Workism.com

When you’re working for yourself, you might find that it is VERY easy to get distracted. I’m not talking about the TV distracting you…I’m actually talking about work distracting you!  You might be working on one product…but then you read about something else that could help you make a lot of money, so you put the product aside, and start to work on this new website.  Then, before that website is done, you hear from a friend about a certain type of blog that will make you money, so you put the website aside, and start that blog.  Now it’s been 6 months, and you don’t have anything finished…you just have a partial product, website, and blog.

Where does that leave you?  Right back at the beginning.  You haven’t made any money, and don’t really have anything to show for your time.  If you kept to a plan though, you would see that you should follow through with one thing before you start the next.

If you write out exactly what your goals and plans are, you will be able to make sure you finish one thing before starting the next.  This will really help you in the long run!  If the idea you heard about is so great, you can do it when you have free time - once what you are working on is finished!

It will really help you save a lot of time!

When you have your own business, you get to choose what you do all day. While that is a great thing - it also means it is very easy to get off track.  Every time you are about to work on something, first ask yourself this.  What are my goals?  Will doing this help me get closer to these goals?  If not, don’t do it!  Otherwise you’re just wasting time.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been working on something an then realized that it wouldn’t help me with my main goal at all!  If you keep reminding yourself of your main goals, you’ll be able to make sure that everything you do leads you towards those goals.

I was reminded this weekend of something important: Always have your business cards on you.

My husband and I were going to a holiday party at the house of one of our friends. The last thing I thought would come up was business, so it never even occurred to make sure I had business cards on me. Plus, between the two of us, one of us usually had a card or so on hand.

So boy were we caught off guard when the host was telling some friends about our business, and they were asking about the website and the URL, and we realized we didn’t have a business card to give them! We hope that they remembered the name, but let’s face it, it was 11pm on a Saturday night, so who knows if they will remember!

If we had the business cards on us, we might have gotten a whole bunch of new people to stop by and join the site! The fact that we had many business cards just sitting in our house (less than 10 minutes away) only made it worse.

So I just want to remind everyone, especially during this holiday season where you will probably see more people then usual, always make sure you have your business cards on you! Don’t have any you say? There are 2 quick ways to get them.

The first is to use Vistaprint. They offer 250 free business cards, you just have to pay shipping.

The great part about them is you can easily make a very professional looking business card in under 5 minutes. You can choose from many different designs, and write whatever you would like in the text.

The only negative (if it bothers you) is that on the back of the card, it does say Vistaprint.com on it. Truthfully though, who cares? For free business cards, I don’t mind if it has their website in small print on the back on my business cards. Plus, not many people look at the back - and if they do, they’ll just know where I got the cards.

I have business cards from them, and really like them.  They look like they were professionally designed, and I am proud to give them out to advertise my business.  Plus, 250 cards is a lot, so you will always have them when you need them!

If you want more control over your card though, and want to design every little part, you can always go to Staples/Office Depot/Etc and buy blank business cards.  You can then go home, find some software to design your own, and print them out.  This is great if you want to do something that is a little different, and if you want to have your business cards that day!

No matter how you get them though, just make sure you always have a few with you.  You never know when it will come up and you could get new business, just because you had your card on you!

One of my biggest problems used to be that I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to each day.  Was it due to lack of work to do?  Maybe I just didn’t have enough to keep busy?  Absolutely not.  I had many different projects to work on. 

I really think that was the problem.  I had too many projects to work on, so I felt overwhelmed thinking that I had to be working on all of them at the same time…and in turn, spent a few minutes on each, and never really got much accomplished.

I have spent the past few months working on this though, and want to share with you the ways I have been able to get more done.

1.  Prioritize your projects.  What is the most important?  What is least important?  Once you decide what is most important, make sure you work on that first.  If possible, try to focus on just one project at a time, but sometimes you don’t have a choice but to work on many projects…so at least make sure you know which are the ones that should get your time first.

2.  Make a schedule before you go to sleep.  The next day, work on things in the order you set up the night before.  Of course since you prioritized everything, the more important things will get done first, even if they are not the most fun. 

3.  Don’t feel as if you have to get everything done at once.  Set realistic goals and milestones for yourself on when you want to get things done.  This way each day you will see that you are getting closer to your goals, and you’ll feel better.

If you follow these simple rules, you’ll be able to get done a lot more each day, and get closer to your goals!

