Starting from the bottom but at least I'm starting

[gabeb1920]

I have no experience with starting a business and am just learning my way around now but I've had a couple of good outcomes this week! And although I haven't made a lot of money and don't really have a solid business plan I still feel like I'm making progress!

I earnt my first few dollars online!
I joined UpWork this week and was able to get a small job writing a couple of SEO articles. It was paying $8 for 2 x 700 word articles so it's not Fast Lane by any stretch! But it's a start. I figure I'll be able to use the feedback to leverage some higher paying jobs and go from there. The UpWork jobs will be a bit of extra income for me while I work my 9-5. It is a step towards leaving the rat race because it would allow me to work from home or anywhere for that matter! Plus I'm also learning how to write for my blog or other business projects. And that leads to my second achievement:

I had 1400+ page views on my blog!
I have been writing on and off for the last year or so. This year I have committed to writing more frequently and last week I posted about a software product I use in my 9-5 job. I sent the page out to a email user list and received 5 comments along with the 1400+ page views! It's not a money maker at this point but it is providing value so I feel good about that. I'm obviously going to keep writing about this as it's something people seem to want to hear. I'll probably explain the idea in a bit more detail in a later post to get some feedback.

Basically I'm thinking that writing about this will lead to people seeing my as an expert which may lead to consulting work. There's also the opportunity to write some small tools to add features to the software we use which I may be able to either sell or else provide free but then consult to help get them setup. Lastly I may also be able to do some consulting work doing database reporting. There could be a real opportunity here so I'd like some feedback when I post more details here.

Just wanted to say thank you to all the people posting here for some of the excellent information and motivation, particularly the points about having the mindset of providing value to people.

I'll keep you all posted with how I go

Thanks again.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Lex DeVille]

I have no experience with starting a business and am just learning my way around now but I've had a couple of good outcomes this week! And although I haven't made a lot of money and don't really have a solid business plan I still feel like I'm making progress!

I earnt my first few dollars online!
I joined UpWork this week and was able to get a small job writing a couple of SEO articles. It was paying $8 for 2 x 700 word articles so it's not Fast Lane by any stretch! But it's a start. I figure I'll be able to use the feedback to leverage some higher paying jobs and go from there. The UpWork jobs will be a bit of extra income for me while I work my 9-5. It is a step towards leaving the rat race because it would allow me to work from home or anywhere for that matter! Plus I'm also learning how to write for my blog or other business projects. And that leads to my second achievement:

I had 1400+ page views on my blog!
I have been writing on and off for the last year or so. This year I have committed to writing more frequently and last week I posted about a software product I use in my 9-5 job. I sent the page out to a email user list and received 5 comments along with the 1400+ page views! It's not a money maker at this point but it is providing value so I feel good about that. I'm obviously going to keep writing about this as it's something people seem to want to hear. I'll probably explain the idea in a bit more detail in a later post to get some feedback.

Basically I'm thinking that writing about this will lead to people seeing my as an expert which may lead to consulting work. There's also the opportunity to write some small tools to add features to the software we use which I may be able to either sell or else provide free but then consult to help get them setup. Lastly I may also be able to do some consulting work doing database reporting. There could be a real opportunity here so I'd like some feedback when I post more details here.

Just wanted to say thank you to all the people posting here for some of the excellent information and motivation, particularly the points about having the mindset of providing value to people.

I'll keep you all posted with how I go

Thanks again.

$8 for 2 articles is pretty good starting out. Most freelancers earn $1 to $2 per blog article for around 500 words. From there you can scale once you have good feedback. Add as much proof as you can in your profile and take lots of tests. Add links to your writing on your blog.

How many people are on your mailing list?

If consulting is what you want to do, then couldn't you use your Upwork earnings to start getting paid traffic?

Then you could double up - getting clients from Upwork and beyond.

Once your mailing list is big enough you could even sell an ebook through your site if they like what you have to say.

A lot of ways to earn when you start from scratch.

 

[gabeb1920]

Thanks for the reply @SinisterLex All really good points!

My email list is still very small but growing. Up until this week it was 2 people, my fiancee and myself! I had another 3 register this week out of the 1400 page views but 2 haven't confirmed their emails yet. It's a work in progress that's for sure!

As for the paid advertising the topics are very, very niche. It's for a patient management application specifically for cancer treatments. It's used in a lot of cancer centres in the US as well as Australia, New Zealand and some throughout Asia. It's also just started to be sold in the UK last year. So overall it is a fairly small market and certainly not the sort of thing you could advertise on Facebook. Perhaps LinkedIn or Google for specific keywords? I haven't done this before so I'd need to look into it a bit more.

I also still have mindset issues when I think about doing consulting work. Up until 6 months ago my position was classified and treated very much as a trainee position. I still don't really think of myself as an expert. Though having people email me questions which I'm able to help them with is helping. I feel as though if they know what they want me to do I can go in and work my way through it but if I was required to go in and set things up I'd struggle with that. Just comes from the impostor syndrome kind of thoughts. Any tips on how to work through that? I'm imaging just get out there and provide value until you think of yourself as someone who can solve problems!

Anyway, thanks again for the reply, it's always helpful
Cheers