2025 Income Report: Building a Profitable Marketing Agency Without Full-Time Hours
Every year, I get more convinced that business owners, especially women, do not talk openly enough about money.
Not in a braggy way. Not in a “look what I did” way. But in a real, grounded, this is what it actually looked like way.
I get messages from fellow business owners all the time on Instagram that say something along the lines of “oh my gosh, I don’t know how you do it” or “how do you do it all with 3 little kids at home!?” The truth is, I have a lot of support, still drop a lot of balls, and sometimes still feel like I am drowning.
So this is my first official annual income report for Hilltop Help.
I’m sharing it for two reasons:
It helps me reflect on whether my business decisions are aligned with the life I want and helps me decide what is actually worth spending my time on in my business/what moves the needle.
I know there are other service-based business owners reading this who want proof that steady, intentional growth works, even if you are not working full-time hours.
This report covers January through December 2025 and reflects my third full year in business.
Who This Income Report Is For
This is for:
Service-based business owners and newer agency owners
People who want to grow over the next 1 to 5 years, not overnight
Business owners who care about profit, sustainability, and impact more than speed
This is not a hustle story. No bro marketing here!
This is not a “scale at all costs” story.
And this is definitely not a story about working 60-hour weeks.
But if you’re a mom still in the trenches with young children, losing sleep or work hours due to sicknesses, school events, and moody toddlers, you’re in the right place.
A Little Context Before the Numbers
I took Hilltop Help full-time in early 2023 after working as a VA in 2022 to learn my skills.
Here’s what that growth looked like:
Year 1 (2022): ~$12k in revenue, almost no profit
Year 2 (2023): ~$49k in revenue, about ~$21k profit
Year 3 (2024): ~$68k in revenue, about ~$45k profit
Year 3 (2025): This is the year things finally clicked
2025 was the year I:
Raised my prices
Productized my services
Started hiring contractors to help with client work
Shifted from “doing everything myself” to building real capacity
None of that happened overnight. It happened because I had more clients than I could realistically handle on my own.
2025 Profit and Loss At a Glance
Here is the big-picture snapshot for 2025:
Total Revenue: $155,299.91
Total Expenses: $65,393.42
Net Income: $89,202.13
Profit Margin: ~57 percent
These numbers are pre-tax and based on accrual accounting for the year 2025.
For a service-based marketing agency that is not operating full time, I feel really good about both the revenue and the margin.
But the quality of the revenue matters just as much as the total.Where the Revenue Actually Came From
One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that not all revenue feels the same.
In 2025, my income came from a mix of:
Retainer Clients
This was by far the most aligned revenue stream.
Long-term retainer clients allowed me to:
See real growth over time
Build deeper relationships
Make a more meaningful impact beyond just a pretty website or organic traffic
This is also where I want to continue shifting the business, toward helping clients grow revenue, not just visibility.
For transparency, my retainer clients pay anywhere from $500-$5000/month and I can only handle about 6 on my own before I need to outsource.
Website in a Week Projects
From an ROI-on-time perspective, these were the best.
Each project took roughly:
~20 hours total
~5 days to deliver
~$3,000 per project
I did 8 “Website in a Week” Projects this year, though I started at a very low rate until settling on my ideal price of $3500 per project.
Being able to give someone a high-quality website in a short, focused sprint felt efficient, clean, and energizing. When I first started this business as a web designer, I loved the creativity side of things.
Little did I know how much a website can effect a business’ bottom line and seeing the value in that changed my perspective on how I wanted to position myself in this sometimes crowded market. I didn’t just want to make “pretty websites.” I wanted to build websites that truly benefitted a business so that my clients would come back to me the next time they were ready to invest in their marketing. (And thankfully, a lot of my clients do come back to me!)
One-Off Projects and Audits
These were helpful both for cash flow and for giving people a clear starting point. I love my website audits because the give great strategy to business owners who aren’t ready to invest in SEO support yet. Plus, I always review the audits with my clients during a 1 hour strategy call which is super insightful for me because I can see where people get hung up when it comes to SEO and common questions that I can use in my content.
They also often turned into longer-term relationships, which I prefer.
This year I did 8 website audits at $500 each and a handful of one-off projects that typically involved website updates, page add-ons, and strategy calls.
Courses and Memberships
I launched my Visibility Membership in October as a lower-price way to support more people.
I currently only have two members, and that’s okay.
This offer exists because:
Not everyone needs 1:1 support
I wanted a lower-pressure option
I did not want to force growth here
I am intentionally not pushing this hard.
I only launched RANK Method (my signature SEO course) one time this year in late January and made 1 sale. Then I made a sale through Instagram in March for a total revenue of $1195.50. I simply didn’t have the energy to do a big launch again later in the year and had high hopes that my funnel using a small Meta Ads budget would convert better. It didn’t and that’s okay.
