I make up to $13,000 a month from my digital-marketing business and still have the flexibility to travel and snowboard — here's how I built it

• Elizabeth Nelson launched her digital agency during the pandemic after being a wildland firefighter.
• She and her partner made $180,000 in 2022 while maintaining the flexibility to ski and snowboard.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Elizabeth Nelson, the 31-year-old owner of a digital-marketing agency based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Insider has verified her income with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to Colorado in 2016 and first lived out of my car, then a teardrop travel trailer, and finally a condo I bought at a ski resort in Durango. I now live near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, during the winters to snowboard and run my digital-marketing agency, Snowmad Digital.

From 2016 to 2020, I was an SEO- and pay-per-click-marketing contractor for a PR agency that specialized in wine and tourism. During that time, I began earning my certifications to become a wildland firefighter. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the PR agency I was working for fired everyone, and I started wildland firefighting. I fought the infamous Creek Fire in California that September.

My original plan was to become a smokejumper, a type of wildland firefighter who enters the fire by parachute, but I decided for my health to leave firefighting behind and focus on my digital-marketing agency.

My partner, Jesse Hall, 30, now works with me as our head web designer. He previously was a wildland firefighter, diesel mechanic, and snowcat mechanic. Together, we made around $180,000 in 2022.

Here's what inspired me to shift careers

After inhaling poison oak in the Creek Fire, I came back to Durango almost unable to breathe and worn down from the long days of eating trail mix and sleeping on the ground. I went for a hike up the famously steep Hogsback Mountain in October 2020 and was spewing out black gunk from my lungs. I also worried about Jesse, who had been fighting fires for three summers at the time.

I replied to a Craigslist ad for cold-calling, which led to me working as a ghost web designer and SEO strategist for several prominent wedding-industry speakers. My clients realized I was capable of more than just cold-calling and asked if I could work on their ads and websites. I had never built a more complex website than an online blog, but I said yes because I was eager to take on more work and taught myself from there, primarily from researching on Google.

But I knew that working under other agencies as a freelancer and contractor was never going to give me the freedom I desired to travel, skydive, snowboard, and create healthy relationships with clients. Freedom, to me, is owning your time, and working for another agency means they own your time.

Even though I was never paid as an employee for the agencies I worked for, I was always treated like one, with set work hours and no compensation for overtime. I grew tired of ghostwriting and ghost designing. I wanted the credit. Most importantly, I wanted to deliver results directly to clients.

Jesse agreed to quit firefighting, too, and we moved into a camper van during the winter of 2020 to travel while working on our agency remotely and chasing powder storms at ski resorts.

We returned to Durango in the spring of 2021. Jesse encouraged me to work on my email outreach and content on my website to attract customers. I was extremely reluctant to grow the business because I knew I'd sacrifice my free time, but I was also eager to prove my potential.

In 2 1/2 years, I've worked with more than 70 clients

I now do web design, SEO, digital marketing, web hosting, and consulting for wedding venues like Mountain House Estate, Weddings Unlimited, Alexander Homestead, and Legacy Farms through my own agency.

My first client was John Alden, the owner of Mountain House Estate, who found me through another wedding-industry professional who referred me. John had a lot of faith in my work and started consistently referring me to other venue owners. His advice was to simplify everything I talked about to clients regarding SEO, which taught me to speak in a less technical way that business owners understood.

From there my network grew, and content I posted on my website about some controversial topics like The Knot losing its shine in the wedding industry and about deciding between Squarespace and WordPress gained me more clients who wanted not only monthly SEO work but also web design and hosting.

I now make between $8,000 and $13,000 per month. Jesse and I work our own schedule, powering through days or weeks for projects and only taking off time to ski in the winter or take trips in the summer. I work at least four or five days a week for 10 hours or more, depending on the weather.

I'm transparent in my pricing. I typically charge $3,500 to $6,500 for responsive SEO-optimized web design and $1,000 to $3,000 monthly for marketing, social media, and SEO.

These are the strategies I use to attract and retain clients

I did extra work for one of my clients in exchange for their creating a video testimonial I posted on my agency's YouTube channel. A video testimonial from a client is more powerful than any text or anything you can say about yourself. One of my newer clients said they saw the video and just hired me this month largely because of it.

I also exhibited and spoke this year at WeddingMBA, a program I'd applied to, which catapulted my brand recognition.

I never outsource my work. Some business owners see this as a failure, but I see it as a positive work-life balance because I enjoy doing the work, not managing others.

I create boundaries around communication and expectations with my clients and my partner. Since we live together, my partner and I sometimes work separately. We've taken communication courses and gotten individual therapy during our relationship to strengthen our bond. Understanding each other's boundaries and needs, as well as not harboring negative emotions, is vital in a healthy working relationship.

I never work with my clients' competitors, and I work with clients all around the country and the world. When my client hires me, I'm loyal to them and their company. I've never lost a client. I also value my clients' work-life balance as much as mine, and I strive to make them more money to help them improve this.