If you read this blog, then you know my day job is a web development / hosting company. A vast majority in my field never grasp the concept of working for yourself versus hiring a staff and managing them. Obviously when you start out you can’t hire a big staff, but as your business grows, you need to realize that as long as you’re doing the work, there are only so many hours you can work in a day - therefore it is a very real and finite cap on how much money you can make. To really unlock the potential of your business, you need to have others do the work while you sell the product and bring in clients.
I’m a mediocre designer and I know very little dynamic code, but I’ve manged to build a successful web development business by seeking out individuals who are talented in those areas - but have trouble selling their services. Now they are happy because I send them significant amounts of work, and I am happy because I am able to mark up their services and earn some money. Furthermore, the clients are happy because they get an excellent product.
You may be thinking, that’s great Dave…but what does it have to do with publishing online? The same principle applies! When you find the right niche, it’s hard to keep this principle in mind because you can earn a lot more money for your time, but it still comes down to the same basic principle. Jason and I have mentioned numerous times that we have motivational issues. That’s part of the reason we’re in a partnership, instead of developing sites separately. However, even if we were the most motivated hard-workers in the world, there is no way we’d have even come close to accomplishing what we have done in the last year without having people work for us.
Look at John Chow’s blog; the biggest income earners on his blog are Review Me reviews. He has tons of them coming in all the time, and if you’ve been reading his blog you’ll notice that many of them aren’t even written by him anymore. It becomes a simple equation: I can pay someone $x to do y work. I then get paid z dollars. Is z > x? If so, then you’ve got a winning situation. Obviously it’s not that simple, you have to account for overhead and other factors that affect revenue, but I assume you wouldn’t be getting into this field if you didn’t have half a brain to figure that sort of thing out.
Stay tuned for a post from Jay in a few days that will show you inexpensive ways of using this strategy for your online business.
Good Profits.
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 am
[…] One of the great post that you should read in their blog is about whether we should hire others or do your thing yourself? It really gave great insights on the reality of the right method of making money online. I agree with Dave’s formula : I can pay someone $x to do y work. I then get paid z dollars. Is z > x? Quite simple isn’t it? But, maybe you never thought of that before.. Well, what can I say, they’re really crazy and clever web entrepreneurs. […]