One and a half years later...

It has been over one and a half years since my last post. What happened? Well, life happened. Fortunately for me my learning experience continued to deepen my understanding of business, both online and offline, and the result has changed my life immensely.

After getting my book marketed (www.best-dog-breed-for-children.com) AND continuing to work for other people (www.assistant-for-hire.com) I also found a new opportunity to grow and diversify my income. Following my passion I stepped outside my comfort zone to start what I call a 'real life' business - one that operates face-to-face with clients.

Real estate has been a huge force in the last few years and with it has come a fairly new industry, at least in it's present form: home staging. Of course, big marketers have used staging to sell new developments for many, many years, but staging personal homes for resale is still new.

With a little curiousity and a lot of gumption I went about examining the business to see if 1) there was a market and 2) what skills or education were needed. Looking for opportunities and taking calculated risks has rewarded me with the best of both worlds - I have an automatic income from past writing, regular and interesting work I can do at home with my online business and a rewarding and creativly challenging business in home staging.

I am so thankful for the learning process and to see the fruits of these labours that I hope to share more about my journey. Please give me any feedback you may have - questions, comments, ideas - so my work can help someone else, and if you're still reading this post, thanks for your patience and I hope your life has changed for the better as well!

No News is GOOD News!

I said I was going to keep up with my posts - and I am! The good news is that my life has undergone a few changes and my business is doing better than ever!

For those of you who haven't been following, I gave myself a year to get an online business to the point of making income. Not only have I done that, I've also dropped a huge amount of my overhead by closing some of the businesses that were more money and energy than they were worth.

Is that a good idea? Well, tax time came (glad that's over) and I realized that having too many businesses on the go is a nightmare when you're doing your taxes. Take this seriously folks - your online business is as much a business as someone with a store front. Anyway, I decided that I should do some pruning so that my really profitable businesses would get more of my attention and I wouldn't be so distracted.

It worked! After clearing my path I made some small but necessary changes to my sites. My Virtual Assistant site used to promote all sorts of services - data entry, typing, answering emails etc. However, 90% of my work has been ghostwriting for websites and newsletters. So I made the changes and picked up some more work. See what you think: New Ad Copy for VA Site.

I also cut the cost of my book about choosing the right dog breed in HALF! I was getting sales at the old price but I wanted to see more action. The truth is I ended up selling more in dollar value AND volume with the change.

So what's the tip for today? Once you've found something that works try to become more focused. Make small changes and see how your customers respond. Above all, become reliable in your field and work hard to show you care about what you do - people respond to that energy.

Finding Business Success - How Many Tries?

Are you still looking for the 'Right' opportunity?

I have to admit I am still occasionally enticed by offers, however I now know the secret behind successful online business: you'll only find it when you stop looking.

On the flip side, you must BE looking to stumble across it. I know. I've been on all sides of this issue. I've taken small business classes, I've edited books on the subject and helped work on projects about business coaching and have had a business coach. What it all boils down to is that NOBODY can know for certain if a business idea will work, or if it will work for YOU.

What does this mean to those starting out? When you see offers that suggest you can easily make money or start making money quickly you should understand that most of the people who succeed have tried their hands at many other businesses before finding success.

This ability to 'stick to it' and the experience that they've learned from in past endevors makes their efforts succeed. I feel certain that every individual should attempt several online businesses to find a good fit. Don't look at a failure to make money as a drawback - you learn valuable information as you go. And you CAN'T learn it all in a book or a course.

Whatever you try, you should protect yourself from over-investing in any one business until you know it works for you. It is beneficial to learn about the marketing aspects of business but you needn't necessarily choose to do that as your business. You may be surprised when your many efforts eventually show a spark here or there or even become a blazing success.

I hope this gives you a new perspective on finding a business and making a success of it. I appreciate the emails of readers that have thanked me for the information posted. I'll try to do better at keeping up with my reports :)

Time to Catch Up...

I know it's been awhile - sorry.

The good news is that business has been going very well. However, I've been frustrated looking back at the past year.

I find myself annoyed and discouraged by the costs of learning how to run a business online. Why? Because what works (at least from my experience) is almost FREE to start.

I have now covered the following:
Selling a physical product
Selling affiliate products
Creating 'Ad Word' sites
Selling a service
Selling my own electronic book.

I've now officially done business in nearly every conceivable venue. While some are doing better than others, I now know exactly what must be done to make each of them profitable.

Can you avoid the cost of learning? I'm not sure. I'll try to tell you more about what I did, but what I really found is that learning is a personal experience. And learning to do business online may not be that different than in the offline world. Most successful professions require an expensive education. You don't need to spend that much, but you will probably need to spend some.

