martharichardson.com

Archive for the ‘My Education’ Category

Don’t know about you but I have trouble asking for help especially since I took over this business with there being so much to learn and know to be successful.  I don’t want people to think I’m dumb and for the most part I’m still not sure what sort of help to ask for so I’ve just been doing what I can.  But that hasn’t been working out very well for me so far to bring in more income.  It has been mostly a hit and miss thing and that isn’t good at all.

I do get some input, suggestions from other IM’ers, which is great and truly appreciated but I just don’t know how to keep it going.  Or which skill is important for me to be working on right now, sometimes I think I’m trying to do too many things at one time, other times I don’t seem to do enough.

I’m still having trouble engaging my subscribers, even when I send them a “free gift” not many take it or I get a lot of unsubscribed.  I’m feeling more desperate now than when Barry first died.   It has been over a year and I should be much better at this or at least my understanding should be better but I don’t feel it is.  I’ve had people tell me I’ve come a long way since March 2009 and yes I have in some respects but not in others.  Some days I just stare at my computer not knowing where or what to do, I’m sure some of you felt the same way when you first started, at least I hope this feeling isn’t just mine.

I’m not looking to make millions although that would be nice but I just want to be able to pay my bills and have some left over instead of struggling to pay my bills.  I’m not mad at Barry for dying so suddenly anymore but I am still a bit disappointed that he didn’t make sure I knew what I needed to to continuing running our business.

These last few weeks business wise has been more frustrating than right after Barry died.  I’m learning more things such as Squidoo and I’ve been listening to some webinars.  Maybe I’m trying to do too many “new” things at the same time because I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed today.  I’m also feeling the pressure to bring in more money to help cover some expenses. 

I think this push to make more money is affecting my relationship with my subscribers, which is never good.  This week I needed to stop another one of the memberships that Barry had started because of declining membership and with the domain coming up for renewal, I couldn’t see the point in renewing it again with only a few members.

I feel like I’m slowly ruining the business Barry worked very hard to build up and I can only blame him for not showing me what I need to know only so long.  It has been over a year since he left me suddenly and now it is up to me to keep this business going and find a way to make it thrive again.  I’m sure part of it is that I’m not really passionate about IM’ing and if I could find some niche that I’m interested in that would help a great deal.  But right now I just don’t know what to try or look into. 

I know it really hasn’t been long since I’ve had to take over but in some ways it has been and I don’t think I’m doing any better than I did right after he died.  I  can feel a depression coming on which isn’t good because then I don’t usually want to do anything.  Maybe I just need to take a couple of days away from this to relax and maybe think of something else I can do online to bring in some money.  Any suggestions would be great if any of my readers have any.

Death seems to be what I know a lot about right now but I don’t want that to be my niche, even though I did make my first Lens about death and I’m still adding to it as things come to me about how things were right after Barry died.  I like sports, music and reading crime/mystery books but is that something that can bring in some income?  I don’t know since I haven’t looked into it.  It would be great if those things could and I guess I should look into those topics to see what is out there. 

I did an Adswap the other day and I think it did ok.  I couple of days later I sent my new subscribers a “thanks for joining” email and gave them another freebie and 1.56 of them complained!  I just don’t understand that since I wasn’t selling them anything but just welcoming them again and thanking them for signing up to be on my list.

It has been months since I’ve had a cigarette but every once in awhile I think about having one, not that I would but I’m sure that craving will come up from time to time, especially when I’m stressing.

I recently read an ebook on Squidoo Lens and signed up for a free account and started working on my first Lens.  Of course the subject I choose was Marketing after the death of your  spouse, since that is what I know right now.  It is still a work in progress and it is another important skill that I believe Marketer’s need to have since the more way you can get traffic to your website and/or your name out there the better.

Here is the link to my Lens, leave me a suggestion or comment please.

http://www.squidoo.com/MarketingAfterDeath

Well I made to California yesterday.  Wyoming was an experience as I was going from Laramie to Rawlins, through some mountains and storm was brewing.  As I was coming down the it started to rain and there is no place to turn off or stop.  We I finally got down the rain got really bad but finally passed and was clear for a little while but as I got closer to Rawlins it started to rain again and was getting close to evening so I pulled off for the night.

The next morning I left at 7am, crossed the Continetal Divide and drove roughly 12 hours until I finally reach Reno where my boyfriend was working a baseball game.  There are a lot of mountains between Missouri and Nevada and I’m not crazy about mountain driving but the U-Haul handled very well and I eventually got use to driving next to semis and passing them when necessary.  It took me 3 days to finally get to Reno and I’m glad that drive is over.

Now I will need to settle in and start my new routine here in California and continue to grow in my knowledge of being an IM’er.

Well I wasn’t able to leave on the 8th as I had planned,  there was complications thanks to my son being difficult.  So I left Columbia, MO around 1:30pm on the 9th and made it to Lincoln, Nebraska that night around 9pm.  The I-29 interchange to I-80 in Nebraska was just nuts but I got through it. 

This morning I left Lincoln around 8am got through the rest of Nebraska and into Wyoming today.  But the weather in Wyoming was not very cooperative today.  I went through Medicine Bow National Park  and in the distance I could see the clouds were getting darker and not very friendly looking but after you pass Laramie, WY there is nothing around until Rawlings so there was no choice but to keep going.  It had started to rain as I was coming down out of Medicine Bow National Park and when I got down it really got bad.  The radio kept giving out National Services Advisory which was Sever Thunder Storms Warnings and Tornado Watch and I’m thinking great I spent 10 years in Missouri without seeing a tornado and now I will probably see on in Wyoming out in the middle of nowhere lol.  But at least I didn’t see one of those today but the storm was bad enough, I could barely see the tail lights of the car in front of me.

