Do you ever feel like things are just not moving fast enough? You're ready to get started and you just want to put the pedal to the metal and get started already! She's impatient - Very - Impatient - Annoying impatient. (She's totally the one writing this by the way, but trust that he agrees, and that might be an understatement) She's not really sure why she's like that. But that's always how she's been. (Ok, it's not with everything). one thing she is like that with is "knowledge". She wants to know everything yesterday. She gets frustrated with herself if she doesn't know everything about everything the second she wants to know it. And then gets even more frustrated when two weeks later she still doesn't "get it". And in fact, has now officially fallen into this blogging/Amazon rabbits' hole. It's that "pit bull intensity" thing she mentioned earlier... That hyper-focus (which apparently is a real thing, another random thing she learned recently, which was also very validating). It's like that Geico commercial with the two scientists. There's a green blob that swallows up the one scientist. She's the scientist and whatever thing she's fixated on at the time is the blob. Or in this case: the blog/Amazon thing. have you ever dreamt about work, and then when you wake up the entire time you're brushing your teeth you're trying to remember whether that really happened, or if you were dreaming? She solves all sorts of world mysteries in her sleep but can never seen to remember them when she wakes up, but she KNOWS it happened... in her dreams LOL. Thats been her for the last week or two. This week for sure she dreamt she had come up with all these blog topics she wanted to be sure to cover. Saw herself typing them in to her phone and saving them so she wouldn't forget. Even thinking in her dream "Oh yeah! That's a good one! I can't wait to start working on that one! I'm glad I'm saving it so I remember". Not even kidding. She wakes up, you know... Gets ready for "real" work, the usual. Then later goes into the blog editing app to remember the topics only to find they weren't there.... It was a dream! And of course she can't remember the topics either. It was one of those shoulder hunching experiences. Like all this work was unsaved and then your computer crashes. Have you ever done that?! Please say you have. No, but really... Please... So tell us: Have you had the same sentiments while delving in to the monstrosity that is blogging? Have you made sense of whatever the hell AdSense is? (Yes, we get that it's a way to make money, but that's about where our understanding ends) What helped you understand it? Or what helped you turn a corner and start noticing more traffic to your page? What resources did you find that you felt were the most informative? She can honestly say she's probably signed up for every single free e-book, free e-course, free e-insanity imaginable and she still can't get a handle on this damn thing. And to make matters worse she reads an article last night that says the number one thing to getting and keeping readers to your blog is to: "WRITE EPIC SHIT" Really? Well she's kinda feeling like maybe she should go start kickin' rocks! I mean, she loves to write but let's be real here, it ain't epic... Yet... Hey now, even the never ending story had some slow parts... Boring slow parts I mean... Not the tragically slow part with Artax and her childhood crush Atreyu... She means like the part at the end where it's Bastian and the childlike empress and a candle or something? Who really remembers that whole part? But you remember the part where all of a sudden Bastian is riding Falcor through the streets and teaching those bullies a lesson! Is she right??? See?? She wants to fast-forward to that part. Riding the sweet victory of "epic" posts with perfect keywords and giving stupid SEO a run for its money! Phew... She tried to get him to contribute to the content of this extremely long and boring and non-epic post, and he did actually... But she decided to remove the rant about the actual computer not performing at optimum and him making a smart side smile remark. He's such a butt. You gotta love someone who knows just the right amount of "jerk" to apply to make you not only laugh, but laugh at yourself when you're frustrated beyond belief. Shout out to HIM for always being the balance! Now start writing some epic shit! -me and him
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How does one follow a title like that with a hopelessly boring blog post? Just like this she guesses... This first sentence has now been written and re-written at least 4-5 times. Comedy is hard people! And pairing funny with an attempt at helpful-online-money-making information???
Mr. Make-do, it's high time you start coming up with some material for me to use in this thing!
Ok, so she's on her own on this one...
