Category: Featured Post

There are a lot of well-known names in the online business world who specialise in teaching people how to make passive income or recurring revenue either as an addition to their business or as a side hustle, so it can be difficult to know how to choose online courses wisely. Online courses can be a completely legitimate way of learning new digital skills, however in recent times there has been a trend in creators who are selling their courses with Master Resell Rights to unsuspecting buyers hoping to take a shortcut to creating an extra income stream by selling on the exact same course made by someone else to another unsuspecting buyer. No wonder people are calling this the latest pyramid scheme. I only ever want to buy original content from creators who have lived experience in the subject, otherwise, who is going to help me when I have questions or run into a stumbling block? When you are looking to buy training courses online, especially in the digital marketing and business domains, it’s crucial to do thorough due diligence to avoid scams and low-quality Master Resell Rights (MRR) courses. Here are some steps you can follow to ensure you make a wise investment: 1. Research the Instructor’s Background Check Credentials: Look for the instructor’s qualifications, experience, and professional background. Verify their expertise in the subject matter. Online Presence: Review their social media profiles, LinkedIn, and personal website. Authentic experts usually have a consistent and credible online presence. Look to see how long they have had their accounts. Do they have a legitimate website or is it a one-page Stan Store site just with links to their courses? The MRR trend is to sell without ever having to show your face, so you can never see who is truly behind the account. 2. Read Reviews and Testimonials Third-Party Reviews: Look for reviews on independent platforms like Trustpilot, Reddit, or specialised forums related to the course topic. You can usually tell if reviews are useful or just plain gushy; Gushy makes me suspicious, maybe the seller got their friend to write a review, or maybe they’ve been promised something in return. Testimonials on Their Site: Be cautious of testimonials on the course’s sales page. Obviously, these can be carefully selected by the seller. Verify the authenticity by checking if the reviewers have real online profiles. 3. Course Content Verification Preview Content: Many legitimate courses offer a free trial, preview videos, or a detailed syllabus. Evaluate these to gauge the quality and relevance of the content. Learning Outcomes: Ensure the course clearly outlines what you will learn and how it will benefit you. Look for specific, measurable outcomes rather than vague promises. 4. Check for Red Flags Overhyped Promises: Be wary of courses that promise unrealistic results, like making a fortune quickly with minimal effort. Wild Income Claims: Avoid sellers who claim to have made large sums of money in a short space of time, this is a common tactic used to convince people they can have this too. Often if you scratch beneath the surface you can spot signs of dishonesty. 5. Instructor Interaction Availability for Questions: Check if the instructor or course provider is available for questions or support. Good courses often offer some level of interaction with the instructor or a support team. If you are unsure if the seller has created the course themselves, ask them outright. Community and Support: Many quality courses provide access to a community (e.g., a Facebook group, Slack channel) where you can interact with other students and sometimes the instructor. 6. Refund Policy Money-Back Guarantee: Look for a clear and fair refund policy. Reputable courses usually offer a money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied within a certain period, although if you get instant access to your content it may be that there is no refund option, either way it’s good to know. Terms and Conditions: Read the fine print to understand the conditions under which you can request a refund. If there are no visible Terms and Conditions this is a red flag and you at least want to be asking for them. 7. Accreditation and Endorsements Accredited Courses: Check if the course is accredited by a recognised institution or endorsed by reputable industry professionals.  Accreditation is not the be-all-and-end-all, but you need to be seeing lots of social proof at least. Partnerships: Courses partnered with or recommended by well-known organisations or industry leaders often have a higher level of credibility. Be aware that anyone standing to gain from a sale (e.g., an affiliate for a course getting a commission for each sign up), needs to be disclosing this information. 8. Comparison with Other Courses Similar Offerings: Compare the course with other similar courses. Look at the content, price, reviews, and instructor credibility to make an informed decision. Price vs. Value: Evaluate if the course offers value for the price. Extremely cheap courses may sometimes indicate low quality, while very expensive ones should justify the cost with exceptional content and support. 9. Trial Periods and Samples Free Modules: Some legitimate courses offer free introductory modules or a trial period. Take advantage of these to assess the course quality. Content Depth: Assess the depth of the sample content. Quality courses should offer detailed, practical insights even in their free content. 10. Contact Past Students Alumni Feedback: If possible, contact past students of the course for honest feedback. They can provide insights into the course quality and its real-world applicability. Remember that sometimes alumni might also inflate their experience for exposure to a large audience so get a range of feedback from those not standing to gain from it. My golden rule is if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Do your research and don’t rush into buying anything. There are no short cuts to making money online and you need to have your own credibility radar tuned in too. If the person you’re buying from is in a

