Saturday, May 9, 2020
“Wow!” said Annie finishing her list and taking a long sip of her Cosmo. (Remind me and I will blog about my best Cosmo recipe). “I didn’t know that would be so refreshing!”
“The Cosmo or Seed Two?” I asked.
“Oh, most certainly both,” said Annie.
We’d just finished working through Seed Two. Annie had constructed her dream board, made a list of her childhood dreams, desires and wishes. And we’d distilled every thought and feeling evoked by these exercises into an impressive list of things that, well, made Annie feel happy.
And I was happy as well. In addition to reaching into Annie’s heart and distilling her happy list, we’d run the numbers on her Etsy business and we’d found some good and bad news.
The bad news? She was losing $8.00 for every necklace she sold (which so far had been none – and I’m not kidding here, this was the real result), so it was time to scrap her original business plan.
The good news? Her happy list had a number of words I suspected might be dynamite for an online business.
“So, what now?” asked Annie. “How do I make money from my happy list?”
“Oh, there are so many ways,” I said. “I don’t want to get ultra scientific on you, but by 2017, web traffic is anticipated to grow nearly 60%. So in my opinion, it’s best to look for gold on the net. Besides, opening a brick and mortar business can be prohibitively expensive.”
“Yeah, sure. . .that makes sense,” said Annie, looking a bit doubtful while taking another large sip of her Cosmo. “But the internet sounds hard – building websites, finding customers, Google Keywords, SEO.
“We’ll get to all those things and, well, a lot more . . . “
Annie shot me a glance that made me wonder if I had lobsters coming out of my ears.
“Seriously, Annie, building an online business is easier than you might think,” I said glancing down at Annie’s happy list. “We just have to take them step-by-step and grow it from the seeds up.”
Image “We’re going to brainstorm some niches,” I said, “Once we have things pared down, we’ll see how your choices work on the net. This is where our heart begins to meet our mind. So for now, we’re looking for these things:
Narrow down your happy list to things you really love and a niche you could be passionate about day-in and day-out for a year. (Annie could design jewelry all day, every day, but making the same piece day in and day out would kill her spirit, so we looked for things she can build a website around and live a life she loves).
Make a list of three problems you’d like to solve and three things you are really afraid of.
We’ll then take that list and use Market Samurai (free trial) and Google keyword search to analyze the niches, perform a preliminary keyword search, look at the competition and focus on one or two niches that might be profitable.
“OK,” said Annie. “Just show me step-by-step. I know I can do this.”
This week, we’ll hear from two women entrepreneurs who will tell us how they decided to start their own business and how they chose their niche. Then we’ll explore keyword searches, the market, excise Annie’s mental demons and continue to work on the perfect batch of Cosmos.