I will update you soon!

Learning at Record Speed...

Wondering where I've been?

I can't believe I've made it! The learning curve has been tremendous. Funny thing is, learning how to do business, online or offline, is surprisingly like bringing your first baby home.

When you bring them home, you are excited, emotional and unsure of what you need to do. You actually would be scared to death if you had an inkling of what's really in store for you! But the truth is, as you immerse yourself in learning about how to care for this dependant infant, you sometimes come to points where you have glimpses of how much is still ahead of you. It is here where you get lost in self-doubt, or push yourself even harder.

Fortunately, most mothers and fathers have the instinct to keep going. Not so with business owners.

When I say 'I've made it', I mean I've overcome the immense task of learning the basics. Now I can confidently say I've heard most of it before. I am no longer soaking up every new piece of information that heads my way. Just as with mothering, I can now rely more on my own instincts from this point forward. Not to say I don't need more education - children and businesses are a constant learning experience. But I don't doubt my reactions and I can 'feel' when something's not right for me.

I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the truly supportive individuals out there. I have had the good fortune to have attracted clients who are honest and easy to work with. I am learning all the time.

So, now I am completely finished with babysitting. The kids have moved away. My own two children are adapting quite nicely to the more sedate environment. I have a business that is actually making money, and I'm making smart moves with my promotion of it that seem to be paying off.

Someday I will have a nice success story!

Keep up the hard work.

Shannon

Using My Time Wisely...

Hi all,

Well, the time has come to get down to brass tacks. My babysitting days are almost over and it's time to make some serious money so I can stay home with the kids.

For anyone following my progress, I have now got three (Yes, THREE) businesses up and running in the last six months. My greatest gains have not surprisingly been with the latest project: "Your Virtual Assistant" (http://www.affiliate-start.com/VA/writer.html).

My first site took 6 months to figure out, 4 months to gain an income, and is still waiting to make a profit.

My second site was up within a day (24 hours and free to setup). It took 2 months to bring an income and is also waiting to show a profit.

My third try was up within hours (I built it myself) and turned a PROFIT within the first two weeks (may have even been the first!).

So my realization is that learning requires DOING. If you are still THINKING about starting an online business, STOP - and get MOVING! (Sorry for all the capitals)

I have overcome my fears. I have learned how to spend my advertising dollar wisely and even how to NOT spend dollars (this is the real key to making income :)

I hope you all are having exciting experiences. I'd love to hear them.

Shannon

Looking for Traffic? Look what I found...

And so it goes, traffic hunting is a never ending job!

However, kudos to two ladies who've opened MY eyes - Check out this site and sign up for the FREE 'Truth About Traffic' audio course: http://internetbasedmoms.com/.

There's a good bit about what NOT to do as well as traffic building methods for newbies and more advanced marketers.

I want to say that I have found a great deal of valuable information for free if I wait long enough. That doesn't mean all free information is valuable, but after awhile you start hearing the same things over and over, which gives perspective. As I try to absorb all the information out there, it's easy to get overwhelmed, but soon you'll start to see patterns in strategies and techniques. The biggest benefit? Instead of trying everything, I just stick to the main REPEATED techniques. I think this is a wise start.

So make sure you sign up for newsletters from some of the top marketers, this will cut down your learning curve quite a bit.

Another bit of advice - hold back! If you're like me, you think it "takes money to make money". True, but before you spend it on every great idea, hang around forums or read some of those newsletters until you trust the author. You may find some ideas are proven and others are just plain a waste of money. I love the Warrior Forum, there's so much honest feedback. A great place to be!

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I'm still in the countdown to loosing my babysitting income (if this sounds strange, I am actually looking forward to it!) so the push is ON to make this work.

Although I didn't follow through with my previous post about the websites (worried that's a little out of my league right now) I did see the value of finding something related to your marketing efforts that can provide an income while figuring out the affiliate thing.

So I went ahead and created a website offering proofreading services among other things. I offered some free jobs to get going, and I've already received my first payment with another on the way. I've created a newsletter from scratch and had my first subscriber within a day. And get this - I've paid NOTHING for traffic! I think I'm getting the hang of this :)

Here's the site: "Your Virtual Assistant".

Truth is, I think the program I started with, Plug-In-For-Profits is the BEST training tool. However, I think it leads successful individuals into taking further steps into making an income online with their OWN product or service. And speaking of getting good stuff for FREE, I only joined the Warriors Forum because it came as a bonus with the Plug-In-For-Profits system.

If you want to join it yourself, here's the link: WarriorPro
If you want to learn to market from scratch, AND get the forum access for free, go here: Plug-In-For-Profits
Hope everyone's well!

Shannon