From Trash to Cash: the Dribbling never ends

nolongerindenial

munchki wrote: »

Not sure this will help or be of interest....but I have about 10 years direct experience in the IT sector with sales and with marketing, let me know if there is anything I can help you with NLID, and dont worry about fees etc, it would be my pleasure to help where I can!

Any help I can get will be greatfully recieved - as to be honest I can do my job - I ran a team of 10 SEO's in the last company and had the company on page 1 for the key term with only a shoestring budget to get us there - trouble was my boss was a scammer and I dont even have half of the shoestring budget.

I still keep wondering when I get to the stage I hire poeple who I should take on first, Sales team or Programmer.

jo70mo

NLID, I hope I am talking in the spirit of the dribblers thread here. Sometimes people worry that we always just say something is wonderful and don’t always give constructive views.
I don’t have enough information to give informed criticism so I am sharing some of my/ questions thoughts and hope it doesn’t look like I am jumping to conclusions.

Firstly if your SEO business is your bread and butter business and needs stuff to improve it then that may be your best focus.
It feels, and this may well not be true, a little like you still view yourself as a computer programmer and not as a small business owner.
I’ll try and explain why. If you were working in a larger firm there would probably be other departments dealing with stuff like sales and follow up etc and even accepting/ declining clients etc.
As a small business with good cashflow you would maybe be able to buy these skills in and that may well be cost effective.
However as a small business owner who is just managing to make enough money to live off you don’t have that luxury. Many small businesses are in similar situations they may not be “sales people” or accountants or IT people but they need to acquire enough of those skills to be able to make their business run well without buying them in.
Can you look at it as a business overall and not a product and identify where the weaknesses are and then find a way to address them.
The web is a wealth of free information. If you spent 20 mins a night for 15 days looking at sales skills or PR you would have spent as much time as a day workshop on the subject.
Dilli has done this for herself with SEO as it was a gap she had and couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay for someone to do it for her. You could do it with other things that are gaps in your business.
The other thing I want to mention is reliability – you can do all the marketing you want but if you then let customers down you undo that work because the word of mouth they could generate may well generate negative word of mouth instead.
So you need to have a plan of how you will manage workload so when you get a potential client you can see if you can fit them in. I would also suggest that turning a customer down cos you are to busy would be better for your business and reputation than taking them on and letting them down.
I know you struggle for time but also look at how you use it. The ideas of ebay tools and ebooks are great but you need to have your key business solid first.
You managed to carve out 40 hours over 2 weeks to work on ebaytools imagine how much you could learn about marketing/PR/ sales/ social networking in 40 hours.
There are all sorts of free resources to help with becoming a business and time management and stuff they may really help you. Cos as long as you see yourself as not a sales person or not a copywriter etc you will see those as things that need to be outsourced and not be able to move forward until you have the capital to do so.
If you can aquire enough to move forward you will leverage more profit from your business than outsourcing.
Then if your business is succeeding and you don’t enjoy those areas you may be in a position to outsource stuff like that.
Basically at the moment you are a one man outfit and every role is your role. it may help to work on the bits you feel weak at.
I also wonder if this business being a bread and butter one feels like that too and you need to do other things to maintain some excitement/interest/ and change. If so maybe you need to schedule yourself a certain amount of time per day or week to work on other things whilst making sure your earning business is the priority for now.
Ebay sellertools is an uncertainty yet and I would personally only work on it as much as you can do without your other business suffering.
Like I say do not take these as judgements just thoughts and ideas and wonderings.
Jo x

evenstarcrafty

elly68 wrote: »

even sell the tickets yourself and take gd and youngest dd out for tea. tell them you are spending time with your own age group

I love that elly made me laugh and thats not easy at the moment

Hales

Hi all,

Just caught up. How is everyone??

Hugs to those that need them

xx

evenstarcrafty

sorry about all the drama
its just easy to come and write cos i dont know what else to do

I dont know if there is hope Jo but i think I will take ellys advice and hang round my own age group which would apparantly be my 10 year old DD and 1 year old DGD and they will be much better company than a couple of selfish teens (ones 21 but still acts like a teen)
and they wont swear and shout abuse at me

I will be seeing councellor tommorow ....she will have her work cut out
I dont get on with any of my family apart from kids
Im not horriblre ...honest

moneymabel

Even hun-I know your not horrible-we all do you are going through a crap time hun and I really feel for you, nothing to say to help but huge hugs for you and hope this all passes soon for you.

Hi hales-fine thanks apart from a puppy with wind problems that likes sleeping on my feet! how are you?

And as shes asleep for 5 minutes I'm going to update my blog!

jo70mo

evenstar its fine to come and rant on here - we all do it. we know you are not horrible. glad you are seeing the counsellor.
Jo x

jo70mo

Hi Hales, thanks for the thanks!!

evenstarcrafty

Just seems like all I ever do is rant
The problem is with me I am to soft and let people walk all over me
Im still upset they wont get to the concert although they were nasty to each other and even worse to me
On the other hand I dont want to bother with them anymore
I have made myself look an idiot walking all bleary eyed and my DD3 is upset and probarbly embarrased
Can you belive it all because I did a nice thing
We must be the most dysfunctional family in britian and that must be my fault cos other people dont have these dramas all the time
this has gone on and off for years

nolongerindenial

Jo,

I agree with everything you say - I have identified my personal weakness's as the marketing of my business and had a plan in place to put that right. The other weakness was quoting the price and closing hte deal. Over the past 15 months of self employment it is the one thing I have tried - and failed miserably is closing the deal. I have read blog after blog about making the deal to good to refuse - and nearly bankrupt myself with the prices I was putting in and the number of hours I have had to put in and lost a couple of very good clients to try and keep the crap ones happy who whinged toooo much and my nature to make them happy and so lost sight of those that paid the bills.

I learned a massive lesson on that one and shed off the rubbish at the end of february.

My current biggest weakness if I am honest is still closing the deal at the price which is corrent for my abilities, rather than trying to undercut every tom !!!!!! and harry. I just dont have the confidence / selling ability to close the deal at these prices