SmallBusinessNewz

A lot of business/marketing/webmaster blogs are filled with speculation - sales-speak which defines success with a subject in generic terms.

Success is nothing more than working hard and focusing on your subject. Apparently.

I disagree - success with anything comes from experience, and a big part of that experience comes from doing things *wrong*.

That means wasting both money and times with things that didn’t work out, as well as losing money and time by not trying things that could have worked out.

Here’s a list of mistakes and experiences I’m currently very focused on rectifying:

1. Embrace more risk

I like forums. I buy forums. Sometimes, though, there’s an obvious degree of risk involved in buying them, and I’ve found myself shying away from that.

The problem is that there is risk, and there is affordable risk. I can afford to take risks with relatively small purchases at present, but haven’t been doing so.

The result is that I’ve lost out on a couple of choice purchases recently, because I’ve allowed my judegement to become too cynical on new site purchases, instead of looking at the actual potential.

Solution: Take more risks - where they are affordable.

2. Slow to invest

Last year my outgoings were getting out of hand.

Webhosting costs were especially a problem - I had far more hosting accounts than I needed.

After re-structuring into a smaller number of hosting accounts, rather than running additional accounts for the future, I helped bring down costs. I watched my monthly spend very carefully to keep everything in check.

The result is that I managed to keep monthly spend in tune with monthly earnings.

But it couldn’t account for investing, and I firmly believe that if you’re not investing extra in your sites now, you simply dull long-term performance.

Solution: So this month I’ve taken on a number of new journalists for my news sites, and additionally started to throw significant advertising spend (think: links) for my more successful sites.

The aim is to invest now to reap in the future, with the added challenge of ensuring that I don’t over spend.

3. Poor business planning

My approach to business has been to treat it as an art - just do things because, and worry about planning later.

The problem is I took that approach to setting up a number of forums last year - the result of which is that most are flagging badly.

They lacked business planning - I needed to do more than just set up forums and let them run - I needed an end game to play for, and a plan in terms of organisation and investment that would help achieve real objectives.

Instead I’ve simply created a string of white elephants.

Solution: The forums still have potential - so properly determine my goals, how to achieve them, and work to a plan - to achieve that potential.

4. Slow to organise

It must be about 3 years ago Google was giving blogs a real presence. I remember railing about it on a webmaster forum.

But here’s the problem - when you see something that Google favours, you’re looking at opportunity.

Instead of complaining I should have seized the chance and challenge by creating blogs to help sustain my SEO work.

It’s only now - long after the opportunity has really passed - that I’ve finally, and seriously, decided to set up a range of blogs in different topic areas. Because newer domains aren’t going to cut it very well, I’m re-orientating sites that otherwise were low quality content sites and focussing them into being higher quality blog sites.

Of course, chasing a trend always has risks - something else I was slow to organise is that I had enough directory and article content to create about 100 sites each, covering different niches. As a network, I’m sure they would have once had some value, but as a longer term project I’d probably be dismantling it now.

Solution: Don’t whine about what works or is in favour in the moment - instead, try and join in with that moment.

5. Listen to my intuition more

I’m naturally a very intuitive person and I’ve actually been very good at listening to my intuition.

That means if I have a strong feeling I should be doing something, I do it, and if I have a strong feeling I shouldn’t be doing something, I don’t do it.

It’s probably already saved my business so far - rather than chasing dreams or ideas that make intellectual sense, I’ve been following my gut instinct on what I should be doing.

Even still, I’ve been hesitant to act in some areas, and additionally, as with the above points, intuition doesn’t set out planning and investment, merely a direction.

Solution: Be more in tune, and try to match intuitive directions with real planning and investment decisions.

6. Working tired

A lot of the time I’m working exhausted. I only recently found out that this is at least partly due to hayfever medication I’d been on causing drowsiness.

But even worse, if I work till late and then go to bed, I don’t sleep restfully - I’m still working in my dreams (no, not more HTML code to reformat!!). Because of that I wake up still feeling tired.

And working tired means I don’t work so effectively, and don’t have time to be as organised and make the decisions I need to make.

Solution: Take better care of myself, never work past 10pm, and find an activity to distract my mind for 1-2 hours before bed, to help me wind-down mentally. And also make a point of working more efficiently in the time I had.

7. Delegate more work

I’m overworked. Seriously. I finish early on a Friday and Saturday by only working till 9pm. I have Saturday morning off for food shopping, and usually take the family out for a drive on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is work time.

Admin work has become incredibly time-consuming - book keeping, organising writers, doing my own webdevelopment.

