February 2017 Recap
On the last day of January, I wrote a monthly recap talking about what I’d done and what I planned to do for the next month.
I found it quite helpful and nobody complained about it, so I thought I’d start a trend – even though February was by all accounts a down-month for me. (Hey, there’s no point I cherry-picking the accountability posts you write.)
This is probably not going to be interesting reading, but if you’ve got time to kill, I’ll talk about what I did in February and what I’ll do in March.
What Happened In February?
February was a frustrating month for me. At the end of January, I switched over to a new web hosting provider. (Mine was ok but the support was practically non-existent and I couldn’t upgrade the hosting of each site like I wanted to.)
As always, there was tech-headaches and other boring stuff that took my energy and attention. That was the first week. It also highlighted something else: I have a ton of domain names from unfinished projects. I’ve got loads of half-baked sites and thin-content sites too.
I need to solve that. More on that later.
Still, big flaw in my business comes up from that: lots of unrelated and oft-forgotten projects that I’ll “get around to” some year.
Now let’s talk about niche sites for a while. I’ve overhauled my approach to niche sites in February. The reasons are the same as above; a whole lot of projects, a whole lot of time-sinks and a whole lot of stress.
I wrote yesterday about finding what you’re good at – and I’m definitely not as good at dealing with stress as I think I am. I like figuring things out and creating streamlined systems. When I have to work in a system that’s not streamlined, I get stressed.
So anyway, a big breakthrough this month was in the idea of creating niche sites around similar subjects and using the crossover to make it all make sense. I think I’ve cracked the code there. We’ll see in March and beyond, I guess.
Which brings me to goals for March.
Goals For March
Above I talked about lots of loose ends, unfinished projects and not having a coherent system. That sums up most of my business troubles at this stage.
So, in March I will fix them.
I was looking at some of my old, untouched sites and they’re actually pretty good. This site is about me figuring out problems associated with building businesses online and writing and the like. I was figuring out systems for other stuff before that.
A major problem with those old projects is that I didn’t know how to sell. Nor did I know how to talk to an audience. It was a more bullet-point style like I’d write for myself.
Now I can write a sales letter within a couple of hours. I can clean up some of these sites and finish some of these projects quickly if I put my mind to it.
That’s going to be a major goal. I might even share some of these projects here if I like them enough.
Also, I need to finish some of the things I put into motion in February:
- Books – I have a list of about 30 books on my hard drive that are in various stages of completion. Again; unfinished projects and loose ends I want to tie up
- Get back on track with the Niche Site thing. I’m behind and I don’t want to be.
- Officially launch the “Locked Door” experiment.
- Finally play around with paid traffic like I’ve promised since the beginning of the year
- Also I want to concentrate on images. Images are important for making a website look good, and I’ve only got a basic understanding of them. I’m going to get better at that (though not as a priority)
That’s in addition to goals outside of the site. Busy March.
Final Thoughts
By March, the buzz of New Year’s Resolutions wears off and the fun business of doing what you say you’re going to do starts to feel heavy.
At least it feels like that for me right now, but I’m pretty sure I’m being swayed by stress as I’m writing this.
Here’s some old grandpa advice for myself and readers who share the sentiment: when you’re stressed, do some stuff that’s an easy victory. In fact, that’s what I’m going to do once I’ve wrapped up this article.
Anyway, February is almost done and March is a new month. Let’s start it with productive behaviours.