make a couple of hundred bucks, you know, every single month. So like I said, this income is not really very large. I would probably say it's less than $3,000 a month. However, because the nature of it is quite passive, it doesn't really require me to do constant selling, run promos or any of that. So I'm quite happy that it just runs on its back end and you don't generate a little bit of change for our business, right? And last but not least, we also had a high ticket course. And in terms of high ticket, I would say it's questionable if it's high ticket or not because everyone has different ideas about what high ticket is. But I was actually having a course and business bundle called digital business bundle, which I sold through a webinar as well, which was priced at $500 if you bought it during the webinar. And if you bought it outside, it was $1,000. That course did quite well as well. And even though I was quite happy with the performance of the course, I didn't necessarily see a big correlation in revenue. Like I said, I am not a huge fan of high ticket sales because I also think that it takes a lot more effort to convert high ticket customers and also a lot more follow-up and fulfillment. And currently, I don't have the team structure to be able to provide that or the time to be able to provide that. So what I actually decided to this year is to scale back on that. I mean, in future, still again, plan to have higher ticket options. But for now, I really wanted to focus on building what's doing really well for us, what's always done well for us, and kind of build that out. So high ticket coaching and courses did make us a certain amount of money. I think it was less than a hundred K for the whole of the year. And as I said, high ticket stuff has not really been my focus. So I believe that's also why it didn't do that well. But I'm not really too sure of where I want that to go and if I want that to continue. So in terms of what worked in 2024, just to recap some of the things that worked really, really well for me. First of all, and this is a concept that I've learned from my time, you know, with my MBA and my time in startups. This is really known as product market fit. This means that you focus yourself on, you know, creating what your audience actually wants to pay for and not just products that look cute or sound cute. You actually use customer feedback and, you know, trends to figure out what products are actually going to do well and you validate them before you grow the market, right? So that's one strategy that really worked well for me. Next up is my email list. So we have a very, very engaged email list and we have close to I think 90,000 subscribers. And I've been growing that for five years guys. So it has not happened overnight again. However, because I have such a good connection with my email list, you know, because I sent weekly emails, which include a lot of my story, my updates, my life, I feel like that has been a great driver of sales for us, you know, besides what you would expect, which is social media, which is strategy number three, of course, organic traffic and content has always been something I focused on since year one. And last year, we really doubled down on Instagram, you know, and a little bit to some extent on the podcast as well. I would have liked to do a little bit better on the podcast end, but I wasn't able to do lots of, you know, scaling challenges that we were facing in the middle of the year as well. However, I feel like the organic traffic strategy worked really, really well. And what we did was we actually created content on one or two main platforms and we repurposed it everywhere else. So we didn't really have to generate, you know, five different types of content pieces, but we were creating cornerstone key pillar pieces that we were basically circulating and distributing everywhere. So that really helped us, you know, go up in terms of brand equity and people were able to see us everywhere and associate with us everywhere. And I think that really helped a lot in driving even more sales to the business strategy. Number four is strategic paid ads. So I started out the year with not spending a lot on Facebook and Instagram ads because I wasn't too sure which offers with scale and which wouldn't. However, now that I've been doing ads for a couple of years, I've become really, really comfortable with the idea of spending money to get data. So usually, when I'm launching a new offer, I'm going to run at least a couple of hundred dollars worth of ads to see whether or not that offer is converting. And if the answer is yes, then I start to scale up those offers. So these ads have really helped us, you know, massively grow our audience and also reach a lot of people. I don't think that if I just focused on organic, I could have made this revenue because it's just not possible for me as a one person content creator to reach, you know, one or two million people a month, especially because I don't feel like I am someone who wants to spend day in and day out on just creating content because I also really value my freedom. I really value behind the scenes of being in the business, you know, creating funnels and offers and all of that. So I much, I'd much rather focus on that and create really exceptional products and, you know, let the, let the ads do their job, right? So that was something that worked really well for us as well. Another thing that worked really well for us was cross-selling, upselling and just increasing the average auto value. So 2023 or average auto value, I think was about $25 and in 2024, we were already able to increase it to our $50, which obviously reflects in the revenue increase as well. We also were able to package and, you know, cross-sell products which made more sense to the customer and that's also helped us increase the other, you know, average spend per customer as well. Next strategy that I want to talk about and I think this is something that not a lot of people talk about and this is building a community and personal brand. Last year, I don't know if you guys have noticed but there has been a significant shift in my content and a lot of it has been driven from the fact that I was very phased with what was going on in social media where it was just about, look at me and how much money I'm making and I had a lot of conversations with my team, you know, with someone I was working with on my personal brand as well. Marina, shout out to you if, you know, you're listening. She has a brand called Live In Vibaciously and I was working with her on my personal brand revamp and I really came to the point where I realized I do not want to contribute to the noise anymore and just create content for the heck of it. I don't care if it goes viral, I don't care if I get a lot of followers. What I actually care about is to have a genuine community and to have genuine conversations and I don't want every piece of content to feel transactional where somebody has to do something for me or I have to do something for them but I would rather really dive deeper into the community that already cares about me instead of just, you know, trying to have more and more and more and more. So you see that shift in how I am, you know, creating and showing up content whether it's on the podcast here or even in my social media and I'm always happy to hear feedback. So you can always DM me at, you know, Shati Pankti, and I'm happy to hear what you have to say about it as well. The next strategy is actually one that I think we kind of did well, but also not that well on. And this is going to be automation and delegation. So we did, you know, systems for email marketing. We had automated sequences that were