As if being a mom isn't hard enough, many women have also taken on the role of entrepreneur. This is where the phrase, “mompreneur" comes from. 
It's a tough but generally rewarding lifestyle choice. Moms can be there for their children and family when they need them. They can create an online business and generate an income for the family.


However, sometimes being a mompreneur can seem as if you're standing on the edge of a cliff. A crisis can hit and depending on your business model, everything can go wrong at once.  


For example, a mompreneur who suddenly finds that a family member is having a health crisis may need to drop everything to care for that loved one. The business goes on the back burner. There is no time for online work and when the health crisis is over there's little or no business to come back to. 


That's an extreme example but it can happen as I found out when my mother-in-law became ill and I was offline for almost a year and a half. 


Here are 3 steps that I should have taken to help prepare for any potential crisis.


#1 Have a Backup Person to Help with your Online Business


You don't have to have a partner or divulge everything about your business to another person. However, it is helpful if you have a virtual assistant, friend or family member that can help you. That way, if a crisis occurs, you can quickly contact them and they can handle any communications and manage things while you're away.


#2 Network and Build a Community


Another way to help prepare for a potential crisis is to make sure you have connections in your industry.


If you're a blogger or information marketer, then make connections with other bloggers and writers in your industry. If you're going to be unavailable for an extended period of time, you can hire or partner with a writer so the content continues to flow on your site. 


For example, if you're a professional coach and are unable to meet your coaching obligations for a period of time, you might be able to offer your clients a substitute coach while you're away. They don't miss out on the coaching experience they've paid for and you don't lose clients. 


#3  Your Mindset Is Everything 


Having a positive mindset is what will help you not only come through a crisis personally but also professionally. Being able to stay positive and focused on your priorities helps you avoid feeling overwhelmed and out of control. 


Before a crisis happens, make sure to create strong connections with your niche community. Then you'll be able to quickly make a plan, know what you can handle and what you cannot, and know who to ask for help.  

Many times people begin doing internet marketing excited about their dream of making lots of online money. Who doesn't want to make enough money online to be able to quit their job? It's the dream of lots of people.

But perhaps you've been doing internet marketing for a while now and you're not making the big bucks the gurus do.

What separates them from you?  What do successful internet marketers do that you don't?

Do you have a business model?

It has been said that being a successful internet marketer is not rocket science; find a business model that works for you and work it hard. Yet how many times do you start to follow one model, then abandon it for the next model that comes along with great promises? Stick with one until you're making money with it, then either ramp it up on a large scale or find another stream to add to your income.

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Many online marketers fail because they do not know what their business is. Those who write ebooks and short reports believe they are in the ebook information business, while software creators or marketers both think their business is software. Neither one is even close.

When people trying to run a business do not have a clear idea of what that business actually is they will be unable to produce business plans, write compelling sales copy or build a loyal following. In short, they will not have a business at all.

Regardless of what your product is, your only business is MARKETING. It doesn't matter if your business is online or in a retail store in a mall. Your business is MARKETING. Successful marketers develop a marketing mindset. No one was born with it. They learned how to think like a marketer and to make decisions marketers need to make.

Your first step in this process is to develop a marketer's mindset, rather than an ebook seller's mindset, for example. If you've been selling products on eBay or on your own website, you've probably been consumed by finding interested niches, driving traffic, testing ads for conversion rates and building a list. As necessary as those tasks are, they are the product of a seller's mindset and, while you might make some sales with that mindset, your business will not soar to new heights.

In order to develop a powerful marketing mindset, you have to learn to focus on the one question that will govern every step you take online. All of your business decisions have to be looked at though this question: "How will this action provide true benefits and create loyalty among my customers?" If you cannot provide an answer to that question, you might want to rethink your plan of action.

For all the planning, designing, researching and testing that goes into a successful marketing campaign, the customer is actually in charge of your business. All your success depends on a sale of your products or services and that is 100% dependent on your customer and THEIR needs.

When you develop a successful marketer's mindset, you will understand the motivations that make your customers buy from you. You have to find out what they need and what they want before you start offering products to them. If you are a member of several forums, read the questions that are asked in any category and focus on providing solutions to them. That's a ready-made, customer-driven market for your specific answers provided as a short report, longer ebook or services.

In the past, marketing was all about selling products to a constantly changing market made up of anonymous customers who made a purchase and disappeared. Giant sales based on holidays or current events were designed to bring that anonymous customer back to the store or service to make another purchase. The customers were still anonymous.

Today's marketplace, the worldwide Internet, has demanded a shift from anonymous marketing to building personal, nurturing relationships with customers and that demands exceptional, over-the-top customer service, to start with. Your customers need to develop a personal, trusting relationship with you or they won't even open your emails and, eventually, will just unsubscribe. Click...Gone!

What used to be an Internet of quickly-built, simple web pages promoting products to an anonymous audience no longer exists. The new marketing principles are based on a social Web, with people interacting directly with each other and mega businesses. Open communication and honest answers have become the driving force behind any online relationship.

Those relationships are dynamic, vital and dependent on the customer's behavior, attitudes and interests. Now, a single customer in a very small town, way out in the country someplace, can reach out and grab the attention of a mega company on the other side of the globe and have an effect on their customer service or the products they provide.

Now that's worth thinking about!
 

This is a MUST if you are trying to make money online with affiliate marketing.

DO NOT make the same mistake I did:

I had not checked my affiliate links on my blogs in over 6 months and didn't know that the site I was using to shorten my links was no longer active. (When I checked my stats, I had not had a click on these links since the last part of May 2009). Almost all my affiliate links on my blogs were going to "Page not found" when clicked. It took me 3 or 4 days to get them all fixed.

Needless to say, my sales are way down for this year. I will not make this mistake again.

***Note:  It is also a good idea to check any outgoing links on your site to make sure they are going where they are supposed to go.  I had several links in my blogrolls that were not working. ***