I’m writing this post from the sunny Gold Coast – I’ve got views to the beach on one side and views to the shopping Mecca Pacific Fair on the other.

Their proximity has highlighted how important it is to be productive while you’re working away from your usual location. It’s all business – no busyness! If you want to enjoy your location, you get your work done promptly!!

We’re down here for a holiday break but I’m using it to live out a little location independent experiment.

I’ve always dreamed of being able to work from anywhere in the world.

Most recently, my dream found form in creating a business that consumed my passion and was driven by a desire to make a difference to people so they can change their world for the better. This business is being built on a model of processes and automation.

While this year I’ve had success with consulting – one on one and groups – the face to face nature of the model wasn’t helping me reach my goals.

Also, while consulting is great – it didn’t fulfil the passion side of my dream equation. However – if there’s anything I’ve learned this year is that patience is golden and allows you time to figure out what you want among other things.

While I will continue consulting – I’m looking at a more effective way to deliver my knowledge and experience to those who need it. But that’s another story.

I acquired the domain womeninbusiness.com.au late last year. Every time I thought about it I’d lose concentration from excitement.

I knew this was going to help me achieve my dream.

So here I am – the Women in Business website is up but still in development – getting ready for its official launch in a couple of weeks.

I’ve had a taste of managing the business while I’ve been away and it’s worked like a dream (oh <- that’s appropriate!)

I’ve spent roughly 4 hours a day working on the business – 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. Posting to the blog, handling enquiries, approving comments, managing the LinkedIn group and building features behind the scenes.

There are a couple of process I can see need to be refined but overall, if I could live my life like this I’d be one happy woman (in business).

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Image credit: SarahR89

I’ve just updated my blog with a new header – in the process I decided to pick three words to describe myself, what this blog is about and what I can offer you as a reader.

Online business owner

Self explanitory – I’m writing about my experience as an online business owner – the objectives, strategies and marketing techniques that I’m using and want to share along the way.

Teacher

I own an online business consultancy and spend a lot of my time explaining online business and marketing concepts so that other people can use the internet to grow their business.

Dream hunter

This was a tricky one – I wanted to sum up my philosophy of business and life in one sexy little statement.

I’ve started my online businesses for a few reasons.

1. I love the internet and I love the game of business
2. I believe that online business will help me achieve what I want to financially, personally and as a member of my community (local and global).
3. I want to inspire other people to take the time to think about their values and skills and design a life that brings out the best in them, to make their world and the world around them a better place.

Not sure if it’s an über wanky term but I feel like it sums up what I’m about at the moment. I have big dreams and I’m going to act big to make them happen and nothing is going to stop me.

Update: Decided it was a bit wanky. My third one is now Writer – which is also very fun.

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Ideas that spread win.

Free ideas spread better then paid ideas.

The way you monetize it is by selling souvenirs.

If you haven’t got time to watch the whole thing – the good stuff starts around 15 mins in.

Key points

• Give people an incentive to talk about your idea – you do this – I’ll do that.
• Permission is the asset you should be working to create online – through blog readers, email list, followers, fans – anything opt-in.
• Don’t find readers for your words – create words for your readers.
• Make people care about you – by giving them what they want.

Links mentioned

• http://www.permission.com
• http://www.ideavirus.com
• http://www.bigredfez.com
• http://www.zoometry.com

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Here’s why:

1. It was a story about two very different women who took a leap of faith and put themselves Out There. They were rewarded with satisfaction, direction, happiness and financial independence.

2. Many of you know that I’m busy setting up a couple of online businesses right now. womeninbusiness.com.au is one and the second is an alternative way to work with me – in a DIY fashion.

I’ve come across so many passionate business owners who want solid advice but haven’t got the budget for consulting. I want to take my 9 years of experience and shape it into practical information products to help you market your business online the right way – yourself.

While I’m absolutely loving it there have been some self doubt and meltdowns (ok, tantrums) and my wonderful husband has been so incredibly supportive throughout it all. Just like the partners in the film were.

3. It has a happy ending – just like the one I’m imagining for myself right now.

If you haven’t seen it yet – go see it, you’ll love it. Especially if you’ve ever written a blog!

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The year was 2001. I’d just studied for three years at Uni (QUT) in a course that was ultra new and focused on new media design – namely, designing communication for the internet.

