Be Your Own Boss

At the Be Your Own Boss forum, regular contributer Prompt said the following in response to the last article about writing blogs for businesses:

I think this is a great idea, and quite a viable one for me; however, how do you find these businesses who are looking for someone to run a blog for them? Any tips would be grea

His question is not necessarily unique to this business idea, but one that I seem to get all the time in real life or in e-mails: how do you find customers for a business market that is too new to be really well known?

In my experience, I always try to enter a business market before everyone knows about it. The biggest rewards come from the biggest risks. If you have experience in a market when it is still young, you’ll be at the top of the pack when the market explodes. Getting customers when the market is young requires a combination of skills as well as time to work on developing the market itself. When I enter a new market, I always work to build my portfolio of successful works in that market. In terms of blog writing, my first 3 blogs that I wrote were my own. I learned the upsides and downsides of all the various platforms, learned how to start working on interfacing and traffic building, and also learned the best ways to develop a return readership — all talents that I could not learn by going to school or buying a book. I had to try first on my own.

I did the same thing in almost every business I’ve started. When I sold skateboards and paintball markers, I didn’t really know the ins-and-outs of the devices. I had used them and had fun with them, but I didn’t know what made them tick. I bought a few dozen from anothe retail store and beat on them until I learned that I could compete in the market. When I co-founded Deep Productions, I had absolutely ZERO experience in the 3D design and layout market. I bought all the software I needed, built my own development PC network, and performed a few trial jobs to see if I could handle things. Deep also started as a webdesign outfit, Deep Interactive, and none of us had any knowledge of web design when we started the company almost 12 years ago.

Once that first step is out of the way, the next step is to take your personal portfolio and expand it to be a professional one. In some markets I had to actually do some jobs for free — pro bono, as the lawyers call it. In many cases it took me weeks to find small local businesses who would give me a job that they needed done, and I’d do it for free. Today, with the Internet, finding customers who will give you a positive reference in exchange for your work (cheaply or freely) is much easier. Don’t think that you’re actually doing work for nothing — building a portfolio of work and a profile of customers with positive references is more important than building an income early on.

For most of us, we’re lazy. We want to do something simple to attract customers, but business doesn’t work that way. Even the biggest and most famous companies in a market still have to work hard to attract new customers, especially with little ankle-biter companies like mine giving them competition. You won’t find work if you don’t build a portfolio of jobs you’ve done. Your portfolio won’t mean anything unless you have 3-5 customers who you’ve worked for who will vouch for your talent, your ability to meet deadlines and your long-term customer service. Once both the portfolio of work and the profile of clients have been built, finding new work is much easier. I’ll go into marketing to customers directly in an upcoming article.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

Life is funny quite often lately, especially given that I’ll be getting ready to write an article when my RSS reader beeps and another site I read happens to publish something on-topic with what I’m writing. Today that happens to be a regular site I like to, Darren the Pro-Blogger. He was asked by a reader about managing a blog for a business. Darren admits he has little experience in the process, as he writes for his own sites and not necessarily for the sites of others.

I have a very strong experience in blogging for others, as I maintain 6 blogs for other people’s businesses. They pay me a regular monthly contract to update their blogs and to do the hardest part of blogging: following through. If you’re a decent writer, can set aside about 8 hours a month per customer, and focus on their industry, this is a business that will blow through the roof in coming months. I’m already finding my market expanding, even though I had only planned on support 4 sites. I’m even getting calls from churches, non-for-profits and individuals who hear about me from the few customers I’m currently supporting.

Since part of my job is to hide the fact that an outsider is actually creating the site, I’m not able to provide links for the moment. In the next few months, though, I’ll be bringing on 3 new customers who said they’re OK with me providing links to the work, in exchange for a better rate. I usually don’t care about having a public portfolio, but in this case I feel it ties in well with this site.

If you want to provide a blog for local businesses, there are about 7 processes I’ve come across that are necessary:

1. How often do they want to update their blog? Less than 4 times a month makes it not worth starting. More than 12 times a month makes it not financially efficient.
2. What information do they what to cover on a regular basis? I recommend setting up the categories early on, and then covering each category in a round-robin situation until the blog is consistent and has a good archive.
3. Who will you have to contact to get information to post a new blog article? At one of my customers, I have to call 6 different managers weekly to get updates (e-mails get ignored). The more people you have to call, the higher you have to charge.
4. Who will be coming to the blog? Will it be previous customers? Will it be new customers? Will it be random people searching for that business? Will it be competitors or suppliers or wholesalers?
5. What is their main purpose in having a blog? Is it for sales reasons, or for customer service (tech issues, updates, etc), or are they just doing it for ego?
6. What is their short term and long term plan? I like contracts, usually 6 - 24 months at a minimum. If a customer can’t agree to carrying me for at least 6 months, I can’t do my job properly. I generally charge my fee over that initial 6 month period.
7. What will you have to do beyond getting text information? Will you have to take photo of jobs, will you have to do face-to-face interviews with the employee of the month, etc?