As a one-man company I’m taking everything on board, and it’s leaving me too over-stretched.

Which means I don’t have enough time to focus on strategy and planning decisions I really need to focus on.

Solution: I’ve already started training my girlfriend in dealing with the accounts and book-keeping - I’m still doing most, but training is on-going.

I’ve also taken on new writers to expand my news sites - but am also setting up two of them as editors over the others. This means they can delegate as required and take some of the basic organisational tasks away from me.

I’ve also started canvassing for developers I can outsource work to - basic design and webmaster tasks, all to help reduce my daily workload.

8. Work with my strengths

Some web developers are incredibly good with monetisation programs and similar, because they can customise very clever programming solutions for common problems, giving them a real competitive edge.

I don’t have that strength, and I don’t have the understanding or experience to determine what those specific problems are in order to employ someone to solve them.

Which means there’s no way I can compete in this area.

Instead, I’m ensuring that I focus on my strengths.

Solution: I love collating and publishing information, and as a long-term aspiring novelist writing and content generation, organisation, and publishing, is definitely a strength I’ve recognised and built upon.

That’s why I’ve spent the past 18-24 months developing news sites for syndication - it allows me the opportunity to work with my strengths.

And even though these sites often have been developed with no direct monetisation plan, I am keenly aware that there is plenty of potential to work with, not simply in terms of revenue generation options, but also in terms of longer term asset growth.

9. Determine long-term goals

Another planning issue, really, but more generic.

It’s one thing to try and determine what individual websites should achieve in the longer-term, but what’s my overall game plan?

I started in web publishing for fun - got roped into SEO for employment - but now am returning to web publishing to cover both, especially via news sites and forums, which again are being slowly portalised together.

But what’s my end game?

I love my SEO work and helping real small businesses with real customer care, compete online against mega-corps who are all concerned with profit at the expense of the customer.

But SEO is a horribly horribly horribly uncertain business. For the past two years I’ve told myself that a single Google update could potentially wipe out my SEO business. What then?

Moving into news and community development has been an attempt to address this - provide longer-term goals to work with, which could offer some revenue generation to at least take up some of the slack.

But I’m still missing a long-term vision of my end game.

Solution: Tie up planning for individual sites into a wider plan. I’ve already started doing this by bringing my news sites under different umbrellas - ie, my financial news sites are now part of the Independent Financial News Network, and my technology news sites are now part of the Independent Technology News Network.

10. PPC

I’ve known for a long time that I’ve needed to get into PPC. It’s a necessary addition to my skillset.

However, a huge amount of work commitments plus moving house twice over the past two years has made my time a premium, and dedicating time to learn PPC just couldn’t be prioritised.

It’s becoming less a choice as much as a necessity now, especially as my youngest brother is starting his own online store and I know he’ll be dead in the water on Google for some time, so passive SEO won’t cut it - he needs PPC at launch.

Solution: Dedicate an afternoon in Google’s Adwords University to qualify, then run some testers on established sites to get used to working with tracking and keyword selection experiences.

11. Digital Media

Eighteen months ago I write about the New Digital Revolution - the fact that IPTV was merging with the internet, turning simple websites into media platforms - TV channels even, in the end game.

And I even started a news site to dedicate to coverage of it - IPTV Watch.

I’ve written before about the new opportunities for it, such as optimising for YouTube.

And yet - even to date - I haven’t uploaded a single video to the net.

Again, it’s a problem of planning and organisation, but one I desperately need to rectify.

Solution: I’ve already purchased a Firewire card so that we can now connect the existing camcorder to the PC and record/edit video for internet use. I’ve also made getting this running a priority for my girlfriend, who is also company secretary at Britecorp.

Once that’s done, I need to plan how I’m going to use video media - what aims, what usage - and upgrade to a new camera if I need to.

12. Social Media

I’ve toyed with Digg - even got my blog here ibrian.co.uk banned by using a paid Digg submission service. :)

But over the past couple of weeks I’ve revisited it with a vengeance, and managed to get Platinax dugg by submitting to one social media site, which was then picked up and published on Digg without any involvement on my part.

What’s especially nice is that social media loves news - and I have a developing inventory of news sites. That’s a match.

I don’t see social media as a game I should play to send in huge amounts of traffic - that’s not my gameplan here - but it does provide a useful place to get links, and even get some small amount of traffic and coverage. That’ll suit my immediate aims.

Solution: Just about to hire a freelance writer to submit news items from my news sites to a small number of social media sites. After that’s been running for a few months, review the situation and see whether I need to expand on its use.