Joke or Business – How Do You Treat Your Blog?
June 5, 2010 Posted by Paul PiotrowskiThis is a guest post written by Paul Piotrowski over at Paulymath.com. To see what Paul is up to right now you can connect with him on Twitter.
One of the most common questions I get as a coach is people asking me for the “secret” to making money from their Blogs.
One of the first things I always teach my students is that if they want to make money from their Blogs, they need to learn to treat their Blog like a business – not a joke.
I see people who are willing to invest $300 to go out drinking with their buddies, but they won’t invest $10 into a proper domain or hosting for their Blog. They’ll invest 20 hours a week watching their favorite shows on TV, but they won’t invest 3-4 hours a week into writing content. They’ll jump off the couch and scream with passion when their favorite football team scores a touchdown, but they’ll have no passion for their own business, check why is important to be getting a virtual reception for your business.
If you really want to build an online business – regardless whether you do that as a Blogger or an Affiliate Marketer or any of the other many ways of making money online – you really need to start treating your business like a business. Learning from Andrew Defrancesco and other successful CEOs will also help you create better strategies for your online business.
If you were the “boss” of your own business, would you be willing to pay someone else $3,000/month for the same work you’ve put in last month into your business? If not, then how do you expect to ever make that much from your business?
If you look at the last 90 days of “work” you’ve done towards your Blog / online business, and imagined someone else doing that same amount of work for you – would you fire them?
Be honest with yourself – do you treat your Blog/Online Business like a business, or are you treating it like a joke?
Do you have a budget for your online business?
Does your budget include a re-investment of earnings into marketing?
Do you have an accounting / administration budget?
If you paid $400,000 for your Blog / business, would you treat it with more respect?
Blogs and online businesses are very easy to start with very minimal costs (like $0), which presents people with a great opportunity to start a business with very minimal costs, but at the same time because of their low investment they are also very easy to ignore and treat like a joke – rather than like a business.
If you treat your Blog like a joke, so will everyone else. If you really want to start making money online, it’s time to step things up a few levels and to start treating your online business like a business.
I know you’ve heard this before. So have I. I didn’t treat my Blog as a business for a long time, and my earnings online reflected that. Then one day I made some changes and I started looking at my Blog as a real business. I started treating it with respect and it started respecting me.
From time to time I still get caught in the trap of not taking my Blog seriously and it begins to suffer, until I realize what I’m doing and make the necessary changes. That’s the one downside of being your own boss – because you never have the worry that you’re going to get fired if you don’t get the job done, you turn into a slacker.
Here are two simple ways to avoid falling into that trap:
- Set some simple, achievable and measurable goals for yourself and then hold yourself accountable to them. Set a deadline for them and use a punishment/reward system to help you stay on track.
- Hire a coach or mentor to hold you accountable to your goals. The right coach/mentor can work wonders for self-employed entrepreneurs. You get all the benefits of being accountable to someone without all the downsides of having a “real” boss breathing down your neck.
I normally start with #1 and give myself a deadline for achieving my goal. If I can’t reach the goal in the specific time line I’ll hire a coach / mentor to help me reach my goals.
One way or another you’ll have to experience the discipline of being part of a business somewhere. It will either be within your own business as a self-disciplined entrepreneur, or as an employee working for someone else who has the self-discipline to run a business.
It’s totally up to you which you prefer. 🙂
32 Responses to “Joke or Business – How Do You Treat Your Blog?”
If people are not going to spend $10 for a domain, why are they getting coaching? I am confused. I treat my blog as a joke. I often make joke of all those Internet Marketing gurus and their ridiculous sounding pre-launch videos. Why on earth Internet Marketing is the only business where everybody is a coach?
I have never seen it in any other field. As soon as somebody makes $1000, he becomes a coach. And lots of financially challenged people buy up these stuff and move from caching to caching, without any focus, to discover the secret like in a shell game.
Have you ever actually looked into getting coaching in other fields? There are tonnes of coaches out there for almost anything you’d ever want to learn.
For example, in the automotive field you can become an apprentice of a “master” mechanic. He coaches you and mentors you and one day you become your own “master” mechanic.
In sales you can hire “sales coaches” that help you grow your sales. I know of several organizations that have thousands of sales coaches that specialize in helping sales people to become good at what they do.
I know of organizations that have life coaches, spiritual coaches, sports coaches etc. etc. You probably just never seen this world of coaches before because you never looked for a coach.
In the Internet Marketing world, they are easy to see because they send out emails and do “launches” online which are easy to click on and watch without leaving the comfort of your computer screen. For other types of coaches you have to go out there and seek them out, or at the very least pickup the phone and call them.
