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Setting out by yourself to start a business can be an exciting and also scary time. Whatever your reason for needing to go solo and make it on your own, what follows is usually a messy experiment of failures and successes than eventually (hopefully) becomes a business you can be proud of, or the makings of an entrepreneur who’s not afraid to give anything a go.
It can be even scarier when most of what you do is online for everyone to see (or not, as is the case with my third business mistake below). The sheer volume of opportunities we have to access clients, suppliers, collaborators and solutions online is unprecedented, to the extent that even a stay at home mum can start a business in her pyjamas and eventually offer her husband a job.
However, despite eventually succeeding in my ventures, most of my mistakes had nothing to do with the online realm at all. It can be easy to think online business is easier, but it still needs you to focus on all the hallmarks required of any traditional business. Here’s where I fell down, so you can hopefully avoid the same pitfalls.
My ‘business’ started out fairly slowly with revenue trickling in from here and there. I did have the foresight to set up as a Sole Trader (a simple Australian business structure), but I didn’t set up a separate bank account because as a sole trader I would be taxed at the same rate as an individual. So all my revenue earned went into my personal account and was spent as personal income.
My big mistake was not considering the implication of no longer having income tax withheld from my earnings. When you’re employed, your employer does that for you and passes the tax onto the government. When you’re a sole trader, you need to do that yourself, preferably on a regular basis ie each quarter. I learned the hard way, getting landed with an $11,000 tax bill at the end of my first financial year.
To make things even more difficult, I wasn’t really keeping effective financial records, so submitting my tax return was painful and eventually resulted in many tears and a visit to an accountant. My accountant set me on the right track, helped me get set up with an accounting system, a business bank account, and the correct business structure. They also empowered me to learn how to manage and understand my own accounts and tax obligations. You may want to delegate these to a bookkeeper and/or your accountant, but I thoroughly recommend learning to understand how your finances work in your own business first.
I think this is a pretty common mistake. When we first start out we eagerly take business that comes our way, usually for the wrong reasons – they’re a friend, they were referred by a friend, we need the money, we tell ourselves we need the experience – even if they’re not quite the right fit.
I’ve taken on clients and then realised I should have done more homework. I would have recognised that I couldn’t actually help them. I’ve worked with clients who have said they want one thing and then after it was delivered, moved the goalposts – like to another playing field!
It’s the same with people who you contract or sub-contract to – your judgement can be easily clouded, but when it really matters, the mismatch in expectations or skill will become painfully clear.
The best ways to avoid these mistakes is to:
Deciding to jump the fence from being an influencer to working with influencers was a big step for me. There was some definite imposter syndrome going on, and as such I ended up spending too much time worrying about branding and business cards (which is important to help you stand out) and not enough time creating content and promoting myself. I felt like I had to hide behind some pretty fancy business cards that cost me $900 (wow, that hurts to admit that!) and remembered crying when my toddler destroyed $30 worth of business cards in the blink of an eye!
I have always identified as the experimenter, not the expert. I’m a terrible self-promoter and I worry about what people would think if I ever wrote an opinion piece, hence why finding blog posts authored by yours truly is like searching for hens teeth. Not the best strategy if you want to be found online!
Last week Darren introduced you to Robert Gerrish of Flying Solo in a podcast interview about how to overcome the challenges of being a solo entrepreneur. I’ve been going through his Soloism course and came across this very frank observation:
Being a soloist demands that you are prepared to stand up, stand out and get noticed. It also demands that you stand for something, have opinions and can talk powerfully and passionately about what you do, who for, why and how. This is stepping into the expert’s space – standing under the spotlight.
Are you ready to stand under that spotlight? I wish I had realised that positioning yourself as an expert is not about he or she who shouts loudest. Any confidence (even the quiet kind) can help you create content and opportunities that will allow the right people to find you and work with you. It’s something I’m still learning to do so that I can continue to grow into the entrepreneur who’s not afraid to give anything a go.
Solosim would have helped me to avoid most of my business mistakes, except maybe the tax one – there’s no specific advice on that, and is best pursued with your relevant local authorities. When you go it alone you don’t have to be truly alone – there are great communities like ours and Flying Solo to draw from, and the Solosim ‘Work your way course’ can help you at whatever stage you’re in with your solo business.