She's decided she's just gonna have to throw it out there plain an simple and hope maybe a smidge of comedy finds its way in somehow... So here goes... She is always trying to find weird random ways to save money, make money, be more money efficient, make budgeting easier, etc. She blames pinterest and her "pit-Bull" hyper-focus disorder that makes her obsess over things until she either conquers it, or admits defeat and moves on. One such endeavor was before she went back to work and when the whole extreme couponing thing hit (in her defense, she actually started trying to learn to coupon like, right before the Extreme Couponing shows popped up). In her search to better understand couponing, she somehow came across the blog of this amazing woman named Josie. She looks young, she's super cute, her blog is super informative and helpful, and she's in So-Cal?! She signed up for her blog 'cause if she was going to learn from anyone, it'd be her! This woman knows the struggle of living in Southern California and knows how to save! And not just save, but also how to save money on healthier food, not just the processed Cheese-Whiz crap that you usually get coupons for. She faithfully clipped coupons and organized them in her binder full of plastic baseball card organizer sheets and tried making lists of dinners to make off of sale stuff, tried to match sales with random coupons and different stores.... She's tired again just writing about it.
It was work. A LOT of work. It was her job when she wasn't working, And she didn't enjoy it. And she didn't even really understand it. She admitted defeat and moved on. but she never stopped following Josie's blog.
SIDE NOTE: Both her couponing and Smart Money pages are packed full of super useful information and guides and she definitely encourages her so-cal friends to check out both of Josie's pages. She's really hoping Josie starts a blog about blogging so she can learn some more and maybe reach more people like us. Fast forward 3 years later and she gets an email from Josie's blog saying she's starting a new blog about budgeting. Of course her interest is piqued. Especially when in this blog she talks about how she "accidentally" started an amazon business and made $4,000 in one month.
Right?! That's what she said too, and that's how the pit-bull intensity obsession began. Josie took the Amazon Boot Camp course (about $300 and offers a 3-month payment plan for slightly more) from The Selling Family (Referenced in the previous post when he said: "what happened to the $300 one?"). They offer a couple different options, each option has different information inside. An A-La-Carte type of thing which is cool for those who #1 may not have the money to invest in the boot camp, or #2 are really only looking for information on one aspect of AMazon business.
But like we said before, we want to try to do this as free or cheap as possible. And we need the whole enchilada plate, beans and all and maybe a fountain drink of horchata if you're in to that (blegh). So she dug deeper... Next she came across Scott Voelker aka The Amazing Seller. And he-is-amazing. He admittedly talks fast especially when he gets pumped telling people about Private Labeling products and selling them on Amazon. We've watched a few of his webinars and he gets you pumped and jazzed and ready to go! (again, hence the previous post about "What happened to the $300 one?"). He touts himself a "normal guy" and starts to give you a little background on himself.
Well we don't know about everyone else, but to us, that is not what we consider a "normal guy. Clearly he has some business knowledge, how to start a business, etc. Scott does say he learns a lot from watching, listening and talking to others and teaches himself through research etc. And we get that. We respect it! It takes drive, or as he says "Action"! He also says he loves to help and teach others which we think is awesome. And we do believe his knowledge and the things his program includes is more than likely worth the value he charges for the course. But listen, if that kind of money was in our budget just chillin', lookin' for a reason to be spent, we wouldn't even be writing this blog. Side Hustlin' with his lady
So again, we press on in the search for free information. Then Sunday (Father's Day), through some miracle of technology, she came across quite possibly the best blog about this amazon-blogging-learning-curve thing ever written by this dude named Matthew Allen!
Matt says he calls it "Side Hustlin' with my lady". She laughed out loud and called him over to tell him what Matthew called it, explained how he's a truck driver and she thinks this just might be the guy who we're gonna learn everything we need to know from because he sounds just like us and he's been doing it for a while and how he thought it was so cool that this was something he and his wife could do together! A normal human with a family and a real job and just wants to generate some extra cash for his family. Just like us! He laughs and continues playing water balloons with the little guy, fully enjoying his 110 degree father's day with a belly full of shrimp boil and beer. She goes back to her iPhone reading as much as she could while trying not to melt. She wonders where his blog was back in May when we were searching google for "real normal people trying to start an amazon business with practically zero dollars to invest and equally if not less knowledge about starting a business"? Maybe we were using the wrong keywords... Curse you SEO!!!!
