Not getting away with it! Clearly, I can't duck out of writing my blog, I have had so many people asking what's happened and worse still thinking I have given up on my work! The blog always did and still does seem very self-indulgent, it takes me a considerable time to write and when I was going through the worst year of my life it was hard to find anything upbeat to write. However, I received this email last week and decided that it is time to get back into it but as I've said before it may be more of a ‘monthly moan’ rather than the ‘weekly whinge’ it once was. I really do have to sort my life out and get a better work/life balance. My business is pretty unique in being just me. I feed, clean and care for all my little animals. I breed them, advertise them, pack them and on top of this I do all the paperwork and computer work associated with it, not to mention social media – a topic for the next blog. So, when I say I'm always busy, I mean it. I have a number of people who also need my help (I cannot talk about their problems in my blog) but caring is what I do best in life, only some days there just isn't enough of me to go around.
So NO, I am not giving up just adapting. I now feel great and want to move on with my life but before I start restocking large numbers of animals I'm taking things a bit slower during the winter as we are planning a family holiday to Costa Rica in November.
Email from customer:
Hi
Virginia
I hope that you are keeping well, I thought that I would drop you a line, as I
have heard that you are winding things up with your website, it might be
hearsay, but it's going around that you blog has finished and there is not a
lot of new stock on your website.
So I thought I would check with you, it is very tough out there at the moment
and many small business are finding things hard and constantly have to think of
ways to stay ahead of the game.
If you are winding up I would like to take this opportunity to wish you the
very best for the future, however if you are not, I am sorry to have emailed
you .
I will say something Your blogs were always very popular and many people paid a
frequent visit to your site to read those and you probably picked up a few
sales based on this when they saw another new bug for their collection.
I know time is a factor I myself start at 6.00am and sometimes like now 18.43
still at it. but cutting your blog reduces the amount of traffic to your site,
google promotes popular sites, if you’re not getting many hits then you keep
dropping down their listings, which will have a negative impact on your sales.
You probably know this already, but maybe you can start your blogs again or
maybe get a guest speaker weekly.
Either way good luck for the future.
My reply:
Thanks for your email, I really appreciate you taking the time to write it. I’m not winding things up but I am cutting back at the moment as we are planning a two week, holiday to Costa Rica in November (celebrating our Ruby wedding anniversary). The last year has been horrendous for my family with death, disease and marriage breakups, I have never experienced anything like it and I cannot share this sort of information in my blog so it’s been a case of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”. However, I have just had my third, and thank goodness last operation in a year so I will be getting everything back on track shortly.
Several small businesses that I know, have gone under in the last couple of years, it is very tough. I don’t have enough orders these days to warrant the amount of work that I put into the upkeep and care of my little animals so I am planning to run my Ginny’s Jungle parties alongside the online shop and see how it goes. I still have almost 9 years until I get a pension so I certainly intend to keep going with my animals in one form or another!
Best wishes,
Virginia
Although I don’t have as many animals as I did on my website, I still have a huge number in my bug room that I need to reduce before the holiday. Our daughter will be looking after everything but she has her own job and cannot possible spend hours each day on mine. She also has my ‘pets’ and mother in-law, etc!
The AES exhibition is fast approaching and I will be doing a certain amount of restocking there, I have a shopping list as usual. There are several species of tarantula that I want, scorpions, cockroaches and Train millipedes to name a few but basically only animals that I can set up in advance and leave for two weeks with minimal care, definitely no ‘leaf eating’ bugs until I get back. I will then have a proper restock in the New Year. Christmas is a very slow time for my business, the schools close down and people don’t have the money to spend on themselves for their hobby.
Having said all that I have got plenty of orders at the moment, most of my stock is now captive bred, which I am very happy about. I spent yesterday evening trying to pair up my beautiful Indian Violet tarantulas but as yet no joy. I’m ‘almost’ getting desperate enough to just leave them together over night but I would hate anything to happen to the male (I have promised to pass him on to a friend afterwards as he too has an adult female). My Ginny’s Jungle parties are also picking up, I have several things in the pipeline and a children’s party booked for next weekend. All is good and I will attempt to write another blog ‘shortly’ (I just need to find the time, I will aim for next week but we will see!)
Just about to upload the blog and discovered that I have four comments in reply to my last blog post. I didn’t see them so sorry, but I obviously haven’t replied. I have read and enabled them now and would like to thank the people who took the time to write.
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