So I go for my job interview – very excited to be interviewing with an online agency considering the .com bubble had just burst and I’d spent the last 5 months looking for a job. Happily – I landed the job as an SEO specialist.

Of course, at the time I didn’t have a clue what an SEO was but I had the web development and project management skills from Uni and it got me through.

Learning SEO

For three and a half years I worked on strategies to drive free targeted traffic from search engines to our client’s casino and poker sites. Google was the new kid on the block and WebmasterWorld was my new best friend.

I got thrown in the deep end (with a budget of $0) and I learned to swim.

I became pretty good at this SEO thing and pretty over the idea that I was helping people lose their money/savings/retirement funds on gambling from home in their PJ’s.

So I left and got another job.

Trying to earn money doing something I didn’t like

Even though I had some problems with promoting gambling as my full time job I’ve always been into leveraging and find making money a bit of a game (hobby/experiment dare I say passion.)

I thought – hey, I should set up some casino affiliate sites, write about Texas Holdem and Bingo, SEO it up and earn myself some money.

I bought a few domains, started writing my content and I got bored. I was enticed by the idea of cashing in on my SEO experience, casino content writing ability but I was absolutely, 100% over it.

Which brings me to my point and where I am now.

You have to do what you love

I’ve just steered my blog in the direction of “Good Business Online”.

Since I decided to start my own business I’ve discovered a passion for launching online businesses that make me feel good and help me to live my life according to what’s important to me.

I can tell you now – writing about that is SO MUCH EASIER and getting up and seeing what comes back from what I’ve put out there thrills me to bits.

If you start doing what you love and turning it into content – on this low barrier to entry, don’t need a dollar to setup platform that is the internet – I bet you’ll be happier and in a better position to diversify your income with a bit of online revenue (if you’re not doing it full time).

You spend too much time in your life working to NOT spend time thinking about what’s important to you – then going after it. Online business is one way to get there.

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Today we hear from traditional turned digital publisher – James Tuckerman, founder of Australian Anthill.

Q) You’ve recently stopped printing your magazine and moved to digital publishing. How did you find the response and what benefits have you found from the move?

A) It has been been exciting and slightly sad.

The reader response has been overwhelmingly positive. We fretted and gnashed our teeth over when and how to make the move. However, reader feedback was largely, ‘We don’t care how you do it, just keep doing it!’

“I love magazines, as a consumer, but I’m not convinced about their longevity, as a business owner.”

So, while it was a hard decision, we now find ourselves in the enviable position of being ranked among the Top 50 Business and Finance websites in Australia, according to Nielsen. The ASX and ComSec take the two top spots.

Not bad company, for a standing start.

Q) What’s been your biggest surprise/benefit of taking the magazine online?

A) We’ve been really surprised about what we can now do for advertisers.

We knew that our print product was generating a good result for sponsors but now we can measure and track the effectiveness of advertiser activities – and suggest new things when we see what works (and what doesn’t).

“We’ve been really surprised about what we can now do for advertisers.”

This week, we started offering pay-per-click advertising for email, starting at $190 for 100 click-throughs (something accessible for almost anyone with something to sell).

I’m not aware of any other organisation that is offering PPC for email. Digital allows us to be more innovative and trial new things.

“The biggest surprise has been the reluctance – rather, the lack of interest among PR professionals when given the option of print or digital coverage.”

At the same time, one of our digital pieces is likely to attract twice as many readers as a print article. And a digital article is more likely to send traffic to the subject of the article, right? And that’s the purpose of PR, yes? Publicity, positive sentiment, sales, customers etc.

But I guess you can’t thump a laptop down in front of a client with a beaming smile of accomplishment, like you can with a magazine – even if the numbers for print rarely compare or measure up.

Q) What effect has the integration and use of social media and networking sites like Twitter had on the business?

A) I mentioned earlier that we’re now ranked among the Top 50 Business and Finance websites in Australia.

This could not have happened without social media.

I do wonder, with a degree of apprehension, when or whether the mainstream brands will wake up and start to exploit the potential of social media.

Almost 6 percent of our traffic comes from Twitter. It’s amazing the reach that you can now give a digital article by asking and assisting others to spread the word for you.

“I do wonder, with a degree of apprehension, when or whether the mainstream brands will wake up and start to exploit the potential of social media.”

