As a regular reader of my site, you are aware that I Strongly and Unequivocally recommend Ken Evoy’s different (free) e-books on marketing. (You can find them in the Library or directly on my Ken Evoy page here.)
Ok, I read the books and I recommend it. So what happens to somebody that actually follows up on my recommendations. Here is an interview with Sarah who is on my blogroll and who has follows Ken Evoy’s advice.
While I wish I can claim she followed my advice, I discovered Sam after she started writing.
Sam is a model for somebody who will succeed. Her site is http://www.achieve-goal-setting-success.com/ go and say hi and mention Zale sent you!
1. Do you want the interview to be with Sarah or with Sam?
Sam. Sam is actually my nickname and Sander is my married name. So I am Sarah Lethbridge at work, Sarah Sander to my family, Sam Lethbridge to my old school friends and Sam Sander online. Confusing, I know.
I’m a civil engineer by day, success writer by night.
2. Is the Site Build It process as easy as Ken Evoy claims?
Yes it is – which is just as well, as I need all the help I can get!
3. What parts of SiteSell do you find the easiest to use, what parts don’t?
The page building block process is probably the simplest process, which is good because it is also the most used function. But all the functions I’ve used so far (I haven’t tried them all yet) are logical and well explained, and as I’ve ventured into new functions – such as setting up the mail out ezine – I’ve found that the methodical process steps through the functions easily.
I do find the link building block process disjointed, as you need to read the start of the link in the previous text block, then the link text and then the rest of the sentence in the following text block. I’ve now taken to just typing in the HTML code (Wow! I’m talking like a pro) into the text link block – I find it easier to follow that way.
Also I’m not particularly fond of the webmail set-up – and I find that many registration confirmation emails sent to my SBI! email address disappear into that black hole called the Internet.
4. How hard is it to motivate yourself to write? How do you motivate yourself?
As the lyrics from the musical “Evita” go – “Sometimes it’s very difficult to keep momentum when it’s you that you are following”. My level of motivation has highs and lows.
Having a plan with specific tasks and deadlines really helps me stay motivated and on track, but I get the best real kick along if I’m getting good feedback or traffic. Even interviews like this are great for motivation, because it is a chance to reflect on what I’ve done and achieved, where I’m going and what’s really important to me.
Motivation does lag though if traffic drops off and it is hard to maintain the drive, so it’s these times I go back to the ‘plan’ and remember that it’s all working towards my long-term goals.
5. How have you been finding your growth rate?
Slow then good then slow then steady. I plotted monthly traffic over a 6 month period and applied a polynomial equation to create a trend line in an attempt to predict future growth. Maths is great in engineering, but not so useful in explaining human interactions.
6. Has it been as financially lucrative as you expected?
I’ve really only just set the site up, so I’ll see how it goes over the next year – perhaps another polynomial equation could be useful here? Maybe not.
7. How does the site connect to your long term goals?
This site is instrumental in achieving my long-term goals – to create a non-profit organization to help others, with proceeds from my site going to worthwhile community and environmental causes.
8. Do you have any partners in the venture? How does the partnership work?
I don’t have any commercial partners in the true sense, but through online connections I’m being faced with many opportunities for joint ventures, which I’m still getting my head around.
9. What challenges have you had and how have you overcome them?
The main challenges I’ve had to overcome are the self-induced hurdles of doubt and lack of confidence. But as the website developed and I realized that it was actually possible to create a successful website, these hurdles just disappeared (well shrunk a lot).
10. What do you use for Inspiration?
My partner and two little boys – and visualizing what we’re trying to achieve. My partner and I are both excited about the prospect of creating a foundation to help others and it is this excitement that keeps me inspired.
11. What are some of your sources for writing on Success?
Real life experience with the people I love and work with.
I’ve also had a lot of training on how to ‘manage’ people and read a lot of information on goal setting and success related topics. After a while, all this information aligns into a certain mindset – and this is the essence of my website.
12. What books do you read and which ones do you recommend?
“The GHD Book of Water Treatment”, written by engineering consultants GHD.
