What I've Learned This Week

This week has been instructive for me. I've been posting consistently and daily on social media about my varied topics. I mixed in there the offer for my private coaching work. Yes, I picked my highest priced offer to see what would happen.

Traffic shot way up on my website. The hits on my private coaching offer have been numerous. I'm small beans, so to get 300 hits on one item in a matter of a few days is really good for me.

This is for those of you that struggle with doing this. This isn't to brag because I've tried many strategies that didn't work and I'm no social media influencer. Here's a few of the strategies that didn't work just so you can see where I started from.

1. I tried posting once a day and just putting all my offers there and not posting links. Nobody messaged.
2. I tried posting my offers in the comments only with and without links. Nothing happened.
3. I tried posting multiple times a day with no links just an offer to help. Nobody messaged.
4. I went through a phase where I didn't post much of anything. That didn't work obviously.
5. I went through a phase where I only posted my offer once, link or not. Most things never sold.

What's the balance I've found so far?

1. Posting offers separately at least twice a day for a week or so, including the links.
2. Posting consistently around that talking about what I do.
3. I have been adding my offers to the comments sometimes. This may work better if you wait to see which of your posts gets attention and then post the comment after. The comment is more likely to be seen that way.

These are paid offers. I haven't tried this to see what it does to my blog views yet, but I will be trying it soon. I probably won't offer the same blog for a week, but certainly for a couple of days to see if it increases my traffic. I'm expecting it will. Finding a balance of free offers plus paid offers will be important in the long term.

I'm also down to 2 platforms, Facebook and Mastodon. This helps with my consistency because posting is less complicated. They both get the same content because I've found a server on Mastodon that allows for 5000 character posts. That's perfect because I talk a lot. I'm proud to say I've only topped it once. hahaha They also have very different groups of people so there is nobody seeing the same content in multiple places.

I'm not encouraging either group to come to the other one. Except for my offers that are in Facebook groups, I don't drive traffic from Mastodon to Facebook or vice versa. It just allows me to have the separate audiences and not be bothered by duplication.

On Facebook specifically, my main profile is using the Professional Dashboard that Facebook offers. I've actually qualified for Stars which is really cool. Stars is how people support you when you do live videos. They can send you Stars and you get a penny for each star. It helps creators make money off their free content. You need at least 1000 followers (includes your friends) for 60 days to qualify.

Once I feel less like I'm homeless and I'm able to buy more clothes and fix myself up a bit, I'll probably start doing videos again. Tik Tok is probably my next platform of choice. It's easy to get traffic there. Then doing once a week lives on Facebook will also be added.

The other thing I've added is hashtags on Facebook. I was using them on Mastodon to be seen. I've realized that it's needed on Facebook too. My profile is public as well. Everything I share is open. It helps with visibility. Yes, I've added followers this way. It does work.

One final note, the posts that I make with my offers don't get attention on social media but the traffic numbers show me that people are actually looking. Don't wait for that interaction and get disappointed when you don't see it. The idea of looking to your outside reality for confirmation is what got me and probably gets you into trouble. Just put the posts there and walk away. Don't worry about anything else. Keep going with your normal posting. You'll be fine.

This took me forever to figure out. Part of it was watching the outside world - traffic numbers and so on - and part of it was my own lack of power. I didn't have the ability to be confident in it without seeing it validated around me. I couldn't hold it without seeing approval outside of me. My offers wouldn't get jumped on like I see happen to other creators and so it made me think I failed instantly. That's what kept me stuck for so long.

I had to understand my own power and just trust that the people that needed to find my offers would do so, algorithms or not. The idea of Law of Attraction works, but not the way you want it to. It works in the sense that the right people will see your stuff and eventually they may buy it or follow you or join your group. But it doesn't mean that you're going to get a ton of interaction from it. It doesn't mean that your post is suddenly going to get 1000 like and 50 shares. It just means that it's going to end up in the feed of at least some of the people that need to see it. You don't have control over who actually takes you up on it and whether or not they interact with it.

