In all my years of being a businessman, I have always had unique and memorable business cards. I think that the uniqueness of the cards has been a benefit when even those who didn’t do business with me kept my cards handy just to show them off. Before cards were available so cheaply online, I focused on cards that weren’t flashy or outrageous — they were just appealing. Rarely did I design them myself or print them myself, though, I paid professionals to do their jobs.

A good business card design is not something I would recommend the average new business owner try to create on their own. If you don’t have a background in colors, fonts and layouts, you’ll likely make something that you think looks good, but customers will get ill from looking at. I’ve seen some outrageous ones that ended up in the circular file (the trash bin) before I even looked over them. Too many colors, too many fonts, terrible placement of text and an overwhelming amount of information. Some were so complicated that they folded up more than once, and the text was so tiny that there was no way I’d understand what the person was selling or promoting.

The business card is not just for realtors or sales people, it can be very handy for computer techs, writers and even blog owners. I use the standard business card size, which is 3.5″ inches by 2 inches, for promoting events in my life as well — church outing, concerts I’m producing, even new websites or e-books that I wrote and released. A good business card is small enough to be convenient, but large enough to cover the basics and build interest.

I believe the business card should cover only a few important pieces of information:
1. Your name and your business or website title
2. Your phone number and e-mail address
3. Your domain name or business address (not both)
4. A very simple description of what you’re selling, offering or providing

That’s it. An overwhelming card that tries to cover everything will likely be ignored. A card that reminds a possible customer about you is perfect as it won’t be tossed right away, and if it is interesting enough, it might be kept a long time and go through many hands. My best business cards get the ultimate response from people I give them to: “Can I get a few more of these?” The only reason someone will ask for more cards is because they’d like to pass them out for you. Free marketing is better than the most expensive Super Bowl commercial.

A business card has even helped my businesses by forcing me to think about what my businesses mean. By having to cut back to a tiny sentence as a description of my business, I am able to see if I am trying to provide too much, and also try to work on a slogan that is memorable and to the point.

You’ll notice that I left out “position” from the list of items your card needs. If you run a small business of 10 employees or less, your position is not really needed. Every small business has people who do a number of jobs, so leaving it open will leave room for questions from your possible customer. I love it when people ask me what I do (I don’t write it on my card). It opens the door to explain what the entire company does — and that is how I can work to close a sale and gain a customer. I don’t write too many specific services down, either. By leaving a generic (but memorable) description, people might ask you “Do you do _____?” Again, opening the door to questions is a perfect card.

My cards always have a specific color scheme and font style — something that I carry over to my letterhead, my envelopes, my brochures and newsletters and usually my website. A simple logo can make sense, but for most businesses it is just something to take up space. I’ve seen terrible stock logos on many business cards, and it just makes the person unremarkable and forgettable. If you’re going to have a logo, make sure that it is unique, easy to remember and something that actually makes sense on your card. Egotism on a card is not what you want — you want people to want to keep the card, show it to others, and request more.

Another place a good business card works is in what I call “the parent test.” Parents love to pass out business cards of their kids, and if the card is designed properly, it can open a door to calls about your work. The cards my mom has of mine give just enough information for my market to know what I do, but when people ask my mom what it is that I do, all she can say is “I have no idea, something with _____. Give him a call.” I actually get about 2-3 calls a month from those encounters.

Overdoing a card with color is terrible though — think of the old websites of the late 90s. Loud colors, eye-straining fonts all over the place, and photos will kill your card. A simple color scheme (1 color, maybe 2 for highlighting) is perfect. Leave the photos for your website, or throw them out all together. Don’t put your own photo on there, no one cares.

Once you have an idea for a card, hire a professional designer. You’ll find numerous designers in your area that can create a great business card (and maybe even stationary) for under US$200. The good designers will focus on a simple but memorable design, but also help you make a choice of paperstock and printing companies. I’ve looked over most of the cheap business card companies online, and most of them do a good job but don’t follow the rules. They focus on Wow! factor, which is not what we want to promote. We want facts and we want to drive questions from our possible clients. While the online print shops are cheap, they don’t necessarily offer you the skills you might want in a good designer. My local designer actually has my cards printed at a little bit more than the online companies, but they also check to make sure the cards are to spec when they arrive, and they also have fixed problems at no charge when the print job was done improperly (bad alignment, missing text, rough cuts, etc).

If you’re going into your own business — even an online blog — you’ll want the best promotional tool available — a great business card. Don’t skip spending a little cash on this step, and you’ll find that the best market is word of mouth. By giving your customers and fans the ability to promote for you with a few extra cards, you might be surprised at how easy it is to open the door to new customers.

Discuss this article at the Be the Boss forum.

