Lady WordPress

… And that translates by not updating this blog regularly. But I have high hopes, I have mapped out my business and I have scheduled daily updates for this blog every day. I figure, if I schedule them every day, I might at least get one or two a week done

So, what have I been up to? Well, I’m close to releasing a new plugin (for a sneak peek, you can visit WPDomainSafe.com, I’m not completely done yet though, still need to create the video manual), I’ve been testing new features for one of my existing plugins and once I’m completely satisfied I’ll be relaunching that one, and as I already said: I’ve been busy mapping out my business. I blame it on Tiffany Dow though, she got me back into mindmapping, which I have been doing on and off since I got started working for myself. But since she started to talk about her own experiences with it, I’ve been really working with mindmaps. The plusside, I feel so much more organized and am actually getting things done on my to do list.

I’m also back to focusing more and more on client work, but I’ve been very selective to who I’m working with. I have about two clients that I work regularly with, and they provide about 25% of my monthly income at this moment. Not too bad, but I would like to increase my other income streams so my dependence on clients becomes less and less and I don’t have to worry about keeping them. I love working for others, I learn a lot from my clients, especially since they are internet marketers who I help setting up their sites for new product launches. All that knowledge I gain will be used for my own product launches. Talking about having the best of both worlds

For my PLR business (which at the moment is for the most part PLR blogs), I came up with some new plans too. I’ll be expanding it with PLR article packs, PLR video packs and WordPress themes. To increase traffic to my site, and sales, of course, I’m at the moment focusing on expanding search engine rankings as well as focusing on learning as much as I can on paid traffic (adwords, facebook ads, …). I’ll be keeping track of what I learn and how it works for me on this site, so if you’re interested in using paid traffic for your own business, you should stick around over the next weeks.

I’ll leave it at this for today, next time I’ll try to get you a first update on what I learned on paid traffic and what I did in regards to it for my own business.

… so I’m sure it’s time I post something again on this blog. It’s not that I didn’t want to write something here, but real life and other parts of my business have been taking up too much time. But, I promise to do better from now on.

So, what have I been up too? I’ve been working on getting extra features added to Banner Wizard and I’ll be relaunching it soon. I also will be launching another plugin in the next few weeks. Everything is done for it, just the last testing and getting the JV page set up for affiliates. I’ll tell more about what that one does closer to the launch.

I also set up some new PLR blog packages, with the latest one being in the Diamond Ring niche. A niche with good commissions and one you should really consider (hint, hint ).

I also finished a third report in my Easy Guides series. The first two were Easy Blogging and Easy Promotion, the third one is Easy cPanel. I’ll have the salescopy for that up soon. I also have a few more reports in that series I’ll be working on in the next few months. I’m thinking one report per month should be doable.

And last but not least, my affiliate sites. I’ve been neglecting them again, but I’m picking them up again tomorrow. Or at least, I will pick up one of them again. I have the free report for my list building ready, just need to set up my autoresponder for it. Time to get subscribers so I can grow my income from that site.

That’s the short recap of what I’ve been doing in the last weeks and what you can expect in the near future. I promise to be back tomorrow with a new article.

… And if you don’t have it, you can better stop working and take a day off!

Now, why do I want to talk about that today? Not because I don’t have any focus right now, it’s completely the opposite, I have much more focus this week then I had last month. Last month I couldn’t get myself to focus even 5 minutes to work, and I noticed it in my income. Let’s say that in this first week of January I made half of what I made in the whole month of December. Now, why did that happen? Well, if you can’t get focused enough to work on your site to promote it, add more products to your store or even outsource tasks so you don’t have to do them yourself, you will not make as much money as you would want. You will still make money from things you did before and while I do like that minimum income I have each month without having to do any work, I rather make more then that (and grow that minimum income with increasing the number of products I have).

So, what was my biggest mistake last month while I wasn’t able to focus on working? I kept trying. And because I kept trying and didn’t succeed to get any decent work done, I started to feel like a failure. And let me tell you, that feeling doesn’t help getting your focus back so that means it became worse and worse. I should have taken a day off, or a few days off. It might have helped to clear my mind and get back to work feeling refreshed. I didn’t do it however, even though I knew better. Between Christmas and the New Year, however, I took a few days off. Besides that, I came up with a plan to focus on the three main aspects of my business (the 3 parts I enjoy most) and doing so with only one task a day. I’ve been doing that for the first few days of this year and I’ve already felt a big change in myself. I finish my jobs first thing in the morning and after that I feel so good about myself that I have enough energy to focus on other parts of my business or to do more tasks for one of the three main jobs. Focus is again a big part of my business.

Talking about my 365 Day Challenge, this is what I did yesterday and today:
Blog Business:
Y: finish salescopy for PLR blog
T: send out mail to affiliates and subscribers for PLR blog + transfer 2 unique sites I sold earlier this week

Plugin/Theme Business:
Y: Discussed new features for Content Wizard with my coder
T: Worked on helpdesk site for my plugins

Affiliate Marketing:
Y: Ordered new articles for tropical fish and domain registration site
T: Scheduled articles from yesterday on the sites

2011 has almost ended and it’s time to start 2012 with a bang! Last year, this time I was testing my first ever plugin before I would start marketing, which I did on January 3. This year I don’t have anything major planned but I am getting ready to make changes in my business. I’ll be doing more of the things I like and less of the things I don’t like, meaning, I’ll be outsourcing a lot more then I’ve been doing up till now. It’ll help me being more productive if I don’t have to spend weeks to write one salesletter and instead can spend that time promoting my product and working on future products.

