In my latest business moves and successes, doing my best to take things slow and steady and enjoy the process. One success, this site has been self-hosted for 2 weeks! I still can’t get Google AdSense to approve the site for ads. I’m not really sure what I’ve done incorrect on the site. So I will be investigating for the next few days to figure out what the issue is. Can’t say that their information section is all that informative. I’m going to need to reach out to an actual person for this one 🙄
I’ve been having all sorts of ideas for new content for the social accounts. Not sure if what I’m doing is really planting seeds that will eventually lead to sales, though. But going to stay consistent, so followers can turn into loyal customers and trust my opinion on books. Always here for a mini book club discussion in the comments section!
Here are my latest business moves and stagnations:
- Google Adsense: mentioned above, they’re saying the site has “policy violations” but nothing specific. So I have to comb through their program policies to figure out what’s wrong with the site. Frustrating…not good customer service. The catch-22 is that the site needs to be approved before you can see the Google Adsense policy center’s full explanation. Blergh.
- Habit Tracker & Journal: The journals I designed and published through Amazon KDP are live on the site now. I’m anxiously awaiting the sample arrivals in the mail so I can make sure they’re actually worth selling and promoting. So I’m gonna withhold those links for now. [Ed note: I love the journals, so I’ve added a link to my post about the journals.]
- Amazon Affiliate: On another passive income journey, I signed up as an Amazon affiliate. Planning on using links for any posts I might write outside of the shop diary and book reviews. For instance, I have a draft post for items I want to buy to create a book nook. I figure someone on Pinterest would like that topic. So my Amazon links will be everything, but books. To make sure we’re supporting independent booksellers (myself being one of them). Book links will always be for Bookshop.org, Libro.fm and Kobo (I’ll only use Kindle if Kobo is unavailable). Bookshop.org is planning to introduce e-books on their site, so until that happens I’ll be using Kobo.
- Marketing lessons: Attended a small business zoom call about marketing sponsored by Mastercard, where Jacqui Jones detailed “reputation management”. She gave us tips on how to nurture brand reputation (perception) and reputation (customer service). Legit don’t remember how I found this event. But I found it really informative, would I highly recommend joining their events if you’re also a small business owner.
- Grant applications: I applied to a couple grants to help fund the brick-and-mortar in the future. I think a physical location will bring customers in faster than this digital existence – but I’m probably just impatient. I used Nerdwallet to assemble a notion doc with all of the possible grants that I could apply for.
I still want to look into making merch for the store, but I want to see how these journals look first. Try to only have 2 fires burning at a time 🤭
What business moves are you making? Let me know in the comments.