going out, you know, we automated delivery of products and payments and all of that. However, we also faced significant challenges as we scaled because of, you know, like I said, the number of transactions more than doubled. So it was quite challenging for us, especially mid-year to deal with that. And inside of money moves, I actually share a couple of stories and how we tackled it as well in terms of, you know, working out and figuring out which payment provider to work with. So yeah, if you remember, you can go and check out, you know, my mindset hacks, lessons, and one of them will show you what happened. And why, you know, it was a big setback for my business. However, I do think that that was helpful for us because we were able to work on, you know, generating better SOPs, better processes, and really have a streamlined way of delivering, you know, fulfillment and customer support as well. So I think that even though this was the most challenging part of the year for us, we were also able to grow massively because of all the challenges we faced here. So next up, let's move on to what were the major expenses and investments. So I think just to wrap it up, you might have already understood, you know, what that was, but obviously software and tools, I use lots of software like Shopify, I convert kit, love you, Google suite, many chat, things like that. On my business, I also share all of my tools, you know, which have helped me make millions inside of money moves where you can really access the detailed audio guide on why I use which tool and how I actually use them. Next up, of course, paid ads was a big chunk of our investments as well. Team and contractors, including me. So we have a very, very close in the team of about five, which does, you know, day-to-day stuff, but we also have specialists for content, video editing, tech, podcast editing, admin. And there were people that we pulled in and out depending on, you know, what projects we needed focus on. And of course, we also had to do, you know, payment providers, commissions. So every time that we make a sale, we also have to split the sale with our payment provider, whether that's Stripe, PayPal or whatever. And that can lead to significant expenses as well. We also have affiliate partners. So we had affiliate payouts as well. This was admittedly not a big chunk of change, however, still as, you know, a relevant expense. And of course, we had also some investments we had to make in scaling. So doing testing our different softwares. We had to work with different teams on projects to understand how we could switch and migrate to different softwares. So that was again, a cost, you know, in terms of scaling infrastructure. So I just want to wrap this up. I feel like it's been so long since I'm talking. And as you can guess, I have a little bit of a cold. So I might sound a little bit weird compared to usual. Just want to wrap it up on what I felt were the final takeaways and what lessons we learned. Number one, simple scales, fancy fails. So we did not have anything overcomplicated about our products, offers or funnels. We also scaled back down a lot on our products. So we could avoid confusion. Second, audience first, sale second. So focus on serving, educating and engaging before you sell. Make sure that your aim is, you know, to create value for your customers, so that they actually want to be a long-term customer and not just try to get a quick sale. Because that's really not going to lead you to have a lasting business, right? It might make you a couple of bucks here and there, but it's not going to help you win in the long run, right? Next up, consistency wins. So we consistently created content and, you know, sent out emails literally the whole of the year and about a huge chunk of that was just me. We do have now a copywriter on the team. So she does help me with brainstorming and, you know, putting things together in terms of emails. However, that was not the case for the majority of the year. So I was myself sending out like three to five emails a week or even posting content on stories and things like that. And I think that's a huge, huge player as to why we've been consistently top of mind and have done so well. Next up, diversified income streams. So I also realized quickly that I didn't want to have only one product. I was driving all the revenue. So we did have lots of different products that we launched and scaled in 2024. Of course, products in mind, keeping in mind that they were still adding value to each point of the customer journey. So we try not to have products which are contradictory in nature but rather products that add value at each step of the way. Next up, data-driven growth. So I've always been someone who says, if you can't track it, don't do it. If you can't track the success of what you're doing, there's literally no point doing that. So I always look and love tracking numbers and adjusting our strategy based on, you know, how those numbers have performed. So every thing that we do, we have key performance indicator for it and we understand whether or not that is doing well. Whether that is posting an Instagram reel or that is creating an episode on, you know, for a podcast or that is sending an email. We always have clear numbers that we want to hit and I uphold those numbers and understand and analyze them to make sure that the business is on track. And again, this is something that I feel has been something I have learned over time and I explore a lot of this inside of money moves as well because I feel like the strategies that have really allowed me to go from just a broke, you know, entrepreneur to actually a successful one are so in-depth and so detailed and they change so frequently that the only way for me to actually share them is inside of a private community where you get access and first dips on what actually is working right now. And I think that's what makes money moves so special. And last but not least, I also want to say that it was really important for us to invest in what works. So we did invest in ads, in tools, in team members, in scaling infrastructure, anything that would directly help us impact revenue or save the team time. We've been, you know, open to investing in that, including some AI tools as well. I might do a podcast episode on that entirely to help you guys know what AI tools we actually work with. Let me know on Instagram that it's something that's interesting to you. So when it comes to 2025, what are we focused on? We're obviously focused on continuing to scale the business in terms of being consistent. I would be really happy if we hit just the same number and targets this year as well. However, keeping in line with, you know, my usual growth mindset. Of course, I would love for the business to grow 50% again year and year. We are going to be focusing on, you know, narrowing down our focus in terms of how we are generating revenue and really diving deeper into more organic content, more organic revenue. Because I feel like even though we do a good job there, we could do an even better job. So that's something that I'm going to focus on in terms of, you know, content creation and even just maybe building a team to help us do that. Now, if you want to learn how to scale your digital business, I would love to invite you inside of money moves, my insider community, where you get access to the current hot insights of what is working in my business, so that you can copy paste that, steal that framework and use that to grow your business as well. Now, if this episode was useful for you, make sure to screenshot and tag me on Instagram @CityBunkley and let me know what your biggest takeaway was. I'll see you in the next one.