I’ve been thinking about a regular series of articles covering how to build your business from a customer perspective, and have spent a few days writing down my thoughts on how I have built successful businesses from nothing. For the online publisher (blogger, webmaster, whatever) building clients usually means building traffic. For the retail store, building clients means bringing in customers. For the consulting, building clients means finding people who need your service and approaching them.

Darren the ProBlogger had an article today titled How to Find Traffic for a New Blog where he references another blog article regarding traffic building for the new blogger. I read both posts and found that they offer some insight that is different than mine, but they also forget some very important considerations to make when you are a new businessperson — online or in real life.

The most important marketing tool any business owner has is what I call proven reliability. Proven reliability comes from having a history of being able to complete tasks. It also comes from having a history of being very knowledgable in your market or product. Lastly, proven reliability comes from having previous customers who would recommend you to others or back up your service as a positive reference. Both bloggers and “real life” business owners need to build all 3 histories in order to acquire this proven reliability, and it doesn’t come quick.

The huge step that one takes to start a business is very similar to what one does when they go to college to get an education. You’re making a time and money investment over years in order to acquire knowledge that you can use to market yourself to others. A new business owner is exactly in the same boat — you’re learning, not making money. Do you go to college to get a paycheck from the process of learning? No, the paycheck comes after you’ve proven yourself. The early business owner or blogger has the same hurdle to overcome — you’re giving up time and money in order to learn without gaining a financial profit from the process (usually).

Some businesses and bloggers earn a good money right away, but these are so rare that we just can’t focus on the hope that we’ll be that rare individual. Instead, I like to look at a new blog and a new business as my version of college. Hopefully I have enough time and enough money to build a business education before I start reaping the profits. This is where having a second part time job can come in handy — just like some college students need to get through the years of learning.

Looking at the blogs I linked to above, we get the following:

This is a little easier if you already have a web presence and the ability to directly influence current readers (especially if your known in the area your new blog is about).

I agree. If you’re starting a business, take advantage of any influence you might already have. Have you performed your services for previous employers, family, friends, or businesses in the past? Use these people for references. Do you have any nepotism you can take advantage of? Do so. Don’t be ashamed of it. If you’re a blogger, get the word out to everyone you know to watch as you learn about blogging or learn to build a website. They might tell others that they know.

If you don’t already have such an influence your options are more limited and things might be a little slower to grow. One such option is to pay for traffic via some form of Advertising.

No way. Advertising? Forget it. People will come to your business or website and see that you have no history to back you up. Work, instead, at looking at the first few months or even a year as building a history of reliability. If you’re a blogger, blog even if you have no traffic. Slowly build up links with other bloggers in your market but only once you can show that you have a history of writing. If you run a real life business, focus on working with the few customers you do have, and then work with them as references to market directly to businesses rather than blanket advertising to the masses.

If you don’t have direct influence or you are not willing to pay for traffic another option is to leverage the traffic of others via the links they give you. This takes time as you build relationships with other bloggers and as a result of producing quality content gain traction for your blog from them linking to you.

Here’s an interesting idea that I think can work in the blog market and the real life market. Instead of forming those bonds only, how about writing some articles for other bloggers for free? Offer them your articles in exchange for a future link back to your blog where you’ll republish it. Bloggers get busy, and even if they say no today, they might remember you tomorrow when they can’t stay ahead of their writing. If you’re in a real life industry, talk to actual competitors outside of your market and see if you can perform some work for them in exchange for their referral in your market. Most competitors will say no, but I have built 3 businesses out of help from people who would be my competitors if they were in my market area. I had to drive far to get their confidence, but over time it was very successful. Subcontract yourself out at a big discount (remember, you’re gaining an education in the process while getting paid!), and build up your portfolio of proven reliability.

The new business owner may just sit there and stare at the walls, or the new blog writer might write only to see 2 or 3 people visit a day. This is tough, and it can be the number one reason we see people leave a business or a blog. Real traffic will come years down the line — this is where you know you’re succeeding. Early success in either business can be a panacea in terms of building up hope that you’re a success but it can quickly disappear. Don’t base your future on any initial booms in business, especially if you haven’t built that proven reliability that other customers will use to judge if you are worthy of hiring, buying from or reading.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

It seems I created a little anger/frustration towards my business attitude this morning over at Darren the ProBlogger’s site in the comments of an article titled Idol Blogger Crashes Server and Teaches us a Lesson about Hosting. Darren is a professional blogger that I highly respect, but I don’t always agree with his positions and opinions on many blog topics (such as copyright enforcement and general business conduct). The topic he wrote about today is what to do when your host performs an action that is counter to your income.

