I Could Use Your Help and Ideas!
So, I started with Wealthy Affiliate a few months ago, and started with a bang. I have learned a tremendous amount here. But I came close to hitting the "cancel membership button" today. Not because of anything wrong here at this wonderful community, but because of my own inability to keep momentum and my general feelings of being tired and discouraged by internet marketing. I could use some feedback and discussion as I try to move forward.
I currently have a site in my main niche, piano: www.you-can-play-piano.com
This is built and hosted with another web-business-teaching company. I've had this site for 5+ years, and was in IM back when you could score great rankings with keyword focused pages, keyword match domains, and article and directory submissions. I'm a pretty good writer, and I had lots of great rankings and was actually making a few hundred dollars a month in Adsense and affiliate income. Then the Google changes happened, and I've pretty much decided that this domain will never recover due to bad links... some of which are on me (I did a couple of outsourced things that were probably iffy, but never had a membership to one of those blog networks or anything). People do continue to find my site, but my traffic is dismal and it's barely paying for itself, and I'm OVER this particular service it's hosted on. I'm determined to start getting traffic from other sources and being more diversified and not relying so much on the SEs.
I also am a part of a direct sales business that will actually let me do some marketing online and that I feel pretty strongly about (Ava Anderson non-toxic home and personal care). And I have a domain registered and WP set up for the craft stuff I want to start selling.
After blogging a couple months ago here about trying to manage different social media accounts (personal and niche) -- I'm terrible at it -- and the way the web is going (building personal relationships), I'm thinking of stopping the whole niche thing entirely. I'm thinking of having one site, my site, with all my varied interests... I'm so tired of trying to manage multiple things. I'm a mom, and every bit of work I do has to be carved out of early morning or late hours, because my family and my home are my first priorities.
So that's what I'm considering. Downloading all of my content from my other site, notifying my subscribers there, and starting over on a fresh domain, putting up my content again in a fresh way. Everything that's ME -- family life, piano, leading worship at church, fun with kids, Ava Anderson, internet marketing -- and building relationships with people. Offering Skype piano lessons and Skype meetings for people interested in skin care and home care with natural products. Writing great content for people, freebies, eBooks and the like. ONE site to manage, writing great content the WA way (which means the SEs will hopefully like me, but for me the priority is building relationships, repeat visitors, starting with my friends and broader community). One set of social media stuff. Really caring about helping people.
Maybe one day, when I have more time and more mental space (we moved back to the mainland from Hawaii last month and my house and my family are still recovering) I can branch out again. Maybe.
What do you think, everyone? I know the standard advice would be have a piano site, a skin care site, a parenting site... but I'm just not feeling that right now! Would love thoughts and feedback.
Thank you, wonderful WA community!
Recent Comments
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I agree with Dan. Keep them separate. You will have better traction with focused sites. That said there is no reason not to create a site the sends additional traffic to them.
I know, ANOTHER site. Don't stress that. Set a schedule and if you only get there once a week, that works too.
Thanks so much for your advice and taking the time to read my blog. :-) I think I've been living in overwhelm for so long with regards to IM that I'm having a hard time just taking it step by step. Moving also derailed the momentum I had going in my first month with WA. It takes a long time to settle again after moving. I have to simply focus on small progress, and not on the huge list of things to get done.
I agree with what Dan said Kim. Your site is awesome. Keep the focus on it. I think your struggle here is time management for maintaining sites.
Thank you so much!! You're right -- time management and focus are indeed my issues. They always have been. That's where I'm putting my energy now -- pulling out my daily to-do list and going over it, and shutting down the Facebook tab. :-)
Hi, Kim, I can understand your battle to find enough time to do the work on your personal online businesses. I have the same struggles. However, I looked at the Piano website and what I read there is excellent. It is attractive, has a good flow and great information. I think it is far to valuable to mix other interests into. Doing so will only take away from your focus. People who are interested in piano will not want to sort through other distractions on the site. Take the classes here at WA as you can find time and I believe you will find the success you seek.
I wish I had more time to make more comments but I have meeting in five minutes. Such is the life of a aspiring online marketer. Have a great day and I am looking forward to following your success!
Dan
Hi Dan! Thank you very much for taking the time to visit my site and give me your feedback! I've put a LOT of work into my piano site but, at the very least, I'm going to have to move my content to a new domain. I hear what you're saying about keeping the niches separate -- I just know that social media is such a big deal. I don't know that I can manage multiple niches!! I've been failing at that. Maybe it's just a matter of getting everything onto WordPress and then creating a solid workflow.
Thanks so much. I very much appreciate your time and your comments!!
Hey WillowKim! I am too inexperienced to be of help to you in any practical way, but I did want to say 'Well done!' for being brave enough to write such a candid blog post. I'm sure you speak for many people when you express your confusion, lack of certainty and frustration- including me!
I also am struggling, now that school is back in (which for me means homeschooling) I have even fewer hours in the day now to devote to WA than I did during the summer. I've found myself getting annoyed, then despondent, then victim-y, then blamey... Finally I decided to just keep calm and carry on.
I'm not telling you what to do, WillowKim. I don't know whether having one uber site with all your stuff on it is a good idea or not. But I do really feel that good decisions often can't be made when you're feeling depleted, tired and worried. I hope people will give you some excellent advice and that you'll rethink leaving, just because I can see from your post how genuine you are, how much you care, and how much you have to offer, and the online business world needs people just like you! :o)
Hi there! Thank you SO much for your supportive words! I have learned more here than I've learned in years and already made some great connections, so I don't want to leave. But I'm weary of spending money on something that I'm not following through with, know what I mean? Deep down in my heart I know that I could be successful, I just need to find my own way to do this, a way that feels authentic and not like drudgery work. I don't want to take another "real" job! I love being a mom and having the time to cook real food and take care of our home... and I want to contribute financially too.
You're right about making decisions. I know that right now I'm tired, my house is still unorganized from moving (I'm an organization girl) and things are just not... settled. It's not my happy place. :-) it's hard to even think about what I should do next on the business side of things. So I let it sit, and feel bad about the money it's costing.
Thanks again, so much, for your thoughts and your encouragement. I'm going to message you!
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It takes discipline to focus on one idea/site at a time because we are so multi-dimensional. I sure would keep with the piano site.
Keeping within the same discipline or specialty will be simpler and more rewarding.
Thank you for asking and I thank Labman for teaching me about focused sites. ^_~
Thank you, Caylynn! The truth is, I really need to make something of my Ava Anderson business in the next few months or I won't sell enough to still be a consultant! Even just putting up posts on my personal blog would do, I guess, to spread the word to family and friends and get them to try things. I'm not good at 'talking it up" in person or calling and asking people to host parties! And I have a strong feeling that my other idea, a local site on the town where I live, will be done by someone else if I don't do it. It's wide open with only the Chamber of Commerce and regional sites (that aren't very good) -- I don't know if I'll ever make money with that, but I've wanted to do it for YEARS.
It really all boils down to me not letting myself get into an overwhelmed mindset. I'm working this morning on the daily task schedule that I started during my first month. Even if I post once per week it will be more than I have been doing for years!
And as far as social media management goes, I did some research and found that HootSuite is only $10 monthly for managing up to 50 profiles, so that's reasonable and I can do all the social media stuff from one dashboard.
I believe in you. You are determined and making solid plans. This is excellent.
No matter what site am working on, the focus is writing to give information your reader needs at least once a week.
Use Hootsuite, for free. The dashboard saves a lot of time.