Time is one of those precious commodities that money can’t buy more of, although we can all be more efficient with the time we do have and get clever with time-saving strategies.     Forget the pomodoro technique and time-blocking, the techniques below are where the big shifts happen.     You’ll notice these are all action words, so if we put that effort in and take action up front, our rewards will accumulate by way of time saved in the long run.   My challenge to you is to find at least one thing in the next week that you can change or improve by using one of these suggestions.   These 5 Strategies Will Change Your Life Automate Set tasks to run without your consistent input.   Eliminate Remove tasks that just don’t need to happen.   Delegate Pass tasks onto someone else to complete.   Accelerate Speed up the task by using templates or a system.   Collaborate Share the task with someone else.   No. 1 Automate There are endless automations and we already use some of them in our daily lives. A Direct Debit, a saved password, or an automated email response are all examples used regularly.   I’d be willing to bet that most small business owners could automate even further and get tasks to run themselves.    I use a gym where to book a class I need to log on at 07:00 eight days before the class. Classes are really popular and sometimes places have gone by 07:01. I have set an automation on my phone to run at 06:58 every day which opens the app so I’m ready to book. I’m happy with this as I don’t always go to the same classes, however another gym goer has automated his class booking completely and after he programmes in what he wants to do his system does it all for him.   I’ve also built an automation for the Hello Pink Business Hub, if all goes to plan when someone buys a listing they should automatically get an email, this provides a link for them to submit their listing. The listing responses will them be mapped out in a Google Sheet. After that, the relevant data gets copied to a new sheet, then the tool where the directory sits will automatically take this data and update it. An automation likes this takes a lot of testing, but when it’s done it will work even if I’m on holiday. No. 2 Eliminate Although obvious, how many times do we really sit and think about the tasks we could ditch?   Social media is a good example of this as many of us try or have tried at some point to be omnipresent.   Yes, there are ways to repurpose content, however if a platform just isn’t working for you, this is quite a valid task to eliminate.    I recently decided my Instagram would just be reels and stories, but I didn’t like my wall looking untouched, I therefore went for an 18 grid post so it doesn’t look empty when someone first arrives on my profile and I can focus more on reels and stories. No. 3 Delegate This could quite easily be a home or a work task. Sometimes we forget there are other people who could do things and we persevere because ‘by the time I’ve shown someone, I could’ve done it myself’, which of course is true for one-off tasks, but you’ll get that time back in abundance for ongoing work.     Show someone once or write them notes and they may take a while to get it, but once they’ve perfected it, it’s gone from your workload for good.   I will just add that in order to delegate, it’s a good idea to administrate with Standard Operating Procedures (also known as SOP’s) so the task can easily be passed onto someone else if necessary. No. 4 Accelerate Different to automation, there are often quicker ways of doing something. If you want to find some customer details but don’t have a CRM and need to trawl through emails, then you could accelerate that task next time but organising your data better.     The other side to accelerate is to use templates or tools that other people have created which get your task completed faster. You can get templates for email marketing or templates for your Pinterest pins, you can get sales page templates, website templates, copy templates, and many more.     AI tools are the ultimate in accelerating tasks of course, you just need to get good and putting the right prompts in.     I use a truly amazing AI tool for marketing which helps me create branding and content ideas in record time, it’s better than off-the-shelf AI because you build your brand identity into it. I’m an affiliate for it now because I love it so much, if you want to have a look, it’s Marketing Magic Dashboards.   No. 5 Collaborate  Collaboration is a great way to save time. For example, if you’re trying to build an audience, collaborating with someone else who already has a similar audience can rapidly grow yours. Some people do this by participating in a summit or bundle, or by speaking at someone’s event or in their membership.  There are also opportunities to collaborate on a joint venture, for example a networking event, when you collaborate you can share the workload with others but achieve the same goal. Like all of these strategies, a little investment in time up front can really pay off by saving time in the longer term.  You just need to think creatively and taking some action to preserve your time, is better than taking none. Get Help Working with someone like a VA for delegation or a tech VA for automation pays for itself in no time. If there is something you need help with, feel free to send me a

