Mapping Your Online Presence: A Simple Exercise for Creative Entrepreneurs
As creatives, we tend to focus on our craft, our passion, and the art itself—but how often do we stop to take a step back and assess the landscape of our online presence? For me, it slipped through the cracks for years. Over the years, I designed a powerful tool to help artists and entrepreneurs organize their digital footprint and identify opportunities to manage their online presence. It has been eye-opening for me and my students over the years.
The exercise is simple but incredibly effective: create a mind map that catalogues your personal and business websites, apps, and platforms. The process can take up to an hour or two, depending on how you track your digital presence. This one task requires you to think about where your online presence lives. Often, we sign up for platforms or services and never give them a second thought. This exercise forces you to consider all those hidden corners of the internet where your work, creative work, social media posts or personal data might reside.
Why Create a Mind Map?
Mind maps are a fantastic visual tool that helps you see the big picture and connect the dots. In this exercise, you’ll start by listing every online account you have—personal and business. It might sound tedious, but trust me, once you start, it’s almost like peeling back layers of an onion. You’ll find things you forgot you were even subscribed to!
This isn’t just about organizing your digital presence. It’s about discovering how much money you’re spending—and potentially wasting—on subscription fees, bank charges, and other expenses. More importantly, it’s about identifying which of your online accounts generate income for your business.
As someone who has run a creative business, I know how easy it is to get caught up in the daily hustle without pausing to check where your money is going or how efficiently you receive payments. The mind map exercise I have designed encourages creatives to analyze both sides of the equation: income and expenses. It’s about becoming aware of what’s profitable and what’s just cluttering your online life.
The Power of Awareness: Income vs. Expenses
One of the most valuable parts of this exercise is that it highlights costs that could be tax-deductible. Sole proprietors and small business owners often overlook things like subscription fees or platform charges that, when added up, can become significant deductions. This simple act of cataloging your online presence could reveal new opportunities to save money at tax time.
Equally important is the focus on revenue streams. Which platforms are making you money? Are you using outdated or inefficient payment methods? To improve efficiency, I suggest looking into global, streamlined payment platforms like PayPal or Stripe. After all, you want to make it as easy for clients and customers to pay you as possible, right? Also, it is a great opportunity to look into how your accounting software is tying into these applications to track your expenses for the end-of-year!
Efficiency is Key: Update Those Payment Methods
I remember the days when receiving checks, reviewing bank statements and reconciling bank accounts were a headache. The fees were outrageous, the review time took forever, and it took forever to get paid. Fast forward to now, and tools like Freshbooks, Quickbooks, PayPal and Stripe have revolutionized how creatives do business. You can receive payments from anywhere in the world and streamline your finances with the click of a button. This exercise asks yourself if you’ve optimized your personal and business processes. If not, now is the time to update your systems to something faster, more global, and more efficient.
Keeping Track of Your Digital Footprint and Your Online Information
In today’s fast-moving digital world, it’s not just your business platforms that need attention—social media profiles, family communication platforms (Slack/TeamSnap/WhatsApp, Facebook), and even gaming accounts all play a role in your online presence. It's easy to lose track of where your credit card information is stored or how much time you spend on certain apps. This tool helps you be mindful of where your commentary, particularly on public forums, could expose sensitive information, putting you at risk for identity theft or privacy breaches. Sharing seemingly harmless details like your children’s names, participating in public surveys, or using AI tools that gather data may inadvertently reveal more than you intend. These platforms can become liabilities, especially if they store financial data or access your personal information. The mind-mapping exercise encourages you to evaluate where your digital footprint extends, helping you secure your information, protect your privacy, and reduce the risk of online vulnerabilities in case of a password breach or health issues that will need an executor to manage your digital legacy.
Why Handwritten Mind Maps?
In a world of endless digital templates and apps, it’s refreshing to opt for a handwritten mind map and take time away from technology and distraction. There’s something personal and grounding about taking a pen to paper, allowing ideas to flow freely without the constraints of a digital format. Over the years, I have personally filled notebook after notebook with mind maps, each with valuable creative projects, business ideas and plans using this process.
Handwritten mind maps allow for an unfiltered brainstorming session. Later, they can be refined into something more polished for business use, but creativity often starts with pen and paper’s raw, organic nature. I’ve adopted this practice, and it’s amazing how much clarity it brings.
Action Items to Get You Started
Create a mind map: List all your personal and business online accounts. Include everything—websites, apps, social media profiles, payment platforms.
Identify costs and income: Once your mind map is complete, analyze it. Identify any costs, subscription fees, or bank charges associated with these accounts. At the same time, list which platforms generate income.
Optimize your payment methods: If you’re still using outdated payment systems, consider switching to global, more efficient options like PayPal or Stripe.
Review Business vs Personal: Many of our accounts can have a dual purpose. Tracking where we communicate, share our creative projects, talk about our businesses, and spend our time is valuable in optimizing our lives.
Privacy and Legacy: Anyone wanting to protect their identity in this digital world must consider recent account breaches and where they are online.
This mind-mapping exercise is more than just organizing your digital life—it’s a way to gain awareness of your financial landscape, streamline your processes, and ultimately, unlock new opportunities for monetizing your work. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, taking that hour to reflect on your online presence can pay off in ways you never imagined.
So, grab a notebook and pen, and start mapping!