The 6 business blogs I maintain now are decent but nothing exciting. In the future I hope that I can charge upwards of US$300-500 per month to maintain each blog (which is currently below my regular hourly rate). For someone with good writing skills, a journalistic view of the world and the ability to procure information from those who have it, writing a blog for a business can be a reasonably decent income. If you invest 8 hours a month per customer and can find 20 customers to maintain, you can put yourself in the 6-figure income level fairly quickly. This is one of those businesses that either get you a lot of word-of-mouth advertising, or none because the customers don’t want anyone finding their secret source. It’s like a good plumber — no one wants to share him. I make it a part of my sales technique to demand that I get positive references in exchange for a reduced rate. When you’re new to a market or field, your portfolio is just as important as your contract — without being able to build a customer base from positive reviews of your current customers, you won’t grow and you won’t be able to sell yourself if the market is too new.

The blog market will explode in 2007, don’t miss out on it. I would not doubt that there are millions to be made within 15 minutes of my home, but I don’t have the time or the responsibility to grab all that work. Do you?

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

I found a link over at Darren the ProBlogger’s site to talks about the costs of web design. After reading the comments on both sites, I realized that most wannabe entrepreneurs are absolutely clueless in money issues, and it scares me to see people trying to earn money without understanding what it is they’re trying to do.

In business, costs are irrelevant. There is no “too expensive” or “too cheap” price to a product or service, since every product and every service is unique every time it is sold or bartered for. Web design is a huge business today, but not in the number of quality designers — there are hundreds of thousands of terrible web designers trying to sell their services. Does this mean these terrible ones are too expensive, no matter what? Not at all — “too expensive” doesn’t exist.

When you are in business (or even just a consumer), you have to look at every bit of money or time spent and see if the spending is efficient in your business (or life). Will buying a certain product or service be cheaper in the long run than making it yourself? Is the product that you can make yourself going to be as good as the one you’ll hire out? Unless you’re a great graphic designer, the answer is yes — it is often times better to hire a professional than to try to attempt it yourself.

I’m amazed that someone can look at a great web design for US$3000 and think it is too expensive. A great web design involves years of experience in knowing what code works, but also requires years of experience in knowing what graphics design is useful for. Understanding fonts, placements, layouts, colors and overall look-and-feel is not something that comes naturally to 90% of people out there. They know when something looks wrong or right, but they have no idea how to change things. This is where a pro comes in.

A good entrepreneur should have no problem earning US$80-US$150 per hour on a contract basis. Can you make a great website in 20-40 hours? I doubt it (many of my friends who think they could have shown me that they couldn’t do it in 50 hours or 100 hours, too). I’m no web designer (as you can tell), but as soon as I am ready to promote my sites more, I’ll be hiring someone to create something new and interesting and unqiue — this is what a good designer does for you.

In all my businesses I’ve owned, I never cleaned my facilities myself. I hired it out. A cleaning crew could do in 2 hours (and for under US$100) what took me a week and hundreds more in cleaning products and trash collection. I hired it out because they were cheaper and more efficient than myself. I never bothered to have my own answering machine or voice mail — I hired out answering services that took great notes, prioritized my messages and even paged me in emergencies. It was cheaper and more efficient to have someone else do the work!

Don’t automatically look at certain business expenses as “too expensive” or “worthless” until you realize how much time you’re saving, how much money you might save in the long run, and how useful the item or service will be to your income. People don’t charge more than they’re worth — if they did, they’d be out of business very quickly. Don’t mock or criticize others without understanding what is involved in their work, and if paying them to do something for you saves you time and money, be happy that you found someone able to make your life easier.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting on the couch, drinking a cup of tea and staring out the window. At 11:30am. On a Wednesday. My energy wasn’t tapped from overworking or overpartying or over-extending myself in any way. The fact is, I was slacking because life was getting very steady and stable. I’m driven best by customers who call with last minute deadlines, emergencies and big news days — I also get to charge more for those events. When self-employment settles into a regular daily habit, it can become very easy to slack.

For most people, there is a difference between taking some time off to “veg out” and slacking. If you’ve just worked harder than ever before and if your body (and friends and family) are telling you to take a break, do it. If your responsibilities are met and you’re not under any deadline pressure, nothing is wrong with taking a day or two vacation from work just to refocus and get back to working hard and profitably. Slacking, though, comes from when you’re just doing enough to earn a check, but not really doing enough to look to the future. Looking to the future to me means marketing, thanking your past customers, and following up on leads.

