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A couple of weeks ago, we gave away a custom mini site from Silicon Post. Our lucky winner April Jones from Nebraska. Her and Robert worked together and the mini-site is now complete.

Here’s what April had to say:

“Hey Alice,

I just wanted to thank you again for hosting the giveaway of a mini-website from Silicon Post. I was so excited when I found out I won!

After months of debating whether or not I wanted to start my own Virtual Assistant business, I finally decided to go for it on June 1st of this year. The first thing I did was try to set up my website. I did an okay job using some free templates I found online, but it just wasn’t enough. And I knew it would be a while before I could teach myself how to design a website or pay someone else to do it. So your giveaway came just in time.

My “grand opening” is July 1st and my brand new website is up and running thanks to you and Robert Mesa of Silicon Post

Robert has been such a pleasure to work with. He made sure I got the professional look I wanted for my website. As a VA, my website will be the first impression that a majority of my potential clients get of me and my business. So the design and content is very important to me.

Not only did Robert make sure everything I needed was on there, he even made some suggestions and added features that had never occurred to me that will really help my website (and my business) stand out. He was completely patient, even when I messed some things up when trying to edit, and he was both professional and friendly.

I hope you’ll do another Silicon Post mini-website giveaway so that someone else out there will have the same opportunity that I did to work with Robert and Silicon Post.

Thanks again!
April
Advantage Virtual Assistant

And on April’s last comment - if Robert’s up to it, we’ll certainly host another one soon.

Here’s Twitter comment from Dewald Pretorius that got me thinking about just how lucky we at home entrepreneurs really are. Dewald was having a fun evening, goofing off on the ‘puter (and sampling some wine…lucky guy) and he wrote:

But hey you know what? Who cares if it’s Friday night? Who cares if it’s the 3 AM on Wednesday or the middle of a Sunday afternoon? This is the BEAUTY of being your own boss and setting your own schedule.

Now, I don’t recommend working every single day all day…so I absolutely get Dewald’s point. But if someone skips work Tuesday - Thursday and decides to catch up on a Friday evening, I think that’s AWESOME.

I think it all comes down to responsible scheduling and balance. Use this amazing freedom to your advantage and work proudly whenever you decide to do so.

Yep, a second edition of Wednesday Words from You today. This is a great quote from Product Launch Expert, Jeff Walker.

The power of the list cannot be underestimated…and of course, I’d love to give you a hand to realize the same.

One of my Twitter friends, Chele Neisler recently used 140 alloted characters to post a very poignant observation. For the record, I don’t know precisely what made her post this.

But in working with online entrepreneurs and really trying to give them the PUSH to actually do stuff - her comment illustrated perfectly what holds a lot of people back:

It seems like a lot of people want everything laid out for them when it comes to this online marketing stuff. If they receive general step-by-step instructions, they get tied up on one detail and can’t just come up with a solution for themselves.

Here’s just a couple of the things I see people get bogged down with, but I see similar brain farts like this all the time.

“I have written an ebook and want to sell it, but not sure if I should use ClickBank, PayPal or something else.” - Ummm…your ebook is written, pick a processor and get on with it. Sure, you can get opinions from people, but people use questions like this as a crutch to do nothing.

“I am not sure if I should post other people’s articles on my site because I hear conflicting things about duplicate content.” - If you like the article, post it. It’s that simple…and seriously, since when is a search engine allowed to dictate how you run your website? Besides, who cares what other people argue endlessly about?

Sure, it’s good to get advice from other online entrepreneurs, pick up some how-to information, but taking action and getting results is YOUR responsibility. If you run into something you don’t understand search Google. It’s really easy and you can find information to help YOU answer your questions there IMMEDIATELY, instead of waiting for someone to come to your rescue.

Making decisions and deciding what will work for you and your business is up to YOU only. Sure, some decisions will result in some errors, but correct them and move on.

Here’s a question from Pam Rathlou of LusciousPlus.com (plus-size lingerie if you click that link )

“Hi Alice - I have a plus size lingerie website. I have a blog and I write articles. I am trying to get buying traffic to my site but the only way seems to be through google ads and I just plain can’t afford it. I’ve done all the seo stuff, free directories all kinds of things but my traffic is low and conversions non existant - HELP! Thank you.“

Well Pam, I think you’re not alone in your frustration and that’s why I thought addressing your question here will hopefully help you and others in the same boat. Here are a few things for you to think about:

Blogs & Articles: You mentioned you are doing these. Have you been tracking the results of these efforts and ensuring that your time is well-spent? Although, these are very viable promotion methods, you want to make sure that your efforts are paying off. Do more of what is working and none of what isn’t (or tweak it so it does work).

Google Ads: A well-run Google campaign should be designed to make you money, rather than cost you money. That said, I don’t know how competitive the plus-size lingerie market is and if your profit per item isn’t large enough, the click costs could make a good campaign difficult…but probably not impossible. One of the most important keys to a Google Adwords campaign is relevancy - from your advertising text, to your landing page and offers - being relevant is crucial. Start with this free tutorial if you need help.

