Make Your Blog Your Business

This is my third blog. Do you remember the other two I had? Don’t worry, except for my family, no one else remembers them either. Believe it or not, that’s okay. The difference between my ex-blogs and assistantmelissa.com, is my approach. Let me give you a little backstory so I can explain. (Edit: I just read through my own blog post and it’s longer than I expected it to be. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in because I seem to have a lot to say about the subject.)

My first website, titled Lil’ Bit of This Lil’ Bit of That, was exactly what you think it would be about. It was my first time using WordPress and I wanted to figure everything out on my own. Not only did I not know what I was doing (obviously), I also didn’t create a niche and wrote about pretty much anything that tickled my fancy. It wasn’t that I couldn’t create enough blog content or write engaging material (I like to think it was interesting), but it was basically my online journal. No one knew about it. No one knew how to find it. Assuming some person happened to stumble across it, that same person would have no idea what the main theme of the blog was. It was like a personal Instagram account before people started posting pictures of their dog, followed by what they ate, and then what they did at the gym that day (you get my point). Sigh. The good news is that once I realized that the blog wasn’t going anywhere I decided to step back for a while, gather my thoughts, and go about it from a different angle the second time.

My second blog, Lotte Lee, was under my alias (the name I use online for my freelance work…now you know) and was geared solely to helping startup entrepreneurs, a group I care deeply about. Having watched my dad’s journey as an entrepreneur and then becoming one myself, drove me to want to help others just starting out. I spent months learning how to create e-books, built quizzes, testing different materials on willing friends, but it was still a flop. Why? Because fear held me back. Even though a couple of my friends knew about my endeavor, I was uncomfortable really putting myself out there.

Ironically, my current blog was never intended to be a blog at all! Thinking that I was never going to hack it as a blogger, even though there is so much I wanted to say, I set up a website strictly for my virtual assistant/marketing business. I made sure that my services and prices were listed, there was a short blurb about myself, and a way to contact me. The end. I couldn’t see the benefit of including a blog when my website was just an interactive landing site for people to see what I could offer them. But as fate would have it, I started getting a lot of requests from potential clients all asking the same questions over and over again. Once I started keeping track of the questions I was answering, I had a facepalm moment as I realized that I could have addressed almost all of these questions with a blog. Ugh!

Amazingly, my light bulb moment happened around the same time that I accepted the fact that I needed more income but was running out of hours in the day to work on active income. How in the world was I supposed to take on more work to create more income when there are only 24 hours in the day.? Eek! I was already teaching ESL online during the morning while everyone was asleep, then homeschooling my own kids, freelancing, consulting, on top of the work I was doing for my clients. Aside from the one hour a day I get to escape to the gym (yes, it is an escape…I love my kids more than life itself but we are together all.the.time…it makes even the most brutal workout feel like a blessing), every other minute of the day was filled.

After much thought, and some inner turmoil, I decided the best thing that I could do was change the way I do business. And guess what that meant? It meant that I had to stop taking on new clients and begin focusing on reaching entrepreneurs, writers, and bloggers in a different, but not new, way: through a blog. Initially, I panicked at the idea of creating another blog.

Should I be doing this? Is there a better way? It didn’t work before, what makes you think it’ll work this time?

There is a HUGE difference between paying clients and starting a blog. Having paid clients means signed contracts for work, invoices, and (cue the angel sounds) payments. Blogging, even though numerous people have proven to be a viable way of making an income, had not been successful in MY past (obviously).

Because Assistant Melissa was already a business, I chose to approach the blog with the same mindset. I learned from my first blog that I can, and enjoy, writing about pretty much anything. I love to research all kinds of topics and make my own conclusions while interjecting my own ideas. However, that blog also taught me to focus on only a couple of topics and be an expert about those specific ideas for a specific audience. Although I enjoy exercising, eating plant-based, and being a homeschool mom, that had no place in my company before and it has no place here on the blog either.

I learned from my second blog that quizzes are fun, and big beautiful pictures are great, but if I don’t tell anyone about the blog no one will read it. And what is the purpose of researching and pouring myself into helping others if I don’t actually reach anyone to help? This time, I am all in. I’m serious about learning more ways to promote my posts and engage with my audience outside the blog. I’ve also learned about the importance of Pinterest (a site I am seriously addicted to but never utilized correctly for business in the past). The lessons I’ve learned and the ability to use them as road maps to my success have been a game changer for my business.

I guess the (extremely long-winded) point of telling you all this is to point out that I made MANY mistakes on the journey to this point in my career that I want you to avoid. That’s one of the reasons I felt compelled to turn Assistant Melissa into a blog focused business. Not only would I be able to help people, like my clients, who were looking to a solution to a problem, I also get the opportunity to show you how to avoid the mistakes that I made so that you don’t have to go through the pains that I did and you can (hopefully) get your business off to a great start!

And finally…

Ask yourself how you can take the mistakes you’ve made in your business and turn them into lessons. Every time we do something wrong, we’re given the opportunity to grow from it. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring the lesson or pretending that it doesn’t exist. If you want your blog to help others and be a source of income you need to think of it as a business first.

What about you? Have you ever tried blogging and felt like it fell flat? Maybe you started a business and realized that it wasn’t the right niche, time, industry, whatever. I’ve done that too. Share your pains in the comments below and let me know I’m not the only one.

Until next time…

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