The one thing I hear most from my tribe is the desire to earn six-figures with an online business. 

Oh, I get it. That was my main goal for many years. It became a mantra in our house. We talked, and talked, AND talked about “someday” when…

It felt like I was standing on the edge of an amazing breakthrough, just about to cross-over into six-figure territory. I could feel it. 

At least, I told myself I could feel it. I gave myself daily pep talks. I woke up every morning and thought, “today is the day the switch flips.” 

But, here’s the reality of my life back then - I didn’t have a good channel to make six-figures. Let me explain…

At that time, I had an Etsy shop that sold jewelry-making supplies. You know, beads, findings, chain, earring hooks, claps, etc. It was a cute little shop, and it earned about $3k a month. Not bad, but not great. 

I had tons of product, that I religiously kept organized and inventoried. At any moment, I could check a spreadsheet and know how much stock I had on hand. I used our upstairs hallway as a warehouse, and had one of those industrial, stainless steel racks that commercial kitchens use. I stored all the inventory on shelves in color-coded baskets.

It was a great system. I was proud of how organized my business was. 

Ok, so back to my six-figure goal… I would wake up every morning and grab my phone off the nightstand to check and see if I’d had a flood of orders overnight. Or maybe someone had emailed wanting a HUGE wholesale order. I just knew that at any moment, I could be running a six-figure business. 

Then one morning I had a sobering thought. I kept an average of $12k-$15K in inventory on hand in my makeshift hallway warehouse. It suddenly hit me - I wasn’t set up to make six-figures. It just wasn’t going to happen, I was playing too small. 

I literally couldn’t wake up to sales amounting to more than $12k-$15k (and it was highly unlikely that would happen anyway). And if it did, then what? My shop would be sold out for a couple weeks until I could restock. Plus, my little Etsy shop wasn’t going to attract a big wholesale order, because I wasn’t ready to handle that type of success. 

I was playing in a small pond, and dreaming of ocean results. 

So now I’m going to ask you - Can your current business really make six-figures?

We’re going to figure that out right now!

Ready? Grab a notebook and latte. I promise this is going to be worth it. 

There’s three main types of products; physical products, services, and digital products. Which one do you currently sell?

1. Physical products

This is anything ‘real’ that gets shipped to a customer (jewelry, clothing, books, rubber stamps, etc). If you’re selling a physical product, it’s especially important that you do the math to make sure you can hit your six-figure goal. 

How much inventory do you have on hand? 

How big is your average sale? 

How much traffic does your shop get each month?

How healthy are your margins? 

Example, if you sell a $10 item, and make a profit of $6 (after product costs), you’ll need to ship approximately seventy items a day to make six-figures a year. That’s a big commitment. 

Take $100,000 and divide it by your average order price. That's how many orders you need to ship each year. How many does that work out to a week? A day? Can you handle that type of volume, and is it worth it to you? Will you still be able to have the lifestyle you want if you're processing that many orders? 

There’s a lot of considerations to look at when you’re selling a physical product. To give you the best idea of where you stand with your business, I strongly recommend you download the free workbook at the end of this article. In it, I break down everything and give you a formula to follow so you can see if your business is ready to hit six-figures. I also give action items you can take right now to get your business on the right track. 

2. Services

Services are defined as trading time and expertise for money. Examples are, an energy healer that does sixty minute sessions on the phone, or a copywriter that charges per page written. 

If you sell a service, you need to figure out how much of your time you can offer each month, plus what your average cost is per service. 

For example, you’d need to make $8,400 per month to make six-figures ($8,400 X 12 months = $100,800 per year). If you do sixty minute phone sessions for $100, to make $8,400 a month, you’d need to do 84 sixty minute sessions per month, or 21 sessions per week. 

That works out to approximately 4-5 sessions every day, Monday through Friday. Can you do that? 

Only you will know if that level of work is right for you and the lifestyle you’re trying to build. However, now you know the commitment it will take to build a six-figure business with your services.