First Page Of Google, Other Goals and The Next 12 Months.

Hi friends I hope this finds you all well and that you’ve made great progress with your online world! In this post, I will briefly talk about weekly time commitment, the quality versus quantity principle and how that should be tailored to your own needs and requirements. Not to mention, future goals and much more….

Weekly Time Commitment

This is a fairly tricky section to comment on as everyone has a different lifestyle, work and family commitments. I personally believe it is more about the quality of the work you put in to your enterprise rather than the actual hours. Having said that, hours are important as well, but not quite to the same degree I think. You can achieve much more with a quality, concerted effort in 4-5 hours of work a day than slogging away for 10 plus hours doing multiple tasks in a mediocre fashion. Everyone works differently - if you can sustain quailty work doing 10 hours a day, you are something else and by all means go for it!

I initially thought about going “ALL OUT” and working 10 + hour days when first starting at WA. However, I now realize working 10 + hours a day will cause fatigue, a major drop-off in attention, negleting other asptects of life and subsequent mistakes. I personally try to put in about 4-7 hours per day (on average) each day that I have available for the business, (which at this stage is about 4 days per 7-day week). I say 7-day week rather than 5 as I also work on weekends. So, about 20-28 hours per 7-day week is what I currently undertake, but this may be subject to change.

Future Website Comments & Customer/Visitor Service

I would like to have as many comments as possible on the site. That helps not only with ranking but also really adds to the credibility and overall “atmosphere” of the site. It’s like the difference between walking into a busy, bustling shop or one that is deserted. Always invite people to comment and get involved regularly in the conversation.

While on that subject, one thing I have noticed recently, is that for some unknown reason some site owners are not replying to (or getting involved) with the comments on their sites. Not cool and something I don’t recommend.

It makes the site owner come across as stand-offish and aloof. You should always try your darnedest to try to get back to people and involve yourself in the conversation, even if it’s just a short, quick (but friendly) reply or, for that matter, an involving comment. People like to hear from the owner as well and gain their perspective on things, as well as other visitors.

This “set and forget” mentality can be off-putting to the online person browsing. I’m not saying reply to every single comment, as that’s not practical, (unless you want to) but reply to at least a good portion of them, particularly in the beginning as the site starts to rank.

This costs the site owner nothing but time. I know myself as a purchaser, I’d much rather purchase through someone who replies to comments and involves themselves in messages than someone who stays silent.

I’ll explain that a bit further and I’ll give an offline example – Say you walk into a shoe shop or something similar and the owner just sits there and says nothing or stares at their phone.

We’ve all had that crap, rude service at some stage and frankly I have little time for that attidude. 9 times out of 10 I’ll walk out the shop and not come back. Additionally, I will not refer anybody to that person. I understand everyone has bad days, but in business you have to separate personal from professional – if you are not able or willing to do that effectively, please don’t own a shop – or work in one for that matter.

The only exception to that is if they provide a service or product that cannot be found anywhere else, which is very rarely the case, - in which case I might put up with the bad service. The other reason would be if they came good and apologized for being a snob. Hey, no problem, all’s forgotten if that’s the case. I’m a nice guy and no further hard feelings held, at all.

Back to our situation, we, as online business owners, have the luxury of behind computer screens. If the kids are playing up, or you’ve had words with the other half, at least no one can see your face (hopefully! – these days I’m not so sure!) and you have time to prepare a decent reply which could have been challenging to do if you owned a shop and had to talk to a customer.

It goes without saying that good visitor service should ALWAYS be one of your top business priorities. Look after your visitors as they will be your bread and butter. Money, though certainly important, should also not be the sole reason your there either. Sure, we all need to pay the bills, but at the end of the day you want to be positioning yourself as a helpful and informative authority figure in your chosen business/niche.

Being disingenuous will serve no-one any good in the long run and people will latch onto it and turn away. I’ve known several people in Adelaide whose businesses have gone to the wall – simply because they did not listen to advice.

3 Month Goals

• By this stage I will have written at least 10-15 high quality, helpful, relevant and informative posts (if not more) related to the niche I’m in, I think that is a good start. I also aim to make most, if not all, of my posts ranking in Google by that stage and get to the first page of google. That would be AWESOME! I’m not aiming for any revenue at this point in time. I know that sounds mad, but I know from experience it can take a while to rank for keywords and also build customer trust. (That assertion may be subject to change as time goes by).

• Get an extensive social media campaign happening. Obtain any professional help that may be required from time to time, depending on the needs of the business and whether I need to bring in someone with specialist skills.
  
• Keep all expenses (including personal) to an absolute minimum by living modest and sensible and not splurging on frivilous things I don’t need. Also, will do that by being a true DIY online entity, by that I mean do everything myself (where possible).

6 Month Goals

I aim to be getting to the stage where I can start to say I’m an expert (and respected) authority on the subject I’m presenting. I mean I know I’m already an expert with 30 plus experience in my chosen niche/field but that person at the other end doesn’t really know that yet. That is why it’s so important to build up trust with your customer base as the weeks and months start to tick by. Start building up a nice, thick portfolio of online posts that the reader can start to not only trust but also you start to become their ‘go to” person if you like when they have an issue or question to resolve. Referrals to other’s that they know are also potentially powerful.

Revenue at the 6-month point

The start of decent revenue coming in would also be nice to help pay the bills and support myself – 500 to 1500 dollars a month (clear take-home pay after expenses) is my aim at this stage. I know that sounds modest, but I know from experience that this process is not for those who are impatient; starting an online venture takes time, no getting around that. Especially if you’re doing it on a shoestring budget and going down the SEO route, like me.

12 Month Goals (including revenue)

At this stage it would be nice to start pulling in 2000-5000 dollars per month (clear funds, after expenses). At that point, the business becomes what is known as ‘scalable’. This means that you now have enough funds coming in to portion (also known as ‘leveraging’) a certain amount of your OWN money (and I stress your own funds, not credit) that only goes to furthering the business’s progress (and this would be mostly in the form of advertising).

Possibly hire a professional to help with article submission or specialist marketing areas etc. Paid advertising like PPC and possibly Google Ads may also be the go, but will need to learn a bit more about them first. Expand into new social and other advertising mediums to really start getting the enterprise out there and ‘seen’ by as many relevant and targeted people as possible.

I say targeted and relevant traffic because you don’t want thousands of folks coming through the site who don’t care or who are not interested in what you are promoting. You only want people who have an interest in your niche or have a problem or question to solve in that niche.

I think that’s about it for today, I was going to go beyond 12 months but I’ll think I’ll leave that for another time as I don’t think it’s wise to go too far ahead. Stay safe and more to come…