LDP Business Report: Reaching Critical Mass or Business Autopilot (current tools & tactics)

by | Stage 4: Business

In case you missed it, I’m keeping secret personal posts on marriage, God, wishes, and other such stuff off the homepage and on a special page you can find by clicking the link at the top called “Personal Posts”

Something amazing has been happening the last two months of online business at IT Arsenal, it’s started to drive itself at times.

The culmination of two years of networking, moving toward a consistent goal and keeping record has started to take effect and despite how busy I’ve been moving and getting married; e-mails, sales, and calls have continued to come in.

The critical mass some have felt when you’re name is thrown around enough, you have enough on-topic pages on your site, affiliate programs, solid reviews, or visible work has started to peek through and feeling the business (and income) effects have been fun.

It’s all part of the process and experience (when you hustle) of this new online economy and making strides to make it your own. In this report I go over what recent tools I’ve been using, what’s working, and where I’m failing in building an online business that offers online services and stand alone products to produce easily managed income.

If I were to somehow plot myself on a map, something I’m not sure is very possible with all the moving parts of a business (and varying types), I’d say I’m two years in, grossing 2-5k a month, %20 of that is easily managed (read, runs itself, perpetuated by previous efforts), 5-10 hours a week and I’m still loving it. As always, I’m striving to make things easier, automate more, learn from my mistakes, and enjoy (fill with joy) life as much as possible though my efforts and results.

what’s working

tools

  • gmail labels – particularly having a label for people (e-mails) i want to add to my newsletter, and conversations to turn into something to post about
  • paypal invoices – quick and easy, and recognizable for people if i need to draft up something custom
  • ejunkie affiliate features – not the best, but cheap, and i made a guide on my business site.
  • google forms – i have a form for several service needs, questionnaires to get all the info i need to work, etc i quickly send to clients using “canned responses” in gmail
  • scheduling tool – you need to skip over the “e-mailing 5 times back and forth to set up a call with either a client or fellow entrepreneur”. i haven’t found one i love, but get a tool that gives you a link to send to people, currently using bookfresh.com
  • wordpress plugins
  • followupthen.com – a tool for closing the loop or reminding yourself to do something and eliminating e-mail

tactics

  • personal communication to clients and potential clients – i don’t have massive reach or traffic, but quality communication means i turn a lot of e-mails into purchases
  • going the extra mile regardless of agreement – just how i work, under-promise, over-deliver
  • writing about clients and experience – this builds trust and makes you real. talk about the tough ones too
  • referrals, fiercely connecting people – people remember when you hook them up
  • pushing people to forms and product pages when i get an e-mail – having a google form or a hidden sales form for repeatable situations saves time
  • telling people about my affiliate program in chat and e-mail – people don’t seek this out, but are always interested to know they can earn money by sending people to me for help
  • posting who you are, and what you’re out to do, with an incentivised offer in forums – always gets feedback
  • reading business books and blogs and telling people about it – keeps you reflecting
  • receiving referrals – part of that critical mass of being around and visible and doing good to those in your niche

where i’m failing

  • internal development of documents
  • regular content posting
  • having a “launch” event around some effort every few months
  • reaching out on social media
  • ebooks, and products. i like love people too much, but don’t like charging a lot. this is a bad business recipe. although i’ve made progress in charging more, products are where i know i can make something full quality, and have no cap on income potential. i need to dig deeper into them. this isn’t the first time this theme has presented, some progress needs to change into main focus.
  • being a tech guy, my website is always in development and has too many portions unfinished. gotta clean this up.
  • being a perfectionist. it’s apparent that because of all the variables in a business, everything will not always be perfect and organized. forgoing making everything “just right” in my eyes, i need to strive ahead toward things that bring in sales or push forward business. i still stay up late into the night crafting the perfect submit form, or moving images pixel by pixel. bad habit.

goals for the fourth quarter (ending 2011)

  • send out a more useful and personal newsletter
  • build list to 1000
  • construct better systems on wordpress for buying what i offer
  • make better offer pages, including an “on call, everything included” monthly product
  • 10k in sales
  • launch another stand alone product
  • “be” a seller more than i have been
  • regular content of some sort out of www.itarsenal.com, i need more reach. read thinktraffic.net for tactics

i’m certainly not a “big player” in anyway, but the dream spoken about when this blog started is piecing itself together. there’s no big, woah, i can buy a lamborghini now, but i regularly feel challenged, fulfilled, excited, and as the money continues to tip the scales, i have more time and experiential freedoms present in my life.

and honestly, if i wanted a lamborghini, i don’t feel absurd going and looking at one, averaging out the monthly cost, and thinking about how well a product or service would need to perform to pay for that. anything seems possible.

keep hustling toward your consistent goal, you’ll get a tingle when you begin to feel a “critical mass” point, something i think may be unique to this type of online business. now to keep growing it. get back in action.

photo by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center