Business Progress

Obstacles in life, whether on the trail or in business, can be overcome. Sometimes we go over them, sometimes we go under, and sometimes we go around them.

A couple weeks ago I finally got ungated in Beauty. I started trying back in November and I needed it to happen within 90 days of my first invoice purchase (also in November). You need to submit three invoices from a wholesaler with 36 items. If it took too long to get approved, I'd have to purchase more inventory, which I didn't want to do since the inventory I'm purchasing does not have a great potential for profit. I pretty much lose money selling those items, but it makes it possible to sell a much wider variety of items, so it's worth it in the long run.

The main reason I kept pursuing the beauty category is that I have some private label ideas that I can't pursue if I can't sell in the beauty category. Now that I'm approved to sell in the beauty category I can move forward with those ideas when I have the funds available.

In between resubmitting my paperwork to Amazon repeatedly I've also been working on my other businesses.

I've realized that my past reluctance to be involved in social media is slowing me down a lot. I'm just not familiar enough with the various platforms to do even some of the basic things. So I'm learning the basics, but as soon as I can afford it, I'm going to hire a VA to handle all my social media tasks. I need to have a social media presence, but it's not something I want to deal with, so I'm willing to pay someone else to take care of it for me.

In the meantime, I'm muddling along the best I can.

My blog website is up and running, but now I have to do the monetization portion- affiliate links, ads, etc and start linking to social media. I had trouble figuring out how to promote a blog post in a Facebook post. I know I'd seen it done, but it took awhile to figure out how to do it myself. Facebook is not my favorite social media platform.

Instagram I can handle- I actually like it. I'm getting comfortable with it and am figuring out how to use it. In fact, I have two accounts that I'm active on. I set up my original account when I started my first business last year as a way of showcasing my products. Since that had to be put on hold I've just been using it to document our hikes and field trips. Eventually I'll post pictures of my leather notebooks, so I started a new account to complement the new blog.

Pinterest is also not my favorite, but I have started using it. I'm not super consistent yet and I'm still figuring out how it works.

From what I've read, some people post on various platforms 5, 6 times a day. And that's per platform. I don't have that kind of time, or even the desire to spend that much time on social media. Plus I think it's overkill to post that frequently, but that might be my anti-social media side coming out.

I won't be using any other social media platforms besides Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. I don't have the time or energy and I've read that it's best to stick to the ones that work best in your niche. As far as I can tell, those three are the ones for me to use.

I built my blog site on Wordpress and once I found a theme that I mostly liked it went pretty easily. There's still some tweaking that needs to be done to it, but I'm not sure that I can edit those things in the theme I'm currently using. I like the layout though, so I'm willing to stick it out for awhile.

I'm also building a site for my Amazon business, but I'm using Wix for that and I'm still struggling to find a design I like, so it's going a lot slower than I'd like. Well, that and I'm having a hard time figuring out what content to include. This site is mostly to lend validity to my business.

It would be quicker to pay someone to do all this work, but the budget just can't handle it yet. So I'm doing the best I can now and I'll pay someone to re-design everything when I'm profitable.