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Aug 23 • General Discussion 💬
My actual document automation revenue - every ugly detail from $0 to $14k/month
Sharing real numbers because the fake guru stuff helps nobody.
📉 **MONTH 1-3: The Delusion Phase**
- Revenue: $0
- Expenses: $400 (tools, courses, domains)
- Clients: 0
- Projects: 12 "portfolio builds" nobody saw
- Confidence: "I'm gonna be rich"
- Reality: Eating ramen
📈 **MONTH 4-6: First Blood**
- Revenue: $1,800/month average
- Clients: 3 small businesses
- Pricing: $500-800/month (way too low)
- Mistakes: Promised too much, delivered chaos
- Lost: First client in month 5 (overengineered their solution)
- Lesson: Simple beats complex
📊 **MONTH 7-9: Finding The Groove**
- Revenue: $5,400/month average
- Clients: 5 (lost 1, gained 3)
- Pricing: Raised to $1,200 average
- Breakthrough: Focused only on invoices/contracts
- Stopped: Building custom solutions
- Started: Reusing templates
💰 **MONTH 10-12 (Current): Actual Business**
- Revenue: $14,000/month
- Clients: 8 active
- Pricing: $800-3,500/month
- Sweet spot: Law firms and accounting ($2,500 average)
- Retention: 100% past 3 months
- Referrals: 3 new clients from existing ones
THE REAL COSTS:
- n8n hosting: $20/month (DigitalOcean)
- Make/Zapier: $58/month (for clients who insist)
- Random tools: $43/month
- Total: $200/month
Time investment:
- Week 1-20: 60 hours/week (unsustainable)
- Week 21-40: 40 hours/week (still too much)
- Now: 20 hours/week (finally balanced)
Net profit: ~$13,800/month
THE HARD TRUTHS:
- First 6 months sucked. Made $67/hour at McDonald's in college. Made $0/hour for 6 months here.
- Almost quit in month 5 when client said my work was "unusable"
- Wife questioned my sanity daily
- Imposter syndrome hit different at 3 AM debugging webhooks
WHAT ACTUALLY WORKED:
- Picking one thing (document processing)
- Building boring solutions that work
- Charging for value, not time
- Saying no to complex requests
- Using reliable tools (stop trying to save $50/month)
Currently building toward $18k/month. Not there yet, but the path is clear now.
Where are you honestly at? No judgment - we all started at $0 💪
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My actual document automation revenue - every ugly detail from $0 to $14k/month
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