Focus on Profit, Not Revenue
Earlier this year, I had set goals for my desired blogging revenue and profit. My desired revenue was mid $XXX/month, and desired profit was a low $XXX. I kind of made these goals on a whim after reading other people’s revenue goals online. Well as we approach the end of the year, I realize that I’m not sticking to the plan I had wanted to meet these goals.
How have I failed? Well surely not on revenue: The last three months I have doubled my year end revenue goal. However, I’m honestly not very proud of my doubled revenue because the only reason that it is so high is because of the amount of work I have put in personally to my sites. So factoring in my own labor, I have actually had terrible returns. I am too scared to run the numbers to figure out how much money I have actually lost. I hate to say this, but if I were to pick up another job in place of the work I have put into my sites, I’d be in a better position financially. (But in no way do I regret doing this)
I am glad though that I have experienced, and realized, this downfall so early though. I would much rather learn this lesson now than become a live example of everything E-Myth Revisited teaches against in one, three, or ten years from now.
Fixing the Problem
I’ve started to fix the problem by taking a break from the sites that I’ve put too much of my own work into. This break will help me be able to take a fresh look at the systems in place, and help me decide if it’s even possible for me to run profitable websites. I still haven’t came to a conclusion yet. (the PR update might have an impact on this). If these sites don’t seem to be profitable enough for me to run while on the outside, I may just sell them off and focus elsewhere.
Just Avoid the Problem
After a situation like this, you realize how much easier it would have been if you would have taken the time to make a viable business plan and system. Unless it’s your first blog, I don’t think that “just get started” is a good slogan. I “just got started” a few months ago with no business model or plan, and I’m still paying for it.
So to get the bad taste out of my mouth, I’ve taken the plunge into starting from scratch on a new website while making sure that I have no part in the content development aspect. I will discuss this more in later posts. The valuable lesson I take away from this experience is to use online problogging business models that have proved successful for other, successful multiple-blog owners: don’t overextend yourself, invest in writers, and market your site efficiently. Then leverage and repeat. If only I had listened before…
Speaking as a person who’s been doing this a while, everyone needs to do a gut check when it comes to the profit/revenue emphasis.
Personally, for the first 2 years I had enough steam to focus exclusively on revenue and make sure that I had ZERO profit – in other words, I was constantly overspending my revenue to grow my revenue.
After 2 years, I realized I couldn’t maintain my level of effort without a salary, so i started focusing on profit and made sure that I started taking a salary.