So disclaimer: we clearly just found his blog, and he has a ton, and we mean a TON of content. And because it does look like he has clearly been where we are now, we want to take our time reading it, understanding it, you know the drill... so we haven't read through all of his posts yet (because again, we're normal average adults who both work full time and have a family and sometimes we try to sleep too...) but what we've read so far, we feel we can say we think this guy is pretty awesome. And he's real, like real real. he just tells it like it is, and is honest about things. Which is exactly how we would be if we were as far into this journey as he is.
Another thing we respect is that all the Amazon and blogging stuff he knows is 100% self-taught. He says in his blog he listens to several podcasts (which was actually one of the first things she downloaded when she first started researching, but has yet to listed to any of them), research and undoubtedly some trial-and-error too. Shortly after she found his blog she commented and asked a couple questions and he responded pretty quick! Not just a response though, like "took the time to include a link to one of his posts that would answer her question" kind of response. So We're pretty excited to dig deeper into his blog and learn as much as we can from his experiences so we can at least try and get a basic understanding of this Amazon thing. So shout out to Matthew Allen! A big thank you to you and your wife for beating us to the punch and sharing your amazon journey with us!
-Me and Him
p.s. She almost forgot to add the smidge of comedy! She couldn't think of anything clever or remotely funny to say, but in her search for something funny she came across this photo.... and the story behind it. And that, dear friends... that's funny right there!
We said we'd be honest and so… its true folks...
She'll catch an infomercial selling sunshine in So-Cal (we're still in a drought for those of you living under a rock) and she'll look at him with wide glassy eyes and say "did you see that?!?! How have we lived without that this whole time?!" he's the "balance". Here's the story: There are several, (if not more) "selling on Amazon" classes, boot camps, "gated communities" whatever you want to call them. They all promise to teach and walk you through every step it takes to be successful selling on Amazon. In fact, these are the very steps they took that lead them to success (in most cases). To save you the "trial and error" period. And who doesn't want that? In an effort to make sure she does her due diligence researching what it takes to run an Amazon "store", she signs up for every website, podcast, blog, free downloads, free webinars... Anything. You've got to have a hunger to learn, right? And this mama's HANGRY! And this is something a Snickers ain't gonna satisfy (never thought she'd hear herself say that).
one such webinar she watched about private labeling. In essence: you find a product, research/review it, make it better, find a supplier, order your product check it out, send it to amazon aaaaaand wham-bam-thank you ma'am!
You're now in the private label business! You've got your very own supply of consistently in demand product and you have complete control over inventory. OK, obviously the entire process is waaaaay more involved than that, but that's about the gist. her eyes instantly get giant. Of course! It makes perfect sense!
It's perfectly logical really. If you're making money and moving product you'll want to be able to control inventory. Run out of inventory, run out of sales.
You'll want something unique, but practical and useful. "Wait, you're telling me there's a basically a roadmap to doing this Amazon thing?! Like... Lots of roadmaps?! I mean, sure, we'll be using the credit card for this, but We'll make double our money back anyway, right?! We need to do this now!!!" And they offered "for the first time ever" a 4-month payment plan plus a 30-day, 100% money back guarantee no questions asked with full and complete access upon the first payment?!?! She literally had her credit card out, payment page pulled up when he texted her back.
its no risk, but at the same time, it is...
