Pep Talks For Side Hustlers

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Owning a website is kinda like dying your hair… once you bleach it blonde (okay, orange) with a bottle of peroxide and a hair dryer in seventh grade, you have to keep up with it! That means begging your mom to buy Sun-In for you when your roots start to grow out. And many years later when you finally make enough money to go to a real hairstylist? Yep, non-negotiable quarterly trips to get highlights. No, those aren’t gray hairs, those are highlights!!! Your website requires the same kind of tender loving care! There are a few non-negotiable things you need to do to your website to keep it in tip-top shape and prevent malware infections and other nastiness from ruining your hard work or making your life difficult. 1) MONITORING YOUR SECURITY PLUGIN I recommend WordFence i

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Expenses Breakdown Tools: AccessAlly (Membership plugin for all of my courses) – $79.00 Acuity Scheduling (Done For You Consultations) – $10.00 Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, etc.) $64.48 Auphonic (audio optimization for podcast) – $11.00 Bluehost – $79.76 Dropbox (File Storage) – $19.99 FreeConferenceCall.com (Coaching & Client Calls) – $3.00 GDPR Compliance Plugins – $76.61 GSuite (wp-bff.com Email) – $10.76 HauteStock (Stock Photography) – $99.00 Infusionsoft (email marketing, automation, e-commerce & customer management) – $341.45 LibSyn (Podcast Hosting) – $8.00 ManageWP (WordPress Site Management for Clients & WordPress Protection Package) – $102.77 Popup Ally Annual License Renewal (List building plugin) – $99.00 Soundup (Alexa Flash Briefing Hosting

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Welcome to my May Income Report! Each month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my #SideHustleGoneSerious and show you exactly how much I make, how much I spend and lessons learned along the way! Important Things That Happened in May I completely changed my work schedule around. I began time-blocking my schedule. I wrote my second income report that reviewed February. I began estimating (and then doubling) the time on every single task before it was added to my schedule. I had several client projects that I needed to close out and complete in early May. I booked zero new clients in May. I held webinars promoting Serious Side Hustlers, Websites That Make Money, and the Web Designer Academy resulting in no new sales. Every single weekend we either h

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! An industrial designer & artist by trade, Matt turned everything upside down in 2011 to launch a tech company in Sydney, Australia. Bonjoro was born from a customer success hack for his first startup, where Matt and the team would send every new signup a personal welcome video, and it has snowballed over the last 18 months. His love of building great products is only surpassed by that of building strong business cultures, and he believes culture has been the core driver of Bonjoro’s rapid growth since it launched in 2017.  With a vision to help every business be more customer-centric and scale real human relationships, Bonjoro is just the start of Matt’s journey. In our conversation, we discuss Why it’s so important to build relationships and what can happen if you

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! An industrial designer & artist by trade, Matt turned everything upside down in 2011 to launch a tech company in Sydney, Australia. Bonjoro was born from a customer success hack for his first startup, where Matt and the team would send every new signup a personal welcome video, and it has snowballed over the last 18 months. His love of building great products is only surpassed by that of building strong business cultures, and he believes culture has been the core driver of Bonjoro’s rapid growth since it launched in 2017.  With a vision to help every business be more customer-centric and scale real human relationships, Bonjoro is just the start of Matt’s journey. In our conversation, we discuss How Bonjoro started as a secret side hustle alongside Matt’s original bu

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! 1. UPDATE YOUR COPYRIGHT DATE IN THE FOOTER OF YOUR WEBSITE. This may be in appearance > customize > footer (this is the way we set up our footers in the free 5 Day Website Challenge) or it may be under appearance > widgets, depending on how you set up your site. 2. REVIEW YOUR ANALYTICS AND NOTE YOUR CONVERSIONS, AND SET UP A GOAL IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE ALREADY. If your analytics show that you need to build your email list, check out my favorite 30 day list building challenge here! 3. NOTE YOUR METRICS. How much traffic are you getting to your website? How many unique visitors are you getting? How long are they staying on your page? Note your metrics so that you can compare them later and see if you’re actually getting traction. 4. UPDATE, SEO OPTIMIZE, AND SOCIAL OPTIMI

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Hey, BFFs!! I’ve been struggling with inaction lately. Oh, it looks like I’m doing a lot, and my days are full, don’t get me wrong, but there are a few things that I know will take me to the next level that I’m just not doing. Pitching myself as a guest to podcasts. Pitching guest posts. Starting my YouTube Channel. Finish writing my book. Starting my podcast. I have a goal to build my email list to 10,000 subscribers, and these are all things that are going to get me there, yet there they sit, on my to-do list without being scheduled and prioritized over all the other things. WHY DO WE HOLD OURSELVES BACK FROM DOING THINGS THAT WE KNOW WILL GET US WHAT WE WANT? The same pattern shows up in other areas of my life. I have a great week of a daily exercise practice, eating

