One of the things I like about inventing is always seeing possibility on the horizon. A failed experiment gleans new insights into how things work and allows me to create a new experiment to try.
For my experiments I collect all kinds of odds and ends to help me out—just recently I got some shower drains off Amazon to help build an experiment. I search for the sales and the cheapest products that will work for me in order to save money.
Inventing can get expensive. In 2019, a lot of financing went into my tea business Teazzed, with patenting, prototype building, and getting everything squared away. With MGSpear, which covers my blog, my writing (Black Cat Scribbles Vol. 1), inventing, and consulting, I spent a little less getting that off the ground, but I budgeted every step of the way and did as much as I could on my own.
I designed MGSpear.com. I went through several themes before I got the hang of things, and even got into making some of my own clip art. I started out with Photoshop, and then incorporated GIMP as well, to make my own memes and images for my blog and my stories. I’m still learning as I go, and am loving all the nuances and knowledge in tweaking this website.
I built 4 different websites in WordPress in 2019, and had one designed for me (that was my splurge for the year). Now that I have settled on MGSpear for now, I am planning on closing down my other websites to save money. But I loved building them and learned a lot.
For advertising I started with GoogleAds, but being cheap went with around $5 a day. For that I got a lot of traffic in India and no sales. Then I found some other sources for helping me build my audience, plus Facebook and Instagram pages (which is all still growing little by little), and I have seen my numbers go up slowly. After a while I linked my Pinterest account, advertised with a few pins, and that was actually more helpful than the GoogleAds. I took my two top impressions pins and paid $1 a day for 15 days to boost with advertising (I will talk more about Pinterest in another post).
It’s definitely been a year for experiments, both inventing-wise and business-wise. I’ve failed a lot, learned a lot, and learned where I need to spend more time at. For 2020, one of my goals is I’m slashing all the “fat”, and cutting expenses down to bare bones, or at least as bare as I can get it, to put more money into things that are growing.
What is one of your goals for 2020, dear readers?