It's that nagging voice in your head that makes you question yourself. "you just spent the money you had saved up specifically for something else going to New York for a different financial endeavor, and that set you back. You had to reconfigure the budgeting to make sure this other thing was covered but you did it and now you're back on track. but vacation is about 2 weeks away, then it will be time to buy school clothes, then this then that, meanwhile pay off the credit card, then... Then.... Then..." the list goes on, and whenever it ends, it repeats itself. Like we said: we make do, but sometimes it takes a lot of doing without to make headway. Sounds more desperate than it actually is. In a nutshell; we live in Southern California. And although we live in an area that's "cheaper" in comparison to San Diego or Los Angeles, it ain't cheap! And we probably have the cheapest rent for a house with a good size backyard in our whole little valley area here! (If our Landlord is reading this: Just kidding! Please don't raise the rent!!!!!) Let that boggle your brain for a little bit... now, that being said, we do appreciate the position we are in! We're not in a bad financial place by any means. Could we go Dave-Ramsey-balls-to-the-wall-live-out-of-cars-and-sell-all-belongings-for-however-long-it-takes-just-to-save-money-to-buy-a-house? Sure! Is that reasonable? Not for us. we just don't think people around here would be taking us up on "mowing their lawn, teaching them piano" or other random skills we've seen suggested to make side money... Aside from that, we don't really think we have all these random skills like that to offer... Or ones that would justify spending the little amount of time we have during the week with our kids and each other away to make an extra $10. Its not exactly our idea of "living like no one else so later, we can live like no one else". (yes, we read the book, we did the whole envelope thing bla bla bla... It's one of those things you have to take with a grain of salt, In our opinion) We feel like we already live like no one else! Unless there's somewhere in Idaho, Oregon or Washington State called "Cancun" or "Maui"... maybe we drove past it on our way to visit family? It's hard not to get caught up in the moment and jump the gun knowing the payoff will come... especially when you know "results aren't typical". So it's back down to the ground she comes... no more fizzy-lifting-drink for her.
-Me and Him
we think we have our niche! Now what?
now comes the research. she now knows some free places to go to research it but she really has no idea how to analyze the data and make sense of it... Also the niche is more of a general idea and isn't really a new one but something we personally have felt the need for (I know you're probably waiting for her to just say what the niche is but she feels like every single thing she's read so far nobody ever talks about what specifically their "niche" is so.. She's following suit. Sorry folks. Trust us, we know how freaking annoying it is!) pssssst... we have no niche
alright so we've got two posts up, 13 "original views" and more than likely our blog is probably only coming up in Google when someone decides to type in "random couple blogging about money and nothingness"... Which is totally what someone is going to search for, right?
yeah, she didn't think so either.... She knows there is a way to add keywords somewhere, somehow that will increase our blogs' chances of moving up the Google totem pole, so she decided to look into it to increase the chances of like-minded folk to stumble across our blog. Turns out this ability is called: SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Isn't it funny we totally understand those three words and yet at the same time really have no idea what exactly that means? Like, How exactly do you "Optimize for a search engine"? What does that really mean?
Well, she looked into it! And she had absolutely every intention in the world to post it all right here for your viewing and learning pleasure; Bullet point by sweet sweet bullet point... But 6 1/2 hours, 3 Coronitas (She's like, a midget folks, let's cut her some slack) and a bowl of cookie dough ice cream later this was her:
There's just no way to streamline every single detail without tumbling deep deep deeeeeeeeeeeeeeep into the rabbits hole...
It's one of those paradoxes... it's simply complicated. Hmm.. that doesn't sound the way she wanted... it's confusingly simple? It's.... it's just a damn paradox people, ok?
She thinks it's just one of those things you have to actually understand to even begin to try to break it down into layman's terms for someone. And we're just not there yet. But one day, when we are, we'll post it for ya. Just the way she imagined it. It will be a thing of beauty, she promises... she just may need a reminder later on... you know... like in never years when she finally gets it?
