Analytics and Links

One of the assignments this week that was helpful for my business was learning how to navigate Google Analytics. This was a little tricky at first, but once I asked myself what category something was under it was easier to look up the answer to the assignment. This will be very useful when my sisters and I will be trying to narrow down specific topics, demographics, etc. or answer some questions we have in moving our business forward. On the complete opposite spectrum, I don’t think I learned much from the back link assignments. Mostly because the terminology is confusing to me, but also because I feel like the type of business we have it is common sense of where the links will come from. We need to utilize social media marketing and asking friends, family, and followers to share our posts. We also know that ads and boosting our ads will be where they come from too.

Almost Done

Mostly I just feel grateful that this semester is almost over. I have learned a lot, especially in this class, but it has been a semester fraught with questions like "Did I do this assignment right?", "Did I mess up my website?", "Is this business going to be successful and help people like we desire it too? I have loved using Google Analytics and Google Ads though, because it has helped me to see that there are people being connected to our website, and just because it may not be making in any money (yet) that it is a need that is being fulfilled or met, and that we are helping people along like we feel our legacy is to our mom. I don’t know if we will continue using Google Ads because we are a small business starting out and I feel like everywhere we turn we are bleeding money, but for sure we will return to it when we have revenue coming in, but maybe we will continue with it because it will help bring in revenue sooner??? Who knows? I guess we need to have a business meeting to discuss the numbers and further use of it.

SEO Basics...At Least I hope it's Basic

This week’s course work on SEO optimization helped me to look a little closer at my website and Google Ad to make sure that I was do everything I can with my keywords and gaining the maximum benefit for my campaign. Again though, I am struggling with feeling like I am missing some prerequisite for this class, or at least vocabulary, to fully understand what I read. I did learn that I want to make sure that my primary keywords are towards the beginning of my ad and to make sure that they correspond to the landing page title. Another thing that I want to change is making sure that my keywords correspond with my images on my website. If I understood right, connecting images helps so that when consumers do an image search my images have a chance of popping up, which ultimately can help with conversions from directing them to my website. Now, the tricky part is making sure I do all the changing steps correctly.

Frustrations

This week has been a very frustrating week. Besides the ROI assignment instructions not being very clear to me, I have been struggling with my website and Google Tag Manager. I installed a plug-in to my website called 'Google Site Kit' which is supposed to automatically connect Google Analytics and the global site tracking code, which it did. I know it did because I verified the code snippet in on my pages view source sections. It also is supposed to install all the tags I want to use on my site. I even checked to see if Google Tag Manager is installed on it, which it is. However, when I try to verify the pages I want to track conversions on, Google Tag Manager doesn't do anything after it connects to my site. I have searched and searched for YouTube videos on how to fix this problem but I am not coming up with any luck. I believe I have the snippet codes on my site, but still no luck on the conversions being verified on Google Ads. I guess this is like life, frustrations and all.

Quality & Relevance

This week as we worked on understanding Relevance and Quality Scores pertaining to our Googles Ads Campaign, and how to analyze and raise them, I couldn't help think about it in life in general. If we are low in life, attitude, spirituality, etc. it would do us well to re-evaluate where we are in life and how to fix the problem areas we marked as "low" scoring. For example, if we are feeling poor in spirit we can get up and serve. It doesn't have to be a huge act of service; it can be as simple as making your child’s bed. If we feel that we are lacking in Spirituality and we noticed we haven't been praying or reading our scriptures like we should be we can slowly implement changes in our lives to get us where we want to be. While simple evaluations are helpful, and can make a huge impact and difference in our lives, we have to be willing to put forth the effort to make the changes as well. The same goes for our businesses too 😊

Google Ads

This week was easy in course load, but hard in the Google Ads Campaign. I must have written and re-written my headlines and descriptions several different times. I would think, "ah, I got it this time" only to think about it while making dinner or picking kids up from school and then coming home to change it because it didn't fit or feel right. Now that I think I have it, I hope that what I have done is put myself in my potential customers seat and picked the keywords they would use when looking for help on the internet. I also felt a little amazed at the prospect that this class is half way over and has helped me tremendously already with building my website, which is making my sisters and I feel like we are in a great starting place to help families that are really needing some support in the gray areas of the world.