Writing up that last post yesterday reminded me how much I now rely on one piece of free software - KeePass.  In KeePas, you enter all of your logins, passwords, and the URL’s that are associated with them.  It then makes it very easy when you come to a site you need to log into, you just double click on the login or password field, and it will copy the login or password to your clipboard for 10 seconds, giving you just enough time to paste it into your browser. 

Since almost everything has a login and website these days, there are a lot of passwords to remember!  Especially since you really shouldn’t re-use the same password over and over.  So it can be hard to remember 10 or more passwords.  With this program, you just have to remember the password to get into the program itself, and you’re set.  This is good though, because if someone uses your computer, they won’t be able to get into your password file. 

I really recommend this free software - especially if you belong to as many affiliate programs as I do!  It really makes things a lot easier.

Another lesson I would like to pass on is something that is probably obvious to everyone else, but is something I did not do.  The smart way to start a business at home is to start it on nights and weekends, and only quit your day job once you are somewhat successful, and are making enough money to pay the bills. 

I unfortunately did not listen to that advice, and quit my job before I even started a business!  I was unhappy at my job, and quit first, and then started the business.  Forgetting about not having the money coming in anymore, my biggest issue was with stress.

Even though I had the money to pay the bills without working for a while, I was just so stressed all of the time wanting the business to succeed NOW, that it made it even harder to get things done.  When you’re sitting in front of a computer thinking that you MUST succeed right now, the extra stress really does make it harder to get work done. 

 Once I took the pressure off, it was a lot easier to think more clearly, and start getting things done.  And even if you think the business will take off right away, that is not always the case.  If you first have the business earning some income, and then you quit your job, you are much more likely to succeed as you will already be doing somewhat well before you quit, so you can then devote all of your time to making the business even better, instead of starting it from scratch after you quit.  I’m sure that it’s obvious to most people…but considering I did it that way, I’m sure others might be tempted to also!

Hopefully this will help someone else who is trying to figure out what type of business to start.
I love to save money. If I am going to buy anything, I will make sure I find the cheapest price before I buy it, especially if it’s a big-ticket item. I even go as far as to match up coupons to the grocery circulars, and go to 2-3 grocery stores a week if I can get great deals. I even order coupons on eBay if I see a great deal where I can get something for free (minus the cost of the coupons and shipping).

So when I was trying to figure out what type of business to start, I really genuinely wanted to help others save money. I thought, why on earth shouldn’t everyone do the same little things I do so that they could save money? I know a lot of people wish that they could save more, and if I could do something small that would help others, it would be a win/win situation!

I came up with what I thought was a really great idea. I spend a lot of time each week (and I mean a LOT…) looking for good deals. I go through the Sunday circulars we get in the paper, I go through the grocery circulars, and I also look online at many different places to find good deals on all types of products. So, I decided to create a newsletter that gets sent out twice a week. Each newsletter would have deals in different categories. So one newsletter would have clothing, electronics, and travel deals, and the next might have deals on home, kids stuff, and office supplies. I would even include links to free stuff in every newsletter, so that people can sign up to get free shampoo samples, snacks, magazines, and more. I would also take requests, so if someone was looking for a particular item, I would find the best price for them. I was also going to promise that each newsletter would have at least $200.00 worth of savings in it.

I first tried pricing it at $9.97 a month, and later went down to $4.97 a month, but never got a single subscriber. It seemed that no one wanted to pay money in order to save money, even though they would be saving so much more than they would be paying.

This is where I made my first mistake: Even if you have a passion for something, and think it’s a great idea…make sure that the public is willing to pay for it!

Well, once I realized that people just didn’t want to pay for it, I decided to make it a free newsletter. I would still put the best deals in the newsletter, but if they had an affiliate program that I was part of, I would make a tiny percentage of what they bought.

As soon as the newsletter became free, I had a bunch of subscribers sign up. A year later, I have an even bigger list of subscribers. So it wasn’t that people didn’t like the idea of the newsletter, and didn’t want to save money, it just wasn’t something that they were willing to pay for.

So I was still able to do what I liked, but I just had to change it around so that it worked for the group of people I was marketing to.

But if I had first done more research, and had realized that people might not be willing to pay for it, I might have either not started the newsletter at all or have come up with a different way to monetize it.

If you’re going to start a new business, you should first do the research to make sure people are willing to buy what you’re trying to sell!

I have since learned that lesson, and have moved on…but it was a hard lesson to learn!