It has been a crazy insane month in my life. I’ve joked that if all this movement was actually running, I could run a marathon by now!
The big theme of the month was diversification. I mean my client base is growing at a steady rate but it’s really important to have a few related streams of income. This way, I’m not counting on one check to come in or one other person to decide to buy my services.
How I’ve been doing this is creating more in-person seminars. I love public speaking and people seem to enjoy my presentations so the question was, how can I make money doing this? How can I help more businesses? Here are a few things I did this past month:
I planned a whole new program to help small businesses learn about the internet.
Hugo Diaz, who is a local web developer in my area who normally works on really high end projects, took a lot of his time to help me develop the Downeast Internet Incubator Program (DIIP). The basic idea is to take business owners through the process of setting up social media and a basic CMS (content management system) website in small groups online which will 1) cut down on costs, 2) allow me to help more people, and 3) get more business owners in my area comfortable with using the internet and help build future capacity for my services.
The kickoff for the program is Saturday afternoon at the Maine Grind. I’m charging $10 for the program orientation because while some of it will be about the program, most of it will be about how to use Skype and DimDim to have remote meetings. I figure whether or not people like the program, they’ll definitely get their $10 worth.
There’s plenty of spots. To register, click here.
I presented at the Deer Isle Stonington Chamber.
Deer Isle-Stonington is a beautiful part of the county I live in and one of my old clients got me a speaking gig with the Chamber. It went well and I even got a client out of it. She says if I do a good job, she’ll tell everyone. Great!
I negotiated regular rent at the Maine Grind.
If I was going to set up regular seminar experiences, I needed a venue. Leslie, the owner of the Maine Grind was my first client ever so I’ve always had a soft spot for her. Even before I started working with her though, I loved her coffee shop with its free Wi-Fi, local art, and an upstairs room with good light (not to mention food and drink on site).
To make the rent more affordable (and to make the price reduction worth Leslie’s while), I got together with the Downeast Mac Users Group (DEMUG) and made a package deal for the next six months and presented it to the Maine Grind. Reduced rent for technology groups and in exchange, Leslie knowing she’d have this guaranteed revenue coming in.
I love negotiations, especially when everyone can ‘win’.
Matt and I had our second Downeast Learning workshop on search engine optimization… and we have a Facebook one coming up in June.
Yesterday, Matt Baya of Svaha LLC and I did our second workshop. It was a much lower turnout than our first but the topic was very specific. Since our first gig, Matt and I set up a website for our workshops at www.downeastlearning.com. Since we set up our schedule ahead of time for the reduced room rental, Wednesday June 23rd’s workshop will be all about Facebook for Business. To sign-up or learn more, click here.
My new big project is a challenge.
I’ve recently taken on my first bilingual site (French-English) which is going to have a lot of media in it, including at least 40 hours of video. I’m organizing and processing the content and a more techy web designer is helping me with the technical heavy lifting.
And those are just a few of the bigger things I’ve been working on… I’m happy to be busy and developing new projects takes awhile. So good news is just because I haven’t been blogging, doesn’t mean I’ve been a slacker.
What’s something cool you’ve accomplished this month? Comment below and all who read this can say ‘Yay!’