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! HOW TO CHOOSE BETWEEN SELF-HOSTED AND FREE BLOGGING PLATFORMS I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at the Thrive Creative Conference for Bloggers last week in Austin, Texas all about how bloggers can grow their influence and how to monetize their blogs. After my talk on search engine optimization, I had quite a few bloggers come up to me and ask me a variation of this question: I’m on Blogger/SquareSpace/Wix/Weebly/WordPress.com – do I need to move to self-hosted WordPress? I’m so confused… What is self-hosted WordPress? It sounds expensive and intimidating. I really just want to blog, I don’t want to be a web developer. I hear this question a lot, so in this blog post I’m going to break it all down for you and then tell you who I think should be on self-hosted WordP

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Expenses Breakdown Tools:AccessAlly (Membership plugin for all of my courses) – $79.00 Acuity Scheduling (Done For You Consultations) – $10.00 Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, etc.) $64.48 Auphonic (audio optimization for podcast) – $11.00 Canva for Work Annual Subscription – $119.40 Dropbox (File Storage) – $19.99 Elegant Themes Marketplace – $7.00 GoDaddy (Domain Names) – $40.17 FreeConferenceCall.com (Coaching & Client Calls) – $3.00 Gravity Forms Developer License Renewal – $97 GSuite (wp-bff.com Email) – $10.76 Infusionsoft (email marketing, automation, e-commerce & customer management) – $321.44 ManageWP (WordPress Site Management for Clients & WordPress Protection Package) – $94.78 Social Warfare Pro License – $29.00 Soundup (Alexa Flash Briefing Hosti

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Welcome to my April Income Report! Each month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my #SideHustleGoneSerious and show you exactly how much I make, how much I spend and lessons learned along the way! Important Things That Happened in April I had 9 active, concurrent client projects occurring in April. We had our first camping trip of the year. I drove the camper home for the first time since we bought it 6 years ago and did a pretty good job – I didn’t take out any mailboxes, hit any curbs, and kept up speed on the freeway. Annual Income taxes for 2017 are due here in the US, plus quarterly estimated taxes for 2018. GDPR started to creep closer, and my community started to ask me how to technically implement GDPR on my website. I worked 80-hour wor

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Laura Zaccagnini is the owner of IWMLBproject which stands for I Want My Life Back. After burning out in a corporate job, Laura decided that life was too short to be missing precious time with loved ones and decided to start her own business. IWMLBproject helps corporate women in their 30s make the leap from a job that doesn’t fulfill them anymore, into a life they love. When not typing furiously into her laptop, Laura can be found reading Scandi crime novels and eating peanut butter. I discovered Laura Zacaggnini from the I Want My Life Back Project on Pinterest and I immediately felt like she was a kindred spirit. And I was totally right!! We’re the exact same age, we had similar day jobs, and we quit our day jobs for the same reason! In this episode we’ll talk about:

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Laura Zaccagnini is the owner of IWMLBproject which stands for I Want My Life Back. After burning out in a corporate job, Laura decided that life was too short to be missing precious time with loved ones and decided to start her own business. IWMLBproject helps corporate women in their 30s make the leap from a job that doesn’t fulfill them anymore, into a life they love. When not typing furiously into her laptop, Laura can be found reading Scandi crime novels and eating peanut butter. I discovered Laura Zacaggnini from the I Want My Life Back Project on Pinterest and I immediately felt like she was a kindred spirit. And I was totally right!! We’re the exact same age, we had similar day jobs, and we quit our day jobs for the same reason! In this episode we’ll talk about:

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! In Episode 83, I shared with you that I got out of my comfort zone of introverted aloneness to attend a conference, and in this episode I want to dive a little deeper into what it can look like to get out of your comfort zone not only in your business but also personally and how those things can blend together to work to your advantage. 5. CONNECT WITH YOUR PEOPLE THROUGH STORIES It’s not enough to just give away information, you have to share who YOU are. That’s the only thing that’s going to set you apart from the other blogger that blogs about the same things you blog about. Your experiences will connect you with others who have had similar experiences. Jenna Kutcher does this by sharing body-positive photos of herself and talking about mac and cheese and her dogs. Am

