I recently made a list of things that suck [for me at least] when it comes to running an online business … and things you’re not good at you either need to take on getting good at, [increase your experience and value] or have someone else who is skilled, [delegate, spend time wisely] do them for you.
As I sit down to focus before another week, I want to explore new ways to handle 10 things in my online business I don’t particularly love, these are things you can likely identify with.
If you can relate, let me know in the comments and how you tackle some of these things
- editing blog posts
- hire someone to flesh out my rough drafts, someone with a writing background, pay a copywriter if blog posts are that important or perhaps hire my sister who would do it cheaply. the list of posts i want to write vs. how often i do write is much too high.
- photoshop, product images, logos, headers, and graphic designers
- use boxshotking.com, create images in Apple Pages and use screenshots or start a relationship with a designer you can use reliably, I like Mars Dorian, Shea McGuire, and Emily Kil
- finding feedback
- feedback is tough sometimes, i created a form with incentives for those who have worked with IT Arsenal to entice and make it much more rewarding to tell me how i’m doing. i also have an internal group on facebook to give me feedback on ideas yet to launch. another goodie i plan on testing is critique a website that just launched. it’s a service for peer reviewed one for one feedback on your website. i generally get feedback, but i don’t get enough of it, you should have 20 quality pieces of feedback.
- logging in [to so many things]
- the built in “remember this password” tools never seem to work, i found 1password and now I have a self building database that is fast, and i can refer to easily. i also log in and out of WordPress websites all day and found InfiniteWP to help me jump in and out of multiple sites without having to login
- conferences
- i just need to “go through” this one. i avoid conferences, i think because i have no one to go with. i’m not anti social, or awkward, i just haven’t gone to one to it’s hard to place the value of paying money to go to an event and talk with a bunch of people.
- posting everywhere
- buffer solved posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook Pages for me a while ago, but now i’m more interested in posting my content “tweaked” for different platforms everywhere, but haven’t found a way to do this so it’s not taking away time from other more important things. i’m going to shelf this for right now.
- the distractions, it’s so hard to focus because of all the moving parts. you often times lose sight of your mission
- well i could pay someone to slap me, like ramit sethi’s brother maneesh, that’s one way, another is to place stakes, make bet’s to people, and have them hold me accountable. but who’s going to hold me accountable to my meetings of people who hold me accountable?
- remember where i saved a document, image, piece of text
- without organization, we’re all doomed. search is really helpful but eventually collapses. i’ve upgraded to evernote pro, and now keep documents, files, everything stored to handle in evernote. the finished pieces go in a thought out hierarchy of files on my computer. now that it’s set up, it’s faster than hunting like i did before
- promoting/marketing
- good marketing is not easy. i’m horrible at creating momentum, dripping content, crafting a story. i put my time and effort into something and then say…it’s here…to little fanfare. i’m going to hire a marketing manager in 2013 to help create a marketing schedule, which will probably come with a lot of posting, and video’s. i’m scared of the additional time it might take, but i bet i’ll like hitting publish a lot more than i do now.
- the never endingness
- take a vacation! close up new sales for a week, 2 weeks and focus on something else. this can actually increase demand, and allow you to breath, or make progress in an area you know you need to give attention but haven’t in so long. you need to have victories in various parts of your life, or you’ll suffer when you get burned out or one big thing doesn’t work out.