You don't know who is seeing your posts that isn't interacting. You don't really know the impact you're having because it's not visible to you. You have to trust because you don't have control, that the right people are seeing it and that you're having an impact whether you know it or not. You have to be able to keep going regardless of what the outside world shows you.

I was hooked on numbers too, just like a lot of you are. It didn't work. It was frustrating and it was disempowering. Needing that outside feedback and making choices based on the lack of it caused pain. Guess what? When you make choices from pain you get more pain. That's what happened.

I had to heal my confidence and my power first. I had to be able to not watch intently to see if anybody liked my post. I had to just be able to post and walk away so I could keep writing and keep sharing. I couldn't do it until I was okay within myself. Yes, there was a lot of work behind what I've shared in this post. There was a lot of healing there. It's happened slowly honestly. This hasn't been a fast process.

I had my meltdown awakening in June of 2014. I worked as a teacher for a year and then went to be a trainer and curriculum developer for a private company for 2 years. From September of 2014 to August of 2017 I was employed by other people. When I left that private company, I started offering tarot readings. I've been doing this for 5 years! I hadn't done that math until now. Holy heaven!

But for most of that 5 years, I made very little or no money. The process was me healing myself and actually still learning how to do what I do now. It was me understanding all the things that I now share with you about self-mastery, self-awareness, and focus. I learned it all on my own by doing it daily for 5 years. Now I get the fun of teaching it and sharing it back out into the world. That's all I could ever ask for.

No, I'm not perfect and never will be. Perfection is over-rated and you need to stop thinking it's possible. I'm still human. I still have days and moments where I'm far from perfect. Most of the time I just laugh at myself and move on. I correct my path when I need to but I never take out the hammer and beat myself up. I've learned to be okay with my humanness while still recognizing the need for continuous improvement. Being a professional golfer does not mean you get a hole in one on every hole. Not getting a hole in one on every hole doesn't make you a bad golfer either. It just means you're human and that's as it should be. We can know how to do something and still make mistakes doing it. That is where I am at on this journey right now.

Once my business is supporting me and the chaos has stopped, there will be a new learning experience, more change, and a new path. I will get the next level of this, so to speak. Will it be as difficult as the first 8 years of this journey were? It may be difficult, but I have the skills now to handle that difficulty. Yes, sometimes the difficulty level goes up, but the point of learning those skills is to be able to handle the next level of challenge.

One of my oracle decks has a card about being a "fearless teacher and student". I teach self-mastery, focus, and awareness, but I am still a student of those same things. I have not given up the learning. Unlike regular school where the learning stops once you graduate, I'm still learning even though I'm teaching. I will be a lifelong learner in that respect. I'm okay with that. The more I learn the more I share the more I offer. It keeps the cycle of content going. It gives me more to talk about, more to share, and more to learn. It never stops.

I'm as committed to my learning as I am to my teaching. I do both equally. They get equal air-time in my world. When I'm not writing and posting, I'm working on self-awareness and mastery for myself. I'm fixing my focus. I'm improving my own skills. It really never truly ends.

I offer you a way forward all the time because I understand the value of what I do. I see how important our focus is and I see the pain in the focus of others when I look around. Most people don't recognize the pain in their focus, they just think that's the way it is. But it's not. The pain covers up the truth and causes our perception to be skewed. We make choices from pain and wonder why we get more pain. There's a reason for all of it and I can help to show you where you might be missing something important in your world.

When you're ready to shift your reality, I'm here to help. I'm so darn excited about what's coming next for me and how much I'll be able to help others now that I've figured some things out for myself. You can do this too and I can show you how!

I've been offering private coaching this week and I'm going to finish out the week strong by continuing with that. If you would like to work with me, click the link below to fill in the application form and get started.

https://dellawrenbooks.com/b/private-coaching

Love to all.

Della