We are finally at the end of what has felt like the longest January in history. January can usually feel like a long month but this one has felt exceptionally long, is it ever gong to end kind of long.
That doesn’t mean it was a terrible month here at The SEO Upcycler but its been long and a bit of a roller coaster!
Christmas And New Year
Like a lot of business owners, we closed up for Christmas and New Year which meant we didn’t open back up again until the 6th of January
December had been a helluva month so we were eagerly looking forward to the long Christmas break, but to be honest by the time we opened again (both our Agency Lead Better Online and The SEO ucpcyler were closed until the 6th) I was ready to get back to work and get back to some sort of normalcy
We did have a wonderful Christmas and Hogmanay though. Its so different now that our kids are older (18 and 15) Im the one dragging them out of bed now on Christmas morning and I do miss all the “Santa” stuff we used to do.
But having teens at Christmas comes with its perks as well, lots of Christmas movies, help cooking dinner, a busy house full of their friends over the festive period they even buy their own gifts for us now!
Hogmanay was a quiet affair, which, as a Scot I’m ashamed to say! But we had a lovely night, never the less
How was your Christmas and New Year?
What Went Well In January For The SEO Upcycler?
So now onto business, Behind the Scenes at Upcycler January was all about change, as our Marketing Agency continues to grow, we have moved all our done for you SEO services to that part of the business
Meaning The SEO Upcycler will now be focusing on SEO training and SEO Strategy. This will be done through our SEO Power hours, SEO strategy packages and whole new training suite that is coming this year!
With all that in mind the website is also getting a makeover, we started with giving the SEO Power Hour page a bit of a Facelift and I LOVE how it has turned out!
The sales page for the Power Hour hadn’t had any changes in a couple of years so it was long over due, another thing that hasn’t had an update in a while is the price, but I couldn’t bring myself to increase the price straight after Christmas, so we decided come the end of February the price for the power hour will be rising from £147 to £197.
This reflects the fact that all prices rise with time but you also get so much more now with the power hour. As well as our hour together, a recording of our call, templates and checklists, you now also get a SEO training course and a Google Ad’s course, 14 days email support and 25% off future orders.
So if you want to grab all the extras but at the old price then now is the time to do it as the price increases February 27th.
Next up was mapping out the training academy that I want to add to the SEO Upcycler, this will be a collection of SEO and Marketing training courses that we will be adding to the website over the course of the next few months.
These courses will help you whether you are brand new to SEO and marketing or have better understanding and slightly more experience.
The aim will be for you to pick and chose the courses that you need from a library of courses, guides, downloads to allow you to shape your SEO and marketing journey exactly how you want it.
While coming up with this plan it was really important for me to make them as affordable as possible so over 80% of the courses will be under £100.
So thats the strategic planning we got done for The SEO Upcycler, what else did we get up to in January that made us happy?
I had a number of SEO strategies go out to clients this month, and I have included the wonderful feedback from a couple of them below. We will now take that strategy and implement it this year to work on the local SEO strategy each month for Ernie and his business, Vantage Windows And Doors, as one of our agency clients.
I also had a couple of press and online magazine articles I was featured in, including this one about Local SEO, which I always love doing, as I could honestly talk about SEO all day long.
Then I set up some podcast interviews and guest trainings for later in the year.
So those were January’s wins, now lets take a look at what didn’t work out so well.
The Down Sides Of Running A Small Business
I think across the board January has felt quiet for a lot of business owners, I know we have felt it quieter than normal.
While there were still orders, new clients and returning clients overall it felt like everyone was waiting for January to be over to really invest in their business.
Or perhaps we just weren’t out there enough. Which brings me to what I think was our biggest problem for January, we focused so much on moving services like our SEO Audit over to the agency site and pushing that out, that Upcycler felt a little neglected.
We had no content scheduled for January, I didn’t even do much in terms of social media (practically none) we didn’t email our list once and we didn’t run any ads to help grow the list either. I didn’t even add to any of our content clusters
In other words, we just didn’t manage our time as well as we could have to make sure SEO upcycler was ready for the changes. Too much of our time was focused on the agency and on client work for the agency, so we allowed the pipeline for upcycler to dwindle and it showed in terms of training enquiries and sales.
Add that to the fact January is usually a quieter month anyway and we have made plans to prep for December and January differently going forward.
Behind The Business
The aim with these posts is to show the reality of running and growing a small business while also navigating family life and well life in general.
This month we all got sick, which meant taking time off from the business while we recovered.
My lovely mother in law turned 70, so we had a fab celebration for that. I often forget shes 70 as shes as fit as fiddle and doesn’t look her age, Shes signed up to do the kilt walk this year so being the good son he is Allan has agreed to sign up and do it with her.
My eldest told me she wants to move into digs in August, through in Edinburgh for the second year of her costume design course and that she doesn’t want to come on the family holiday to France this summer. I was half expecting both these things but they still made my mum heart a little sad (Ok a lot sad and I turned into a very needy human)
Meanwhile, my son is in the throws of his Nat 5 exams and general acing life while also turning into your typical teenage boy, he also has to stop growing soon because at 6ft 2 he now towers over me, which is crazy!
Our dog Bruce is a rescue we got last year after we lost our boy Jake at 14. Bruce has had a horrible life (physically abused, starved, had never been outside in the first couple of years of life)
He’s been with us a year now and had been doing so well getting over his fear of everything! Until he was attacked by a dog off lead and now walks just terrify him again! (So if you have any tips, or life in the west of Scotland and can recommend a dog training let me know)
So thats it January in the life of the SEO Upcycler, I would love to hear how your January went so pop it in the comments below and don’t forget your February goals so we can all cheer you on!