It’s amazing how little you can accomplish without any guidance. I decided in 2007, after earning my master’s degree, I wanted to start my own business in second language acquisition. I created a website on my own and waited. I created business cards and handed them out to friends and waited.
Finally, one of my friends told me that she and her boyfriend wanted to learn Spanish. So, I eagerly took their money and spent almost two months with them. I tried to use what I could remember about learning theories to make it the best learning experience possible. But in the end, they didn’t learn much. I finally gave them a booklet of frequently used phrases, and we stopped meeting.
I thought the next best step would be to start going to seminars –online, locally, and nationally. I still had my business cards, maybe if more people knew about me, I could get more business.
But, I didn’t.
I struggled for quite a while trying to figure out how to do this business. Honestly, I really didn’t know what I was doing.Was my goal to simply teach people Spanish? Maybe I wanted to offer teachers research about Spanish?Maybe I should get certified as a Spanish speaker? It seemed so broad, but I thought I needed to spread a broad net if I was to find any customers at all.
About a year later, I decided I didn’t want to focus on second language acquisition at all. I made this decision, mostly, because I had only one customer who paid $50. After purchasing a business license and registering my domain, I probably netted $5.
That 's when I started a blog. Again.
I really didn’t know what I was doing. I tried to stay focused. I figured if I stuck to education, I’d be doing pretty well, but I was doing exactly what I had done at the start. I wrote a blog and waited for someone to read it. Maybe someone would comment, “good blog”, or send
me an email and ask me to write something for them.
Of course that didn’t happen, and my blog became rambling about anything and everything. I just wanted to write, so I wrote book reviews, summaries of my vacations, thoughts on religious topics, and local artist profiles.
Again, I waited.
Of course my artist profiles and some of my book reviews drew attention, but it certainly didn’t draw any money.
Kudos could only go so far. So, I stopped blogging.What was the point if no one was going to read what I was writing, and my focus strayed in so many directions, who would even want to follow what I was writing?
And that got me frustrated. I wasn’t working a 9-5 job. I hadn’t done that in over 5 years, and while I was receiving money from another source, there was no way I could sustain myself in the long term. I needed help.
One friend I have on social media recommended finding someone local who wasn’t connected to my field at all. In doing that, I could get connected to the community but have the objectivity I needed to get to work. I definitely needed the objectivity, but I didn’t like the idea of finding someone local.
Being connected to the community would be a good thing, but I like to travel, and I want my writing or blogging or whatever this is to have a nationwide or global audience.
So, I did seek out someone completely unrelated to my field, well sort of, and she isn’t local. She’s a writer, and she markets her products through writing, but her products have little to do with my area of interest –that vague field of educational research. But, she is a successful writer, and if nothing else, I wanted to be the same. Even if I couldn’t be a successful researcher or a world-renown expert in education, I wanted to be a successful writer.
And, I wanted to be paid for my writing.
What’s the point of writing if you’re not being paid? Really, if you’re not being paid, you’re not doing much more than writing in your own private diary!
So, now it’s 2015. It was just December 2014when I realized I finally needed some kind of focus.
And, now at the end of January, I can actually say I’m not just an educational research writer. I don’t want to be a Spanish teacher or a book reviewer, or a music blogger.One of the first things I needed to do was find a niche, and surprisingly after some brainstorming, I came up with something I don’t think I would have ever considered.
I have a single focus now on music education within early childhood programs.
With that niche, there is so much I can do, but I will no longer ramble in my blogs. I won't allow myself to get off topic, and I won’t just wait for someone to stumble onmy website. I know it’s still early, but I feel confident that with proper guidance, the next ten years will look nothing like the past eight I wasted by doing nothing!
To find out more about Deb, follow her!
Twitter @debhalasz
Blog http://www.Debhalasz.com/index.html
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