For those who are familiar with my history in blogging, I started writing a blog in November 2005. I joined up with Blogger.com as I was new to the idea, but I have spent years writing print and e-mail newsletters. I quickly learned that the Blogger.com platform was VERY unreliable (crashed often) and VERY limited. I quickly registered my own domain name to host some blogs (at the Global Unanimocracy Network), but bought a shared hosting plan with my host — HostingDude.com (a shill for GoDaddy.com). For less than $7 a month I was running my own site, but it was on a shared server.

Darren’s article talks about a user who runs a blog dedicated to the TV show American Idol. After a new show aired, the website host shut access to the website down because of the traffic surge. The website now says that the blogger is leaving the business because of the hosting problem, because he refuses to pay for a service plan that offers the stability and bandwidth his site requires. Here we see one of the worst problems with running a business — amateur hobbyists who expect professional service from their suppliers. The hobbyists of the world are a big burden on many businesses who have to sell at hobby prices but provide professional service. It can’t be done (note how many sales flyers explicitly deny resellers from taking advantage of the sale).

This hobbyist ran a website he was really focused on — the American Idol blog. I have no proof, but I am assuming he was monetizing his site with advertisements, offering him some sort of an income. The host he used offered him a set service along with a list of rules that he would have to agree to in order to use that service. I took at look at his host, (Surpasshosting.com) and saw that their highest level of shared hosting service is $25 per month for 1000 GB bandwidth. Now most people will think this means they can use up that bandwidth whenever they want, but that is not the case with shared hosting plans. It is wiser to consider your “ceiling” to be three times as much as the per-minute average of the allotted bandwidth. In this case, 1000 GB bandwidth per month comes to an average of 20 MB per minute. Multiply that by 3 and you get 60 MB per minute that you shouldn’t exceed. For a blog like his (with photos and a ton of information), you could easily surpass that number during a surge of visitors. Even my mostly text blogs can hit those numbers quite easily if I get a link from a popular message forum.

Here’s a copy of Surpasshosting.com’s terms of service:

BANDWIDTH USAGE POLICY
All server plans include an allocated continuous data transfer rate of 3.75 Mbps in a 30-day calendar month, which is an approximate quantity of 1,200 GB of data transfer. If your monthly average usage exceeds the bandwidth transfer rate of 4.0 Mbps within your 30 day billing cycle, you will be billed for total average usage based on 95th percentile metering and will be liable for overages exceeding your monthly allocation. In accordance to these terms of service, you agree to pay such overages at the rate of $75.00 per 1 Mbps.

Note: 1 Mbps of continuous transfer in a 30 day period ~ 320 GB of data transfer.

They also have the following in their VERY quick to read TOS:

In all fairness, we cannot allow one or two clients to use all of the system resources on a shared machine and have all other clients suffer because of it. Excessive CPU & memory usage by one or more clients causes extreme slowness in all areas: MySQL, Email, HTTP and more. If the CPU & memory usage by a few clients gets out of hand, all sites hosted on the machine will return errors and not be accessible in any way.

AVERAGE SERVER RESOURCE LIMITS
Memory usage may not exceed 10% per domain/file/application
CPU usage may not exceed 20% per domain/file/application
Apache connections may not exceed 30 connections
15 MySQL maximum user connections allowed
350 emails per hour, per domain

How could ANY business owner even bother with the cheap hosting of this provider? I looked at 4 other big hosting providers and they all had similar restrictions. The comments on Darren’s blog post are vitriolic and see to lay the blame on the host, not the website owner. He accepted these restrictions, and now he’s moaning about not taking the proper course of action. If he really does stop blogging, it will only be good for the industry that is already plagued with enough moaners and complainers who react emotionally rather than logically.

If you’re planning on making money online, be logical about each step you take. When you sign a contract, even electronically, READ IT. If you don’t agree with the contract, e-mail the sales department. I’ve signed 4 agreements in the past year online that I have had modified to fit my needs — the sales departments are more than happy to help acquire the business of a serious entrepreneur.

The worst thing you can do is to sell yourself short. I look at the first few years of business as similar to a college education. You’re learning every step of the way, and you’re investing your time into learning. Don’t except huge profits, but do expect bumps along the way. If you’re going to buy cheap quality products, your customers will eventually be hurt by your lack of investment, and you’ll lose everything you built. I’ve been to stores that refuse to install quality carpeting and lighting and their sales are lacking because of it. If you’re planning on being in business for the long haul, invest in the right infrastructure for the future.

Here’s a look at some of the comments on Darren’s blog post:

1 James Says: Yeh, I had a brief flirtation with Surpass… they were absolutely rubbish.

And yet they have many customers who are absolutely satisfied with their services provided. I don’t know of many people who are ever happy with shared host services. Would YOU run a business for $7 a month and be happy to provide any level of service other than “most basic possible?” If this was your business, would you even have time to deal with business owners who are using a hobby level service?

