Making Money and Knowing When to Quit
Making money online involves understanding the value of your online business, idea or website. Are they profitable or are you attempting the impossible by trying to squeeze blood from a stone?
We all have many ideas on what types of money making websites to set up and we often execute these ideas only to find them withering due to neglect or intense competition from others.
Knowing when to terminate a project is just as important as starting one. By cutting off these additional channels, you can focus exclusively on the ideas that will actually make you money.
According to a recent Forbes article on this topic, there are three main reasons why you should consider dumping your great money making ideas. Headlines below come from the article, comments made are mine.
1. Paying Customers Never Show Up.
Are you getting sales? What do your visitors say or think about your online business? Is your website or service well received? These are some points to assess once a project has been initiated.
If you don’t meet your goal forecast, reevaluate your business model or tweak it to better fit the target market’s needs. If you still don’t make money after all these efforts, terminating or selling your business will help you avoid unnecessary costs.
At bottom, it doesn’t matter how ingenious your product is–if you can’t communicate its value, it may as well not exist.
2. You Can’t Sustain a Competitive Advantage.
It is important to have a long-term plan to cope with other competitors in your field. If your idea is truly novel, you should expect a bunch of copycats. To succeed to constantly adjust your website to provide an unique selling proposition.
Allocating a significant portion of your income towards consistent marketing and promotion is always a good idea after the initial site launch.
Remember: Your idea is what gets you in the game; your competitive advantage is what keeps you there. If you can’t figure out how to stay ahead in your market, start looking for a new one.
3. You’re Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job
A great money making idea only reaches its full potential when you support it 100%. You need to push your idea as much as possible if you truly believe it. If you are passionate about professional blogging, giving up your day job to focus on your projects is a move you will eventually have to consider.
Chances are, if you’re going to make that leap, you’ll do it sooner rather than later. Commitment to an idea spurs action. Driven entrepreneurs can’t wait to hit key milestones–incorporation, building prototypes, drumming up customers.If you’re not moving fast, it’s probably time to move on.
If your idea fulfills all the above conditions, it might be better to drop it in favor of another idea that would fare better. My personal belief is that most ideas will turn out to be profitable if you have in-depth industry knowledge, sufficient personal networks and the will to sustain it through the difficult initial growth period.
Play it smart and be intuitive when building your online empire and you will eventually generate a lucrative income from all your businesses or projects.
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Good find.. these are some good tips. I am definitely going to read the Forbes article. Learning to cut your losses is important, not only in entrepreneurship, but in other aspects of life as well.
There’s definitely some good advice here. All too often it is easy to keep spending time and money on a project that just cannot succeed. Unfortunately the time/money already invested in a project can mean this is impossible to see.
If things are not going to plan, it is always a good idea to get opinions from those not so intimately involved.
- Martin Reed
Yup good point martin, realising sunk cost is one of the hardest things. Time spent as well as resources for a startup or project, most people hope things would improve even though odds things wouldn’t. Being a businessman is an emotional rollercoaster; some have more good days then bad. I am the king of online flops! You should see my report card.
Your article, Maki, covers all of the pertinent points, except one, perhaps the determining point between success and failure: giving up too soon, due to refusing to change your vantage point from which you are viewing your business model and marketing strategy. When the netpreneur lacks persistence and determination, there is the temptation to throw in the towel, where letting go of that granite mindset and titanium resistance to change, may have led to tremendous online success. -Dr. Vibe
Been there done that with the quitting the day job- I believe that’s the most daunting one. My husband had to make the leap- in order to devote full time to our web biz GWD and I had to give a time consuming volunteer gig and part time work outside of the home to support that business, and so I could start my blog Smart not Cheap and run a vintage biz One of a Kind Wisconsin. I know all these links… the point is that a lot of our friends and family talk a good game when it comes to having their own business, but the step that always trips them up, is cutting the ties with the safety net of a day job. It isn’t easy- especially with kids involved, but if you don’t you won’t have the time for your business and it is always going to be in the fledgling stages. -Michelle
I complete agree with your on this “3. You’re Not Ready To Quit Your Day Job”. I have quite my day job now and fully focusing on my online ventures.
I also cannot agree with #6 I run a VERY successful online community which happens to make quite a bit of money but its new, and it income is not secure yet, as it is brand new. My mother did not a raise a fool to quit the job and then not have enough money to pay rent, as I pay weekly not monthly. My fulltime offline job allows me to run my business from work as well as do work for the company. So as of right now I have time to spend 40 hours a week doing both. It is hard in the beginning knowing when to quit and when not to. Especially when a lot of people either pay yearly, or monthly its definitely a big jump in managing your money from weekly to monthly.