With over 80 videos and supported by exercises, worksheets and online discussion, Work your way is the most comprehensive course of its kind anywhere. The modules help you to attract more dream clients. Fire clients. Find a mentor. Coach yourself. Work faster. Work slower. Work healthily. Charge more. Smile more. Expand. Contract. Enter new markets. Design your office. Design your week. Design your exit.
I’m looking forward to the next stage of my own entrepreneurial venture, as it is ever changing and exciting. I’ll see you on the other side of this module on ‘Rejuvenating and Refreshing’!
ProBlogger is an affiliate partner of Soloism who is offering a 20% discount off the Work your way course. We earn a small commission if you purchase Soloism but we offer our genuine recommendation for it and the Robert’s teaching.
The post The 3 Biggest Mistakes I Made Starting My Online Business appeared first on ProBlogger.
In the second part of our three-part series on the What, How and Why of SEO and how it relates to your blog, we’ll be exploring why your blog needs SEO (you can find the first post SEO For Bloggers: A Basic Explanation here).
The reasons for writing a blog are varied, from sharing your knowledge to earning income, but they all depend on attracting, maintaining and growing an audience. You can have a blog filled with great writing and information, but if no one reads it, all you have is a diary.
Now for some sobering facts. At any given time there are approximately 164 million blogs in circulation, yet 80% of those stagnate with readership numbers of less than a thousand, and many with, as the industry maxim goes, readerships of one.
A common process with bloggers, especially when starting out, is to pump out content, a “build it and they will come” approach. This is pointless and an approach that will only dishearten your efforts in building a loyal readership. If you weren’t attracting readers with five blog posts, what makes you think writing ten more will change anything?
So how do you increase your readership base? Well, promotion is the key, along with the ability of your blog to be found. That’s where SEO comes in.
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process used to write and structure your blog in such a way as to raise your search engine rankings. When done correctly it means more people finding and reading your blog. Here’s why:
In the search for more readers, many blog owners resort to advertising on social media or paying for ads on other blogs. This approach will usually cost you money. Typically, not what a blogger wants. Utilise the power of SEO to:
Readers looking for blogs like yours have a great way to find them, and that is using search engines. Google and the like are this generation’s phone books, handy ways to look up any business or entity to find out where to contact them. Google does its part by sending out its robot (Googlebot) to crawl your site, searching for relevant information. It then uses this information to catalogue the individual pages. The closer your blog posts come to answering reader’s questions, the more likely they are to rank high.
Search engine optimisation is just that: optimising your page to get the best possible rankings for a given search phrase. By following simple SEO principles, traffic from Google and other search engines can grow quickly. Even tweaking small details, such as making filenames descriptive instead of image009.jpg can help posts rank higher.
Structuring your blog posts with SEO in mind makes for a much better reader experience. Informative, entertaining, and succinct posts will keep readers returning and help build a loyal following. Other points to follow that create a superior reader experience are:
SEO is in a constant state of flux. Every time you think it is perfect, a Google update can upset the balance. The regular updates that Google conducts means your SEO must be a dynamic process to maintain high rankings. Keep abreast of Google and its various updates and tweak your site accordingly. Evolving your SEO will ensure you continue to deliver quality posts to your readers.
If you have competition in your niche that you’re eager to overtake, SEO is one of the simplest ways to do it. This works especially well if your competitor has poor quality search engine optimisation. They may have a greater budget or more time to work on their site, but if their pages aren’t optimised as well as yours, you will hold the SEO advantage. That means a greater opportunity for your site to rise in the rankings with a potential drop for the competition.
A simple, successful search can lead a vast amount of readership to your blog. To be searched and found entails you spending some time understanding and implementing an SEO strategy that makes your blog easier to discover. You want your blog to stand out from your competition, increasing your readership base and offering you the chance to monetise your blog. SEO is a powerful tool that can leverage your efforts for great returns.
Jim Stewart, CEO of StewArt Media, is a recognised digital marketing expert. Jim is ProBlogger’s SEO expert and will share his vast SEO knowledge to equip you with the systems and skills to optimise and monetise your blog using tried and tested techniques. What Jim doesn’t know about SEO and blogging isn’t worth knowing.
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This week’s posts made me want to live in an RV and perennially chase the warmer weather while reading more novels and finding creative ways to stay well-clear of writer’s block. Quite a good week, if I’m being honest!