A common struggle amongst solopreneurs and small business owners is being able to find the time to create consistent content for their business.    A good friend once said to me that creating content is like riding a bike, all the time you’re peddling it’s working, but if you stop, the momentum stops too.  With that in mind, and as I love making things more efficient and helping people feel more organised, read on to find out how you can boost your content creation with my   5 Productivity Hacks Calendar Organisation Set up an organised content calendar.   Batch Content Creation Batch content creation to work efficiently.   Repurpose & Refresh Repurpose and refresh oldcontent for new life.    Brand Kit & Templates Set up brand kit and templates to save time.   Choose Your Tools  Choose tools that will work for you.   No. 1 Content Calendar Organisation To streamline your content creation process, begin by establishing a well-organised content calendar that outlines your publishing schedule and topics.    Having a clear plan in place helps you stay focused and consistent in producing content, otherwise you’re stabbing in the dark.   Start by determining how often you want to publish – whether it’s daily, weekly, or monthly, and where. Then, assign specific topics or themes to each publishing slot.    This way, you’ll always know what you need to write about next without feeling overwhelmed or unsure.   Since creating a proper content plan, my content headache has disappeared, it doesn’t take too much headspace and I can get on with other things.   I’m in a fabulous membership called The Visibility Society with training and guidance on everything to do with visibility. I also couldn’t be without the amazing Marketing Magic Dashboards (Affiliate link to a 7 day trial) which helped me create all my content pillars, content ideas, blog titles, and so much more in one afternoon.    I can’t tell you how much that has propelled my content plan forward and helped get me out of that sludgy vicious circle.  No. 2 Batch Content Creation Streamlining your content creation process can be achieved effectively through batch content creation.    This method involves creating multiple pieces of content in one focused session. By dedicating a block of time solely to content creation, you can minimise distractions and maximise productivity.   Start by outlining all the topics you want to cover. Then, proceed to create drafts, edit, and finalise each piece in succession.    This approach allows you to get into a flow state, reducing the time spent switching between different tasks. No. 3 Repurpose & Refresh Strategy By incorporating a repurpose and refresh strategy, you can breathe new life into your existing content and extend its reach effectively.    Repurposing involves transforming your content into different formats such as videos, infographics, or podcasts. This strategy allows you to reach a broader audience across various platforms.   Refreshing your content involves updating information, adding new examples, or providing a different perspective to keep it relevant and engaging.    By repurposing and refreshing your content, you save time on creating new material while still providing value to your audience.   Remember to analyse your existing content to identify pieces with potential for repurposing or refreshing, ensuring that your efforts align with your content goals. No. 4 Create a Brand Kit & Templates There are lots of tips and tricks to make your content creation sessions more productive.    The first thing that will save you a tonne of time is to set up your brand kit.  That means having to hand (or saved in whichever tools you use like Canva, your professional logo, your brand colours, and all your fonts.   One of my favourite tools I used when I was creating my own branding was this site colour palette generator (affiliate link). It helps you generate beautiful colour palettes and their codes as well as fonts, so you can give your branding an overhaul and consistently stay on brand.   I would also recommend setting up templates so you can customise and post within minutes.    The design part can be the most time-consuming and the one where we all fall down a rabbit hole, so having templates to hand helps get the job done efficiently and beautifully and then you’ll find it easier to batch create content as mentioned above too.   Be careful when using images and graphics that you are allowed to use them. There are lots of places to get free graphics and images online, and there are also marketplaces for this where you can buy bundles and templates. I have a  subscription with Creative Fabrica (affiliate link) and find a lot of beautiful templates I can use.     No. 5 Choose Tools Wisely  Choose your tools wisely, you want them to be practical and easy to use. I wouldn’t be without Canva as a starting point and we use it a LOT. There is a great free version and a reasonably priced pro version too.   If you can use the Canva mobile app alongside it, that helps a lot when posting on your mobile phone too.   Workflow tools can be useful too, I’m a big fan of Trello and Airtable (affiliate link) for content planning. You can also add content straight into a content scheduler like Metricool.   Finally, my best trick for productivity is to be really organised with your content storage, this will save time when needing to find files and for repurposing content too.   My motto is work smarter not harder, so by taking on some of these productivity hacks, you’ll be doing that in no time too and we can all look forward to creating effortless consistent content. Enlist Help Working with someone like a VA for part of your content workflow can be really efficient and keep you accountable. If there is something you need help with, feel free to send me a message and I’ll offer up some suggestions or contacts. Send me a message