I’m excited to launch it again later this month with some new bonuses, messaging, and affiliates. If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate for RANK, use this link to sign up! I pay 20% commission per sale and provide swipe copy and graphics so it’s a very low lift :)
I made an additional ~$3100 from sales of the membership and my Keyword Research Mini Course, though honestly this was basically a wash since I spent about that much in ads this year.
If you’re wondering how I got these pretty graphs, I use ThriveCart and can’t recommend it enough! I sell all of my digital products using Thrivecart and love that you just pay a one-time fee and have it for LIFE!
It makes it really easy to track your numbers and conversion rates, set up funnels, affiliates, and automations, and create new checkout pages branded for your business.
If you’re interested, you can use this link for a discount :) I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you!
How Many Hours I Actually Worked
Now let’s get into one of the most common questions I get. “How much do you actually work in your business?”
The honest answer is: it depended on the season.
Summer was by far my busiest season of work this year and I worked up to ~30 hours per week. This was not intentional at all but I had a lot of clients book bigger projects in the April/May time period that carried into the summer.
I honestly loved this schedule so much because I was able to truly be present in both my personal and business lives. I felt like I had enough time to get all my work done without stressing about it when I was out and about with my kids. Ending the work day at 3pm was perfect (and is honestly my norm year round) because we would spend our afternoons at the neighborhood pool.
What helped make this happen:
I had a nanny three days per week from 9am to 3pm
My husband covered childcare for another ~10 hours per week
During the school year I worked about two or three focused workdays per week (9am - 3pm). The earlier part of the year was much busier than the fall/winter but honestly after the summer I had, I needed the lighter workload. How this shook out:
Some work during nap time
Some light work from my phone
Rare evenings, usually 1 to 2 hours max, and mostly for my own business
I tried hard to:
Take at least one full weekend day off
Avoid Instagram scrolling on weekends
Not use my phone before 9am
This made a noticeable difference in my mental health, and it’s something I want to protect even more in 2026.
Hiring, Growth, and Letting Go
Lots of lessons learned when it came to hiring this year. Honestly, I kept going back and forth all year between wanting to start and agency and scale and just keeping it little ole me. Agency life feels like a lot of pressure and I never want the work I provide for my clients to suffer.
2025 was the first year I had help with client work. That was both exciting and uncomfortable.
I hired contractors because:
I did not want to turn away work
I genuinely love helping businesses get real results
I realized I also love being able to provide work for others
One of my current contractors is my best friend, and my husband will be coming on in 2026 to help with operations and local SEO. I also found an amazing VA through the Unicorn VA community my friend Emily Reagan runs. She came on in August and hit the ground running!
That said, not everything went smoothly.
I let go of a VA I had worked with for over two years. We were friends, and that made it harder. There was a communication breakdown on both sides, and it became clear she wanted to focus on growing her own business.
It was sad, but resolved. And the lesson was clear: even with people you trust, expectations need to be documented and clearly laid out, not assumed.
I also tried working with an overseas VA agency. The price point was great. The quality was not. I let them go within three weeks.
In hindsight, I should have given them more standardized, repeatable tasks instead of expecting higher-level work right away. Lesson learned.
What Was Harder Than I Expected
The hardest part of 2025 was not the workload itself. It was the context switching.
Between:
Kids
Interruptions
Clients changing direction mid-project
Urgent requests that disrupted deep work
It was hard to get long stretches of focused time.
The contrast was obvious when I went to Mexico for a Mixermind retreat and again during winter break when I paused major client work. Even a few uninterrupted days made a massive difference and I hope to be able to do more of this “CEO” level work in 2026.
There were many moments where I thought: This is not sustainable if I keep doing it this way.
That realization is what’s driving more hiring and better systems in 2026.
What Worked Really Well in 2025
Retainer clients and long-term relationships
Productized offers instead of endless customization
Delegating execution instead of trying to do everything myself
Small-budget Meta ads ($300 per month) that brought in high-quality leads
Saying no to constant launching
I cut back on Pinterest this year, and while I may revisit it if I relaunch my template shop, it was the right decision for this season.
I also took several weeks off from posting on Instagram in the fall. I just felt burned out and didn’t have much to say. There was a lot going on in the world and every time I logged into the app, I went down rabbit holes that were very distracting and emotionally draining.
Let this be your permission to take social media breaks!
What I’m Focusing On Next
For 2026, my goals are clear:
~$200k in revenue - This feels realistic and achievable
60 percent profit margin or better
More long-term retainer clients
More delegated execution
More time for exercise, reading, and rest
I want the business to feel lighter, easier, and less stressful six months from now.
Why I’m Sharing This and What’s Next
I plan to do these income reports quarterly going forward.
They are helpful for me because they force honest reflection. They help me make decisions from alignment, not pressure.
If you’re in a similar season of business, I hope this post made you think:
This feels doable
I’m not behind
I should rethink how I’m spending my time
If you want a clearer picture of where your website and marketing could be working harder for you, I offer a Website and SEO Audit that breaks down exactly what to focus on next.
And if nothing else, I hope this encourages more open conversations about money, growth, and building businesses that support real life.
