Small Wins-First month Progress of launching my personal brand

 

July 2016…the first full month of my site being live.

So many ideas and different directions this thing will take, but I have successfully conquered putting thought into action.

I am focused on making some general life adjustments as far as my daily activities and making sure they all revolve in some way around forward moving personal brand building and business progress.

Why waste time watching stupid TV shows and looking at my Facebook Feed. 

Recently I have tuned into some of the greatness that is Gary Vaynerchuk among other thought leaders, and my biggest takeaway is the fear of regret and awareness of time that drives these entrepreneurs every single day.

We live once, so make it count!

With that said, here are some small wins worth noting.

 

Themify.me featured my site:

Themify.me has my site featured on their homepage which is awesome.

Sure they have other customers featured, but I think it’s pretty damn cool that a credible WordPress builder has provided me some real clout.

It’s really a testament to their awesome product, and what it does for people like myself that have no coding skills.

Check out the screen shot below, or check out themify.me for yourself

 

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 3.45.52 PM

 

Twitter Growth: 

I am seeing some nice growth with the people I am connecting with and from some of the recent entrepreneur spotlights I have featured.

From what I’ve seen people are always ok with sharing your post with their networks, all you need to do is ask!

John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire launched a genius model that taps into other well renowned networks, all while building his at the same time.

I think this is the key to building ones online brand at the core.

Figure out who you can network with that is more successful than you are, establish a relationship, and get some exposure through providing value to their community.

 

Entrepreneur Spotlight’s and Networking: 

I am pumped at the responses I am getting from everyone I have reached out to.  I have many other posts in the cue, and using these as an initial content strategy that I can iterate from.

Everyone of the entrepreneurs bring something different to the table, and are more than willing to share their story with their audience which is important to building real value as more people become aware of who I am.

Kyle Schultz, who I recently did a spotlight on called From Firefighter to Online Photo School mentioned one thing that resonated with me very strongly.

In summary, he said that Version 1 of your site will be different than Version 2 and so on.

Don’t get caught up in what is and isn’t there, just ship it!

You need to start somewhere and then adapt along the way. 

 

Pageviews & Session’s baseline: 

July 2016 provides me with an initial starting point of my traffic analytics.

Here are my month 1 baseline figures: 

Pageviews: 1,986

Sessions: 350

 

Ad Sense Setup:

I got approved for Google Ad sense and now see some display ads appearing on site. 

I have started to generate pennies! 

Revenue isn’t my focus out of the gate, it’s making legitimate steps toward building a real audience.

 

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 4.58.51 PM

 

Learnings: 

 

Podcasting:

I have started to download and listen to some Podcasts.  

I always knew of the medium, but have grown accustomed to listening to local sports talk radio instead. 

Podcasting continues to be a huge driver for many emerging entrepreneurs, with many opportunities for sponsors/revenue once certain metrics are met. 

Big brands like Legal Zoom and Audible seem to be popular sponsors within the market. 

I am not sure when this may come into play for me, we will see. 

John Lee Dumas who started Entrepreneur on Fire back in 2012 has grown a massive podcast audience in just 4 years and has built it into a multi million dollar business.

What is great about John’s approach is two fold.

It’s to interview inspiring entrepreneurs 7 days per week, but also to create content about how you or I can do it too. 

He breaks his process down from inception of idea to current state of business, and it’s really motivating. 

A few of the other shows I have started to tune into are Lewis Howes, Radical Personal Finance, and Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income.

 

Email List:

Being in the industry I am very familiar with the best practices, but that doesn’t mean you launch a website and start getting thousands of opt-ins right away. 

I have a nice 7 part automation series that provides subscribers Tips from Inside The Industry, so I will look to this piece of educational content to be a driver for growth as I move forward.

Or who knows, perhaps my entrepreneur spotlights turn out to be the more attractive opt-in opportunity.  

 

Goals:

In the first month I wanted to get the site off the ground. 

I did that and have a simple V1 to what I am doing, but I need to challenge myself and set some tangible goals as I progress.

Operating under the high level strategy of ” I want to grow an audience” won’t get me where I need to be.