For an entrepreneur, slacking is part of the business, it seems. We tend to get into a steady cycle of work and fun, and eventually we find that we can work a little less and still earn as much as usual. Becoming productive and efficient at your work will leave you with much more time than you’d get in your 9-5, when you’d slack in between visits from the boss or the managers. Instead of slacking in 5 and 10 minute breaks throughout every work day, you build it up and spend that slack time when it is least warranted: when everything seems stable and things look good for the time being.

Business is never stable, and if you don’t grow, you’ll shrink. I find myself in slack mode about once every 3 months: just as I’ve picked up new customers and finished some normal projects, I’ll find myself wandering off into lazy-land. It takes a full day or two to realize it, and that is 2 days lost to no productive results. Vacation time is good because it does produce a positive result: you get much needed downtime to refocus. Slacking doesn’t do this, it just lets you forget about today, tomorrow, yesterday and everything that needs to be done or needed to be done. It is a real destroyer of many entrepreneurs who start to slack regularly, happy that they can make in 8 hours what used to take them 40.

When the day comes where there isn’t 8 billable hours of work in a week, they’ll wonder where the work went. I’ll tell you where it goes: it slipped into the walls around you when you slacked, and you’ve lost all that time not being productive in some way.

Don’t slack.

Discuss this article at the Be The Boss forum.

I tried something a little over a month ago just as a test — I had about 500% more business cards printed than I usually do. I like to carry 10 cards with me at all times (3 for my websites, and 7 for my main business). I usually give business cards out to people who are interested in my work (they’ll ask for my information). In the past 6 weeks I’ve handed out over 700 cards to family, friends and people I just randomly meet while out and about. Even when people didn’t ask me for information or even what I do for a living, I ended the conversation with a card and a one sentence rundown: “I own this business, if you need my services or know anyone who does, please consider giving me a call or passing on my name.” Most people I know already know my business, but not all my friends and family have been good referrals for work. Some probably never even mention me when problems for other arise.

In the 6 weeks that I’ve passed out, on average, 20 cards a day, the response was greater than I had expected: I received 12 phone calls and 19 e-mails from people I never met and had no connection to. They all received my card from people I mostly didn’t know: “My friend Gus gave me your card the other day when I told him I was having a problem. He thought you could help me.” I have no idea who Gus is, unfortunately, but I thank him nonetheless. Out of the 31 responses I received, I’m sure to gain at least 3 customers. If I’m lucky, responsible and productive on bringing in more customers, I might double that number. This is free business for me, I spent only a nickel or so on the advertisement, and used word of mouth as the force behind the marketing.

I keep hearing from other friends of mine on how slow business is right now. Many of them are doing nothing to change that, they’re waiting for yellow pages listing to be found, or waiting for old customer to remember their numbers. I never look at a past customer as a future customer unless I take a step to help them refind me. Even my monthly contracts are not set in stone: when they expire, I have to propose to them to bring me back. This is how life is — humans are focused on themselves, and it is very easy to forget others. We even tend to forget our own families that live with us.

I was relatively shocked that every response (but 2) came from people I don’t even know. One person I met while leaving my favorite tobacco shop gave my card to another person who gave it to the person who called me! That’s networking, even though not a single person in the chain actually knew if I was any good or if I knew what I was doing. My card worked hard for me, and so did people down the line.

The cards that failed the most were cards I gave to business clients — they already get so many cards from suppliers and customers that they tend to end up in a cardfile and become forgotten. They weren’t good marketing tools, yet. The cards I’ve given to friends and family have always brought me in a few customers over the years, but I don’t have high expectations. Once someone is familiar with you, their tendency to talk about you actually goes down. The best time to get word-of-mouth referrals is usually right after someone meets you, hires you, or has you do something “miraculous” for them. The rest of the time you’re put on the backburner of the stove that’s being tossed at the side of the road. Expect this to happen, and continue to work to get your name and card out.

Even my website cards have brought an increase of traffic, some of which have returned more than once. While I can’t verify that this is necessary the case, it is easy to see when someone finds my sites without a search engine (no referrer) and they’re local. I have to assume someone either told them about me verbally, or they gave them my card. It’s a win either way.

Don’t ignore those who you don’t know, they can be your best assets. They haven’t known you long enough to know your negative side, and they may run into someone who needs your services soon after you first met them. Ignoring these potential advocates of your business is a very unwise thing to do — whether you run a real brick and mortar business, a consulting company or a website.

Discus this article at the Be The Boss forum.

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.

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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.