PERFORMANCE SECTION

HOW I EARNED
$1,000,000 IN
LESS THAN A
YEAR.

The Six Figure Chick| Cici Gunn

This year has been my most profitable business year

and I reached my dream milestone of earning

$1,000,000.

I put together this guide to give you a behind the

scene view of what it takes to earn consistent income

as an online digital entrepreneur.

The information I'm sharing works for me, so feel free

to take what makes sense for your business and leave

the rest.

Cici Gunn| Page 1

The Tools I Used This Year

1. Kajabi- $399/Monthly

I use Kajabi for the customer experience and it also

handles my large product catalog.

I currently have over 100 classes and workshops so

Kajabi allows me to create a space for my students,

give them longer access to the content and also gives

them a place where they can ask questions.

Kajabi is an all in one platform so you can use it for

your website, email marketing, classes, membership

and more.

I already had other systems in place that worked well

for this so I only needed the access for my students.

Cici Gunn| Page 2

The Tools I Used This Year

2. SamCart- $199/Month

I've used SamCart for 3 years and it is my favorite

payment processor.

It allows me to create sales pages, to offer

upsells/order bumps, it integrates easily with my other

systems, and they have one of the most responsive

customer service teams out there.

3. Convertkit- Begins at $29/Month for up to 1000

subscribers.

I use Convertkit for my emails. My email list is one of

my most profitable tools so Convertkit fits most of my

needs for e-mail marketing.

It allows me to create email funnels, follow up with my

customers, send targeted emails, and it helps me to

keep my list segmented and tagged.

Cici Gunn| Page 3

The Tools I Used This Year

4. Canva Pro (formerly Canva For Work)

Canva is something  I use multiple times each day. I

use it for my social media content, to create my

digital products, and when I'm building content for my

clients.

Canva is constantly adding new features so it's

growing to be more useful.

5. Social Media- Instagram and Facebook

Groups.

I keep my social media simple, and focus on a few

platforms. Instagram is my main platform and I use IG

posts, IG:Live, IG:TV, Instagram Stories, and

Instagram DMs.

Cici Gunn| Page 4

 Top Strategies This Year
Strategy #1
Focused on building my email list not my followers.

Followers can look good on Instagram or other social

media platforms but when it comes down to it, your

email list subscribers are king.

You can build targeted lists based on the products or

services that you want to offer. You can validate new

ideas by offering a freebie such as a checklist, mini

eBook, pdf or a free training.

My general rule of thumb is if your audience won’t

take something for free, they most likely won’t pay for

a paid product on the same topic.

Offering free content allows you to build targeted

lists of potential buyers so when creating the free

content think about the what’s next step and what

you plan to offer.

Cici Gunn| Page 5

Remember free content is the what and the why, so

you can share information and still be helpful without

making yourself unnecessary.

The paid content is how, so they will pay for

execution steps.

Strategy #2-
Once people are on your list, you have to continue to

build the relationship so that means sending emails

on a regular basis.

I’ve tried just about every strategy out there when it

comes to emails there is  no one size fits all.

The best way to determine what works for your

audience is to pay attention to what they are saying

and test different things.

I do recommend emailing at least 2x per week, keep

your emails related to your products but also balance

it with sharing relatable content, and always have a

call to action even if it’s just to have them reply back

to the email.

Cici Gunn| Page 6

Remember free content is the what and the why, so

you can share information and still be helpful without

making yourself unnecessary.

The paid content is how, so they will pay for

execution steps.

Strategy #3-

I shifted from page ads where I paid other pages to

promote my content and learned now to use

Instagram Ads.

This shift allowed me to create more targeted ads as

well as measure the return on investment better.

With page ads it can be a bit hit or miss, you’re not

always sure who’s in the audience of the page you’re

using to promote, you don’t get exact traffic stats,

and there’s often a best window to post where you’ll

receive the most interaction. 

Cici Gunn| Page 7

Page ads can have very varied rates as well, some

pages may charge $20 for a 24 hour post and some

may charge $5000, its up the page owner.

Some also don’t allow you to share your links so extra

steps for the new audience could cause lost traffic

and conversions.

Sponsored ads are different because you have more

control over who your ad is sent to and direct them to

a link.

You can choose interests, personal figures, age, and

locations which can help your develop different

campaigns targeted to specific markets and offers.

You can also run a longer budget over an extended

period of time so you are able to have a bigger

impact.

I prefer 7-10 day campaigns and found that ads that

ran to a free webinar or offered a free download

performed the best.

Cici Gunn| Page 8

 Strategy #4
Kept my engagement high. 

Instagram stats are great but they don’t always tell

the entire story so when you are building your

engagement strategy focus on what moves the

needle for your business.

This year I did an Ask Me Anything session in my

Instagram Stories at least once or twice each week. 

This was a great way to give my audience value but it

also gave me great insight into exactly where my

audience was struggling. 

