As any good venture capitalist knows it’s never wise to put all your eggs in one basket. As a matter of fact if you’re good you can put your eggs in a variety of different baskets knowing that the majority of baskets are crap only to make everything back and more on the few baskets that are worth a damn. It’s the same with online business. While I’m all about focus and would warn one to stay away from the shiny object syndrome there does come a time when it may be wise to invest in other ventures while still maintaining the ones you have running. There comes a time when investing more and more into a business may not be the best use of your time.
You should measure the ROI on everything that you do, after all time is your most valuable resource and wasting it is the most foolish thing that you can do. This holds true with working out, eating right, dating, and of course business. You want to get the most from every second of the day. At some point certain busineses (especially online ones such as niche sites) are just not going to give you a good return on investment and should be switched from building mode (where your actively invested in growing it) to maintainence mode (where you keep it up and updated so it doesn’t get stale but don’t go crazy growing it) and then focus on other things.
Multiple Income Streams
You need to have multiple income streams. This isn’t a suggestion it’s a fact. Especially in today’s world where everything is volatile and constantly changing. Coporate employment is never safe and there are always risk with being an entrepreneur. Having multiple online businesses ensures that the money is going to keep coming in even if you take a hit in a certain area. For example let’s say that you have a plumbing company with you being the sole owner and operator. In addition to this you have a niche site dedicated to selling vitamins and supplements and then a blog dedicated to all things having to do with parakeets (I’m a bit tired).
You make the majority of your income from the plumbing service followed by your e-book “How To Train Your Parakeet To Sing Like A Champ” and then followed by your affiliate sales of supplements and vitamins. Let’s say for the sake of simple math that you are making 10k a month from the plumbing, 3k from the parakeet book (don’t be surprised), and then 2.5k from the vitamins and supplement site. Now let’s say that an economic downturn hits and people are learning to fix their own toilets and your monthly income goes down to 7k for plumbing. You’d still be making over 100k a year. The situation is much different without the online businesses. A simple example but you get the point.
Testing Markets
The more I read the more I am completely blown away by some of the things that people make their living from selling. If you thought that “How To Train Your Parakeet To Sing Like A Champ” was bad you’d be amazed by some other things. With the internet you can now reach all differnet kinds of people, even in niche interests that before you’d be lucky to find one other person in town who was interested in. As a matter of fact to make it online you have to niche and niche down hard. However even when picking a niche there is no way to tell how popular you’re going to be in it.
You have to test different markets. For example the vast majority of traffic for this site comes from articles written under the attraction section yet the Amazon book that sells the best is Man Up a book about being a man. From data alone I would have figured that writing a book about picking up girls would net me much more money than a book about being a man, a category that doesn’t see that much traffic overall. And yet I’d be wrong. This isn’t to say I won’t capitalize on the traffic coming in from those sources simply to say that without testing I wouldn’t have know what category for me is going to be the most profitable to write about. I’ve also recently started businesses in other categories and will report on what I learn from them here soon.
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your efforts will net you 80% of your results. I find this applies true to my books as well as my articles as well as many other things in life. But here’s the thing about the 80/20 rule it’s often hard to determine which part is the 20 before doing something. For example from my analytics I would have sworn that books about getting women would be my 20% that made me 80% of my profits yet my kdp page tells a very different story. It’s the same with your websites. You’ll probably eventually hit on an idea that is extremely profitable that’ll make the rest pale in comparison.
However I can almost guarantee that the one that makes you all the money is not the first one that you’d think. One of the cardinal rules of effective direct mail is to test, test, test and the same is true of running websites and businesses. You never know which one is going to give you great results. Don’t get me wrong don’t go in blind or guess wildly. Do research, learn principles, but always test, test, test. That is where the magic is and the thing that is going to give you great results. It’s hard to judge how the market will respond something you think will work great may flop and likewise something you did off the cuff may surprise you and be incredibly popular. No matter what make sure to capitalize on any success you see and continue to hit that rich vein you’ve stumbled upon.
Summary
Never have all your eggs in one basket. Test out different niches and target markets. Some are much more buying prone than others. For example compare a manosphere man to the average woman. Who makes more purchases? Who spends more money? Who is easier to “sell”? I think you know the answer to that one. Hit different categories and see how they respond. You can always keep your passion going after the money is flowing in. For example I’ll be writing in the masculine self-improvement niche for some time even if it doesn’t make me much money because it’s something I care about. However in the meantime I’ll be testing different markets and report my findings here.
If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it. You can follow me on Twitter here.
-Charles Sledge
