The Web Wrangler

My mother-in-law passed away about two weeks before Christmas. As if that wasn’t bad enough in and of itself, she didn’t leave a will, she had no life insurance, she had a disabled husband who was completely dependent on her, and she had a rented apartment that was only paid up through the end of the month. My husband is an only child, so the responsibility for all of these things fell squarely on our shoulders. Talk about overwhelming. 

I’ve been on hiatus for the last few weeks while we’ve dealt with all of this, working non-stop to clear out her apartment, take care of her final arrangements, get my step-father-in-law settled in a nursing home, figure out his social security and finances, etc. The To Do list seems to be growing faster than things are getting crossed off. Like I said, overwhelming. To get through it, we’re having to just take it one day at a time, one thing at a time.

Little By Little

Doing big things little by little is a lesson I have to keep learning again and again. I always apply it to major tasks, like this one, or cleaning up storm debris, or trying to clean and organize my entire house. I forget that it applies to smaller things, too.

It took Erica Douglass’s post on How To Make Money On the Internet to make me realize that the same lesson applies to things like web marketing and social networking. That’s an excellent post, by the way. You should go read it. It might clear up some misconceptions you have about working online. But the part that turned on a lightbulb in my brain was this:

Then, pick ONE source of traffic and learn it inside and out until you’re consistently profitable with it. Put up a squeeze page on your site, then learn SEO, PPC, Facebook ads, Plenty of Fish, guest posting, Twitter, heck, even direct mail. Pick ONE of the above. Then learn it. (As a bonus, if you purchased a course on one of those, now’s the time to actually put it into use.)

Again: Learn only ONE traffic method right now! I mean it. Entire empires have been built from a single source of traffic. Until you’ve got one source of traffic profitable, you’re wasting your time learning other sources of traffic.

Thank you, Erica, for illuminating for me what perhaps should have been a “Well, duh!” notion.

Social Media Overwhelm

Clients often come to me feeling overwhelmed by social networking, or by SEO, or blogging, or all of the above. The big picture of creating an effective online presence IS overwhelming when you break it down to see how much work, and how many different components, go into it.

Despite what many so-called web marketing “experts” try to sell you, there is no magic button that will build you gobs of traffic and followers overnight. It takes time, and it takes work. It takes baby steps, focusing on one component at a time until you master it, and then moving on to the next. Keep doing that, without giving up, and you will build traffic.

I’m applying this lesson to my own marketing efforts. Right now, I’m focusing on how to market myself on Twitter. I’ve been a Twitter user for years, and I’ve helped other people learn Twitter, but I could never quite wrap my head around how to effectively use it for my own business.

Since narrowing my marketing focus to learning how to engage followers on Twitter, I’ve already seen an increase in my web traffic, and I’ve even been contacted through Twitter by potential clients who are interested in my services. This is a much better result than I was getting when I tried marketing to all avenues at once.

If you’re struggling with feeling overwhelmed in your own marketing efforts, try taking a step back, picking ONE area, and focusing on that area until you get good at it. Don’t worry about the areas you’re neglecting. You’ll get around to them in due time. Besides, if you get REALLY good at the one area that you’ve made your focus, it might be the only avenue you ever need.

Until next time,

P.S. – Click here to subscribe to my new weekly newsletter, The Web Wrangler Roundup! As a signup bonus you’ll receive a free copy of my tip sheet, 11 Free Resources for Building Your Online Business. This is a roundup of tools and resources mentioned throughout this blog, all of which I used to help create and build my own online business for no overhead. Even if your business is already up and running, there might be something in there that could make operating it a little easier. And it’s all free, just for signing up.