If you’re in the online business world, the chances are you may have considered a membership or still be considering. If you are still unsure if an online membership is right for your business, here I explore memberships from all angles. You’ll probably already know that there are memberships in all manner of categories. Just in the business category, examples of membership topics available include: and the list could go on and on.  There are even special interest and hobbyist memberships, including learning to sew, playing an instrument, online fitness memberships, learning a language, DIY nail art, and even super specific memberships like teaching you how to do a handstand. Pretty much anything could be made into a membership if you were willing to be creative and had the willpower to see it through. My own experience of various memberships does tell me that to lead one is not for the faint-hearted. If you lack commitment, consistency, creativity, or get bored easily then maybe look for a different form of recurring revenue.  If you tend to overdeliver and are a prime candidate for burning yourself out, I’d also steer clear. The benefits to the members can be vast, it’s hugely beneficial to learn over time, within a community, sharing a common goal. However, some are better than others so if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it right. What are the secrets to running a successful membership and what are the pitfalls you want to avoid? Firstly, we should acknowledge the elephant in the room of memberships, there will be churn in your membership, people will come, and they will go.  When they go they might not tell you why (or the real reason why), this will make you question yourself, you’ll worry you’re not providing enough, and you’ll get scared they’re all going to leave; it’s a real mindset and confidence war against yourself.  You might see this as a setback, but often it’s not. With any challenging situations, it’s helpful to have a plan, in this case a ‘churn preparation plan’ and set yourself up to accept this will happen; it will be a lot easier to deal with. Who knows it might be nothing to do with you and everything to do with the things you have no control of. The Martin Lewis Effect Sometimes there are outside factors that influence people’s decision-making. It can be difficult to pinpoint sometimes but just know that it might be completely out of your control. Who knows, Martin Lewis might have just run a 30-minute programme on cleansing all recurring payments and they’ve remembered they haven’t actually logged on in 3 months because they lost the password.  It might be nothing to do with your content, or you, it might just be the Martin Lewis effect. Customer Feedback is Your Friend Of course, there are times when it might be something to do with the content, or you, or another member they’ve taken a dislike to, or the vibe, or your online platform, or feeling it’s not value for money.  In this case, customer feedback is your friend. I consider it a gift, although it doesn’t always feel like it at first. There are a ton of different reasons and it’s good to at least know what they might be, you won’t need to address every piece of feedback; by getting good quality feedback, you’ll be able to use what you’ll find useful, and leave behind what is not relevant at this time. A one-person-owned membership can be difficult to give feedback to if there are reasons that might be difficult to swallow.  Most people will tiptoe around the real issues they’ve found, you might get subtle (or not so subtle) hints but the majority will probably not want to hurt your feelings (there are exceptions to this of course!). Outsourcing Customer Engagement This is where it’s useful to outsource your customer engagement work. If you embed the feedback process into your membership, this sends an immediate signal that you care and have taken their views seriously and taken steps to make it easier for them to give you feedback. This is not to be underestimated, it shows you as a professional who is self-aware and eager to listen and improve. Questions to Ask Yourself When Deciding if you Should Start a Membership Important Factors in Memberships There are some important factors to consider before setting up a membership. The Good, Bad & The Ugly With any new business move, it makes sense to acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly. This will test your commitment to the idea without seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses or just focusing on the good parts. The Good The Bad The Ugly Will You Be Introducing a Membership Into Your Business? If you’ve got this far and you’ve not been put off completely but the harsh reality of introducing a membership into your business, then this might just be for you. Many people initially get seduced by the benefits, and then are disappointed when it doesn’t work out that way or ends up being a lot more work than first thought. By taking the rough with the smooth you really could build the next amazing community and help more people than you ever could before.

