Day 1 of 90 Day Challenge - thanks TonyHamilton!

byGMG224

205 followers

Updated 8 years ago

What a momentous day... this Type A Control Freak is tamely joining the herd and letting someone else lead the way. Tony Hamilton's call to action to submit to a 90 Day Personal Challenge really appeals to me because quite frankly my usual policy of trying to do everything alone doesn't seem to be working.

Here is what Ground Zero looks like for me. I am trying to create a range of adult colouring books that I can market through Amazon and my own website. I still haven't quite worked out what I'm doing with this website yet. Really, I just want to make the sort of website that I'D love to find... one devoted to all sorts of arts and crafts, to tips and tutorials, to fabulous pictures and downloadable artwork, to gorgeous and unusual materials. I'd like to review my favourite art materials/books/music/online courses (incl WA!) and make money through affiliate sales, as well as the sale of my own downloadable products. I want to create an affiliate program for my own products so other people can sell them too although I haven't any idea at this stage how to do it.

I registered a domain name a couple of days ago and set up my new website using the early training in Course 1. I immediately hit a road block in that I haven't a clue how to customise it to make it look the way I want. I also don't really know what I want on it! I'm used to a WYSIWYG setup like Weebly where everything is drag and drop. I know Wordpress is supposed to be the bee's knees but we are NOT friends right now. In fact I want to sit down and cry with frustration. I had no idea there was so much STUFF to do! :-(

On top of this I am madly designing pictures for my colouring books and sending them to a lovely little guy in Indonesia who is turning them into print-ready artwork. He does it much better than I do and at a very reasonable cost... I just have to keep up by creating more original artwork. It's hard to be creative though when all you feel is panic. I have almost enough designs for my first book but I still have to write some introductory content, create a beautiful cover design, work out how to host a bunch of pdf files that people who buy the Kindle version can download and print, and then upload the whole thing to Amazon and CreateSpace. I can't seem to work out how to do this either. Cue more drumming of heels and silent screaming. Once I work it all out, I need to do it again another eleven times as I want at least a dozen titles in my series.

My To Do list for the next ten days look like this:-

• Work out what I want on my website - create the overall design and the individual pages
• Work out how to customise and edit said website
• Try to understand this SEO thing
• Write some content
• Create a list of potential affiliate partnerships I'd like to have (are they likely to want someone who doesn't even have an established website yet??) and contact them
• Work out how to format and upload the files for my Kindle ebook and POD paperback book
• Work out where I'm supposed to store the pdf files for people to download
• Start marketing my first book on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest (which would necessarily involve learning how to use them... I don't even have an Instagram account at the moment)
• Complete the outlines for the rest of my series and start creating original artwork for each one... this will involve over 700 separate files by the time I'm finished
• Banish the negative thinking - that little demon that pokes me in the ribs and says "nobody wants to buy your crappy colouring books - you're rubbish - it's all been done before - nobody cares what you think - nobody is even going to read your stupid little blog - and did I mention that you're rubbish?"

That doesn't seem like too much to achieve does it??

I'd really love to hear what other people are doing. I'd especially like to hear from people who are actually making this all work now but who may have started out clueless and confused like me. I would find that truly inspiring! :-)