2015 Recap: Doubled Subscriber Base and Plans for 2016

2015 was an interesting year for me. After living in New Jersey for over a decade, I decided to sell my home and move to Florida.

Moving was somewhat disruptive to my work flow, but I felt that it was time for change and to experience something new.

The thing I probably struggled with most last year was productivity. It took a little time to get back into the flow and I’ve realized that running multiple businesses has been a distraction so I’ve decided to get more focused this year.

In this article, I recap 2015 and discuss some of the plans I have going forward.

Blogging

When I started the blog, I envisioned it as a resource for people that were interested in starting their own business or for people who needed help growing their businesses.

I also use this blog to test out digital and content marketing techniques and share some of my results.

I started doing more digital marketing content because that is one area that I focus on and also because marketing is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. Such content has also done well on social media and with the search engines.

However, having surveyed my audience, I found that some people actually do want more articles related to business. I’ve also found that my readers have a wide range of different businesses or business ideas.

So I’m hoping that I can increase content production overall and include some more articles on business, mindsets and other things while still providing top quality digital marketing articles.

I’m working on forming a content creation and promotion strategy for the business articles, which will be different from the digital marketing content I’ve been creating.

I’ve also realized that I should put more thought into monetizing this blog so that I can justify spending more time on it. I was thinking that offering business coaching might be a possibility.

At the beginning of the year, I decided to shift my focus from metrics like traffic and social sharing and focus a little more on growing my email list.

As a result, I’ve doubled my email list size in 2015. As I am on a paid plan with Mailchimp, I know that if I continue to grow my blog that the costs of blogging will also increase.

Although the costs aren’t massive, as a business person, I prefer that if I invest money into a project that it provides a positive return.

I’ve used guest blogging and outreach to grow my audience, but I’ve realized that I haven’t guest posted as much as I should have or even created that much content on my blog.

With about one post a month on my blog and maybe a dozen guest posts, it comes out to less than 30 articles total. That’s not a lot and I’m hoping I scale it up more in 2016.

Overall, people seem to like the blog and I’ve enjoyed watching it continue to grow even at times when I became inactive.

E-commerce

I’ve mostly put my e-commerce business growth on hold, although I have some ideas in the back of my mind that I really want to try.

The temptation to re-focus on e-commerce is high but I know that if I get back into it, I won’t have much time to blog or try other things. I’ve seen a few other bloggers get into e-commerce and then quit blogging.

However, I have maintained the Pinterest account for my baby shower site and am getting close to 10,000 followers. My year end Pinterest summary says that 1.7 million people saw my pins in 2015.

There are a few reasons I decided not to re-focus on e-commerce right now.

1. The biggest difference between online marketing then versus now is that before you could just exchange links and get SEO traffic. Now, most SEO’s take the content marketing approach which involves creating high quality content first and then getting links to those articles. Unfortunately, I don’t have much interest in becoming a baby shower expert at this time.

2. If I got back into e-commerce, I wouldn’t have time to continue exploring blogging, coaching and consulting. I decided it was time to try to pursue something that aligns more closely with what I want to do. E-commerce takes a lot of time and there’s always more you can do to grow an e-commerce business, including product creation and affiliate marketing.

3. The niche I am in is small and although I believe it can hit 7-figures, with the same amount of work, I could do better in a larger niche. The order size for wedding favors, for example, is 2-3 times greater and the search volume is much larger too. In other words, if I were to put the hard work into promoting an e-commerce business, it would make sense to pick a larger niche with 8-figure sales potential.

In the future, I have plans to expand into content marketing for the site as well as product creation. But for now, I’ve chosen to focus mostly on consulting.

Freelancing / Consulting

I decided to dabble in freelancing a few years ago as a way to diversify my income away from SEO and other digital marketing tactics. The good news is that there are tons of people that need new websites, graphic design or content on a daily basis.

At one point, I decided to hire someone to bid aggressively on projects on Elance and ended up securing around $10,000 in projects in one month.

Google and social media channels can change their algorithms in an instant, so I feel like freelancing is a good fallback just in case. I do believe that if you are nimble, that you can keep up with the changes, but it’s always good to have a backup plan.

Having a blog definitely helps me differentiate myself from other competing contractors and get better clients. Most web developers don’t have a blog or experience in generating traffic and social media activity to a website.

And interestingly enough, many people who need websites aren’t too experienced in marketing either. I’ve realized that the knowledge I possess is extremely valuable and could be helpful to others.

So I feel that I’m at a point where I am ready to move from web design to more marketing focused work. My goal is to find a client that I can work with longer term to really grow their business and possibly a few other clients I can consult with short term to work on marketing strategy.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a few marketing managers and even some thought leaders in the marketing niche and it seems that many businesses are struggling with finding content marketing talent.

Learning is always an important part of entrepreneurship and in 2015, I focused heavily on learning about sales. I hope to share more about my experiences in 2016.

Other Things

I also experimented with creating course and product launches, including some courses on Udemy. I may continue to experiment with information products in 2016.

My freelancing course on Udemy is the best selling course so far of the ones I created although it only covers Elance. I may expand it some more to include other tactics like networking and public speaking or create a higher end product because I think it would be useful for a lot of people.

Although I didn’t get as many students as I hoped, the people who did take the courses reviewed them positively. So at some point, I plan on re-working the selling approach and also expanding the content inside the courses.

Goals for 2016

The tricky thing about blogging is that it takes up a lot more time than I originally anticipated when I started a few years ago. I spend a lot more time on the content and also on promoting it.

However, blogging does have a lot of benefits. I’ve been able to connect with some other well known bloggers and other people that I wouldn’t have been able to connect with as easily before. It also gives me credibility when selling creative services to clients.

As far as business goes, I’m planning on focusing on moving from freelancing to content marketing and consulting as my top priority. I also want to expand into public speaking.

I might test selling relevant products and services to my blog audience, but alternatively, I might continue to monetize indirectly by using the blog as credibility when selling marketing or creative services to others.

Looking forward to a new year and I’d like to wish everyone a prosperous 2016.