I am t-minus 2.5 months from becoming a stay-at-home mom. And it’s freaking me out! But it’s also exciting!
Today is the first day of my third trimester, and I am heading like a steam engine towards giving birth to my very first baby and being officially jobless!
I would love to be my own boss, to be responsible for my own actions, my own work, my own income. However, I have no clue how to start the momentum – how do you actually go from making $0 on your own to making $1. That seems to be my biggest hurdle right now. And I think it’s all mental. It’s just a hurdle I’ve got to get over in my mind. You know what it is? I’m scared to get out there and say – “Hey, yeah, you! I’m selling myself! Don’t you want to buy what I’m offering?” I’m not afraid to do the work. I’m not afraid to do the research, write the content, create the products. I’m afraid to actually tell anybody about it and sell it! I’m to ask for or set up backlinks because I’m afraid people won’t like what they’ll see. Maybe they’ll think I’m a fraud.
So, that’s where my mind is at today. I’ve invested in my soon-to-be momtepreneur business – I’ve sunk money and time into it – and now…I’ve got to deliver the goods – make my first $1. Prove to myself I can do it.
This is my very first journal entry of my new business venture. I will be making weekly journal entries to keep you up to date on:
- What strategies I’m using to make money online
- Current progress on my strategy
- What new things I’m trying out this week
- What lessons I learned this week (including where I totally failed)
- What books and/or blogs I’ve been inspired by this week
The last weekly journal of each month (which means this post for this month!), I’ll also be giving you a monthly “situation report”, including an updated finance report, that shows extreme transparency in how I’m spending my money and how I’m making money (if at all).
My inspiration for this is Pat Flynn’s blog Smart Passive Income. However, I always get both a little inspired as well as a little depressed when I see his monthly income sheet – as he’s already “made it”. My income sheet? It’s in the red. Not the black. Because I’m just starting out. So, I want this to be used to inspire you!! If I can start from negative income, then so can you!
Alright, here goes.
1. What strategies I’m using to make money online
So, I read a book called “How to Make Money Online” by Mike Omar. It’s a bit outdated now, written back in 2013. However, I thought it gave some pretty great step-by-step instructions on doing keyword research and setting up a portfolio of websites. His theory is that you can never really guarantee if one niche website is going to do well or not. However, if you make a portfolio of websites, say 10 websites at a time, and market them all, then some will do better than others, so you continue to put your time and attention into the ones doing the best. And the income you make from the top-performers will far outweigh your poorer-performing websites. And overall your portfolio will set you up for making some nice passive income.
So, while I’m not sure I’ll be using all his backlinking strategies yet (maybe I will, just not there yet, and don’t know how many are still relevant in 2017), I thought his approach to having a “portfolio” of websites was excellent. So that’s where I’ve started.
My primary goal right now is to get 10-14 websites up and running, with a minimum of 10-20 articles on each website.
2. Current progress on my strategy
- I’ve purchased a total of 14 website domains, with hosting and domain privacy from Bluehost.com (I’ve been using Bluehost since 2013, so I’m happy to continue using them for now)
- I’ve got 6 of those websites “live”, with at least 1 article on each of those 6.
- I’ve hooked each website up to Google Analytics for tracking visitors/activity. I’ve also hooked them up to MailChimp so that I can start collecting mailing addresses as soon as visitors start coming!
- I’ve done keyword research for 11 of the websites, and have laid out article plans for them.
- I’ve got a plan in place to have all websites live and at least 5-10 articles on each by the time Baby is due.
- And pretty much, haven’t had a single visitor to my newly-live websites yet this month 🙁
3. What new things I’m trying out this week
So, essentially this week I’m learning how to create content. As each of my blogs/websites go live, I’m learning how to do article research, how to write articles, how to create images for the articles, and how to create “content upgrades” for each article. It’s a time-consuming process! I feel like I’m learning a lot about different pieces of software, first of all. And that’s been pretty time-consuming. However, I’m also learning how to create my “voice”. What is my writing style? How do I ensure the content I create is useful for my eventual readers? It’s a bit of learning curve.
4. What lessons I learned this week (including where I totally failed)
Lesson 1: Visitors don’t come as soon as you publish an article on a brand new website!! So, what I’m trying to figure out now is how do I get some natural visitors to my site. Social media? That’s all I can think of right now…so I’ll be trying that out this week. But basically, I’ve had three websites go live this week, and not a single outside visitor yet. That’s because I am scared (and refuse) to post to my personal Facebook page to tell my friends. So…gotta come up with alternate ways to find the “tribes” for each of my websites.
Lesson 2: I write really long articles. And I have no idea if they are actually too long, i.e., will I “lose” people with content that’s too long? Plus it take s a super long time to write the darn things. So yes, I’m still trying to work out my writing style, with length and time to write as core pieces of that figuring out.
Lesson 3: It is difficult to incorporate keyword research properly into articles. The whole area of SEO is still a mystery to me, even after reading a few books on it. I don’t see how it works yet. But I also think that’s because I still have no domain authority because my websites are brand new (and I only have 1-2 articles on each!). So I’m also scared to reach out to others to promote my newly-keyword-optimized articles.
Lesson 4: I still have a long ways to go on creating an efficient “article-creation process”. With writing the content, optimizing for SEO, creating the blog images, creating a content upgrade – the whole process takes me forever right now! I’ve got a feeling I need to learn how to “batch” these processes to make them more efficient. So I’ll be working on process efficiency in the coming weeks as I get better at this!
5. What books and blogs I’ve been inspired by this week
Blogs I’ve been helped out by this week:
Kindle books I’ve read through this week/month as I’ve gotten started with my website portfolio:
- The Sassy Way to Social Media Marketing When You Have No Clue!
- The Sassy Way to Kindle Bestseller Publishing When You Have No Clue!
- How to Write Great Website Content in 2017
- Effortless Article Writing
- Money on Demand
6. And finally, my financial report for this month (although it actually includes everything spent in both May and June, as I didn’t produce a May report):
Well, that’s it for this week! Until next week! Happy momtepreneuring!