6 Hatem Says:Oh ! This is so bad, I got 1001 stories about hosting but never seen this ! this should be at least mentionned in the Terms and Conditions of Surpass Hosting, but unfortunately I can’t find if they have a link.

It is listed, and I found the link in about 30 seconds of looking. Almost every shared hosting company warns their customers not to abuse resources.

8 Sammy from TrepNetwork Says:This really pisses me off, as well to hear this. Especially after just going off on two GoDaddy representatives yesterday for the crappy customer service they provide and the sarcasm that seems to plague Bob’s employees.

I deal with GoDaddy about twice a month and they’re top notch. I called today because I screwed up my MySQL database that holds all my BIND DNS information. In 6 minutes on the phone they fixed it all without charging me one dime. 6 minutes of my time for any of my customers would be a US$200 charge (minimum service charge). Not only did the tech assist me, he even followed up with an e-mail an hour later. If you pay for a basic service, expect basic support.

He also said:

Why not contact the customer as a courtesy about the excess bandwidth usage. If the customer was unable to cover the cost, I would have negotiated a deal for ad space on the blog or better yet… SPONSOR THE BLOG! Now that’s good PR, but hey… that’s just me.

Because that is not what a basic level of service provides. They’re giving the customer an opportunity to test the waters. If the waters get rough, upgrade to a better support and bandwidth package. You’re paying for people’s time, but at US$7 per month, what can you expect? If the host company said they’d e-mail you about an outage, what difference would have been made? “We’re going to terminate your hosting service unless you upgrade to a non-shared plan.” Isn’t that basically what the outcome was?

It wasn’t until the 13th comment or so that someone brought up a good point — why did the blogger not have backups of his blogs? My blogs get backed up 12 times a day automatically — 6 times a day to my work PC, and 6 times a day to another host that I can fall over to in case my provider fails. There is no one to blame but yourself if the company providing you service sticks with their terms of service and disconnects your access. You broke the contract and took up too many resources. You were shut down. Move to a different host with your backups and forget the error in judgement.

And that is what this article is about — being serious. Just having a great idea or product to sell is useless if you don’t think of the actual process of running a business. Creating a to-do list of things to watch over is very important, but so is reading every contract you sign, and planning for future growth. If you’re going to just be a hobbyist, don’t have expectations beyond what a hobbyist is willing to pay for.

Discuss this article at the Be Your Own Boss forum.

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Yesterday’s Be Yor Own article talked about a few small local businesses that I hire in order to make my life more efficient. It is very important to understand that the entire point of being in business is to provide a service or a product for someone else at a price cheaper than they could do it themselves. One outcome of being a competitive business is the realization that somethings, over time, can be done more efficiently than before. It is in this situation that we see the most failures of small businesses, especially ones that refuse to adapt to the new market.

When you can do something quicker, cheaper or easier, you’ll find a real conundrum: your time can become less valuable. In most markets, the quicker you can provide a service, the more customers you should hope to acquire. I’ve found that in some very competitive markets, I can acquire many more customers the faster I can accomplish a task. If I can do a job in half the time, I can more than double my customer base.

Yet there is a limit to the number of customers in a given market, and you might find yourself becoming very adept at your skill, but as you become better at it, you also find that your pay is decreasing. In economic terms, this is considered “deflation,” which to many business experts, is a bad thing. I don’t see it this way. Over the nearly 2 decades that I have been in business, deflation in income has led the way to new markets that previously haven’t existed. I used to run a successful BBS — the predecessor to the Internet that we see today. I shut down my BBS just before the Internet pre-boom. I knew I could try to become an ISP, but I was tired of the market and wasn’t ready to take on a huge new education.

Many BBSes refused to admit that their business would soon deflate into non-existance if they didn’t accept the new market. I saw many friends go bankrupt within 6 months, friends who had been very profitable for 10+ years. This is a lesson that many businesses should learn, but ignore. They feel that if they do the same job they have always done, they’ll be OK forever. That is completely untrue.

If you’re in a business that is becoming more efficient at doing its task, there are 3 long term views you should consider:

1. That you’ll be the only company providing the service/product, so you can try to keep charging what you’ve always charged.
2. That you’ll acquire new competition who will be happy to provide the same service/product at a cheaper rate.
3. That a new market will emerge that could change your market entirely.

In retail, we’re seeing many stores going under because the Internet stores can provide the same product or service cheaper. At first it was eBay, then it was Amazon, now we’re seeing Craigslist all “hurting” local businesses. Many of these businesses that fail had been in business for years or decades, and were unable to cope with the market that emerged. Others were wiped out when a larger store or chain of stores came into their market. Some had a mini-monopoly in their area, but they didn’t adapt to the customer’s needs, so the customers did without the product or service.