You might have to get in touch with Guy Pierce and ask him if he still has access to that amazing Time Machine from the movie (that movie was awesome...) Ok! Before she goes waaaaaaaaay further off subject. SEO = COnfusing = Frustrating = Do not attempt when tired and drinking coronitas. She ended up signing up for Google Analytics (free). We shall see how that goes. Even that was a bit confusing and not really "normal human" terminology... or she should say, it is, but it isn't (Another Paradox?!??!). I know what a "container" means to me in my personal life, I also know what a "container" means to me in my secular life, but in Google tag word terms? ahhhhhh no. We'll be sure to update any who are interested about how that nonsense works out. Ok, ending this long boring blog about nothing now... maybe when we figure out the SEO crap we can add the keywords "Boring SEO Blog" and spare future visitors the time! Until Then...
- Me and Him
So We (she) decided to start a blog. But since we eventually want to start a business, and hopefully link the two she figured The First Step would be to come up with a clever website/company name and claim it immediately. She marched her fingers straight to GoDaddy.com and registered that bad boy. And with a nod, tap and a hot $12.17 MeAndYouMakeDo.com was born... or rather, registered... We had no idea there was more to it than that. Little did she know that basically all she did was the equivalent to registering a business name. All that $12.17 does is "reserve" that domain name for you for a year, or however long you want to pay just to own that name.com. Again, going by just the commercials, they make everything seem to straight forward. You "buy" a domain at godaddy and that's it. Boom... you have a website. So the Next step was to search "i bought a domain on godaddy. Now what" (yes, she really typed this). And guess what! That's EXACTLY what came up! She's going to be honest with you, she only skimmed the page. She is way too impatient to read all the technical businessy stuff when she's tired. She only read the bolded black title that said "Create a website". Ok! Got it! Website! and off she went to find a way to do this thing as free or cheap as possible. Queue "free website builder" google search. RESULTS: WEEBLY.com Along comes Weebly. It was fairly easy actually! Drag and drop stuff that you can almost put anywhere you want. Change the font colors, background colors or add a photo, etc. She spent two evenings typing it all up, making it look the way she wanted and adding the first blog post and then: it was time... But first! I'll let Kevin Spacey set the mood: (that means read that in his voice!) "It's 11pm on a Tuesday. You've been up for 18 hours, The house is quiet and you're exhausted but you're there! You're FINALLY THERE! Weebly was your cow..." And so... She hit the "Publish" button! a popup appears asking her what she wants her domain name to be... "Ok, No biggie" She thinks. She shakes it off and clicks the "I already have a domain I want to use" button and enters the address thinking "Ok, now here comes THE BIG CLICK!" And then another pop up saying it can't be transferred, but she can pay to transfer it over, blah blah blah, money money money... Detour: Proceed to the route. Ok, so GoDaddy must have something that does the same, right? we're already paying for the domain, let's see what they have. It was pretty straightforward... She even chatted with someone who walked her through signing up step-by-step. GoDaddy offers something called Managed WordPress Basic, it includes the domain name (if you don't have one already), up to 25,000 monthly visitors and a fancy email with your business name at the end to boot! All for the easy payment of $3.99/mo (of course that's if you sign up for a year or more) or $7.99/mo. Not free, but Not a bad deal, she figured. She tried to log in on the app for iphone to edit the site when she had time during the day with no luck. Kept saying her login information was wrong. And though the larger screens on the iphone 6s are amazing, it's not the iphone 6 Plus, or Ipad mini, or even a regular ipad... It's just not the same as having a keyboard and mouse. So logging in on safari wasn't giving her the view or capabilities she wanted either. She starts to work on the website as soon as she gets home, trying to recreate the amazingness she created on Weebly with wordpress. First roadblock: The Fonts: Listen, not everyone cares about fonts. She gets it. But she does! We work with boring 12pt Arial Unicode day in and day out at work. Can we get some character up in the blog please?! She tried searching for how to put the code into wordpress but short of installing some app and then putting it into the "coding" it's not very brain-fart friendly. Second roadblock: boring layouts that look worse on iphones: Browsing the layouts they looked nice. Classy, fun, exciting. When