ToddW Blog

Recently I was reading the book titled The E Myth Revisited and came upon a quote I think everyone should know of.
“If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job.”

What you say? My business can’t depend on me? Your business CAN depend on you but it shouldn’t depend on you to the extent that you have to be there every day for it to survive.  Sure, during the first six months or a year you will most likely have to be there every day (and night most likely!!) for it to get off the ground but after that you shouldn’t develop a business that relys on you and your input every day.

Here are some ideas to take you away from the day to day requirements and also some sites that don’t require you there day to day.

• Blog Owners - Take advantage of the “Post Timestamp” and post a day ahead or even a week ahead.  You can do this for every day of your vacation and your visitors may not even know you are gone
• Web Hosting - Outsource your support using a ticket system by paying per-ticket.  This way you don’t waste money paying someone hourly or monthly only when they help.  This method can be applied for any business that requires support staff.
• Web Builders - This includes anyone who “owns” their own business doing web design, e-Commerce, etc.  Find someone else who can do what you do for a good price (doesn’t have to be cheap).  If you can have someone else do work for you and STILL make a profit you free up time to develop new ideas and new sites that make you a profit.  Most likely you can even raise your price and make just as much if you were doing all the work.
• How-To & Informational Sites - These are a great way to get away from the post often blogs that are so common nowadays.  Writing step-by-step how-tos or creating videos for people to use are great because they don’t require you to add to them once they are completed.  Sure you will initially have to do some work by building up your site but when you are done you can slowly add things to the site in your free time.
• Review sites - Sites that review products (ANYTHING) are great because once you get reviews up you don’t have to add reviews daily.  Sure adding new content daily helps and keeps bringing in new and more visitors but if you stop for a week and go on vacation your site wont die.
• Forums -  Once the forum gets to a certain size you wont need to be there for it to survive or even grow.  Users will continue adding content and new users will continue coming as long as the existing users continue posting.  User generated content is KEY to keeping a site going w/out you there.  User generated content sites are probably one of the few if only site types that could grow and grow without ANY interaction from the owner.  I would suggest using some other methods outlined here such as hiring someone to do some work for you (admin, moderator, etc) so things run smoothly but you shouldn’t have to add anything to keep your community going once you get it “off the ground”.
• RSS Feeds & Automatic Content - Utilizing YouTube, other blogs, and syndication are a great way to keep a site fresh.  Sure they wont make you rich but they could be a nice compliment to an already existing site you personally contribute to or maybe an additional site to earn an extra couple hudnred bucks a day.

In the end what it comes down to is don’t kill yourself doing somethign you can hire someone else.  When it comes to running your own business there is more to it than a dollar amount.  Find out what you are good at stick to it and have other people do the rest.  You will reach a point where you have a good “team” and then the opportunities are endless.