Struggling to treat this like a business

byKWest

208 followers

13 years ago

I know that to be successful this time around, I need to treat my website most like a business. It's remarkably easy to treat website building and marketing as a hobby, especially when so many people see it as a waste of time. Worse, some people, including a few I know, think internet marketing = spam. While I know better, it's sometimes hard to swim against that oppressive tide.

Many of my family have long demanded I get a “real career.” Working for someone else, especially a large corporation, has never appealed to me. I do have a job now. Earlier this year I also almost bought a “real business,” a small franchise. While the deal fell through, I did spend a considerable amount of time looking at business planning, managing, marketing, etc. I learned a lot during that process. However, I need to apply what I learned to my online business(es).

I am embarrassed to say that I'm not doing that yet. Managing yourself is not as easy as it sounds. Being accountable to yourself—and no one else—is not as easy as it sounds. Making all the decisions by yourself is not as easy as it sounds. Taking risks by yourself is not as easy as it sounds. Being brutally honest with yourself is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, admitting your own weaknesses and mistakes may be the most difficult thing to do, but it may also be the most important skill I need to master.

I “owned” a small website before, but I did not OWN it. I did not grab the beast by the horns and make it work in the way I needed to. I did a lot of work. The site had over 500 pages at the end. It was well-ranked in Google for several years for a few keywords. I had several dozen articles distributed in various article directories. I even wrote a couple ebooks. In the end, though, I let a good idea go down the drain. I gave into the naysayers and a saboteur.

But I am committed to success now. This time around I will build a business that works. , I imagine, however, that I am not the only one here dealing with some of these issues.