Contingency Plans – Giving Yourself Breathing Room

Have you ever had one of those weeks that didn’t go exactly as you had planned?  Oh, that is every week as a WAHM?  LOL! My week definitely did not go the way I thought it would, and my business was impacted.  I have learned from my mistakes and have a new Contingency Plan – do you have one?

Episode 266 (April 27, 2009 show) of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio, Vera Raposo discusses how she was able to still run her business while at her daughter’s hospital bedside.  Kelly’s fantastic new resource, The Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start-Up Guide has a detailed plan for just such emergencies.  If these successful WAHMs think contingency planning is essential for their businesses, and if they think so, we should too.

How can you make a contingency plan for your blog?  If you are using WordPress or Blogger (not sure about the other platforms), you can write and schedule your posts in advance.  If you have scheduled times to release your posts, no one will know if you are in the middle of a family emergency, giving birth or having dental surgery unless you want them to know (cough, cough, Twitter).  I have read some people schedule their posts form a few days to months in advance, but 2 weeks seems to be the most popular and realistic number to allow you time to breathe.

Writing the initial posts will take a lot of work, but then you always be 2 weeks ahead, but you can slip in late-breaking posts along the way.  Does the thought of writing two weeks of content at once send chills down your spine?  There are ways to get around it.  You could write two posts a day for 7 days and then you are one week ahead, rinse and repeat.  You could use PLR, provided you have the proper rights.  You could asks others to guest blog.  There are lots of ways to get content up without actually having to write.

With so many wifi hotspots around, it is easy to bring your laptop or netbook with you and check your email or your paypal account from where ever you are. If you have a smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry), it is even easier to look like you are in the “office”.  I even found a fabulous iPhone app (free!) that is a WordPress client – so easy to post to your blog or edit comments or whatever your heart desires from where ever your heart happens to be.  Again, your Twitter stream might let the cat out of the bag if you post “so hi on laffing gas right now, I luff my dentist!”  :)

For more detailed instructions on how to create a backup/contingency plan, you will definitely want to order The Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start-Up Guide for yourself, the checklists and step by step plans are really helpful and it is chock FULL of actionable items.  Of course the back up plan is just a tiny part of this fantastic resource that Kelly has written and it has all the information you need to get your Internet Marketing business up and running.

This week I am writing lots of posts so I can post ahead, I have the feeling the baby will becoming next week and I will need breathing room (and sleeping room!).  I will be writing posts and articles and digging through my PLR to see what I can you.  Now I will be able to breathe easier, what are you doing to breathe?