 I was able to use the same language my audience

was using when I made my sales pages or wrote my

emails so it boosted my conversions and made the

conversation flow easier.

Cici Gunn| Page 9

 Strategy #5
Learned to repeat myself and repurpose more.

This was one of the hardest strategies for me to

implement because I'm accustomed to always

creating something new but it also ended up being

one of the most profitable.

Keep in mind that your brand is always being

introduced to new people so you'll always have new

eyes who may not have seen your previous content.

For your current offer when you made the first offer

or shared the content the first time it may not have

been the right time, but things change and so do

people's needs.

I taught the same topics multiple times this year and

each time I taught something again it allowed me to

see it differently, so I became a better teacher over

the year and my students were able to grow as well.

Cici Gunn| Page 10

 January 2019- $110, 291. 48

Top 3 Products:

Secure The Bag

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$28, 945.00

How To Build A Successful Page That Pays-

How to monetize Instagram.

$15,574.88

Positioned To Profit- (C)

Masterclass on how to prepare your online business,

walked through the basics of setting up an online

business.

$9,209.00

January was a great month to focus on the people

who had the new year, new me spirit and wanted to

make changes.

The best products from this month were focused on

new beginnings.

Cici Gunn| Page 11

 February 2019- $63,130.3

Top 3 Products:

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$16,775.00

How To Make $5000 Teaching Online Classes.

This class taught how to teach online Masterclasses

and workshops.

$11,466.00

Printed Profits 2.0

This class was an update to a class I taught the

previous fall on how to create printed journals and

planners.

$7,308.00

This was an interesting month for me, because I let

fear set in after having two six figure months. I didn't

push as hard or promote my content.

Cici Gunn| Page 12

 February 2019- $63,130.3

For February, I also hired and fired a Facebook Ads

manager and realized that it was going to be best to

learn how to do these myself so that when or if I

decided to outsource this in the future I would

understand what was going on.

I had a great freebie that was aimed at new

entrepreneurs and I used the Secure The Bag bundle

as a tripwire since it was selling so well on it's own.

Cici Gunn| Page 13

 March 2019- $66,157.05

Top 3 Products:

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$16,625.00

The Ultimate Business Plan for Creative Business

Owners (S)

This was an eBook for new entrepreneurs to outline

their business.

$6,477.00

All Access Pass Bundle

This bundle was an all access pass to classes I

recorded in 2018.

$5,122.00

This month I was still dealing with the imposter

syndrome, so I mainly let my systems run, and didn't

teach Live classes this month.

Cici Gunn| Page 14

 This month ended up being a repeat of February.

I couldn't complain much because I was still

profitable, but my head wasn't fully into the business

and I took a break as needed.

Cici Gunn| Page 15

 April 2019- $105,657.91

Top 3 Products:

Pay What You Want- All Access Class Pass Bundle

SamCart released a new feature this month for Pay

What You Want Pricing so I tested it with the All

Access Pass.

$15,802.14

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$12,325.00

Money May- 30 Day Challenge

This was a 30 day accountability and action

challenge I hosted for May.

$8,439.00

Cici Gunn| Page 16

April was half in, half out. I pulled myself together

about mid-month and pulled many classes from my

vault to promote.

I tested the Pay What You Want strategy on 3

different products at different beginning minimum

prices and it worked out pretty well.

This was another month that having a large back

catalog to use for repurposing came in handy. 

The content was already done so I just needed to

make people aware that it was available.

Cici Gunn| Page 17

 May 2019- $103,988.85

Top 3 Products:

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$32,352.00

Money Making Bundle

I started Money Making Monday this month and

pulled 5 classes for $25 on each Monday.

$11,825.00

The New Printed Profits

This was an update to the previous Printed Profits.

$8,725.70

This month was all about repurposing and updating

content, the top 2 products were class bundles of

content I already had on hand. The main strategy

here was to be sure to market it to people.

Cici Gunn| Page 18

 I had a live speaking event at the BYOB conference

where I taught how to monetize Instagram.

This gave me a chance to meet a lot of my followers

in real life as well as show that I was the same person

online and offline.

I feel that played a large part in the sales for the

Secure The Bag bundle doubling this month.

Cici Gunn| Page 19

 June 2019- $103,888.7

Top 3 Products:

Frazzled- How To Sell Your Physical Products

This class was specifically for businesses who sold

physical products or services on Instagram and how

to market their business better.

$17,142.00

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$12,922.00

The Summer School All Access Pass Bundle

This bundle was themed for the summer and another

repurpose of previous classes.

$14, 824.48.

This month's strategy focused on my email list and

doing consistent marketing. This month I also spent

about $3000 on ads and started to learn how to use

Sponsored Ads through IG.

Cici Gunn| Page 20

 July 2019- $80,980.14

Top 3 Products:

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$12,275.00

Money Making Bundle

I continued Money Making Monday this month, I stuck

to Mondays and mainly sold these bundles via DM.

