Are you an entrepreneurial-minded person who wants to pursue a career working for yourself online? Do you have a blog, or have you considered starting a blog? Well, there is no better time than right now to get started. I also want to say, you should be proud of yourself for taking the steps to pursue your dream!
Some of you might be doing this on top of a full time job – perhaps working on weekends or after your regular work hours. That takes a lot of passion and dedication … not to mention good time management skills.
Perhaps you are trying to build a part time business because of other reasons. Maybe you don’t have enough hours in the day to pursue it full time because you’re a stay at home parent, or perhaps you are homeschooling – as so many of us find ourselves doing now!
Either way, it’s impressive to go after what you want – and the good news is, even building a business part time, you should begin to see good results quickly from your efforts, especially when you take the time to plan it out properly.
Which Online Business Models Work Best for Your Blog?
There are so many options to choose from to begin growing your blog. Is one better than another for those who only work on their business part time? Not necessarily. But sometimes it can interfere, depending on the business model and your schedule.
For example, you might not be able to pursue a service-oriented business life ghostwriting or graphics or web design if you never know exactly how much time you’ll have to work on your business.
It’s possible that your life is hectic and you’re pursuing this as a “when I have a few spare moments” goal. That’s perfectly okay, too! You just need to find something that fits your schedule so that you don’t wind up with angry clients and customers because you didn’t meet a deadline.
If you do have set hours and you know that you have exactly 2 hours a day to put into your blog and that you can write 5 pages of content, then you can figure out a delivery schedule for ghostwriting, for example – and you wouldn’t be putting your business reputation at risk.
You also want to allow for physical and mental exhaustion. If you’re already stretched to the gills with work and life and trying to supplement your income with a part time endeavor online, then you might want something where it comes easy to you – not something that you struggle to learn and master.
Building your blog is a great business model because it enables you to work when you can and pull in a variety of profits. For example, your income can be derived on a blog from:
- Banner ad revenue
- AdSense links
- Tangible affiliate reviews
- Digital affiliate reviews
- Your own info product creations (like eBooks)
The great thing about schedules is that blogging allows you to schedule your blog posts ahead of time, so if you have more time on one day, you can queue up a few days’ worth of blog posts and let them automatically go live without you having to log in and publish them.
Coaching may or may not be a good business model for you because it requires you to be available at certain times of the day. If you’re a day worker planning to work on your part time business at night, that may not work for your clients – or it could be perfect timing! It depends on the niche and each individual’s needs.
A membership site can pull in quite a bit of money for you – and it doesn’t require you to be there daily except to make sure things are running smoothly. You can create an entire membership ahead of time that drip feeds to your customers when they sign up. Then you can spend the bulk of your work hours on marketing and promotion.
Things like affiliate marketing and info product development are all easy to pursue as a part time work at home individual. You write when you can – even on your lunch hour at work – and publish whenever something is completed.
How to Find Your Work and Life Balance as a Part Time Entrepreneur
Perhaps the biggest obstacle anyone working from home faces is finding the balance of life and work. You have to eliminate distractions – whether it’s the TV or a family member – and get things done with the few hours you have to invest in your business.
Make sure your loved ones understand what it is you need to do during your work hours. Sometimes family gets confused because they see you home yet you’re saying that you’re working.
Any interruption is a pull on your resources and energy which contribute to your profit plan. But of course, working from home is also a perk. If your whole reason for doing this is so you can enjoy more time with your kids, for example – then by all means, put the keyboard down and hold them when they need you … or you need them!
Be sure that you get plenty of sleep and keep yourself from getting run down. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew and this can leave you exhausted and uninspired to work on your blog or business.
WHICH TASKS ARE BEST COMPLETED IN PART TIME HOURS?
Deciding which tasks to work on in a limited amount of time can make you feel stressed. But it’s easier to manage than you might think. You basically have four branches of focus for your business:
- Creation
- Promotion
- Traffic
- Analysis
You should be creating something in your business. That could be a piece of new content that reviews a product, an eBook, a viral report that you plan to launch with money links in it, etc.