In every business you go into, you have to think of what your next step will be if you are to face competition — either direct or indirect. A new emerging market is just as much competition as a small business that opens next door. Part of becoming more efficient at your job is to balance getting new customers with learning new tasks to fill the time saved by performing the old task quicker. If you’re seeing that there aren’t new customers to find, you have to start immediately at looking what the next step is. It might be moving from a local business to an online international one. It might be cutting out some of your most basic services/products and replacing them with specialized ones that you can sell for a higher price. It might even come to the point that you need to think about switching markets entirely.

The risks a small business owner takes are more than made up for by the rewards you’ll receive if you’re constantly adapting and looking for the change that will occur. Don’t sit back and think that money will always just roll in. In my experience, my most succesful business ventures were the ones where we worked to make ourselves useless. As customers found savings in hiring us, we were able to transition them to the new markets we were looking to. Over time, faith in your ability to save someone money is what brings people back. Even if it means switching from a PC repair company to a company that organizes desks and files, the best commodity you have to rely on to help you transition is the faith you’ve built in the customers you have helped in the past. Don’t fear change, embrace it. Don’t ignore market changes, find out where they’re heading.

Discuss this article at the Be Your Own Boss forum.

Last week was an interesting week for me because I started to look at it from a different perspective. Rather than just live another week as 7 days of habit, I looked at each and every transaction I made with another human being from two perspectives: how is this transaction making my life better, and how might it be making their lives better?

I was shocked at how many people I need to make my life more efficient. In each and every transaction, I saw people doing something better than I can do the given task — by doing it faster or cheaper or just better, I am able to increase my own time spent on doing what I do best. In 8 situations I was definitely using others for my own gains, and they were using me for their gains. That is the best business relationship to have. In one situation, I realized I was giving up more than I was getting in the long run — and I made it a point to discuss with the person what we can do to make the relationship more amicable.

I’m a messy person — disorganized, a minimalist packrat and a paperwork pile addict. You’d be amazed at how many piles of junk I can accumulate in just 30 days. I used to have a gorgeous huge office in Chicago (at the corner of Erie and Franklin, a street corner known best for its mention in The Matrix I). 3000 square feet, beautiful skyline, 2 parking spaces, and a pile of papers from here to China if laid out side by side. The office was a detriment to my state of mind — I avoided it because of the mess. After 6 years of occupying that space, I made the choice to downsize. I cut it out. My employees worked out of their homes, which gave them more reason to be at a customer’s office and billing for their time rather than sitting in a messy office trying to cope with the overhead.

Yet now at home I found myself burdened again. I hired a local young gent with an admitted OCD — he hated clutter and mess. I found him through my failed retail store — he offered to clean up my files there and did so with great attention to detail. I hired him immediately to clean up my mess at home. Now, once a month, he comes and fixes what I break. He doesn’t even have to ask me what is important and what isn’t — he knows me and my needs. Every time he leaves, a huge burden is reduced from my life. The US$50 I pay him for the 1-2 hours of work is worth hundreds each month in time saved and hassles gone. I’m amazed that more people with OCD can’t turn it into a productive and profitable business. My number one customer has 50 offices of messes that they’d love to organize — if you find yourself meticulous in organization, consider a part time job in organizing the lives of others. I bet I could find hundreds of customers who need assistance here.

On Tuesday, the local lawnmowing kid came by the house. Even though our lawn is supposed to be taken care of, this young 14 year old really busts his rear to make it look better — hedging, trimming, even watering and seeding the lawn for under US$20 per visit. Our lawn looks ten times better than almost any other in the neighborhood, and for me it is a weight lifted off my chest. I love sitting on the lawn and reading, or having friends and family over to BBQ. A good lawn is more than just being egotistical about one’s life, it is a useful product if you entertain. I should pay the kid more since he also takes the responsibility of reminding me when I forget to call him.

Later on Tuesday I visited my favorite gas stations — one of the last of its kind. For 7 cents more per gallon, they do the full service job correctly — check the oil, wash the windows, dry the windows, empty the garbage pockets and check the tires for proper pressure. I am positive that I have saved the 7 cents per gallon over the lifetime of the car in better fuel efficiency and a safer car to drive. Last week they noticed my windshield wipers were almost gone, and instead of selling me their overpriced wipers, they told me to just pick them up at the local auto parts store and they’d install them next fill up. Here is a place where thrift doesn’t make sense — especially for a busy entrepreneur. I wish more gas stations offered this service, I’d gladly pay 15 cents a gallon more for the service.