she applied them to use them for this blog? eh... And forget about how they looked on an iphone! It didn't take long for her to realize she wasn't happy, ANd she didn't like it. She wanted the weebly site! It was perfect! What did she do? Can she get out of This?! Is it too late? Lucky for us, there was still time! SHe called and cancelled GoDaddy and Wordpress in about 1 minute (turns out this can be done with the click of a button in your Account Settings as well) and she was back to weebly! NOw, we still have the domain registered at GoDaddy. Frankly because we paid for the year, and currently we're not missing the $12. for whatever reason today she was actually able to find an article about how to make weebly and godaddy work together (which she will look into later) (Update, you have to wait like 60 days after registering a domain name to transfer it anywhere, so… We'll update after that). For whatever reason that site did not pop up in her search before the purchased the WordPress with Godaddy, but nevertheless, it's there now. But she figured in the meantime, let's just get this bad boy up and running already! We'll take the free weebly site for now. One of the free "How to Blog" books she downloaded on Kindle said "before you go pay for a .com to blog, use a free one first and see if you even like it. Wise words Mr. Lotich! So she went for it. She hit that "Publish" button like her name was Desmond Hume (PLEASE say you understood that lost reference!), she typed in that website address with .weebly at the end proudly and boom. The blog was launched! So, the question remains... GoDaddy or No Daddy? In all the free Blogging books I downloaded for kindle there are several domain name places you can go to reserve your name. I haven't looked into them because I've already paid for the year, like I said. But I'm sure there is a spectrum of places you can go to that will include different things with their registrations, etc. Or you can pull a "make do" and go free and see how it goes! Ultimately it will be a matter of personal preference whether you choose Godaddy or a different site. I prefer Weebly this far. However most, if not all of the bloggers who wrote these free books suggest WordPress. Stating there's More you can do with it. I beg to differ, but you know... who am I? I have one, almost two whole posts ever! - Me and Him p.s. If you'd like more information on the free kindle books I downloaded please send us a message and I'm more than happy to provide a list!
"Here goes! First post titled "So... Here we are..." She says all proud of herself for being so clever and funny.
"So typical" he says "don't give your social out on the blog" and laughs, because let's face it, he's funny! And then we move on to normal parent-y type conversations about dinner that we'll have to start making in about an hour as we sit here in the hot southern California sun in the dried up, weedy backyard of the house we've been renting for about 5 years. Earlier today we did a little research on starting an Amazon business together but we didn't get very far. Just the idea of starting a business is daunting and wore us both out. Everyone makes it sound so easy! "Just" do this and that, or "just" pay $300 that you don't have to LEARN how to do what we did and make 6 digits in 6 months..." Yaddah yaddah... You know the drill....
somewhere towards the end of our research she came across a blog about a dad who says he first started blogging, and eventually started an Amazon business and how lucrative selling little weird wedding napkins is and how he can't even believe it himself! (Neither can we, but OK!)
He has one blog post specifically about the advice he would give people exactly like us, who don't know where to start or how. and the advice was basically this: if you don't put yourself out there you'll never know. Gather an audience. And the first step is to just put yourself out there. Well, Mr. MyWifequit... Advice Taken! "So... Here we are..." Boom!! See how that's clever?! Wife wins! He may disagree, but she's the one posting this so, she's calling it. She figures why not? I'm sure tons of people have done it before us (although for the life of me, I can't seem to find their blogs). And it gives her something to focus on while she sits here sipping her cheap champagne mimosa out of a cheap insulated plastic cup with a straw getting sun burnt.
So, that's about it for now... in fact, for "keeping it real"'s sake, she started typing this bad boy up Sunday and it is now Tuesday at 9pm. Why won't these damn website builder/editors just put stuff where I want them the way I want them?! We sure hope someone (besides us) gets a kick out of these posts. And if you have some suggestions, or directions on how to navigate this Selling on Amazon maze: please! Share!
Me and Him |
Oldies but Goodies
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