After that storm passed and I was able to pick up speed again I could make up some time as I wanted to get as close to Utah as possible but Mother Nature had other plans as the closer I got to Rawlings, WY another storm was brewing and it was after 6pm and I thought this is a good place to stop for the night.  So tomorrow I will have a lot of driving to do as I really need to get to Reno tomorrow.

Son found a new place to live so he will start moving out on Tues.

I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve got the uhaul truck to day and will finish loading it up tomorrow morning.  I meet with the middleman at 2pm to go through the house and if every looks good I give him the keys and he gives me the money agreed upon for me clearing out in 21 days.  Then I will be heading on my journey to meet my boyfriend in Reno. 

I will be going through Nebraska, Wyoming, down through Utah then Nevada.  I’m hoping to get at least through Nebraska tomorrow before I stop for the night.  I will post again tomorrow night to let you all know where I”m at in my journey.

I finally got some info from the “middle man” that the person who bought my house is using about when I need to be out.  They offered me something called “Keys for Cash” program and I had until last Friday to decide if I want to do that.  I decided I did so I called the “middle man” on Wednesday and he brought the paperwork by on Friday for me to sign.  This is so that I won’t have the Sheriff come by and serve me a eviction notice.  So I need to be out on or before June 9th and it is good to have a date to be working towards.  I’m trying to keep things at the least amount of stress as possible as I need to move so there is no point in dragging this out any longer than necessary.

My messy house is driving me nuts but I’m using one of the spare bedrooms to put the boxes of things I’m keeping in which helps keep the living room not so crowded.  I’ve almost have all of the downstairs cleared out and just about everything that I’m selling is upstairs.  I’ve sold a lot by contacting friends, posting things online in a local yahoo group for selling items and I’ve put some things in the the local paper’s classified section.  I finally found  new homes for my Beagle’s, which was hard but for the best as I don’t want to travel with dogs and in California I will be living in an apartment.  There is a really good chance that I will be driving to California alone which is a bit scary but mapquest says it is roughly 27 hours and I only need to drive alone to Reno as my boyfriend will be working there that weekend, then we will drive on to California. 

One thing that I have learned in my life is that life is never boring and you never really know what will happen both for the good and the bad.  When I moved to Missouri I was pretty sure I would never go back to California to live but 11 years after I left, I’m going back.  There are things I really like about Missouri such as the snow and the storms though not the tornadoesthat sometimes come with them.  Missouri is really a beautiful state with its rolling hills which are always green in Spring and Summer.  But my youngest son, who right now lives with me, has decided to stay in Missouri so I will be back hopefully from time to time to see him.

Well I found out last week that my house was foreclosed on and since then things have been a little crazy.  My son has decided to stay in Missouri so he is looking for a place to live.  As for me, I’m moving back to California to be with my new love in my life.  We have been talking about moving in together but this just pushed things up sooner than we had planned.  I never really thought I would be living in California again as that is where  I was living when I met Barry but it is what it is.

So last week and this week I’ve been selling whatever I can and what I have left I will put in storage here in Missouri and then come back later to pick them up.  It will be less stressful as we will be able to plan it a little better to work it around his job.

I still haven’t figured out why the comments do not work on my blog so if you want to comment, email me at martha[at]easytoolbox.com and I will try and reply back.  I will still be continuing the business as I can do this from anywhere.

First Happy Easter!  I know I haven’t posted in some time, it is something that I need to get better at. 

So where are things now that a year has past since Barry’s sudden death?  Well the business no longer scares me and I’m actually making some money, which is always good.  I am still working on cultivating a relationship with my subscribers and I think I’m getting better at it from some of the comments I have recieved from some of them. 

My Skype friends are always looking out for me and they always give me a head’s up on new things that are going on just in case I’ve missed something and I really appreciate that.  One of them yesterday as we were talking and Bruno is a subscriber of mine so I asked him how I could make my emails better and he gave me a very good tip about added some tips or tricks to my emails, which is something that I’ve thought of doing for some time but wasn’t sure where to get those tips and tricks from, he suggested I take snippets from PLR ebooks that I have and include them in emails.

On a personal note, my life outside of business is also doing better.  I have my last bankruptcy hearing coming up on April 16th and then I will be done with that.  I’ve almost got all the past taxes filed that Barry never did so that is good and this year’s taxes will be filed on time.

I have a new love in my life, in fact we’ve known each other for about 6 years and he is my best friend, even when I was married, he was the one I talked to about things going on.  As much as Barry and I loved each other it really wasn’t a good marriage and we had some rough times and towards the end we were basically just living in the same place which was sad that things got that bad.  But Barry’s main concern or interest was always working and I had a hard time getting him to talk to me or spend time with me without him being on the computer.

My friend came out to Missouri in March for 4 days and the visit went very well, it was very comfortable especially since it was the first time we had met in person.  Then towards the end of March I went out there for a week and it was better than when he came out here.  Of course I took my laptop and worked while he was at work.  We are planning our next visit with me going out there again since I can work from anywhere.