Besides that I will also make sure that I will nurture ALL parts of my business every day, instead of focusing on one thing for a few days/weeks and neglecting the other parts. To do that, I’m joining Tiffany Dow’s 365 Day Challenge (I just love Tiffany’s challenges). Now, before we can get started I needed to decide what exactly I want my business to be. What do I like doing and what do I want to build out during the next year (and years to come). I decided that there are three things for me. The first one is my WP Plugin and Theme business. I’m planning on releasing a new plugin every month, some of them will fall under the Wizard collection, others will be together with partners. The second part is my blogging business: my PLR blogs and unique sites I sell. I love to build blogs and this part of my business has been a great, consistent monthly income for me this year. I want to grow that out during the next year. The last part is affiliate marketing/niche blogging. I love having income from sites I built and promoted in niches that I feel can relate to me in different ways. It’s what I started out with when I first got into IM and the last year I’ve been neglecting it for a big part. No more of that, in 2012 I’ll be making this a focus in my business.

Three things I’ll be focusing on every day of this year. To make sure I’ll keep following through I decided to make my commitments not too big. So this is how they look:

* Plugin and Theme business: every day I’ll be doing one (yes, that’s ONE) task that will help me expand my business. That could be writing down specs for a new plugin, looking for a coder, testing out the plugin, promoting the launch, … This part is hard to divide in different tasks, so I decided to schedule one hour each day minimum for this part.
* Blog business: I will divide the blog creation in 5 parts, which will make it possible for me to do one task each day (I’m not counting the weekends) and get one site each week done minimum. So that means, I’ll be either doing: keyword research, blog set up, design, content, salespage.
* Affiliate marketing: every day I’ll be doing one task that will build out my own personal niche blog collection, from creating a new site to promoting existing ones. Each blog has a task-page in one of my notebooks and I can easily follow along to see what needs to be done for each site I have. I’ll be focusing on 4 sites this year.

Does this mean that I won’t do other things in my business? No, it doesn’t, I will still create the occassional infoproduct and I will still offer the coaching that I’m offering right now. It just means that I decided that those aren’t the keyparts in my business. I enjoy them, but for now I don’t see them become the main items in my business. Who knows, maybe in 2013 I’ll decide that I’m ready to work with those more.

And you, what are you doing in 2012? Have you decided where you want to take your business and have you set goals for yourself?

I’m having a hard time these weeks to keep my focus and my motivation. I always have this in the winter months, but this year it seems to be even worse. I know why, personal issues I’m dealing with, but knowing the reason is not immediately helping me turning the tables. Other things are though, and that’s what I want to talk to you about today.

The first thing is making sure you have some sort of network that will help you stay accountable. I belong to a few skypegroups related to IM business. When I’m having a down moment and I can’t seem to kick myself out of it, I can go there and talk to a few people to “recharge my batteries”. During my worst moments, I can be sure there is always someone to show me light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not saying that you need a big network yourself, even one person can be enough. Make sure that it’s someone who understand this business (for example, my husband wouldn’t work for me since he hardly understands all the things I need to do in this business, but a chat with an online friend who started out around the same time as I did works wonders when I need a new boost).

The second thing is organisation. When my brain is all scrambled with things related and not related to my business, it doesn’t help when my notes and files are all over the place and when my desk looks like a warzone. So, taking the time to clean things if needed can help you find your focus again. Having a to do list, not only with your big steps towards your goal, but also the smaller tasks that those big steps consist of will help you keep your focus.

The third thing that works wonders for me is a list I belong to, called Inspire Me To WORK! You can subscribe here. It doesn’t cost you anything and you get about two mails a week. One on Monday and one on Friday. They will give you a small task for each day of the week that will help you find inspiration and motivation when needed. When everything else fails, just doing that one job they mail you will help me find back my focus for a few hours.

I pride myself in the fact that I have a good reputation, not only with my clients and buyers, but also with the different services that I use. Of course, like everyone I might slip up here and there (like not being as responsive when I’m sick or when there is a family emergency) but I think most people who have done business with me in the past will know that I do my best to give you exactly what you paid for and more.

When doing business online, your reputation is very valuable, but also very vulnerable. That is why I try to keep as much communication channels open with my buyers or clients. I have contact forms on all my sites and I have a list where I use my real, day to day emailaddress as from and send address, so people can easily contact me by just responding to one of my emails. And even then, when I’m online during the day (and even late at night for me) I will keep an eye on all things that might go wrong, so people don’t even have to contact me themselves. That is the kind of business I try to run. Like I said, I’m human, I make mistakes, but they don’t happen all that often.

So, when someone buys a product from me when it’s midnight for me, I might not notice right away that something went wrong. Most people would send me a message, by email or through one of my contact forms. When they don’t, but they file a paypal complaint within an hour, I feel bad. Especially if it’s not someone who is buying from me for the first time, but someone who has contacted me in the past for things he bought and who has always gotten a fast response.

And the reasons why I feel bad are more then one. First of all, I feel bad because I feel that my buyer felt that I’m not accessible enough to send me an email to resolve that issue without having to bring paypal into it. The second reason I feel bad is because even if it’s “just” a dispute and not a claim, paypal takes notice of these things and will up my risk number when I get them. When you come to the point that you are too much of a risk for them, they might ban your account. So, while it doesn’t seem like much, it’s just a dispute, it can have big consequences on my business.

I’m not mad at my client for going this route, I am mad at myself, because like I said, apparantely I haven’t done all I could to make myself accessible to them for whatever reason. That means that I need to work on improving that. Guess that will be my goal in 2012.