Recently (like this month recently) I was struggling with which direction to take in my online adventures. I felt on the verge of giving up my niche sites.
This week I've done a complete 180 and I'm hanging onto them.
I can't toss them without giving it a really red-hot go. I would always wonder, what if? What if I had given them my everything, would things have been different? What if I promoted and marketed them the best I could? What if I published all the articles I wanted to write? What if I gave them all the SEO lovin' I have to give?
Instead of wondering, I'll give all of that a red-hot go. That's the only way I'll know for sure. If I give it my all, and it doesn't work, so be it. Only then will I not be haunted by the what ifs and what could have beens.
But to do ALL THE THINGS, I need help.
I need to get out of the one-man-band mindset. And I'm doing it, slowly slowly.
Last year I decided to stop being such a tightarse with my online store. I've been outsourcing time-consuming tasks like adding new products. As a result, I've added more than 500 products to my online catalogue. And sales have increased as a result and have more than paid back the cost of adding the products. This month net sales have hit four figures for the first month in a long time.
Once I have a healthy catalogue, I feel more confident about getting a decent return on investment (ROI) for ads I plan to run on Facebook. There was no point spending advertising dollars when I only had 300 or so products online. But if I have 800? There's sure to be a product there that someone will love. Even better if I have 1000+.
I need help with product research and site maintenance tasks. These are easy, contained jobs to outsource to a virtual assistant (VA).
One activity emerged this year as THE THING I want to spend my non-invoiceable time on - creative writing. And the only way I can do this is by getting help in the other areas of my online business activities.
By outsourcing tasks, I'm clawing back time to work on the thing I really want to work on. And right now, that's my title-less middle grade novel. It's a story I first worked on when I wrote an episode of a mobile phone comic back in 2004 for a past start-up of mine (with two other amazing women).
I wrote about 20,000 words of rubbish during a Nanowrimo effort a few years later that turned out to be mostly waffly backstory. Into the bottom drawer it went.
And like I wrote about ideas recently, this is one that haunts me day and night.
I've plotted the latest version of it. It's tight. It follows the hero's journey.
An in the meantime, others are working on my niche sites for me. #winning
I really don't know why it took me so long to get to this point. What was the block?
Was it about money? A little bit. OK, maybe more.
About control? A lot.
About naively thinking I could do ALL THE THINGS? Absolutely.
So, here's to a productive year ahead of content creation from me and my small army of VAs.
Do you outsource? Let me know in the comments below.
