A breakdown: The real costs of running a successful business and blog

I’ve been in business for so long that I kinda grew into it. I started as a teen and became more and more serious about my business over the years. One thing I’m so happy about: that I realised early on that everything I would earn, wasn’t only for me. Before I hired people, it was just me. So it’s very tempting to think that everything you earn, is your salary. But of course, it isn’t. You have expenses, you have fewer benefits than an employee and probably work a lot more. So I decided to write a post that tells it all: the real business costs to run a successful blog and business!

Also check out accounting software, my income reports and the tools I use to run my business.

Here’s how I keep my finances organised:

A breakdown: The real business costs of running a successful business and blog

Always, always calculate these extra expenses in your hourly rate if you charge per hour. Make the sum: the hours, the expenses, your salary.

My favorite? My holiday allowance. Yep, I give it to myself haha! Which means I get it every month. Which means I can travel every month..! So I do 🙂

Here’s a small breakdown of all costs I have to add in my hourly rate:

• My salary
• My business expenses (monthly + annual)
• My taxes (bleh)
• My holiday allowance
• My retirement
• Reserved money for when I get sick / can’t work etc.

Do you add all these costs to your hourly rate? You should! Under business expenses, I’ll add: my office, insurance, office supplies, employees, tech investments and more, see below for a breakdown.

When I calculate this breakdown, I also made a percentage calculation. Roughly: 40% salary, 10% everything else (about six categories). Which means, I slowly build up a fund part of my taxes so the shock is not as big as it would normally be. I also add my calculated VAT to that fund.

Monthly recurring expenses

Unfortunately, the more I grow, the more monthly recurring expenses I have but luckily, the more I can outsource! I love my tech, so here are a few of my monthly recurring expenses of running a successful business and blog (hey, in my eyes I’m successful: I can travel, live my dream and I enjoy ‘going to work’ every day!)

• Convertkit
• Teachable
• Tailwind for Pinterest scheduling, Tribes and Pinterest analytics
• Freshbooks accounting
• My office (I don’t always have an office because I travel a lot)
• Google Apps
• ZenMate for VPN protection when I use public wifi’s and when I travel
• BlueHost for web hosting
• Namecheap domain names
• Infusionsoft for my affiliate program
• Virtual Assistant
• Planoly to schedule Instagram
• Stripe fees linked to my shop
• Grammarly for spell checks
• Shopify fees host of my shop
• OneDrive for cloud storage
• Later to schedule Instagram Stories and schedule Instagram posts
• Boomerang for Gmail scheduling
• Payment plans for courses that I’ve bought like Making sense of affiliate marketing.

How to grow your income 

These are my recurring monthly expenses, and every month my one-time expenses grow too. The best way to manage this? Grow your sources of income too! More about that in this blog post: 50+ ways to make an income online from home.

How to start a blog 

I work as a fulltime blogger and online entrepreneur so that’s how I earn money. If you wanna learn more how to start a blog, read my step by step tutorial on how to start a professionally WordPress blog you can monetize for as low as $3,49 per month. Start making money by monetizing your blog, like this blogger who earns $50,000 per month with blogging. Woah! If you don’t know where to start when building a professional blog business, check out my article The tools I use to run my 5-figure automated business and blog.

Becoming A Millionaire With Your Online Business

I know, I know. It seems like it’s impossible to ever become a millionaire with all these expenses right? Well, think again! I explained the extremely simple math behind generating $1 million dollar overnight here.