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I’ve Made $216,688 From Products This Year
- tocomment 16y agoIf you sell products through an llc do you have to pay social security on it?
- kneath 16y agoYou have to pay social security on every dime up to $120,000 you personally make. Doesn't matter if you make it through an Sole Proprietorship, LLC, C-Corp or S-Corp. Although in Amy's case, she may not have to pay any living in Vienna. But I'm sure the US Gov't get it's share.
- tocomment 16y agoThat doesn't sound quite right. Dividends, capital gains, and interest are forms of income not requiring FICA right? It seems like FICA should only be for selling your labor. I think the 120k figure is wrong too but I'm on an olden first gen iPhone so I can look it up.
- mauricio 16y agoIf you try to declare that all the money you pulled from your LLC was dividends and not a salary, the IRS will bust you. Once you declare a 'fair' amount as salary (and pay FICA), the rest you can pull without paying FICA.
- aresant 16y agoMore impressive than the gross number is the 4x growth in Freckle subscription billing YTD, that is outstanding - $3k to $12k in 10 months. Lesson learned from experience - when you've got a tiger by the tail like that drop everything, hyper focus on marketing, experiment with paid promotion, partnerships, affiliates, a/b testing, etc. If you maintain your revenue growth rate for another year you can do anything else you want, and it's a great product that's got the ability to scale.
- eof 16y agoThe title is pretty misleading here, it's really "I've grossed 216,688...' That being said, very nice.
- bradly 16y agoIt would be even more correct to say "My husband and I have grossed $216,688..." And yes, it was a great article. -- Edited per Amy's feedback to not include her friend. Sorry for the mistake.
- ahoyhere 16y agoActually it's just my husband and I, since my friend kept his share and paid me mine, and that's all I counted.
- p0ppe 16y agoIt would be good to make that more clear in the article. The paragraph about 30×500 gives the impression that that income is being shared, since you point out that the YoH income is your share of it.
- ahoyhere 16y agoThat's because I have no plans to share the 30x500 income with anyone yet. Alex isn't charging me for he material he contributed to the last version since I'm doing all the upkeep. :) He may or may not be joining me in a guest teacher role but we haven't decided yet!
- ahoyhere 16y ago"How much do you make?" "$90,000." "After tax and healthcare contributions?" "Huh? No... before." "Misleading!"
- eof 16y agoI don't really think so. When you are selling products it's specifically different than a salary. If I sold 10k widgets for $10 a piece and said my business made a 100k last year, ignoring rent, cost of widget and labor, that would definitely be misleading. Besides, there are still taxes paid on top of whatever they did bring in, so it really doesn't fit your cute analogy. They paid free lancers, etc. I mean I don't care, but "How much do you make" has built into the question the idea that everyone who gets a salary pays taxes, etc. When you are talking about a business 'making money' it is built into the question that there are costs associated with it.
- briandoll 16y agoThis is a great transparent article on how much Amy Hoy has made through her various products this year. I'd love to see more of these types of posts! Amy is well regarded in the web community (notably the Rails/JavaScript/Design communities), and she has several different types of products here (information products, subscription services and seminars). I'd bet they each serve as a marketing vehicle for one another, and I can only guess she'll continue to do better and better each year. Congrats Amy, and thanks for such an honest behind-the-scenes post!
- forgotAgain 16y agoDid I miss something or did $130,000 come from workshops rather than products? To me workshops aren't where I want to spend my time if I'm developing products. They are too time intensive and costly. The gross amount is nice but I suspect the actual income is a lot less.
- kylecordes 16y agoIt appears to me that workshops are a good, high-margin offering to create short-term revenue in the early months/years of a product business. Workshops aren't all that scalable, but they don't need to be, if you're building a product business alongside.
- ahoyhere 16y agoThat income is from about 20 days total of teaching. The main course we developed on 2009. There is some time to market and update, but you've got to admit, that's a ludicrously good ROI. That said, like Kyle said, and my article said, it's not where I want to be forever. But training is still a product.
- brc 16y agoHave you considered rolling any of the teaching content into an ebook or other type of self-serve information product? That might be an interesting way of leveraging the content you've collated into something that continues to sell even if you don't feel like getting up in front of someone.
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- ahoyhere 16y agoAbsolutely, as I described in the "what's next" section :)
- callmeed 16y agoI disagree. Training is a service. A product (as defined by me) is something you build once and sell. That could be an ebook, an SaaS web app, or some kind of widget. It could even be access to workshops you've recorded. But training people in person or live online is not a product. You might say it's simply a matter of semantics, but I think it's an important distinction. Services don't scale like products because you are limited by the amount of time you're available to perform said service. Keep in mind I'm not trying to take away from your success. It's a good blog post–I simply find the title and use of the word "product" inaccurate.
- brianbreslin 16y agoIncredible article Amy. And to those saying workshops aren't "products" well I'd argue they straddle the product/service line. Since you're creating a content package and then presenting it. Lots of the material from workshops can be re-sold or re-presented over and over. Vs pure services which you are creating on demand each time.
- zackattack 16y agoThat was very fun to read~!
- jeffbski 16y agoGreat article Amy! An inspiring and encouraging story to show people it can be done. Hard work and persistence pays off.
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- lionhearted 16y ago> Money is a tool for me — I want more money to hire people full-time, to pay for some boutique development work I want done, to do a few personal things I want to do. I want to be able to work with my dream team (and they don’t come cheap). That sorta thing. Love that. More money can equal hiring more money, commissioning more art, hiring better trainers so you can learn faster, buying better tools, funding science and research, traveling more and easier, doing more and greater charity, and otherwise good things. I always thought it's silly when people go out of their way to say, "I'd never need more than $xx,xxx." Okay, you wouldn't need it, but with the least little bit of creativity, there's a lot of good and cool things you could do with it. Money's a terrible master, but a pretty good servant.
- ck2 16y agoI look at all she's accomplished and have to admit how incredibly lazy I am.