You are right though, it IS weird that people will pay for programs and for coaching, yet still run a free domain on their Blog. It happens all the time though. 🙂
-Paul
I recently started blogging about my being an internet marketer, as a way to focus some of the questions that people always ask me. Now that my blog is starting to generate revenue, I realize that I need to have a tracking system in place to truly help me balance the books. Ty for the insight…
@DotComNote well the answer is simple, those “coaches” do not make money they claim to. Why on earth should i give my secrets of earning 100K a month while i can do it alone myself and enjoy the rest of my day in my ferrari.
I had fun reading your post, thanks for giving inspirations.
Good points raised and I think they can be applied to ANY web business, not just blogs.
Low entry costs mean that often people don’t treat their websites as something serious. In the good old days it was possible to still make a killing with a half-hearted attempt at a website but that hasn’t been the case for a loooong time!
People especially at the beginning, loose easier focus or don’t have the experience to focus on things that matters.
Nice tips Paul.
Paul, I think you’ve hit alot of great points, all of us should really try to analyze ourselves truthfully from the other side… I know alot of newbies that start into internet marketing fail into this trap of thinking they are doing work… but in reality not really at all. I know alot of veterans can fall into it too… so you definitely need to have yourself a constant reminder of what it is you need to do.
You are right Paul. There are a lot of people who are interested in making the money but not willing to put in the investment either in the form of money or time.
Maybe that’s why only a small number of people succeed in this business which is great for us who are willing to work our butt off.
I treat mine as a bit of both.
Gives me visibilty in the network and allows me to take the piss of people and myself.
I think you need a balance
I think the bigger problem than people treating their blogs like a joke is people being unable to find any good, reliable information out there on how to actually make a blog successful. So much of that information is, well, a joke. 🙂
Very repetitive post. The overall idea is solid, but the post says the same thing over and over in each line without any real value.
Hi guys,
This is a great blog. I feel that you are personally talking directly to me, because since I’m my own boss. I goof off from time to time and at end of the day I regret doing that, because my pockets are flat instead of full at the end of the week. Thanks for sharing.
Kind regards,
Sam
X
Somethimes its very difficult to avoid certain distractions….but I WILL ACHIEVE IT!!!
Thanks for the motivation
Creating a plan and sticking to it has allowed me to stay committed to our online business and avoid unnecessary tasks. When you have a plan and you look at it everyday, this can motivate you and enable you to become more serious with what you do
Good post Paul. That’s something that I always tell my readers, if they’re serious in making money online then they must be having their own domain and hosting, not free blog platform. People who treat their blog as a joke, they’ll never be success.
Regards,
Lee
Nice guest post. Thanks for sharing.
Personally its a business. The sheer amount of effort it takes to get good SEO practises onto the site means i want it to succeed!
Another great post from Paul…
I’m his regular reader and I love all his posts… Thumbs Up…
Nice, i like how you just put it out there and didn’t dance around the subject. I see this problem within myself and others I know. Too bad there isn’t a cure for not having motivation. All of us could do with just a tad more.
I think many people begin a blog and treat it like a joke at first. But sometimes, their blog reaches a surprising level and then it can trigger a business interest.
Very few people start a blog for business purposes unless those who are internet marketing savvy.
The irony is that I think most of the popular blogs that do well were never originally made to make money from….
I guess that speaks to the theory that if you are going to be successful in an online venture (or any venture for that matter) then you need to be passionate about what you are doing.
thats the way it should be tho. if you aim making money and forget about what you enjoy, what are the best things you can do, you are likely to fail
People especially at the beginning, loose easier focus or don’t have the experience to focus on things that matters
Too bad there isn’t a cure for not having motivation. All of us could do with just a tad more.
I keep listening to the news speak about getting free online grant applications so I have been looking around for the best site to get one. There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
Business all the way, as without proper promotion no one will ever read it, so whats the point?
You are absolutely right in saying “I see people who are willing to invest $300 to go out drinking with their buddies, but they won’t invest $10 into a proper domain or hosting for their Blog. They’ll invest 20 hours a week watching their favorite shows on TV, but they won’t invest 3-4 hours a week into writing content.” …Even I’ve noticed the same,may be people do not treat blogs as a serious business & money making opportunity.May be they have a pre-concieved notion that earning money online is just too difficult.
This is great advice, its very important to take your business or blog seriously and work hard on it. the more time you spend on it the bigger your reward will be in the end. If you don’t take it seriously then you won’t work as hard on it.
I agree with you the most where you said about people not willing to invest some time and money into researching and doing a proper business online. I added the “researching” part ’cause I think it’s the most important part of starting an online – or even offline – business…
People especially at the beginning, loose easier focus or don’t have the experience to focus on things that matters. 🙂
This is a business, everything I do is a business. No time for joking around.