$8,800.00

The Summer Business Building Bundle

This bundle had a slight name tweak but was still

themed for the summer and a repurpose of previous

classes.

$8,766.00

This month was pretty steady, I continued the

strategies that worked for June. This month I spent

$5500 on Instagram ads which mainly brought traffic

to the page.

Cici Gunn| Page 20

I was still learning and testing different strategies.

I didn't pay attention to all of the guideline rules for

this month though and my ads account ended up

being disabled.

Considering I had spent over $5000 on ads this

month, I was irritated but learned the hard lesson of

actually understanding what you're doing with new

platforms.

If it's available you should invest in help to learn what

you're doing and most importantly why you're doing it.

That would have saved me a lot of frustration.

Cici Gunn| Page 21

 August 2019- $96,345.16

Top 3 Products:

The Birthday Bundle “34”

My annual birthday bundle of 34 videos.

$40,604.00

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$6,550.00

*Make Some D*mn Money Already*

This class was a repurpose of a marketing class that

had sold well the previous year so I updated the

content to teach again.

$3,724.00

I have an annual sale for my birthday so I went into

August with the expectation that it was going to do

well. This month I spent a lot of time with my email list

content to build up my list and prepare them to

purchase the birthday bundle.

Cici Gunn| Page 22

 I didn't quite hit $100,000 this month, but it was a

pretty good month overall.

After figuring out how to set up a new ads account, I

spent about $7,200 on ads this month in preparation

for the birthday bundle.

Cici Gunn| Page 23

 September 2019- $102,342.3

Top 3 Products:

$100,000 In 30 Days

I had time to evaluate what I was doing right to hit

my $100,000 months so I broke it down into a

Masterclass.

$18,082.04

45 Marketing, Sales And Social Media Strategies

Based on the successes from this year I also updated

one of my eBooks, and reoffered the content.

$9,443.00

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$9,089.00

This month did well because of the updated content I

was able to offer as well as many of the students I

gained over the summer also went into other classes.

Cici Gunn| Page 24

I spent $2408. 42 on ads for September to grow my

list. I was still testing out what worked and what

didn't.

I had a speaking event at the end of August with The

Bawse Conference so that also helped to drive some

traffic for this month.

Cici Gunn| Page 25

 October 2019- $42,944.6

Top 3 Products:

Printed Profits (‘19)

This class was being requested often so I decided to

teach another round.

$6,422.00

Secure The Bag Bundle

Beginner's Bundle to begin an online business.

$4,532.00

45 Marketing, Sales And Social Media Strategies

Based on the successes from this year I also updated

one of my eBooks, and reoffered the content.

$3,569.98

Due to family situations, my anniversary, and travel, I

ended up taking the majority of October off to give

myself space until my home life came back to normal.

I spent $972.67 on ads for this month.

Cici Gunn| Page 26

 November 2019- $102,709.49

Top 3 Products:

Canva Like A Boss (N)

Canva is one of my favorite tools and after many

questions from my audience I decided to teach a

new Canva class.

This was a free class that I flipped into paid content

if they wanted the recorded replay.

$18,469.00

The Business Growth Bundle

I repurposed my birthday bundle into the Business

Growth bundle to offer for Black Friday.

$14,604.00

Print With Amazon/Kindle

I offered this class as an upsell to Canva Like A Boss

and focused only on printing with Kindle Direct

Publishing.

$12,129.00

Cici Gunn| Page 27

 This was an interesting month. I knew most of my

attention would be focused on preparing for Black

Friday so I focused on value emails for this month.

I also opened my Black Friday sale to run the entire

week instead of just Black Friday, which after

reviewing the numbers I wouldn't do in the future.

My Black Friday sale did ok, but it didn't go as well as

expected, overall the month came out well though.

This was my highest ad spend month at $11,573.89. I

was testing two types of ads with static images and

video, video won. I also knew that the best way to

convert this month was going to be my mailing list so I

focused on getting people signed up.

Cici Gunn| Page 28

 December 2019- MTD- 12/10/2019- $76,480.86

December has been a wild card so far, after

reaching my $1,000,000 goal for the year, I took some

time to review everything from this year. From that

review I put together my shift bundle and decided on

what I wanted to focus on for 2020, which will be

digital products, email marketing and mindset.

The original goal for this month was $100,000 but at

this rate, December will be my highest month of the

year, so we'll see how that goes.

Cici Gunn| Page 29

 Overall, I've learned a lot this year and unlearned a

lot this year, so 2020 will be a different playing field.

My best-selling product for the entire year and most

months was The Secure The Bag bundle, so I'll see

how that continues to fit into my overall model for my

new clients and beginner business owners.

I hope this information is helpful to you as you build

your own online business.

Best of luck!

-Cici

Cici Gunn| Page 30