3 Steps for Increasing WAHM Success

Have a Plan
Diving in can be tempting, but you can find yourself overwhelmed and frustrated pretty quick. The Internet is huge, and you’re not trying to take over the whole thing, but the part where people who want your services will be.

Research is key to a great plan. Who are you selling goods and services to? Where do they hang out online? How can you interact with them without being perceived as someone to be avoided because all you do is sell? Jot down some ideas for how you can become part of the group you want to sell to, without being too sales-oriented and becoming ignored (or worse, blocked) from the forum or social networking site.

Work Your Plan
Once you have a plan, put it into step-by-step format. You cannot do everything on your business or marketing plan in one day, and if you try you will find frustration and perhaps even tears when you try and do everything all at once while balancing that with feeding and changing and teaching your kids. You can only do as much as you can do, knowing that is crucial, because then you can have realistic goals like taking care of three items on your plan a day. That way you will feel accomplished at the end of the day instead of working as hard as you can and still feeling behind.

No, Really, Stop Skipping Ahead
Skipping ahead can be so tempting! If your first step is to do research and step two is to set up a profile at a social networking site, you know you’ll have more fun setting up the account and tweaking the colors and making it true to your style.

But then you’ve left your research far behind and when you’re choosing your name or what to put for your bio, you don’t have the right keywords and fill it in based on whatever you think of at the time. You say to yourself, “I’ll go back and fix it later.” But the odds of that happening are low. Even if you do go back in and change your bio or other keyword info (or insert your new elevator pitch) that is going to take more time than it would have to do it right the first time.

Carpenters say, “measure twice, cut once” and you should look to your business goals the same way. While being overcautious is not good, you can find a balance between tweaking and having the perfect plan and executing that plan in the order that will make it most effective for your WAHM life.

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About Jennifer

Jennifer Gniadecki has been a WAHM for over four years. She has been a Virtual Assistant, an Internet Marketer, and a graphic designer… but her one true love is writing and that is what she’s settled in to do for the long haul. She is a freelance writer and blogger and her work has been featured on Reuters.com as well as the Chicago Sun Times Online. You can find her mommyblog at http://www.beyondmom.com