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! GUYS, I GOTTA BE HONEST… Going places by myself where I have to talk to strangers is like my least favorite thing to do. I remember as a kid and even into my early twenties, I got bad anxiety if I had to call someone or answer the phone and talk to someone I didn’t know. Like, I wouldn’t even call to order a pizza. But then when I’m around people I know, or I’m talking to strangers online (you guys don’t feel like strangers to me, but technically, you are), I’m totally at ease and no conversation is off limits. IT’S LIKE I’M TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE SOMETIMES… CAN YOU RELATE?? Back in late February, I attending Social Media Marketing World with over 4000 other people to learn about how to use social media to grow our businesses. Instead of doing what I always do at conferenc

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! So let’s talk about what this could look like in action. One way you could implement seasons in your business is to break them down into quarters. So I used to think of quarters in the traditional sense like the IRS thinks of them: January to March April to June July to September October to December But then I downloaded a content calendar template from Planoly – which is an Instagram planning and posting tool – and it broke the quarters down completely differently. It started in February, which I thought was totally genius because when you think about it, it puts the holiday season into a single quarter. So this looks like: February to April May to July August to October November to January And where you put your season of Creation, Traffic, Sales, and Evaluation into e

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! So, just prior to my season of traffic, I was in the season of creation. I had spent about a month updating my 5-Day Website Challenge, which is a series of free training videos that show people how to build their own website. When I first recorded it, I did 5, 1 to 1.5 hour long courses, but this time, I wanted to break it up into shorter modules, so now it’s nearly 60 super short videos dripped out over 5 days. I’m super proud of it, and you can go check it out and sign up at www.wp-bff.com. But when creating something like this, it doesn’t matter whether you have 60 5-minute-long videos, you just created 12 times the work. So instead of 5 videos and 5 graphics and 5 modules and 5 sets of instructions and 5 progress checklists, I have 60 of each. So I needed to be in a

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! If you’re anything like me, you’re trying to do all the things all at the same time. I’m a do-er, an action taker and I like to dig in and GET STUFF DONE. And I also have a tendency to get frustrated when things don’t happen as quickly as I want them to…and then I decide it’s not working and I move onto the next thing. But what I’m not doing is giving things enough TIME to play out. I’m not watering the seeds that I’ve planted, and I’m doing all the things all the time and not giving any one thing my full, undivided attention. I’m in a Facebook group for customers of Nathalie Lussier’s software and programs – and I happened to catch Nathalie doing a quarterly live training. And the first thing she asked us is what our theme for this quarter is. She said her theme was TRA

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! EXPENSES BREAKDOWN Tools:AccessAlly (Membership plugin for all of my courses) – $79.00 Acuity Scheduling (Done For You Consultations) – $10.00 Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, etc.) $64.48 Bluehost  (Web Hosting) – $59.40 Dropbox (File Storage) – $19.99 FreeConferenceCall.com (Coaching & Client Calls) – $3.00 GoDaddy (Domain Names) – $36.51 GSuite (wp-bff.com Email) – $10.76 Infusionsoft (email marketing, automation, e-commerce & customer management) – $353.80 ManageWP (WordPress Site Management for Clients & WordPress Protection Package) – $90.77 Soundup (Alexa Flash Briefing Hosting- $9.99 Templates, Graphics, Fonts, Etc. – $54.81 Vimeo Pro Video Hosting – $199.99 Zapier – $15.00 Misc Plugins – $8.00 Marketing:Bonjoro (Video Welcome Service) – $25.00 LinkTr

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Welcome to my March Income Report! Each month I publish an income report to take you behind the scenes of my #SideHustleGoneSerious and show you exactly how much I make, how much I spend, and what lessons I learned along the way! IMPORTANT THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN MARCH Social Media Marketing World I kicked off March with a trip to San Diego for Social Media Marketing World – an amazing trip that really pulled me out of my comfort zone. I highly recommend this conference to anyone who seriously wants to make a living from their online business. You can read more about my experience at Social Media Marketing World here. Pep Talks for Side Hustlers Podcast While I was at the hotel, I took a deep dive into Pat Flynn’s Power Up Podcasting Course, which I had actually purchas

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! In part two of my interview with Jenny Blaisdell of Confetti Social and host of The Savvy Social Hour Podcast, we talk about her side hustle within her business – which is doing customer support for email marketing software ConvertKit! Jenny is a social media strategist + coach at Confetti Social who helps female entrepreneurs up-level their biz one social media post at a time. She also hosts the Savvy Social Hour, which strives to help passionate women up-level their businesses and become rockstar entrepreneurs in no time. When she’s not working on her business or recording podcast episodes, she’s hanging out with her hubby and goldendoodle pup. We talk about what she’s learned from working with a top-notch company with an awesome corporate culture that’s helping her b