Marketing After Spouse's Death

I wrote an ebook about my early experience entering the IM world. It has been and sometimes continues to be a frustrating business. But I'm determined to keep at it and continue to learn what I can. I've met some great people that knew my late husband and they have been very supportive, patient, and continue to help me when I need it. There really are some great people in this business and some not so great but with the good people I've met, I've learned who to stay away from and that has saved me a lot of stress and frustration.

It has been a very hard year and I've lost so many things because of my husband's sudden death and from not knowing how to keep our business going smoothly. He meant to show me more, he had been saying that for years but was always too busy to show me. This business takes time to learn what is needed to be able to make enough to live on and I didn't have that time to learn slowly like my late husband did and that makes a big difference.

But I've come a long way from when he first died and that is good. But I didn't do this on my own, I had a lot of help from some of Barry's friends and I could never thank them enough. I am more comfortable with things now but I still have a long ways to go to be good at this.

Just like it is important to have a will and life insurance in place, so it is important to have a printed copy of websites, affiliates, login's etc of your online activities. I knew some of these things but there was so much I didn't know that I really needed to know.

Things such as...

- Email address and login's

- Online payment centers such as PayPal & Clickbank

- Websites you own and where domains are registered at, with account details

- Any programs/websites you are affiliates of, with login details and who to contact in order to update the info.

- Anything else you might be doing such as membership sites and where you get updates from.

Having a written document of my late husband's information would have saved me a lot of stress during this already stressful time. A fellow marketer friend of his was helping me figure out things about the business but at time not having or knowing exactly what he was doing and where he was getting updates for certain things he had going made things much harder than it needed to be. Not only was I alone in making final arraignments but in a way I was also alone in learning about the business, something that should not have been had I had this info handy.

Online businesses can sometimes have many things going on at the same time to bring in money and I know it is something hard to remember every little thing you are doing to make an income so what I do and tried to get my late husband to do, is to write things down as you do them. I bought him a small notebook, like what reporters use, to keep notes, logins and short details of websites, memberships he was a member of but he never got in the habit of doing that. I've always had one for my stuff and when he passed I had the one he never used, so now I have one for business and one for personal because as you know the more you do online it can sometimes be hard to keep logins straight. These are small enough that when I travel I can take them with me and since I have more than one PC I can take it from one PC to the other.

Of course you can do this on your computer with Notepad or a spreadsheet but if you don't print it out from time to time and your computer crashes that info might be lost. It never hurts to have a copy in more than one place. The important thing is just to have all your info written down somewhere and then to let your spouse or someone you trust know where it is at in case something happens to you, whether temporary or permanent so that your loved ones will be able to handle your business.

Terms, terms, and more terms...just trying to learn the lingo or lanugage of being an Internet Marketer at times was overwhelming. Learning what the different rights mean such as PLR, MRR was very confusing. Fortunately most products included a "license" which explained what rights you have with the product your just purchased. These are very important becasue you do not want to vialate the terms of aggreement, as I believe following those gives you more credibility to you and your business. Most license aggreements are very specific as you to what you can and can not do with the product.

I also need to learn how to write a sales letter and the marketing emails which was not and still isn't my strong suit but I have gotten better at both of those things. Practice is the important thing because the more you do something the better you will get at it. I also need to learn how to edit a sales page that comes with most products you purchase that comes with resale rights. Changing the "buy now" button code was a bit frustrating to me but now it is a piece a cake. Writing effective emails is another thing I had to learn and I'm still learning. Writing in general is not one of my strong suits and this has been very frustrating to me. Especially when I've worked for hours or days to edit a sales page then not selling anything.

I've never had to develope business relationships before so that was also something that I needed to learn how to do. I think I had it easier than some because my late husband made some very good connections and had some very solid relationships with fellow marketers. And for the most part they have all been very supportive and helpful towards me since his death. I can't thank them enough for the time they took to answer what questions I had or to show me how to do something, sometimes I needed to be shown multiple times but they never showed any frustration in having to do that.

This is just as important as anything else because if you don't stop and do something just for you then the stress will feel like it will never leave. Things you can do would be...

- Take a walk. Doesn't need to be a long walk but just get out of the house and away from things and enjoy nature.

- Keep in touch with your friends. People never know what to say during this time and sometimes it would be hard to think of things to say so I would just tell my friends, talk to me like you did before he died. That helped a lot!

- Listen to music. This is a great way to de-stress.

- It is ok to put some things off if they can wait. There is so much going on right now, and most things you need to handle so if something can wait or maybe be passed on to a close friend to handle, do it.

- Remember it is ok to laugh, it doesn't mean that you don't miss your loved one. Laughter is the best medicine.

- Get some sleep. I know that isn't easy but it is important for you to get through this time.

- Write down what you are thinking or feeling. This might not be for everyone but it might help, never huts to try.

- Eating is important but don't over do it.

Things you don't want to do a lot of...

- Drinking alcohol. A drink or two is fine but you don't want to over do it. This I learned the hard way since I like to drink and some days I would drink too much.

- Watch your Rx and over the counter medications. As easy as it would be to do, you don't want to over do sleeping pills or sedatives.

There will be good and bad days and some days it will seem like the most innocent activity can make you cry. I remember the first time I went grocery shopping. It seemed like everything I saw was things he especially liked to eat. I bought him things he like, which I didn't care for all the time and on this particular day it just seemed like that is all that was at the store. It was really hard not to walk out of the store but I was out of food so I needed to get some. But when I got back out to the car and was driving home I started crying and let me tell you crying and driving is not good to be doing together.