We have a LinkedIn Group, a Facebook Fanpage and a four Twitter accounts (on four different subjects). We use these to syndicate stories and, more importantly, ask for feedback and respond to unsolicited feedback.

We’re also now offering our articles to help others populate their own business websites with current, topic specific articles, using RSS as a formal syndication tool.

Q) anthillonline.com is highly interactive – people can leave comments, they can follow you on social networking etc. How has this increased personal interaction helped the magazine?

A) It means that people return daily, even when we don’t post an article or distribute a newsletter.

People will always find a fresh conversation to join. We only hope that we can augment this aspect of our site.

“Many websites use the word ‘community’. We can use the word without the self-consciousness that most people must feel when using the word.”

The word ‘community’ is massively overused because in most cases it is an aspirational sentiment – used by ambitious marketers – that is rarely achieved.

That’s an aspect of our site that we are obviously proud of. Our readers will rally to assist us and each other when in need. I can’t see that happening over at some of the other business blogs that generate daily news – yet they all call themselves ‘communities’.

Q) There’s been a lot of talk recently about how to monetise online news through paid subscriptions. What are your thoughts on monetising content online?

A) Only in very few instances will people pay for news. Journalism is built on a false economy. Publishers and journalists still believe that news is the foundation of a newspaper or news website.

The truth is that advertising has always been the foundation of newspapers.

“In fact, news articles were a late addition in the evolution of newspapers. News articles were created when someone said, “How can we get more people to read this advertising flyer we’ve created?”"

What’s happening now is that the bottom has fallen out of the advertising market – advertisers can no longer buy attention like they used to and products like Adwords have commoditised classified advertising.

This means that advertising can no longer be relied upon to support news creation – but neither can the ‘wallets of punters’.

“The future I see is a place where news is fragmented into niche categories, quite probably owned by organisations with the most interest in owning each category.”

For example, Energy Matters is a solar panel company. It is also becoming a world leader in CleanTech news. So long as it remains impartial, it will ‘own the space’ and happily subsidise quality, free journalism.

If someone asked me, “If advertisers won’t pay for news and readers won’t pay for news, who will?” The answer is clearly, “The organisation with the greatest interest in ‘owning’ the news category.”

Visit Australian Anthill.

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In an example of the power of word of mouth online – Australian brand Cotton On is being flamed in social networking site Twitter as I write this.

This morning I noticed a tweet by popular Australian blogger Mia Freedman. “I have not been this furious for a looooong time” with a link to a post on her blog describing her outrage at a slogan t-shirt sold by Cotton On that said “They Shake Me”

Her audience have responded by re-tweeting the link to their own social networks all morning.

The word has spread to influential social media personalities – an action that will ensure the negative exposure will continue to grow.

Mia has updated her Twitter with response from Cotton On – that is that there will be no comment.

At the time of writing the blog post had been re-tweeted on Twitter 230 times with 143 comments posted in response.

—

UPDATE

Cotton On did listen and have now withdrawn the t-shirt line as a result.

From The Australian…

“CLOTHING company Cotton On has admitted it “crossed the line” and today vowed to withdraw a range of offensive children’s t-shirts, including one making light of child abuse, after a consumers threatened a boycott.

A t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “They Shake Me” was the last straw for many angry parents, who sent emails and Twitter messages to the company this morning expressing their disgust and an intention to vote with their feet.

Last month Cotton On had stuck by its range of shirts, which included slogans such as “I’m a tits man” and “I”m living proof my mum is easy”, saying there was a place in the market for their “edgy” humour that pushed the boundaries.

But today, as anger spread through the social networking sites, Cotton On finally cottoned on to their customers’ feelings, offering a contrite apology and a promise to withdraw the offending items from sale.”

Full story here.

SUMMARY

From a Social Media/Online Business perspective this is a great Australian business social media case study. Individuals used their collective voices and personal networks to create change and were successful.

The lesson here for any business is that each and every customer and potential customer of yours has a voice and they’re not afraid to use it.

It’s crucial to develop relationships before the preverbial hits the fan and it’s important to be active in the social media space. By being active I mean – monitoring AND engaging.

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Dan Gilbert on our mistaken expectations.

From the TED site – “Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes — and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way — Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.”

Hmm… hope there’s a happy ending.

—

I haven’t read “The Four Hour Work Week” and this is the first time I’ve seen him speak but from his bio I can see that I’m digging his ideas.

