It's not much easier than having a brick and mortar business.
So, I want to keep updating people on my progress, because I keep getting congrats on the whole quitting my day job thing and giving people hope. But, I want people to also understand it is not all smooth sailing. I just went 30 days straight without making a sale..I logged in today to find I finally made another two sales over night to my relief. I am glad I am into the info products because the commissions are much higher. But the last 30 days have felt pretty rough with a lot of self doubt and confusion over my direction...
I have known for a while that despite earning consistent commissions over the last 8 months, my business strategy is not rock solid. In fact, luck feels as if it is playing a bit of a role. Yes I am ranking on page 1 for these posts, but they get a lot more clicks than conversions, which is normal apparently. Despite having over 100 blog posts on my blog, I have really only been making my sales from a few blog posts. This is not sustainable.
I also believe that email marketing really needs to be a part of your overall plan for your website, and that is another huge topic in itself. I have just started a new site, and straight away I am thinking about how I am going to implement email marketing with it, because as they say 'the money is in the list.' I am yet to experience this 'money in the list' thing because most of my sales have come from SEO, but I know if I were to master email marketing as well as SEO, then it would make for a more stable business foundation.
There is so much to learn when it comes to having an online business and it is no wonder that so many people quit. The thing that is most important is mindset and accepting that you are not an employee and you are the driver of your business, and you have to keep learning new things and being aware of online trends. It is also about knowing exactly what it is you are trying to achieve with your site and being aware of what training is relevant to you and what is not. It is too easy to get sucked in shiny new object syndrome. But I also think being sucked into shiny new object syndrome is part of the journey of being an online entrepreneur-you kind of have to ride the wave of new understandings about what possible directions you could take.
So, here is one piece of advice for the newbies. First and foremost, if you have not finished the online entrepreneurs course which you can access from the green button on the left "Get Started Here", you need to do that straight away. After that-focus your blog on writing reviews for 80% of your posts at least. And, I feel you will have much more success if the products you are reviewing are products that you have personally used yourself. All of the courses I have made commissions out of in the personal development space I have personally taken myself and delved deeply into them. But I didn't focus enough on writing reviews in the beginning-I did not write enough reviews to 'diversify my website' (like diversifying your portfolio lol...)
Get really good at SEO for these posts and be sure to take Jay's training for things that are relevant to what you might feel you need to know more about in the moment. In fact, I picked up some great tips from his four week niche training series recently, as well as the replays from last year. I didn't watch them live because I wanted to be able to pause the training after every little thing I would learn and go and implement it. (As a result, I now have a clone looking website that Jay has but in a completely different niche and different logo to his-sorry Jay, but it was the only way I felt I was going to overcome my fear of learning how to install a premium theme and knowing what I had to do in order to set it up right so it looked good and was functional...).
So, in a nutshell, I still think the beginning stages of setting up an online business are a matter of following instructions to the letter and building up content-but honestly-don't expect sales in the first 6 months. Would you expect sales in the first month of a new business idea for a brick and mortar business? Probably not many if any right? Online business is not much different. You have to build it, nurture it and market it....But the marketing comes later once you have good quality content that you are proud to share.
This is not to say you should not be posting your blog posts on social media each time you write one-but what I mean is marketing in a much bigger way once you are ready to scale up your site-and only time and experience will tell you when that is the right time. I am still not there as I have just started a completely new site and this time, will take what I learned from the first site and go from there. In fact, I only got this site up a month ago, and the entire site is already ranking on page 2 of google which is a hell of a lot better than the time it took my first site to rank-in fact the first site is still not ranking for its main subject matter keywords-only certain blog posts are, which are only really loosely connected to the relevance of the whole site. Again, another lesson learned-relevance.
Hope you got some useful things out of this post. :)
Liz. xx
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One comment I have. This comment is wonderfully detailed and could almost stand as an article on your site.
Thanks again Liz.
Really great Liz.
In my experience a new start-up business that breaks even within 18 months is either lucky or has hit on a highly lucrative niche.
I think the lesson to become an expert on one small niche is very pertinent. Too many change direction just when success is round the corner.
Like you I am curious as to why more really experienced people do not seem to be apparent here.
You were spot on with the advice to follow the rules in the beginning. Maybe the experienced ones are fed up with giving that same advice?
This is still one of the marvels of the business world and I am grateful to be involved in W.A.
Liz, this is a very useful post. You have shared a lot of great advice in here. So much so, I'll probably read it again in the morning.
Thanks for sharing your story. I had a friend today that I told about WA. When he researched it further, he commented on the lack of testimonials from people that have been at the business for a while. So, your story really is important from that perspective.
Thanks Sonda, yes that was one thing that frustrated me when I started at WA-I was so hungry to find success posts and follow people's progress, but it seems that many people are not willing to share, or they are quitting before they have success. Business is not for the faint hearted I think-you have to be willing to learn and take daily steps towards your goals. One of the hardest things for anyone to do is simply focus I think. It is certainly my number one struggle! It doesn't mean you have to turn your whole life upside down for it, but if you can just keep positive momentum going a little bit everyday, you will have success if your mindset is right. :) Oh, and learn from your mistakes.
Without a doubt, the ability to focus on one thing/website has been my biggest challenge.
IRS give businesses three years to earn a profit. The SBA uses 1,5 years as their mark to see if new businesses are still alive. We can't expect anything different with online businesses.
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Liz, I know it's been a while since you posted - and I'm hoping things are going well with your new site - but this is exactly the sort of reality check I need. Having started and stopped my way through getting my main website up with some credible content, I'm at the point now where Resistance (see Steve Pressfield's book "The War of Art") is high. It's the reality of doing the grunt work, showing up day after day, and doing the couple of key things you've mentioned to finally get the spark igniting the tinder.
Thanks for posting this. Super insight from the trenches.
All the best.