The holidays are officially over, so how are we feeling: tired? Lost? A bit bloated? (I have zero regrets.)

The good news is: we survived Black Friday, and it’s a New Year! Now, it’s time to look back at our progress, crunch the numbers, and see what worked vs. what we can do better. That’s what prompted me to sit down and take a hard look at my monthly income report from November. 

So today, let’s talk about how I made over $100K in 30 days from selling digital products in my online shop!

The ramp-up

Leading up to Black Friday every year, we actually close The Contract Shop® for a week. While everyone else pushes their sales hard, we give our customers a little breathing room, while also relishing the excitement just a tad. Risky? Maybe. But I think it helps to set ourselves apart! 

Then, we opened the shop at 12:01 am Eastern time on Black Friday — sales went live all around the world and we were answering questions via chat with excited customers. Best of all, we had over 100 people waiting to see if they would snag our doorbusters (a bonus guide, cash, and a gift card to the shop).

The crazy part? Those doorbusters were gone within 30 seconds of opening the sale, and we had made over $1,000 in the first couple of minutes.

Weekend sales

In true Black Friday fashion, the sales were nothing to sneeze at! We earned over $10,000 within the first HOUR of Black Friday. (That’s the power of digital products!)

Predictably, Black Friday was the best day of the sale, with a little over $46,000 of revenue total. Needless to say, it was a great day for the store, and that was just the start of the weekend. 

Saturday carried some of that Black Friday momentum, although not as strong. It did give us the weirdest revenue number by far: $7,777.70. Is the universe trying to tell us something? * looks up angel numbers * 

Sunday was a bit slower as people began to catch up from the holidays. We were already braced for this kind of flux (it has happened on each of our Black Friday sales!) and we knew those dips wouldn’t derail our month. We were proven right as we ended Cyber Monday at a little over $25,000.

Add it all up, and the shop earned about $88,000 over the course of those four days. Even though the store was shut down for a week, we still made a month’s worth of sales in the two weeks PRIOR to the Black Friday sale!

The grand total ended up being $112,000 for the month of November! It’s not our first 6-figure month (not even the first 6-figure month this year), but it’s still amazing to see things happen so fast and furiously. 

The expenses (no, I didn’t make $88k without expenses!)

Of course, sales alone don’t show the big picture. We have to factor in expenses, too, which take a bit longer to put together (hence the delay on this particular report!).

While I didn’t have any sale-specific expenses this year, I did have some bigger projects behind the scenes. One of the biggest changes has been The Contract Shop®’s redesigned website, which runs about $25,000, including copy, branding, development, graphics, and more; definitely not a cheap project!

And of course, there are those usual recurring monthly expenses to consider. Things like customer support, content creation, editors, social media managers can all run around $4-5K a month, depending on your business and your creative team. Miscellaneous expenses also pop up pretty often (coaches, utilities, etc). 

One of our other big expenses is our affiliate commissions, which are about 20% of sales (so for the Black Friday sale, that’s about $10K!)

Conversion rates

Who says the spoils of Black Friday have to end in December? Between our revamped website and Black Friday sales, I’ve seen one thing continue to improve: our conversion rate. 

Our conversion rate (in other words, the proportion of customers who visit our store and complete their purchase) increased from 3% to 5% for our Black Friday sale, but the impact didn’t stop there. Since then, our conversion rate has held steady. Our normal conversion rate practically doubled (from 1.5% to 3-4%) in daily sales ever since!

This is all possible with digital products (yours, too!)

My November income report has only strengthened my love for digital products (no surprise there!). Digital products are a GREAT way to make money online, in case you can’t tell. Why? Because once you create a digital product one time it can then sell over and over again — I didn’t create a single thing new for this sale (although I did presell a couple of digital products).

If you want to see more of these deep dives on our monthly income reports, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a comment on this month’s report. You can also view all my other Black Friday tips if you’re gearing up for your own seasonal sale (you don’t have to wait for Black Friday!).