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Never Give Up, Never Give Up, Never Give Up by Carrie Lauth If you're like most work at home Moms, your business journey will resemble a roller coaster ride long before it looks like a leisurely Sunday drive (in fact, it may never look like that at all!). But if you're thinking about giving it all up because you still haven't reached your goal after months (years!) of sweat, tears and a sore behind, think of Winston Churchill's words: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense." If you feel like giving up, don't! Here is the funny thing about life: A year will pass regardless of what you do today to build your business. But the things you do today to build your business will keep paying off over and over in a year's time. If you don't believe me, then just keep reading. Since I started working from home, I've changed directions completely a couple of times, undergone major life changes, even felt the rug come out from under my feet a time or two. But, I keep plugging along. My business has taught me some important things about life in general. Here are a couple of things I've learned. 1) They Keep Moving The Cheese Ok, I'll admit I stole that one from Spencer Johnson's "Who Moved My Cheese?". Highly recommended reading for any wahm. It's a slim little volume that you can devour at naptime. Things are going to constantly change: your life, the nature of business. What worked last year isn't going to cut it this year. You have to keep changing if you want to survive and thrive in the online business arena. ,/p> Do your best to try out new technologies and see if they will improve your bottom line. Ask others who are doing it for help. Remember that just two years ago, nobody was blogging? Now if you don’t have a blog, you’re likely to lose visitors. Lots of folks are stepping into audio, video and podcasting. These technologies don’t have to be a stumbling block. You can always hire or joint venture with someone who can do the techie stuff and just create your message. Your family life is dynamic also and just when you think you've gotten into a comfortable routine, bam! A separation, a miscarriage, a new baby, etc. Life happens. Things are getting more challenging than ever for me lately now that my fourth baby is getting older and mobile. I recently started homeschooling two kids instead of just one. I'm trying to regroup and figure out how to do things again (and I'm sure I'll be doing this many more times as my kids get older and their needs change). Anticipate that the cheese will be moving. Constantly monitor the state of your old cheese. If it's dwindling or getting smelly, watch out! I'll give you a perfect example: If you're relying on one major traffic generation method, you're tempting fate. All it will take is one little Google dance and your website can go from "hot" to "not" overnight. I learned this the hard way. My biggest site in terms of traffic and earnings, was dropped like a hot potato from Google’s search results pages, with a corresponding drop in my income. Ouch! Lesson two: 2) Don't Put All Your Marketing Eggs Into One Basket Ok, I'll admit. I stole that one from Alice Seba's blog. Good thing I learned the lesson though. Don't get me wrong... it's good to learn one marketing method well before starting to do another, but just don't focus on one thing entirely to the exclusion of others. For instance, SEO might be your "thing", which is great, but make sure you're also writing articles and learning how to do press releases, and maybe experimenting with PPC or contests. 3) Lesson 3: Give It Time It's so hard to be patient, isn't it? If you find yourself wondering when you will ever meet your goal, there are a couple of things that might make the wait easier while you keep plugging away at your business. a) Celebrate small successes Sometimes we get so caught up in humongous goals and forget to celebrate the little achievements. That first small affiliate check, that first $3 AdSense day, 5 new pages added to a web site, an unsolicited, glowing testimonial about your product, etc. Keep a log of all the little successes that happen in your business and review them when you need to get motivated again. Keep a "done" list next to your "to do" list. b) Start a Feel Good Folder Start a little file on your desktop and name it Confidence. Anytime someone says something nice about you on a message forum, anytime you get a subscriber thanking you for your newsletter, copy and paste that into a text document. Review it when you're feeling down and impatient. Another thing that helps is to hang out with other successful wahms, not just wanna bes. I'm not knocking the wanna be, because we all started there! But spend some time each week talking to people who are where you want to be. Seeing them share success stories, seeing their triumphs and growth makes it clear that you WILL get there. It's them today, but it will be you tomorrow. I'll tell you what happened to me lately. One of my big sites (that I've steadily been working on for over a year) came out of the Google sandbox, and overnight my traffic doubled then tripled and whew... the AdSense earnings have been looking really good lately, and my affiliate income increased. In fact, at loooong last, I've finally reached a certain double digit daily AdSense goal that I've had for a long time. Now I'm on to the next goal. Just don't give up ladies. Remember Winston Churchill. About the Author: Carrie Lauth is a work at home Mom of 4 who keeps on truckin’, and wants to encourage you to do the same. Sign up for her free marketing tips at www.CarrieFAQ.com |
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