Where Did It Start to Go Wrong?

Not spending enough time working on your online business? Spending time but not accomplishing anything?

It seems easy for us to start things with the best of intentions, but sometimes we find ourselves veering off our original path. If you find yourself not dedicating enough time to your internet marketing business, or frustrated by your lack of progress, you’ll need to determine the cause in order to come up with a solution.

The following may be some things you should look at.

Could it be as simple as:

- You’re beginning to feel like you’re too busy to dedicate the time? Sometimes, other unexpected things will suddenly become a priority. That’s the nature of life. So don’t stress over it. At the same time, don’t let these other things always take priority over your business. In order to accomplish the goals you have set for yourself you know you will have to dedicate time to your business as well.

Solving this problem comes down to reviewing your original plan. Did you schedule realistic blocks of time to work on your business? Have you set goals and written to-do lists for each piece of getting your business started?

Get back to following your schedule, use your lists to know what you’re going to do when you’re in front of the computer and begin to get tasks done!

- You suddenly no longer have the support of your family? This may be simple to identify, but can be a tough one to work through. How you handle this depends on how close to you these family members are.

If it’s your spouse and/or your children who are concerned, you need to deal with their issues directly. Talk to them about how they’re feeling and what their concerns are. Remind them of the goals you want to accomplish for all of you. Openly discuss what’s not working. Maybe you need to revise your time frame or work schedule so that it works for the whole family. Involve them in the business plan and keep them up-to-date with your progress.

If it’s your extended family that doesn’t live in your household who isn’t supportive, you may have to be firmer in standing up for yourself. They might just be worried about you and believe it’s only a “real” job that can pay the bills. If easing their fears doesn’t work, don’t feel obligated to make them happy.

- You over-think everything and never get started? Paralysis by analysis is a common problem, especially when you are just starting out and don’t know what to do. Or how to do it.

There is a lot of information about online business and so many ways to do things that it’s easy to become so over-whelmed you don’t know where to start.

To overcome this inaction, you need to take a step and do SOMETHING. Find a source of information that you think you can trust and use that resource to get started with one project.

You may find the source isn’t as good as you thought it would be. Maybe it wasn’t as complete as you needed it to be and it led you into making some mistakes. But, you’re going to LEARN from those mistakes. You’ll be amazed at how much more confident you’ll become and how much you’ll learn simply by DOING, instead of thinking.

These may be a couple of stumbling blocks you didn’t expect to encounter as you started your online business. They certainly won’t be the only ones.

In the end, the success of your home business is entirely dependent upon you and the decisions that you make.

You had your reasons for deciding to start your own online business. Keep those reasons in the forefront of your mind and you’ll be able to work through anything.

Keep Your Content Interesting

For starters, you need to remember that blogging is all about writing. Have you ever tried reading a novel where you just couldn’t get into it? Ever finish it? Ever pick up another book by the same author?

Creating content for your blog is like writing a novel. You try to get people involved so that they keep returning to read new content. The great thing about blogging is that once people like what they read, they will not only return to your blog, they will often recommend it to their friends.

First of all, to keep your blog content interesting, you have to be able to maintain an interest in the topic yourself. If you spend your time creating and writing articles or content on a subject that is of little or no interest to you, your lack of enthusiasm will definitely come across in your writing. However, if you are blogging about something you are passionate about, then your readers will see how devoted you are to the subject yourself and they will pick up some of that passion themselves.

It is also important to write about something you care about because you will have to spend time keeping your blog updated. You should be adding new information and content on a regular basis to keep your readers coming back for more. To help do this, you may have to spend some time doing research on your topic to make sure your ideas stay current.

Secondly, write your blog as if you were having a conversation with a friend. Keep your writing style conversational. Stay away from a lot of technical jargon, unless you are directing it only towards a very specific, technically-oriented readership.

I sometimes have trouble with this. I am trying to teach you how to do things, so I sometimes find myself falling into a long-winded, “I am the teacher…”  style of writing. I am working on it!

Thirdly, use your blog to get your opinions out to the world. The reason you started your blog was because you felt you had something worthwhile to contribute to others. So contribute! No one is looking over your shoulder telling you what you should or should not be writing. You are not being moderated or censored and you are free to express yourself in whatever way you choose. So, be yourself and give people the benefit of your knowledge and experience.

A word of caution, though. Unless your blog topic is “I am a jerk and I will use my blog to Rant!” ,do not use your blog to insult people or try to damage anyone’s business or organization. Be smart when deciding what content to place on your blog. Remember that you are influencing people’s views and they are evaluating your credibility. If you are offensive, you may find yourself spitting into the wind.

Fourth, try to limit each post to one subject. It is okay to address different topics in your posts as long as they remain relevant to your blog subject. But within each post, stick to one idea. Jumping around to different ideas will make you seem unfocused and simply leave your reader confused.

Lastly, people visit and return to a site not for the flashy graphics or the wonderful website designs, but because of the information they learn from the website. Therefore, your blog should have rich, premium, informative content to capture repeat visitors. Make sure your blog’s layout is simple to navigate and easy looking to the visitor’s eyes.  Don’t add too many flashy features on your pages that will distract from your visitor’s  focus when they are reading your content.

Always remember the most important part of your blog is your content. Whether your reader will read on or not heavily depends on your ability to capture their interests and give them what they want to know in a way they enjoy.

AAARRRGGGHHH….My Bad

Just spent a day and a half scouring the internet to find a solution to cloaking affiliate links!

The reason was because the simple-to-use system I attempted at first did NOT work!  I spent hours trying to get it to work properly with no success.

So I went looking for an answer at Google, Ask.com and Utube.  As you can imagine, I found more information than I needed.  Do this, do that, but this, buy that, download this, that and some more of this while you’re at it!

The more I read, the more convinced I became that I was making a SIMPLE mistake.  But what was it?

So I junked everything I had downloaded, printed out, etc.  and started over.  Using the same system I started with. (For a change, I did not buy a solution – again, I was convinced the system I had would work but I was doing something really simple the wrong way.)

This time the system worked just as it said it was supposed to! Hoo…ra!!!

Turns out that at one step I was spelling a file name incorrectly which prevented things from working properly.  And I did it again and again and again…until the last time.

Ooops.    Why can’t my computer figure out what I’m trying to do and let me do it and clean up after me if need be?

My Apologies

It has been five months since I posted to this blog – I apologize.

During this time I have had to deal with some issues that I never expected. Those issues have been, for the most part, dealt with – or are under control.

I am now able to resume what I started out to do with this blog. That is, to provide a trusted source of tips, resources, help and advice for the internet marketing beginner.

I’ll be posting again soon.