Oh, you mean ‘success’ books. I recommend “The Power of Failure” by Charles Manz and “Feel the Fear and do it anyway” by Susan Jeffers.
The warm fuzzy books on how to be a success and how to set goals are good too, but I think it is important for people to realize that there is an ugly side to success too – fear and failure – but more importantly, learn how to use these things to help you succeed.
13. Where do you find the Self Confidence to create a Site like this?
It grows with each little success and achievement, but in the beginning it was very different. In fact, I didn’t even tell anyone about my venture when I first started because I wasn’t confident in being able to do it. But I thought it better to try and fail than never try at all – and I’m glad I did.
14. Do you do any volunteer work – how much? Is it related to your site? Do you leverage it to generate income?
I LOVE volunteer work. My husband and I are both members of the Queensland State Emergency Service – a volunteer rescue organization in Australia. We’ve been members for over 15 years and we volunteer at least 2 hours a week.
My volunteer work is not directly related to my site, but through working with volunteers and other emergency services I’ve learnt a lot about people and this experience is reflected in the website.
15. Has the site led to any other initiatives?
As I built the site I realized that there are several success related topics separate to goal setting that I’d like to expand on, so I will be developing other sites to deal with these down the track.
16. Has writing the site changed your life in unexpected ways?
I originally thought the Internet was very impersonal and anonymous. In fact, my website initially didn’t include my name or any personal thoughts. So the response to my site from REAL people has been pleasantly unexpected and has changed how I view the Internet.
17. Where do you get the ideas for your site?
From the people around me – at work, in my volunteer work and at home. But particularly from my volunteer work as volunteer organizations attract a diverse range of people so helping them interact and work together as a team has given me an excellent insight into this aspect of my site.
Of course, trying to get naturally-conservative-engineers to get out of their comfort zones and ‘succeed’ has also given me many ideas on how to achieve this feat.
18. How often do you write for your site – is there a plan? Is it Random? Are you on a schedule? What is the schedule and how did you set it?
I’m an engineer. Of course I have a plan!
I have a five-year plan for developing my self-help site, which includes a detailed action plan for writing content. I started by setting out the site structure and then expanding this to list all the pages and supporting tools to go with it. As well as content building tasks, my plan includes traffic and link building activities and a strategy for ‘monetising’ the site too.
I love plans.
Do you love what you are doing?
Yes. I enjoy writing and I enjoy the challenge of helping people help themselves. So this website brings these two passions together. What isn’t there to love about that!
19. How do you focus on what you are doing?
It’s much easier once the kids get to bed!
20. Do you speak publicly? Where? Why? Do you enjoy it?
I speak at engineering conferences and community information sessions on community water and sewerage schemes, but I don’t speak publicly about success related topics.
I enjoy the speaking I do – except for that 10 minutes before I’m due to start the presentation when my nerves finally catch up with me and I wish I’d never agreed to do it. This is also when I swear I’m never going to do another presentation ever again!
Of course, once the presentation has started I actually start to enjoy it – and what do you know, I end up agreeing to do another one!
21. What has not gone the way you expected it to? How have you changed your plans?
Ken Evoy always said that all you need is a few good quality inbound links to get good link popularity, but building traffic and link popularity has been a struggle. So I relented and paid a provider to register my site on multiple directories to get some links – seems to have helped.
22. Has anybody been difficult about the site or what you have done? How have you handled it?
No – all feedback has been very encouraging and constructive. I asked for feedback on my site on the SBI! forum and got some great comments back on how to improve the site.
One comment was that my site reads like a text book (not surprising from an engineer) so I am progressively making the information on the site easier to digest. It comes back to a comment in one of Ken Evoy’s books on how people read on-line – keep it simple to scan.
23. Who is your target market? How do you describe them? Why would they read your site?
Anyone that will listen! In think everyone can benefit from using goal setting to find their own success and I hope they read my site to find out HOW. All the advice and goal setting tools I offer are free, as this advice has come freely to me from my mentors and from my life experience.
Click here to learn from Ken Evoy how you can create a website and becomes successful like Sarah or even like Sam
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