Why My A4UExpo Business Cards Will Probably Be Wrong!
Posted under: Once upon a time affiliates used to launch new sites as quickly as shares have plummeted around the world over the past week (little bit of topical humour there). Travel sites, finance sites, insurance sites… you name it we all had them – and for an insane reason (probably called eSpotting) they all ran happily and earnt a few quid here and there.
And then someone spoilt the party and decided that content was needed on all these sites. The swines!
Now in theory writing content for a few sites and keep them in tip top condition and up to date sounds a doddle. True! True unless you happen to also run a site like Loquax which basically takes up a lot of time and effort.
Jude secretly had a quiet celebration this week when I finally admitted that trying to build and develop numerous site with various topics was an impossibility – and also a massive distraction from the things we’re actually good at (which is running a site with a duck in it’s logo).
So why the change of direction?
1. Time! There’s never enough of it and what there is is often taken up by duck related issues.
2. Renewed Interest! Running a big site for 10 years can be a tad bit boring after a while, but recently I’ve had a bit of a revived interest in what Loquax can (and should) do. We’re doing new and fun things and the odd re-invention here and there helps refocus direction.
3. Too Many Distractions! It’s good to have a few sites running but too many becomes distracting. Not just because you need to get content in place but you end up wasting time sorting out broken feeds, changing links for closing merchants, or dealing with PITA networks who want name changes or their merchants featured “now” (like it’s the only thing we have to do in the world).
4. Vicious Circle! To get a new site up and running it requires time, and that’s in short supply. If by chance that new site does work it requires more time – which again we don’t have – and this results in a bit of a distraction!
5. Reality Check! Occasionally in life something happens that gives you a jolt. There’s no need for us to run 50 blogs or update loads of websites – it’s just not that a big a deal!
6. Overlooking the Obvious! Sometimes when you have a big site you often miss the good stuff. We’re very lucky at Loquax in that we have a brand (albeit small), a community, an OK website and it does alright for us… working an extra 100% for an extra 10% income isn’t good business.
7. Actually they Were Crap! The cherry on the top for most of them – they were all good ideas that never quite took off as they lacked time, energy, interest or commitment from us! Amazingly the more a site earns the more time you can find for it, the more energy you have, the more interest it generates and the more committed you become!
So because of the above, my business card which list a few sites we own will now be out of date.
However the most important part of the card can be found on the front – and that’s the site we own with the duck in the title! We will continue with a couple of other sites but our days of trying to work in other sectors and running loads of sites is at an end (probably).
[...] who is anyone in the world of Affiliate Marketing will be at the A4U Expo this coming Tuesday and [...]
You got any sites for sale? LOL I know what you mean with the workload. I have 3 sites that are pretty high maintenance and about a dozen that hardly take up very much time. The sites that take up hardly anytime are not the world’s best sites but they tick over ok and I took the discussion a while back that I rather employ people to do the work then stress myself out. Ok so that means higher costs but in reality the extra sites paid for the extra staff (just some times took longer than I would have liked to break even). More sites will mean more chances of having to deal with the odd idiotic network with staff that are hell bent on wasting your time over trivia, I made a couple of posts about that last week.
If I was in your shoes, I would make a list of the sites I don’t want to work on, find out how much they have made the last month, 3 month and year then work out, can I employ someone that will run these sites be it on a wage or even get another affiliate to do it on a big commission cut and if so go down that route instead of ditching them. Otherwise just abandon them and move on, leave them up and running in case you change your mind but just walk away and forget them for now. I have a number of sites that are floating about in cyberspace awaiting something to happen, what and when that will be I don’t know but its better than taking them offline and losing the link building work that went in to them.