Tim Ferriss: Smash fear, learn anything

From the TED site – “Tim Ferriss is author of bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, a self-improvement program of four steps: defining aspirations, managing time, creating automatic income and escaping the trappings of the 9-to-5 life.”

I think I’ll like them. If you’ve watched the vids – what do you think?

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“It’s not just about making time to travel.
It’s about having an efficient, effective business.
It’s about having a business that aligns with your personal wants and your personal needs.
A business with personality.
A business that you feel good about owning.
It’s all of those things and more.”

From a review of Lea Woodward’s location independent guide by Andy Hayes.

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There’s this perpetual question of what’s there to do, or where to go? Especially for those of us that are socially active and status-seeking ‘transumers’ (those wanting to collect as many experiences and stories as possible).

We try to answer that and give style-conscious, busy people a daily email newsletter that connects them to stylish, cool and interesting events; what we hope will give the most memorable experiences. Daily Addict is about early-access, and our experience-hunting team is dedicated to uncovering the hidden lifestyle gems about town.

We cover 10 different categories ranging from culture to eat & drink and from entertainment to fashion. Our daily dose is conversational and clever, ready and waiting for our subscribers each morning in an easy to read format.

It’s succinct enough to be read before you’ve taken the first sip of your morning latté. We don’t accept payment for our recommendations – it has to be experience or useful-worthy to be featured. It’s also delivered free.

Q) How did you come up with the idea?

During my four-year stint living in London, I traveled to cities all across Europe packing in as many experiences as possible wherever I went.

When I got back to my home town in Sydney I thought how absurd it was that you make such a huge effort to experience new things in a foreign city and don’t do the same at home.

I wanted to create something for Sydneysiders that would let them get the most out of their home town.  I also wanted to give visitors a local’s guide to the best of our city.

Q) What’s the number one piece of advice you could give other women thinking of starting an online business?

The online business world is still relatively young, thriving with new technologies being introduced each day, so surround yourself with super clever industry people that you can trust.

“Be as nimble as you can to really understand how the online world works, and keep an eye on the future – what’s coming up next.”

Q) What was the toughest part about getting up and running?

In the early days I was running on pure enthusiasm; looking back I may have been blinded to how tough it was to launch a daily lifestyle email – a really new concept here in Australia.  But I would say getting comfortable with the content management system was the first early challenge.

The CMS is also a big investment decision that can lock you in for some time. My background is in communications so understanding all the technical components was a big leap.

Q) Do you have any advice about how to get people to sign up to your email list?

Around two-thirds of our new sign ups are via word of mouth, and I’m a true believer of premium content – if you show a respect for your reader’s time they’ll keep coming back for more, importantly they’ll tell their friends, and those will tell their friends, so start with a promise and make sure you deliver.

“Around two-thirds of our new sign ups are via word of mouth, and I’m a true believer of premium content”

More recently we’ve paid more attention to promotion-based incentives (you’ll need a trade promotion license). Simple things like having refer a friend links in existing emails also work.

Thanks to some good advice, connecting via social media has been key since we launched and it’s worked for us. Use Twitter and Facebook to offer customised promotions to those readers.

Before twitter became mainstream in Australia this April; we knew a lot of early adopters, creative and techie-types like using Twitter, so we would sometimes leak exclusives or invitations here first.

“Find the forums your potential subscribers are congregating in and give them a good reason to join up.”

We’ve now just launched the first lifestyle dedicated iPhone app for Sydney.  Keep innovating and researching so you know which are the important touch points.

Q) What are the three most important factors to running a successful online business?

This question made me think about whether it would be different for a successful business – online or off line.  I think I’d still answer it the same.

Belief & Passion – Passion inspires others to get on board, keep you moving in the right direction and get you through the harder times. It’s the best source of human renewable energy. Believe in yourself and don’t waste energy doubting what you can do; research, do it first and doubt later if you need to.

People – the clever, competent, fun to grow with ones.

Product - whatever it is, make it invaluable to your target audience.

Q) What’s the wildest success story you can imagine for Daily Addict’s future?

Daily Addict is known as the ultimate insider’s lifestyle guide. We’re in major cities giving people early access to experiences and events that they would normally never have come across, they are inspired to attend or be informed, and that makes people’s lives richer.

Thanks Carrie! Be sure to check out Daily Addict.

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