Things are not working.
Yesterday I made $1.75 on the Medium platform, and a total of $123.69 for the month of March so far. I used to make that amount in a day not too long ago.
But it’s not the income that’s the biggest problem.
It’s the lack of traffic. And without traffic, nothing else works. No money from the Partner Program, no Gumroad sales, and no email sign ups.
So, it’s time to shake things up again with my digital side hustle. I’m dumping my old newsletter, and trying two new things.
This could turn into an utter failure, or perhaps, a raging success. Only time will tell. I hope you’ll follow along to find out.
Let me tell you what I’m doing…
1. A new email sequence
This might be a diabolical idea, but I decided to try something kind of crazy. My old newsletter was dying a slow, painful death so I decided to stop sending it out.
But I know how important building an email list is. And I know that email is the best way to connect with readers.
So I’m chucking the Intellectualist brand altogether (that was the name of my old newsletter) and going all-in on Hustling Housewife. This will make things less scattered and confusing…for me and my readers.
With Hustling Housewife, I’m creating a year-long email sequence with an email that goes out every day. During that sequence, I’ll be documenting the different ways I grow my “mini digital empire” to reach my target income.
My plan is to write the emails about one month at a time, and it should be evergreen enough to run indefinitely.
There are some downsides to doing this.
For instance, if I link to Medium articles, and then Medium shuts down, I’ll have to go back through and remove or fix all those links. That will suck, but let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
Another downside is that daily emails can be overwhelming for some people, and could be a tough sell. But, I explain why I’m doing it like this somewhere in the first month of the sequence. (I think? I haven’t written that part *quite* yet.)
But…
My goal is to provide a lot of value by showing everything I’m doing, plus some intrigue about what’s going to happen each day. And that should keep the right kind of people hooked.
I’m excited to try it. The worst that can happen is spending all the time to create it, and then having it be an utter failure. It wouldn’t be the first time, and probably not the last!
But you never know if something will work unless you give it a shot. Plus, I always enjoy the process of putting something like this together.
2. Fixing up HustingHousewife.com
Because this platform has been rough lately, and because I’ve experienced the downfall of these types of sites over the years, I realized I needed to have a plan.
I’m copying any articles related to the Hustling Housewife theme (money, health, growing a digital side hustle, self-improvement, family, home management, and even woo-woo topics like law of attraction and Human Design) over to my website.
That way, if this place does shut down, I’ll still have a nice home for my content. I’ve put a lot of sweat and tears into it over the years, and I certainly don’t want to lose any of it!
My email capture will be on the front page when everything is ready.
I’ll also be updating my earnings reports and including them in the email sequence. That part won’t be evergreen since they’ll have dates attached to them, but I still think there will be value showing the growth over time, even if it’s a year or two later.
There’s still one problem.
I need to figure out how to get traffic to my newsletter sign-up. For now, I’ll still be writing on this platform. I’m working on ramping the consistency up to see if that helps get in front of more people. (After all, according to my favorite writing tip, volume wins.)
I have 8.6k followers who clearly don’t see a thing I write anymore, at least according to my stats. The stats won’t deter me though. I’ve been in this position before and was able to come back better than ever.
If that doesn’t work, I may need to go back to Substack. The problem with Substack is that they like keeping people in their ecosystem, so I’ll have to think about how to promote something there that’s outside of their system.
I’ll also keep the possibility open to pay for advertising in other newsletters. I can at least test it out.
For now, I’ll stick with what has worked in the past and hope that it’ll work again. We’ll see…!
About my mini digital empire.
Every piece of content — from email to writing on here or Substack to my website — is a part of my mini digital empire.
But the thing I’ll be growing even more is my Gumroad store.
As the year goes along, I’ll document how I come up with new product ideas, and how I put those ideas together.
My vision is to grow my store into a large catalog of small, affordable products that solve problems in a variety of categories. (All the ones that will be on my website.)
Not only will this be helpful to people who buy the books and to those following along in the documentation journey, but it’ll allow me to put my creativity into overdrive. It should be fun!
All I need to do now is think of problems to solve. Thankfully, I’ve got this amazing $7 Problems book (plus the Masterclass) to point me in the right direction.
I hope you’ll follow along to see what happens. I’m not sure, but I’m excited to find out for myself!
Final Thoughts
Sometime things don’t work out. And sometimes things work out for a while and then stop working out. When this happens, it’s not a setback. It’s an opportunity to shake things up and try something new.
If you’re doing the same thing over and over, but nothing is changing (the definition of insanity and all that…), it’s time to change what you’re doing.
It might not be successful, but there’s a zero percent chance of it being successful if you never try.
P.S. The $7 Problems book and Masterclass are both available (along with tons of other tutorials) in the Inner Circle community. For one small price per month, you get everything + community support. Come join us here.
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