I saw one of these “decade recap” style posts and thought it would be fun to create my own version!
It’s always a great reminder of how far you’ve REALLY come in 10 years, even if it feels like your day-to-day progress is slow.
Here are my revenue breakdowns from the last decade 👇
- 2014 = $1.2k/mo
- 2015 = $3k/mo
- 2016 = $3.5k/mo
- 2017 = $4k/mo
- 2018 = $7k/mo
- 2019 = $10k/mo
- 2020 = $12.5k/mo
- 2021 = $17k/mo
- 2022 = $24k/mo
- 2023 = $20k/mo
- 2024 = $15k/mo?
- 2025 = ???
*This is mostly as a solopreneur, with profit margins typically ~80% (before taxes).
And here’s what I did each year…
👩🎓 2014 👩🎓
Finished grad school and passed the RD exam at the end of July! Leased a room in a wellness clinic to start an in-person private practice. Tutored and food blogged on the side.
Barely made $15k. Went into debt.
💻 2015 💻
Did not like in-person private practice. Went fully virtual instead. Tried to hone my niche. Surviving mostly on tutoring. Still food blogging + freelance virtual assisting for other RDs.
Earned just shy of $40k, but happy to be out in the world with my degree and credential. Money was tight.
📦 2016 📦
Honed my niche, started selling packages instead of one-off appointments. Finally, earning consistent nutrition income. Began cutting back on tutoring. Still food blogging and occasionally virtual assisting.
Earned just shy of $45k. Still on an extremely tight budget.
✏️ 2017 ✏️
Launched The Unconventional RD blog/FB group and The Functional Nutrition Library membership site. Began freelance writing for Healthline. Stopped tutoring, virtual assisting, and food blogging.
The Unconventional RD was not monetized. FNL made $6k in the first 6 months of existence. Virtual nutrition counseling = main income stream.
Earned just shy of $50k, but finally got clarity on the type of work I enjoy.
👩🏫 2018 👩🏫
Shut down my private practice. Focused on freelance writing and The FNL. Pre-sold my first Unconventional RD product for Black Friday. Made $13k in a weekend and felt like my life was forever changed.
Total revenue for the year ~$85k. (Finally getting somewhere, nearly 5 years in!!)
🤹♀️ 2019 🤹♀️
Completely burned out. Created three online courses in one year, freelanced for Healthline, and ran the FNL. By the end of the year: quit freelance writing + announced the FNL would shutdown at the end of 2020. Went “all-in” on The Unconventional RD brand.
FINALLY cracked six figures (after 5.5 years of persistence – don’t give up!)
♻️ 2020 ♻️
Launched The Unconventional RD podcast. Ran live cohorts of my three courses (SEO, monetization, and email marketing) while updating and making them better.
Made $150k and officially shut down the FNL. (And got married!)
👶 2021 👶
Went “all in” on my SEO course. Stopped offering the other two courses. Raised the price to $1k and created an evergreen sales funnel. Had a baby (!!)
Cracked $200k for the first time. Barely worked the last 4 months of the year as a new mom. Evergreen funnel ran everything.
🤑 2022 🤑
Doubled down on the SEO course. Refined my funnel and content marketing efforts. Hired a part-time virtual assistant. Launched a new nutrition blog.
Had my best year ever, $280k+, working part-time.
😬 2023 😬
Shut down my course for nearly 6 months to completely update it. (That was a mistake, it took way longer than I thought it would.) Increased the price to $2k.
Began posting on YouTube and blogging for The Unconventional RD. Upped my hours to full-time. Husband became full-time care taker for our son.
AI takes off. Niche site apocalypse begins with Google’s September HCU update. Started brainstorming ways to future-proof my businesses and my teachings. Let go of my virtual assistant.
Launched a new membership site for Black Friday to talk about brand building, selling digital offers, expanding your content beyond SEO, and email marketing.
Still made $240k+ even though my cart was closed for nearly half the year.
🌀 2024 🌀
Had a business mid-life crisis. Did not enjoy selling a course and a membership. Felt out of alignment. Rolled everything into one membership instead. Turned off all my funnels to give myself space to try new things.
Brainstormed ways to shift from a high-ticket course model to a more diverse offer suite (in progress as we speak.) Husband started working again. Reduced my hours to part-time.
Relaunched The FNL with a business partner. Grew to 80+ members. Made $10k in the first 4 months.
On track for my worst revenue year since 2020… but lots of retooling happening on the backend. Should bounce back stronger in 2025. Proud to have served over 1,000 customers to date.
🌷2025 🌷
Excited to share how these business pivots turn out in 2025!
And, of course, I will be sharing my wins, losses, experiments, and revenue with you here on my email list.
If you enjoyed this “decade in review,” I challenge you to do one yourself!
You might be pleasantly surprised how far you’ve really come.
Before you go… here are a few more ways I can help you.
1. Free Weekly Videos: Subscribe to my YouTube channel to get weekly videos with the latest organic traffic strategies and tips for growing a lucrative online business.
2. Search Savvy Membership: Join 1k+ members and learn how to create an evergreen ecosystem that attracts your ideal customers, nurtures them via email, and sells to them on autopilot! Enrollment is temporarily closed while I redo my tech stack. I hope to be open again sometime in May. Stay tuned.
3. Exclusive Facebook Group: Connect with 16,000+ lovely humans starting, growing, and scaling their digital businesses.
4. Functional Nutrition Library: Your resource for staying on top of the latest research and best practices in functional nutrition. (We recently added new in-depth content on PCOS!)
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Erica Julson is a registered dietitian turned digital marketing pro. She has over 14 years of experience blogging and building online businesses and has taught over 1,000 people inside her programs.
