Going From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be

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Yesterday I did the webinar on how to make cool professional charts in Microsoft Excel. It was my first webinar and it went very well. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. There were a couple of seconds when the audio was lost, but it was due to my internet connection. I was live streaming the training to the 19 who showed up out of the 92 people who registered. They could see in real time what I was doing and hear my voice. And I answered their questions. It was a great experience for me and I can't wait to conduct another webinar.

Today, I'll be talking on how you go from where you are to where you want to be.


image: funsporting.com
About three years ago, I was struggling to get freelance jobs and a secondary source of income. I had been blogging for 3 years then but my blog wasn't generating any income. I was getting about $1 per month. Nothing I tried worked. I looked back at my life to figure out what I have done before that worked that I could do again. During my NYSC I had freelanced as a private Mathematics tutor. While in the University I had contributed poems and articles to an international family magazine for a small money in return. So I called my graphics designer friend and told him to make me beautiful business cards that show me as a Mathematics Tutor. He made me very expensive and beautiful cards. I shared the cards at Mega Plaza, VI and other places on the Island. I got some interested parents who were pleasantly surprised that I teach only Mathematics and by the high quality cards I use. But I couldn't manage it with my day job. Then I put together samples of my best writing, printed them at the rate of N200/page and used an expensive courier (FedEx) to mail them with a personalized pitch letter to Punch, The Nation, ThisDay and Vanguard. I had called and researched whom to address the letters to. I got no reply.

Then I looked online for what people were doing online to make money with little creative efforts. It was around the time YNaija was getting very popular. So I said to myself, "Here is a website that is simply copying articles from newspapers and other sites around the web, and they are doing great. I have been killing myself to come up with creative unique articles and seeing little result. I am going to start a new blog and post news articles from Punch, ThisDay, The Nation and Vanguard." And that I did. I started http://nigeriadaily.blogspot.com/ and in less than a month I was getting more than double the traffic on my three year old blog. By the second month it was making me an impressive sum of money. I started a facebook page, www.facebook.com/nigeriadaily, and a twitter account, http://twitter.com/nigeriadaiily,  to complement the blog. The results were great and by far better than what my three year old blog was producing. But I wasn't happy. I hated the fact that I was only doing this for the money it would generate for me. Even though I had sorted out the copyright issue by posting only part of the news article and putting a ...continue reading  that linked back to the original article, I still felt like I was doing something wrong. So in the third month I stopped. I deleted all the posts and left only the original research posts I had once put up on the blog. I lost the monthly revenue it would have kept generating for me and I gave up trying to make money from blogging.

But out of the ashes of that failed venture something remarkable arose. I had left the Facebook and Twitter pages, hooked them directly to Punch, The Nation, ThisDay and Vanguard websites. So I was freely promoting their posts and sending traffic directly to their websites. The same newspapers that ignore me and my expensive pitch. It was saddening. I stopped checking the Facebook and Twitter page. Then one day I went on the Facebook page and was surprised to see over 600 people had liked it. A page I wasn't actively managing. They were even leaving me thank you messages and asking that I share more news articles with them. So I went on the Twitter one too and saw that it had also grown all by itself. 

Today, I now have more freelance/consulting jobs than I can handle. The Twitter account has over 12,800 followers and I use it to promote my training and blog subscription. 

I am not close to where I want to be yet, but I have learnt that when going from where I am to where I want to be, it doesn't matter how much things I do wrong or how hopeless things seem or how many doors get slammed in my face. It doesn't even matter if the steps I take don't look big enough. All that matters is to keep doing something in the direction of my goal.

2 comments:

  1. Great write up sir. This is definitely one of the best, most inspiring article i have read from you. Keep it up. I just registered my company, will definitely be needing another round of coaching from you (lol) ...especially the webinar part.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks boss! That's good news, about your company registration! I'll be glad to help in all ways I can. And definitely with the webinar set-up too.

    ReplyDelete

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