Hi Tracy,

I would like to salute you for magnificent effort you have put forward. Congratulations on your accomplishment!

Regarding your question what else could be done; quite a bit actually.
One fundamental thing to get right is the understanding where your potential customer is in the purchasing process and address customers concerns, fears, wants and needs in play in that particular point. Goal in this is to trigger assurance in customers mind that this is right thing for her and then aid customers transition to the next phase in the purchasing process.
Once purchase is made, customer should regularly be communicated with to deepen the trust and relationship as whole, and also to cater for additional opportunities of further commercial activities. For example, if customer bought items to set up a garden last year, perhaps buying a lawnmower would in order this year. Fact that customer bought forth of $100.00 gardening tools and soil last year, doesn't mean that she wouldn't be able to purchase a lawnmower worth of $5000.00 this year, if she deems relationship with you worthy of transaction this size. Trust is obviously essential enabler in things like this. Building and maintaining that trust is work on its own of course. Having a newsletter and email mini-courses could be effective tools to achieve that.
Better you know your audience, more accurately you will understand their needs and more to the point communication you are able carry out with them.
Finding micro-niches in your current gardening niche helps in that, as well further developing customer profiles to whom you are communicating with. For example, elderly person wanting to setup garden for herself to relax and enjoy would likely have need for different services and products than lad in his thirties setting up a garden for his family with children.
Former would appreciate absence of back paining laborous tasks and tranquility when garden is in use. Information about local reliable service provides who could take care of those heavy tasks would likely be appreciated. Latter would be concerned of the safety of the children, would there be enough space for children to run around?
Which plants are poisonous?
How garden should be designed to accommodate grilling party of 200 people and still look good in the next day?

Those are just examples, but as you can see that communication should be tuned differently to create that sensation in customers mind that "this is just right for me, just what I needed". To do this means additional work but can also yield great dividends.

Another bit of the work is to find those products worthy to be recommended and sold. After all the hard work of communicating with customer and building the trust, one shouldn't recommend or sell substandard product. It would mark end of that trust as well future revenue. Also when thinking of products to sell, some might be needed at instant due to emergency of some kind. This could accelerate customer going through purchasing process phases faster. Regarding gardening niche, emergency could rise due to severe weather conditions just before holiday season where many outdoor events have already been scheduled. After mini-tornado have swept through the garden something needs to be done to be able to host graduation party in that garden. What kind of service providers there could be to help the clean up the mess, like yesterday?
Being able to cater for such needs can mean significant reduction in time needed for sales cycle to go through.

Third, but no means least is to systemize and automate as much of all the works as possible to enable maximum scalability. Delegating some of the work to freelancers also requires work when done successfully and sustainably. How to find worthy ones? How to formulate fruitful and painless working relationship with them?
What happens when site becomes wildly successful over night because marketing campaign hit the nerve? Can technology scale up and handle the load? How stuff like this is successfully managed in short notice?
Thinking all that in advance is work, yet it needs to be balanced right with other tasks at hand. How do you find right balance then? Carry out risk analysis and manage risks. "But, but wait a minute, that sound like more work again!"


I wish all the best for you and outstanding success today and in the future.

Aki

Hi Tracy,

Looks like you are doing really good. I know it doesn't feel like it till you see the money flowing but new sites take up to 8 months to see some real traffic flowing through. Of course, every site is different and yours might be less or a little more. What you have to make sure is that you don't quit or slow down till that time.

I know it may seem like a long time but it really isn't in the grand scheme of things.

All you have to do is just keep doing what you are doing... and that is writing content. Also work on building an email list, and work on getting more followers on your social media by doing training and applying them.

And congratulations on what you have achieved so far.
I'm sure you will go far at this pace.

Shaun

That is amazing. So much content in a short while. After working all day I am happy to squeeze in 3 posts a week but hopefully I get better at writing and can do more.

I just created a things to do list/schedule yesterday and hopefully that will assist me to get more done.

Thanks for sharing. Your website is going to be huge one day.

Amazing progress with writing, at that rate success will follow.Andy.