On Thursday my home entertainment PC had a power supply failure — the first one in a year. I go through power supplies quicker than most (cat hair, too many hard drives and shoving the PC under the TV rack with no air supply). My local PC hardware store is a hilarious little shop with decent deals and employees who remember me. We purchase a lot from them for my IT shop, but one reason I make the added 15 minute drive each way is for their service. They installed my power supply free of charge. Even though I could do it myself, I prefer to have them do it as they do it with care, and it saves me from the common cuts and nicks I get doing it myself. They also blow out the case, clear up the fans, and do an overview of everything internally to make sure it is all looking good. I’m an IT consulting company owner, yet I think even geeks should look to the advice of others to discover where we’re careless or maybe not even knowledgeable. The typical geek believes he is right in everything IT — yet I always learn something new when visiting this store, especially since most of their employees are a decade younger than me and have more time to sit online and find new ways to do their job better. While I was there getting the power supply replaced, the tech gave me a few pointers on things I should look into to make my life easier. That is a major bonus for me — they weren’t selling me something, they were helping me make a sale for something I needed.

That is just a few companies that I hired and continue to hire — companies that make my life better for the money and time I invest in them. I’ll cover a few more tomororw, as well as the one company that I had to re-negotiate with. If you’re looking to start your own business, think about what these companies did for me, and think about what you can do for others. Running your own business is not difficult if you look past the common fears of new entrepreneurs. The most basic philosophy a successful businessman has is “What can I do for others, and how will doing it help me?”

Don’t be afraid to ask that question over and over again, especially once you’re a successful businessman yourself.

Discuss this article at the Be Your Boss forum.

Darren Rowse, the Pro-Blogger has an article titled 3 Factors to Consider Before Starting a Blog - Maintaining Blogging Momentum. One of the comments asks about the future of blogging, and that is something that I have thought about for about a year before I converted my e-mail and paper newsletters to blog format: what is the future?

A paper newsletter is great because it often gets read — there’s no need for a computer, a monitor or any labor. Sometimes it gets tossed on a pile and read a few weeks later, but it always seems to get read. My comment to reader ratio was VERY high when I was in paper form. People took the time to log on and send me an e-mail. With my blogs, that isn’t the same case, and my return readership has dropped. A print newsletter was good for me since I could write 5-10 articles a month, and people felt like it was a lot. Now, 30 articles a month doesn’t seem enough, and the paltry 15 that some of my sites receive is even worse.

I feel fairly certain that the blogosphere will have an imminent collapse as a newer creation/aggregating/distribution media format comes out — the biggest problem for most bloggers is the lack of quality and interested return traffic. Getting 2000 uniques a day is great, but if they’re not returning and becoming active readers, many bloggers feel they’re just spinning their wheels. If you’re getting 2000 readers visiting a day and only 3 comments (or worse, none), you’re really not getting much for your time, even if the ad revenue is decent.

The blog network is a start but even the networks run into distribution problems. As more blog networks pop up, the ones already out there battle for the readers. Eve as new readers enter the blogosphere, they seem to get lost in the madness. The distribution of blogs is currently the worst media distribution format I’ve ever researched. I’ve thought the best blog distribution structure would be the aggregator — companies that go out and actually read blogs daily to throw them into a news-clip like website. Yet many professional bloggers hate the aggregator because they feel like they’re being stolen from (I, on the other hand, openly allow people to take my writings and use them as their own). The number one problem with distributing something that others are displaying for free is that they don’t want others giving them out for free either. It is a real problem.

Do you close your blog to subscribers only, giving out free articles here and there? A few successful bloggers do that, but it can take years to build a profitable subscriber base. My print newsletters took years to break 3 figures in subscribers, but quickly grew from that point. Do you run a blog with article snippets and then charge for the remainder? I don’t think that is a good promotional tool, either.

Over time, the bloggers with the most time and the least need for income will be the ones to overtake those who need the income (and can’t afford the time) — if both have something similar to say. I don’t believe blogging for money is a casual business venture, and I do believe that the costs of entering the business are so low that we’ll see a ton of competition, even if it is short-lived.

The downside of “easy” competition in any market is that it can saturate the market and actually destroy it. Imagine if it was cheap to make diamonds (just dig them out of your backyard) and 500 people opened diamond stores in your city. Who’d want a diamond? Imagine if it was cheap to build a Ferrari (pull car parts off of a tree) and they could be sold for US$500. Who’d be driving Ferraris? Look at the number of failed cheaper BMW, Audi, Cadillac and Mercedes models.

Blogs are no different — the authors have to have more than just information and something to share, they have to have a drive for getting readers to return. For some, they just want you to visit one site, click some revenue generating link, and never come back. These bloggers will be the quickest ones to leave as the income (initially) is very low. They spend more time trying to spam forums and other blogs in order to get thousands of one-time visitors to come and leave. That isn’t a good business plan. Some bloggers put a site together and abandon it after 30 days, but the site might still exist for years. Visitors to these blogs tend to see how unprofessional blogging is.