Traffic & Conversions: Without the traffic, your conversion rates will be hard to figure out. Still, if you think conversion is an issue, there is plenty you can do to get more out of the traffic you do receive.

I took a quick look at your website and noticed a few things:

-> The site loads rather slowly. You may be losing visitors before they even see your website. It could be due to large images, your web host or a number of different factors you might want to look into.

-> There is a lot of seemingly wasted space above-the-fold of your website, plus you’re lacking an attention-grabbing headline. I’d invest in a nice professional-looking logo for your store and really get to the point in this important part of your virtual real estate.

-> The navigation on the left is really small and the white text is lost on the red background. Upon visiting the site, I’m not 100% sure what I should do right away. Make sure to guide your visitor to find what they are looking for.

But back to traffic - keep working on it:

There are many ways to build traffic. Try a press release campaign and tweak your blog and article marketing tactics. Or go back to the basics and go through the free Truth about Traffic course to help you really get things going.

Just a few ideas to get you started. Take it one step at a time, track your results and improve based on your findings.

Another Wednesday Words from You as heard on Twitter. Today, I asked:

“Working at home ladies…do you wear make up?”

Here are a few of the responses:

Tomorrow’s question, “As a work at home MAN, do you wear make up every day.” Now THAT should get interesting.

How about you? Man or woman who works at home. Does make up work for you?

A Question from a Subscriber: I keep hearing the words, find your “niche” which is confusing me what exactly that means. I saw something you wrote that if we only sell 1 type of product we are missing 80% of buyers. I am currently working 3 DS companies but don’t know how to pull them all together. I wonder if I should only sell for 1 of them and add affiliates and articles? Thank you.

This question leaves a few things to address. The first is, what is finding your niche? From Internet Marketing Definitions:

A niche is a focused and target-able portion of the market. A business that focuses on a niche market is attending to the need for a product or service that is not being addressed by the mainstream market. The niche market narrowly defines a group of potential customers.

One of the advantages of dealing in niche markets is the ability to be one of the only suppliers meeting that need. The key is to find an untapped niche market whose customers are accessible.

In the case of this reader, we can apply the concept of niche to direct sales. I am not certain which companies she is involved with, but creating a niche strategy is one way to set yourself apart from all the other company reps that are hitting the net to try to get their share of the pie.

For example, if you are a rep for a wellness company, you might find a specific niche within the huge market of wellness seekers that you can connect with. Whether it is post-menopausal women, body-builders or diabetics, there are niches to be found in the ultra-competitive general markets. In addition, targeting a more specific niche allows you to deliver more targeted information and establish your credibility within that niche.

As far as the quote about 1 type of product from me (”I saw something you wrote that if we only sell 1 type of product we are missing 80% of buyers.”), I am not exactly sure where that came from, but if I said anything like that, I didn’t mean that anyone should sign up for multiple direct sales companies and hope for the best.

Note: If the person who submitted this question is reading this…feel free to clarify where that quote comes from and I can give you more information.

But let’s get to the real source of your likely frustration and that is the 3 direct sales companies you are involved with. In most cases, each direct sales company you are involved with is essentially a SEPARATE business, even if your customer base overlaps.

I say this because:

You generally face quotas and other obligations the companies require.

Many companies place restriction on how you can sell the products and that includes online selling and selling other products at the same time.

Ultimately, you want to go back to this idea of finding your niche and worry about the products second. The key to your online success will be to find a market you can connect with and of course, sell products too. Once you have your niche, understand their pains, problems and what pleasures they seek…then you can find the products they need/want.

You wrote: “I wonder if I should only sell for 1 of them and add affiliates and articles?” There is some real merit in that statement and I think you already understand much of what your questions asked. Focus on your niche and sell them the products they need. By supplementing your direct sales income (with 1 company…especially to start) with affiliate programs allows you much more freedom to test out new products and find things that really suit your niche.

I receive a lot of question from moms (and Dads too!) that want to know things like:

“How can you do what you do?”

“I’m a homeschooling mom of 3. Do you think it’s possible for me to work from home?”

“You seem so busy. How do you manage everything?”

You know what? For me, it took a lot of hard work, learning and growing along the way. Now I’m not a homeschooling mom, but I can certainly relate to parents who are struggling with the juggling.

But you know what else? If I wasn’t a parent, I really don’t know if I would have accomplished as much as I have.

In fact, my family has:

Made it necessary for me to be more organized and efficient in all aspects of my life.

Motivated me to success more than if I just have myself to care for.

If you want to learn more about my journey to becoming a full time business mom…and the stories of other remarkable women, I recommend taking a look at Nicole Dean’s “Full Time WAHM” (WAHM = work at home mom). She’s compiled some great stories packed with advice.

To learn more:

Go straight to the Full Time WAHM website…or…

Read our Sweetie Staff Review of the guide.