Is it easy to work from home and be self employed? Yes, it is easy to work from home and be self employed! Then why do so many people struggle to get it right?! Why do so many people who try to work from home and be self employed make a good start, think they can do it, think they are going to be successful, and then when not much happens, give up trying!?
They forget about marketing.
They don’t realise how important marketing is.
We have done lots of marketing of our driftwood display stands – making it easy to work from home making and selling driftwood display stands – as one of the things we do to work from home
They don’t realise that marketing takes time and/or money.
It really is easy to work from home and be self employed – there are so many ways people can work from home and be self employed – and so many free or nearly free ways too!
– but what’s difficult is the marketing part of working from home and being self-employed – it can take time to learn how to do good marketing, it can take time doing that good marketing oneself, and it can be costly paying somebody else to do one’s marketing – and it even takes time before one hires somebody to do marketing – researching for the most suitable, most affordable, and most reputable marketing person or company.
People get excited about working from home, they get excited about their fantastic product or service that everyone is going to need or want, or they get excited about the latest online opportunity they’ve just joined.
But
they forget about marketing.
It doesn’t matter how fantastic their product or service is or is going to be or how many people are going to want that product or service; will not know how they could have possibly lived without having that product or service before, if nobody or hardly anybody knows about it.
Now, marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, or even cost anything at all, but it does have to be done well, and done lots, and definitely done. One can’t just dream that people are going to miraculously know about one’s product or service – or that everyone who does know about one’s product or service is going to want it or need it.
Let’s look at our latest product and how we are marketing it or plan to market it:
Driftwood Display Stands
Marketing related work already done:
- Used one of our Driftwood Display Stands ourselves – at a Sunday market near East London – we displayed some of our necklaces and bracelets on our Driftwood Display Stand
- Put a small sign next to our Driftwood Display Stand at that market – informing that people could order a similar one
- Mentioned it on the Services and Products page of this site
- Linked to that page here (in the previous line!)
- Linked to that page in two places at the top of this site
- Mentioned our Driftwood Display Stands on this page!
- Took photos of our Driftwood Display Stands
- Included a photo of one of our Driftwood Display Stands on our Services and Products page
- Imcluded the keywords “driftwood display stand” in the image alt tag and image title tag, and in the caption for the image
- Included a photo of some of our Driftwood Display Stands on this page
- Included the keywords “driftwood display stands” in the image alt tag and image title tag, and in the caption for the image
- Wrote a long description for our driftwood display stands and placed a for sale ad on a Facebook group (For Sale Anything in EL)
- When posted the ad on the For Sale Anything in EL Facebook group, selected to post to 4 other local “for sale” type pages/groups at the same time
- Shared that Facebook group post to my own personal profile at Facebook
Marketing related work still to do:
- Add a photo and brief information about our Driftwood Display Stands to the products page of our driftwoodforsale.co.za site
- Include keywords in the image alt tag, image title tag, and caption of the image
- Create a page where I add more photos of our Driftwood Display Stands and write a longer description – preferably at least 300 words to help with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Link the image and a phrase in the caption on the products page to this other page on our driftwoodforsale.co.za site
- Share a photo from that page to Pinterest
- Post an image and description to our Beachy facebook page
- Link to or mention our driftwoodforsale.co.za site in that post
- Share that post to my personal profile at Facebook
- Link to the Driftwood Display Stands image and description page on our driftwoodforsale.co.za site, from our beachy.co.za site
Ongoing marketing related work to always work at:
- Work at increasing the amount of followers on our Beachy Facebook page
- Work at increasing the amount of followers we have on our Pinterest accounts
- Work at increasing traffic to this site (tant.co.za), and to our beachy.co.za and driftwoodforsale.co.za sites
Summary: It is easy to work from home and be self employed, but
only if you actually knuckle down and do the work and marketing – money does not just fall into one’s lap. And if you don’t know how to do the work or marketing, then you need to be prepared to read and learn and practice. Search for what you need to know on the Internet, read the free information, learn that free information, then start working and marketing – and earning. You can do this!
© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2017