What is the right way to attack this new media industry? For me, I believe you should look at your first professional/amateur blog as an education. Some people go to college for 4+ years. Some people go to trade school for 2+ years. Why shouldn’t a new business be similar? The first few years of any business is an education for the entrepreneur — an education you pay for by reducing your income. Rather than dropping US$50,000 on a 4 year school program, how about reducing your income by US$50,000 over those 4 years and putting your whole self into the business?

Some who go to college hold a part time job to pay the bills. If you’re wanting to be dedicated to a new business, make a 4-year plan and pretend you’re going to college. Get that part-time job to cover the bills, and spend the time you’d spend in school focusing on learning your market, learning what skills you have, learning how you can sell it and what customers are willing to pay or exchange with you for your time and information.

Being a professional blogger is not an overnight change, it might not even happen in 1-year. Some professional bloggers have been going strong for 2-3 years and are only now starting to see incomes worthy of quitting their day job. The same is true of restaurant owners, realtors and hotdog kiosk owners: there is a long term educating period where you learn the ropes.

Today is the best day to start a blog or a business. You don’t need to dive in with your whole body, though, you can just stick your toe in the pool and get acclimated. There will come a time when a big leap of faith will need to occur, but up until then, you can try to see how well you can dedicate yourself to your business, whether it is an online journalism career (blogging) or something more physical.

Building momentum in any business comes from previous successes. But if you ignore the initial period as a learning time frame, you’ll surely fall away from the business, no matter what it is. There comes a time when the biggest investment is your time, but how do you pay the bills when all you’re gaining is knowledge, not income?

Building blogging momentum is no different than building momentum in any business — you have to get over the learning bump, which can take years. Don’t just write and promote, though. Write and ask your friends and family for criticisms. Write and talk to successful bloggers on what they’d recommend you do to make things better. Join some writing forums and review other writers who then review yours. The initial cost of business is time, not money. The time to learn and hone your skills is the best investment you can make, no matter what market you want to get in. Once you are happy with your work, only then will you be able to focus on momentum and building return customers.

Discuss this article at the be your own boss forum.

This website will be changing hosts soon, so watch for updates!

Darren the ProBlogger gave a link today to an article from Chris Garrett titled Can Anyone Make Money From Blogging?

The comments at both blogs are insightful, but I think some people forget some of the realities of any business model — time * time.

There are two completely separate aspects of time when it comes to getting into business for yourself: the time barrier to entering a market, and the time needed to cultivate and build your customer base. Blogging is no different, but blogging also has a success ratio that doesn’t break my time versus time rule.

The easier it is to enter a market (barrier to entry), the more people will try to get in that market. Blogging is so simple to enter (5 minutes at any blog network), but my time * time equation still holds truth. You can start writing in minutes, but so can anyone else. Just like being in a band only brings success to a rare few, the same is true of blogging.

Blogging for dollars is no different than any other business — you need long term time to succeed. I really get frustrated by anyone that says you can make easy money at anything — you can’t. Every business of mine that has succeeded took 18-36 months of very hard work to get to the level of success that I deemed worthwhile for the time I invested. Becoming successful means continuing this hard level of work to stay successful. Blogging is no different, and I think the 18-36 month level holds true here. Sure, there are some lucky few who become overnight successes, but the percentage of overnight successes is so small that I would consider it near impossible to try to be that person.

If you start writing online today, don’t expect to see a steady stream even in the first year. Journalism of any sort is a job that can take a lifetime to become successful, and the entire time that you are writing, you will see more and more people dive in and cover the same topics you’re covering. While this makes the market more adaptive to social change, it also means that added competition will put downward pressure on your income, and it will happen often.

That is when determination will win in the long run — a market is governed by the laws of supply and demand. When a topic has only a few people covering it and only a few people interested in it (low supply of writers, low demand of readers), the income won’t be very good. Yet over time, the demand of readers can pick up (low supply of writers, high demand of readers) which can give you a great income. The big problem with this supply/demand ratio is that it quickly turns into a high supply of writers and a high demand of readers, which pushes your income down again, even if you’re accomplished and popular.

Over time, the high quantity of writers will wither away because of the drop in income. Those who stick around though might find themselves back to the low supply of writers/high demand of readers ratio again (good income), which will cause the market to provide another burst of new writers covering the same topic.

