Tweaking your business plan

I've encouraged you over the last few months to have a way to see how successful you are in your goal to market your writing.

I've told you to use google analytics to track the amount of traffic on websites and blogs. That way you can see trends as well as learn how people are finding you.

I've also told you to use search engines to see where you are appearing and if you're being picked up by other blogs.

Today I want to talk a little bit about what to do if you're not getting the results you'd like to get. What then?

That is a sign you need to tweak your plan.

I would never advocate jumping from one thing to the other constantly however I would suggest that you not sit with a failing idea too long. It shouldn't take more than a few weeks if you're doing something on the internet to determine if something is working or not.

I've had to make a number of adjustments throughout my time. At one point I decided each morning I'd spend two hours reading blogs and posting comments as appropriate. That way I was interacting with others and learning in the process. What I learned is that when I try to spend two hours on something like that...I won't get many blogs read. I followed links and meandered around so much that I never hit all the blogs I wanted to in a week. Therefore, I began subscribing to the blogs that interested me. Then I'm able to visit those that I don't want to miss.

I also had to stop bidding new jobs for content editing. I was extremely excited to see my reputation was starting to take off and I ran the risk of over committing myself. Then you end up breaking promises to people which is not good for you or them. As you become more successful you cannot always make every person's project your "Top Priority". Then you get nothing done [except feeling guilty].

You also need to recognize when it's time to have others work parts of your business or switch around who is helping with your business. Always be sure you have the right person helping you with the right part of the project. It may seem expensive to have someone build your website for $40+per hour but if you spend 100 hours doing it yourself [during which time you lost 15 hours of work at $15/hour] having a web designer do it for you may be MUCH smarter.

The danger in being a do-it-yourself type [like I am] is we get so obsessed with doing things ourself that we do 2nd rate work that takes 4x the time to get done.

So what part of your writing business could be passed on to someone else right now? What part of your marketing plan is outdated? Is your business being run as efficiently as it could be?

Ask yourself these questions...and tweak accordingly.