Once created, you’ll be focusing on promoting your online pages. The most successful entrepreneurs are those who don’t stop at task #1 – they’re the ones who really dig into the promotional aspect of their business and build a brand and a buzz for their business.
You can do this with social media marketing (like using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). You can also write press releases, participate in forums, and comment on blogs to help promote your work and your creations.
There’s a difference between promotion and traffic, although some entrepreneurs use the terms interchangeably. Promotion is how you develop a name for yourself. It’s how you engage people and create loyal customers.
Traffic is the mere act of getting your target audience to your site so that they can build that connection with you and convert into paying clients. Traffic can be achieved through your promotions (like when you Tweet a link to your blog), but you can also use different methods.
If you’re building a list of subscribers, you always want to notify them whenever you have something new up. This includes blog posts, reviews, and new products you are offering.
You can also purchase advertising for traffic using things like Pay Per Click ads on Google, or by purchasing solo ads that go out to another marketer’s list of subscribers.
Analysis is something that never ends. Please see my post on important metrics to track for your blog. Some people never tackle this task – and subsequently, their business doesn’t achieve the success that it could if they’d just paid attention to the details.
You need to analyze what you’re doing online and always look for ways to:
- Improve your products
- Increase your traffic
- Heighten your conversion rate
For example, if you have sales copy for one of your own info products, you want to be split testing regularly to see how one element performs against another one. This means you’ll have two identical copies of the same sales letter – with just one item slightly different so you can see which one performs better.
It might be something as simple as the color of your text, or a headline change. Maybe the font, or an image you’re using is what you find makes the difference. Everything should be tested and tracked over time. This will help you so much with fine tuning your work and gaining clarity for your next steps. It will also help you to create a personal formula that you can replicate over and over again, which ultimately makes your work easier to complete over time.
HOW OUTSOURCING CAN HELP YOU GET AHEAD
As a part time entrepreneur, you need to make the most of all of your resources – including both time and money. What you currently lack compared to other fulltime entrepreneurs is time.
You may even be short on money right now, but as you see earnings coming in, put aside some of those profits to reinvest in your business using freelance workers who can help your profits grow in a shorter period of time.
For example, let’s say you took the time to create your own info product. It’s stellar and you think it will be a big hit on a minisite or on Kindle – wherever you decide to launch it.
Problem is, you need an eCover for that info product and you aren’t good at graphics. You have two choices. You can download a tool and spend time learning how to use it and create your own eCover (which may not be your strength), or you can outsource it to a pro.
What should you outsource? There are several ways to decide this:
- Things you dislike doing
- Things you aren’t good at
- Things someone is better at
This career is supposed to be enjoyable to you – so if you hate writing, by all means, outsource it to someone else. If you aren’t qualified to create graphics, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by doing it yourself and creating a poor visual for your product.
Even outsourcing things you enjoy and that you can do yourself is sometimes a smart move – if someone else can do it better. Like sales copy – if someone else converts at 35% and the most you can do is 7%, then it makes sense to hand that task over to another, more qualified professional.
TOOLS AND TIPS THAT MAKE YOUR PART TIME EFFORTS EASIER
As someone who has fewer hours to work on your business, you need tools and ideas that help you take considerable shortcuts in your business. Consider investing in tools like keyword research tools that help you pick out profitable words and phrases you can hone in on without doing much guesswork with a freebie tool.
Use quality products right away, like top hosting (I started with Studiopress and have never left them, if that holds any weight for you as a recommendation) and email autoresponders. It isn’t ideal to have to migrate everything from a free option to a good paid version later, but there are plenty of options that offer free trials. This is always a great way to go, as it gives you the opportunity to test drive a tool before jumping in to any commitments.
Part time entrepreneurs often perform better than full time marketers do – for the simple fact that they are aware of how limited their time is. This can help with having a laser-focused approach to completing their tasks whenever they get the opportunity! So keep on keeping on, and know that it is all possible.
Be sure to test your form once you have completed it to your liking. Remember to be creative, and have fun!
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