This situation is no different than any other business model. If a grocery store is succeeding in your area, expect another to open. This temporarily affects the income of the first grocer, but over time they either both survive or one will fail — rarely do we see everyone in a market give up. You’ll see it with gas stations, fast food chains, plumbers and insurance brokers — the market is very adaptive to what the consumer wants, but it can change very quickly.

If you’re sitting and waiting for the right time, it will never come. If you’re hoping to see a quick income and you can’t commit years to your business, you will likely fail and be frustrated enough to never try entrepreneurship again.

The article linked above talks about the changes that can happen in your life (emergencies, family, paying job commitments, etc) that can put a damper on your desire to write. This is where I believe it is important to write as much as possible during the times you’re not busy, but don’t publish everything right away. Just as it is wise to save 10-20% of your income for the future, you should save that much or more of your written word for the days when you can’t “pay the bills” of blogging, which is paid in articles.

Those busy points of our lives is also why it is wise to join a network of bloggers — you’ll be giving up some income bursts for a more stable rate of returning readers. I’m in the process of bringing on a few extra writers to start covering some of my topics for just that reason, plus it helps to have some differing opinions from time to time. Most people can’t spend 1 hour a week writing, and that is ok — if you have 10 such people, you can have a successful site (but you might only earn 10% of what you’d make if you could spend 10 hours a week or more on a consistent basis). I’m blessed that I have more time than most to try to stay on top of my topics, but even I find those days when I’m sitting in a cafe in the middle of a foreign country with no Internet, no cell and no way to update my sites. My “blackout of February 2006″ was 3 weeks of being in Europe and Asia with absolutely zero access to the web, and it drastically affected my traffic for months after.

If you’re thinking of blogging-for-dollars, start today. Don’t worry about advertising, income or traffic, worry about building a history of articles and a savings account of articles to publish on the days that you’re not able to. Over time, months and years, a focused writer should have no problem gaining a readership base, even a marginal one, that can help pay a few bills every month. The worst thing you can do is try to mimic the success of others — focus on your own abilities and opportunities, and ignore the winners and losers out there. You don’t know what they’re investing time-wise, and you have no idea what they’ve really done to build that success.

To succeed at any business requires time * times (time to enter the market and time to build a relationship with your readers). If either of those numbers is zero, your income will be zero, too.

Discuss this article at our be your own boss forum. This site is part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.

I’ve spoken a few times about how writing online can be a reasonable way to drive towards being your own boss, but it is also one of those businesses with a very high failure rate. How many bands do you know of that play for years and never make a dime, but have the dreams of it? Writing for web content can be just as competitive, if not more so.

While the key to being a successful online writer ends up being traffic and more traffic coming to your site(s), getting that traffic comes out of quality, quantity and real knowledge on the subject. Yet even if you’re the most knowledgeable person on a given subject, attracting the attention of the millions out there is not easy, especially if there are millions of people trying to write about your very subject.

I recently found, and was added to, an interesting venture that I think might help those involved with it — BlogBurst. BlogBurst is a company that is taking blogs (that they’ve accepted) and distributing them to large and well known media companies online. You write, they publish your writing on some very large companies:

SF Gate
Washington Post
Houston Chronicle
San Antonio Express-News
Austin American-Statements
Gannett

These are not tiny little papers with a few dozen readers, these are papers that carry quite a bit of traffic. While it isn’t necessarily financially profitable for you to be carried by these papers (they take your words, use their ads around them, and you don’t get a share yet), it is a great way to drive traffic in the long run to your site.

Remember, building a reputation as a consistent and knowledgeable writer doesn’t happen overnight. It may not even happy over a period of time: it just happens one day. As your readers tell others about your site, you gain a little bit of respect and establish yourself a little bit more as someone to be trusted. Gaining the distribution into a major newspaper might not bring you a lot of attention right away, but it is something worth trading some ad income for. The newspaper gains a unique opinion, you gain some credibility, and in the long run you’ll gain more from it than they will. Keep writing, keep getting picked up, and the writing opportunities are endless.

The newspapers who are part of the BlogBurst program are doing a very smart thing — many papers are having problems attracting the younger crowd. What better way to gain visitors than an amateur writer telling friends and family about the paper that is publishing their article? This two-way street should work very well for the mainstream media, and by accepting the sidestream media, we should see some very good traffic sharing.

If you aren’t writing yet, jump on it. Grab an account at any of the free hosting companies, and start writing. If you feel like you can stick to it for 6 months, go ahead and register a domain name at a cheap host, download Wordpress, and get to work!

BlogBurst, like most blog distribution networks, requires that you’ve been writing a while, and consistently. I believe they’re looking for 3-6 months of history with high quality grammar and spelling and a unique opinion. There is no time like the present to dig in, build yourself a history of articles (even if no one is reading them yet), and see where journalism can take you.

Discuss this article at the be your own boss forum.