Any small business should consider adding email marketing to your business at the outset, but if you’re completely new to it, it’s difficult to know where to start. Ideally, you’ll have a well-planned out email marketing strategy so you can formulate a solid plan.  However, I live in the real world, and I know from personal experience that it’s difficult to implement something you’re unfamiliar or unsure of when you’re lost in the weeds of starting a new business. There is money to be made from email marketing and it’s important not to only rely on communications channels that you don’t own. I’ve heard of people with thousands of social media followers who’ve ploughed everything into their channels, only to have it shut down overnight with no recourse or chance to get it back. You have full control over your email list and the likelihood of recipients seeing your emails is far higher than them seeing your posts on socials. Won’t I Annoy People With My Emails? It’s easy to think we’ll annoy people with email marketing, we all get far too many emails and have signed up for things that we no longer need or want anymore, some of them are annoying. Of course, there will be people who don’t want to receive your emails anymore (and some might have only subscribed to get your freebie) and some might even express their annoyance with you, but they can unsubscribe at any time. You are not forcing them to stay as a subscriber or open your emails. They have a choice, it’s up to them if they use it. Most of the marketing emails I get don’t get opened but there are definitely some that do – the subject line is really crucial here. Your aim is to tweak your content so that it’s of interest to your audience and they do actually WANT to open it and even LOOK FORWARD to it and they get VALUE from it. What Do I Need to Get Started with Email Marketing? The good news is that you don’t need a lot – some ideas and a way to deliver it to your subscribers. If you have a content strategy, that is great, but plenty of people still wing it with their emails which is perfectly good enough. Some people like to be consistent and send emails out at the same time every week, whilst others are sporadic and just send out news when they have something interesting or important to share. There is no right or wrong way, but how your audience respond will help guide you in the future. And you can’t tell how they’ll respond until you get going. On top of some content or some idea of what you’d like to share and when, you’ll need a way of delivering it to them. There are lots of email software options available that are worth looking at. You want to avoid sending group emails manually from your email account as you’ll likely run into some trouble. You cannot share emails so you’d need to make sure you were using the Blind Carbon Copy option (BCC) which is easy to forget, and you also need an easy way for recipients to unsubscribe from your email marketing which normal email is not set up for. Do I need email marketing software if I’m just a small business? Technically no, however I would advise it early doors. It helps keep you compliant and start to learn about tags and sequences and how the systems work (once you’ve mastered one you start to understand the terminology and how it works). There are a whole range of options for email marketing and some are completely free for basic plans. Popular options for start ups include Mailerlite, Mailchimp, Klaviyo and Convertkit, they all have different plans based on the number of your subscribers or what functionality you need. If you start with one and then want to change across later, this shouldn’t be a problem to export your contacts from one system and import them to another. Can I use Google’s Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) for email marketing? If you’re a Google fan Yes, Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) is a popular add-on for Gmail that allows users to send personalised mass emails directly from their Gmail account.  It is commonly used for email marketing purposes as it enables users to create customised email templates, import contact lists, and track email campaigns. With Yet Another Mail Merge, users can easily reach a large audience with personalized messages, track open rates and click-through rates, and analyse the effectiveness of their email campaigns. This tool is user-friendly and cost-effective, making it a popular choice for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and marketers looking to leverage email marketing for their business growth. Is Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) compliant with GDPR? Yes, Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM) is GDPR compliant. YAMM ensures compliance with GDPR by allowing users to send personalised emails to recipients without revealing their email addresses to others. YAMM also provides options for users to easily manage and delete recipient data as needed. Additionally, YAMM follows best practices for data security and protection to ensure that user data is handled securely and in accordance with GDPR regulations. Users can have peace of mind knowing that their data is being handled responsibly when using YAMM for email campaigns. What should I know about GDPR before starting email marketing? After Britain left the EU, the GDPR rules have not changed as they were incorporated into UK law through the Data Protection Act 2018. The UK government has also introduced the UK GDPR, which mirrors the EU GDPR but has some minor amendments to make it work effectively in a UK context. These amendments include provisions on international data transfers and the appointment of representatives for data controllers not established in the UK. Overall, the principles and requirements of the GDPR still apply in the UK, ensuring that individuals’