I think it’s probably because it’s grey and drizzly here (autumn is well on the way) that I’m dreaming of an endless summer road trip…
Michelle Schroeder-Gardner explains in detail how she earned her first million – mostly from her blog, Making Sense of Cents. She posted for us here on ProBlogger last month on How To Make Time To Grow A Successful Blog When You Have A Full-Time Job – her tips are solid.
I think most parent bloggers have grappled with all the pros and cons that come with living their lives online, but it never seems like there’s one clear answer. Where is your line in the sand?
The blogging comparison beast is large and loud, and can often get in our way of doing our best on the internet. I love these practical tips, based in psychology, to get yourself out of the negative mindset. You’d be surprised how impactful it is to just recognise your feelings and say them out loud!
Not only repurposing content (which we love here at ProBlogger for working smarter, not harder), but ranking for it too! Excellent.
Which is more important than ever on the internet, where we have a global audience.
Well it was probably always coming, but it does change things. How will you handle it?
From March 1, brands and influencers (and all the people in between) will need to abide by new amendments to the Advertiser Code of Ethics in Australia – which won’t affect the large number of folk who are upfront and honest, but will be an expensive mistake for others who don’t disclose.
Which hopefully won’t be you, but hey – we’ve all been there!
Even if numbers are just not your thing, there’s much to be learned from them – especially when it comes to making good decisions based on past performance.
Where journalism and blogging meet! I also think we may forget about proper names and place names when it comes to crafting the best headline… but I guess the real talent is merging keyword-rich headlines that actually engage human readers. May that be all of us!
What caught your eye this week?
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This is a guest contribution from Karly Nimmo.
As a podcaster, I’m inundated with requests and pitches from people who are looking for some free PR.
As a podcaster, I’m totally down with receiving these requests and pitches. I love to hear from people who have something of value to share with my audience.
However, as a podcaster, there’s a few things I’m not down with. Common mistakes I see potential guests make time and time again.
Know that we podcasters love a good pitch. We love nothing more than introducing our audience to people who have something of interest; a good story, valuable information or inspiration. It’s why we do what we do.
So for those of you out there looking to get exposure for your brand, blog, book, event, or yourself, through getting onto other people’s podcasts, listen up. I’ve got some tips that might just help save your pitch from the trash can.
There is nothing worse than receiving a blanket email that you’ve obviously sent out to every other podcaster you’ve ever come across. Or, even worse, from your PR person.
I get it. You think using a PR person makes you look more professional. Or maybe you feel like you don’t have time. I get that too! I’m running two podcasts, two businesses and running around after a toddler. We are all busy. But know this… A blanket email does nothing to raise my interest as a host. It doesn’t make me feel special at all.
The second I see a blanket pitch, in the trash it goes. You don’t respect my time? I won’t respect yours.
Please. Do your research first. I can’t tell you how many times I get an email from someone who clearly knows NOTHING about my show. My podcast is a storytelling format, so it’s bleedingly obvious someone has not even looked at my podcast, when they email pitching ’10 ways to drive more traffic to your website’.
Take a few moments to check out their podcast. See if they’ve already covered your topic. Make a note of what that guest spoke about. And when you go to pitch, have some ideas ready to go. Angles they might not have covered before.
If, when doing your research, you notice that they tend to only speak to women, and you’re not a woman, mention that in your pitch. Point out that you noticed it’s primarily women and would they be interested in perhaps getting a man’s perspective.
Or if it’s a solo show, mention that. ‘Hey. Noticed your show is generally a solo show, but I thought your audience might be interested in *insert topic here*. Would you be open to an interview?’
Going in leading with what you’ve discovered and the value you can bring, will put you on the top of the prospective guests list.
No one has time to read War and Peace. Keep it brief and to the point.
You don’t need to waffle on about yourself. Just be brief and to the point, but friendly, polite and personalised. Add a bit of you into the correspondence. Don’t be all dry and stiff – unless you are dry and stiff.
Make your pitch about them, not about you. What value can you bring? What problems might you be able to solve for their audience?
Remember; podcasters are human just like you. And we are always looking for amazing guests to wow, inspire or inform our audience.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought I should reach out to someone and had them tell me they had wanted to reach out, but let fear stop them. Don’t assume someone doesn’t want to hear from you. You never know unless you ask. Always ask.
Just ask in a way that serves the podcaster… and, in turn, it will best serve yourself.
Karly Nimmo is all about about helping people find their voice, and giving them the tools and platform to get it out there. She’s a passionate podcaster, teacher and mentor atRadcasters Podcasting S’cool.
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