January Check-in

With all that’s been going on in January, I am seriously questioning the idea of building a part-time business. Is it really possible? How should I adjust my goals and expectations? How should I schedule tasks and manage my time?

But first, I think I ought to report on my January progress:

Just to remind you (and myself), my business goal for the first 6 months of this year is to “Create a sustainable part-time social media support business providing sufficient supplemental/second income for the household” (and yes, there is a $ assigned to this goal).

In order to achieve it by my deadline, I chose to take several steps, including marketing on-line and offline.

Step 1 – Promote through networking groups – attend 4 networking meetings each month.

I did put 4 networking meetups on my schedule, but ended up going to only one. I missed the other three because of, as they say, circumstances beyond my control – my son was sick and I stayed home with him instead of going to one of the events. The other one got cancelled (actually, the entire meetup closed down).

Finally, I chose to not go to the forth one and instead attend a meeting that resulted in substantial (and continuous) side-income totally unrelated to my OneClickVA business.

Step 2 – Increase my blog’s visibility

At present, I use my blog as part of my content writing portfolio when I present to a potential client, along with links to the various articles I wrote for other blogs and websites. And it works!

 But I also decided to use it as part of my social media specialist portfolio to show how I can help other businesses build and promote their blogs. I don’t want to go by theory alone. Instead, I want to be able to back it up by solid data.

Remember how I decided to switch gears with my blog and post only once a week and use the rest of the time to look for interesting posts on other blogs and leave substantial comments? My goal is at least 3 comments each week, but in January I managed to leave only 6 comments, falling 6 short of the goal. Still, these comments brought some traffic back to my blog and, along with my HARO-related publicity from last year, made a sizeable improvement in my blog stats.

Almost forgot to mention, but I did a guest post on a local blog, North Hills Buzz, and was invited to be one of their regular freelance contributors. This opportunity came through Twitter.

Step 3 – Start conducting regular presentations and webinars

My original goal was to get 2 requests per month by mid-June, but I’ve already got my first 2 presentations lined up for March. Stay tuned for more on this one.

The one thing I didn’t write down in my Goalbox file was to not be afraid of second chances and to expect the unexpected. Well, I am adding both now and here’s why:

If It Didn’t Work the First Time…

When I just started as a virtual assistant, I tried getting some jobs on eBay and Guru. I was very disappointed with the results – I didn’t get a single project I bid on. And so I gave up. I was understandably disappointed with employers putting such a low value on VAs’ work and their apparent disregard for quality.

Don’t get me wrong – some of the requests on eBay still disgust me (like when an employer is looking for a “top-notch SEO guru” with a budget of “under $10/hr). But I managed to find and bid on a few projects that were more fair in terms of requests and budgets. And I improved how I respond to RFQs. As a result, I won 1 project (out of 5 I replied to) which turned out to be very enjoyable and a great learning experience to boot (if you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw me mention it).

You Just Never Know…

I must admit – I have my moments of weakness, when things don’t seem to go my way and when I have serious doubts whether I can make my business work. When it happens, I start thinking about getting a “real job” again. Sometimes I even end up sending out resumes.

That’s exactly what happened late last year. I was in a funk. Things were going nowhere (or so it seemed at the time). And then I saw a job ad for a project manager at a firm that develops online language courses and language learning software. It sounded exciting, very close to what I used to do before striking out on my own. 

It didn’t work out (since the company is in NH and I’m in NC). But I got an unexpected and even more exciting offer from their chief content strategist (who, by the way, mentioned that his decision to contact me with this offer was based, in part, on this blog) – to become a regular contributor for one of their blogs. Yay!  

My February goals are

• to find and subscribe to 5 more interesting and relevant blogs (social media, virtual assistance, small business, time management)
• to continue commenting on blogs, aiming at an average 3 comments per week
• write 1 guest post (do you want me to write for your blog? drop me a line at yelena@oneclickva.com)
• develop a solution for my terrible time-crunch (and of course write about it)

And how are you doing with your New Year goals? Feel free to share success stories and otherwise brag.

Related posts:

1. February Check-in
2. Best for Last – July 10, 2009
3. New Year Resolutions, Not Again!