Delightful Difficulties

I don't really have anything from the course work that seemed worthy to write about. However, I do want to talk about the message that Brother Beck gave about finding delight in the difficulties. I appreciated that announcement since my husband and I are dealing with some difficult and scary scenarios with our oldest who is 15 almost 16. She is making some not so good choices, that have caused me to ponder and step back and ask myself, "did we teach her everything she needs to know to withstand temptations and make the right choices?" I sure hope we did! BUT, in the meantime I can make sure there is some delight in the difficult moments with her and the rest of my children. I can make an effort for her (and the rest) to see what true happiness looks like, I can show love by serving her (even though I don't want to), I can take her out for dates and give her the opportunity to open up when she feels like she wants to. What I am trying to say is that I can hold her close in other ways so that if/when she makes mistakes, she knows I am here for her to fall on.

Taxes & Fees

What a week! I feel exhausted from looking into the tax, licensing and certification requirements for our business. I was kind of shocked to learn that there isn't any licensing or certification requirements. All you have to do is say you’re a life coach and be willing to put yourself out there and WA-la, you’re a life coach. When I was looking into the taxes I kind of spiraled and went down a rabbit hole with all the eventualities there will be if our business takes off...like we hope it does. For now, we are working on becoming an LLC and making sure that we keep our records for tax purposes. Since I am the money and finance person I will probably be saddled with that responsibility until we are large enough to hire a legit person so I better get cracking on learning the program, especially since we are already purchasing software, website domains, and paying fees for premium features and plugins we want.

I Feel Like I Am Bleeding

This week became really real that this website and our business is a legit thing. We purchased a domain last week, but this week we played around with adding a PayPal button to our site. I even connected a credit card and made a real purchase, to myself, and it went through. My sister and business partner is busy putting together FHE packets to add to our site to sell, and eventually we will have coaching classes and one-on-one sessions to offer. Working with WordPress has been a learning curve for me, which makes me so grateful for YouTube videos to quickly help me learn. Finally, one frustration for me this week was that it feels like every service/help wants their hand in your pocket. Like the small buttons for PayPal, if I want to enable multiple purchases instead a 'buy now' button the price per transaction is significantly higher. It just feels that small businesses bleed a lot of cash at the beginning, and the amount we are spending makes me really want this endeavor to work.

Our Mom, Our Legacy

This week got real real with the starting of making a website to sell a product for my business that I am starting with my sisters. We have felt the promptings to do this business since the passing of our Mom at the beginning of this year, but waited knowing that I was going to be taking this class and that it would be helpful for us young, inexperienced entrepreneurs. Our Mom was a woman full of love and acceptance, but also had a deep abiding testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is our legacy and as we talked about the 'about us' section of our website that I am making, and what we wanted to put there, we were able to reminisce on her life and what we want to carry on. This week has been a hard one with missing her, but I know that she would be so very proud of the work we, as sisters, are about to embark on. 

Note to Self - Startup Business

This week in class felt heavy. There was a lot of reading and learning of things that I didn't know and some stuff that I thought I knew, but learned I didn't. I thought I understood some words or concepts, like supplier, but after the material this week I realized I only knew surface level stuff. One take away or thing I want to remember as I embark on starting my own business is that whatever I decide I want my business to offer, product or service, that I want my website to be clean, inviting, and easy to navigate. There was an activity this week that had me overwhelmed with one site because it was too busy. If it wasn't for an assignment I would have given up on that site even if it could have profited me more than the other. Another thing I thought was important was the explanation of drop shipping and affiliate marketing. While those are both beneficial and earn money, affiliate marketing may be something I want to look into when my business is fully ready to go. Like finding an Instagram star to promote. Just some things I hadn't thought about with all the other things in my head about startups.

Ready or Not

Where to begin??? This new class that I am embarking on is something scary. Going to school is something I have always wanted to say I have completed, but never thought I would be here, let alone the path that I am on. The Lord truly knowa what he is doing. Ever since the passing of my Mom in January, 2 of my sisters and I have felt like we were so blessed and loved by her, as were many others, and that was a legacy we wanted to carry on. After my best friend Marci passed in February, and me loving her 4 kids, and trying to help raise and support her family during this hard time I felt even more impressed that this online business class was what I was supposed to do with my sisters to help others feel "love" no matter what situtation they are in. So, here we go. Diving in head first whether I am feeling ready or not.