Over the course of your blogging and business building career, you are going to be faced with many questions. The decisions made with these questions will have a lasting impact on your future growth and expansions, so answering them correctly is vital to your bottom line.
One of the biggest things I see bloggers struggle with is money. Ironic isn’t it? The thing you are trying to make also ends up being your downfall, but how does that happen? How does money kill bloggers in the pursuit of their dream and the internet lifestyle?
Where Bloggers Fail With Money
The typical road of a blogger is a hard one. They slave over content, monetization techniques and growing their blogs to make pennies on the hour over the course of the beginning stages. Then something hits. A nice spike in traffic, a great review or a feature on another site and the income starts to flow in. Even if it is not a lot of money, there is the instant satisfaction that all of this work is not going to waste and money actually can be made online!
So what does the blogger do?
Celebrates! The blogger buys that big TV, the game console or whatever other toy they have been pining for all this time. They have earned it right?! It can’t be all work and no play!
One BIG problem.
That big TV does nothing to help grow your business or invest in your future. You just took all of your hard work and invested it in a depreciating asset that will be obsolete in 6 months. All of that hard work, those late nights and time away from your family will be absolutely worthless in less time than it took you to build that small income stream. Congratulations, you just crippled your success and you are going to have to work even harder to get it back.
What should you have done?
Looked for ways to reinvest back into you blogging and saved the excess (or paid off high interest credit cards if you have them). Building a business online is no different than any other business. You need to reinvest back into the business if you want to see future growth.
Was there a paid plugin that you needed?
Was there a design or coding project you needed done?
Do you need a better camera or piece of equipment that would benefit your blogging?
These are the questions you need to ask yourself as you start to see money coming in from your blogging. That expensive “celebration dinner” might make you feel great for an hour, but the increased revenue from reinvesting back into your blogging will pay for itself over years.
Bloggers tend to get all of the advice down on growing a community and monetizing a blog. What they fail to realize is that a business can not grow without capital and they are squandering away that capital on a bunch of stuff they really don’t need…leaving nothing for the business when you need an interview transcribed or help with a new design or logo that will increase your professional reputation online.
Personal Story: What I Bought This Week
Ok…so what spurred this thought process? With some extra income in the bank from hard work at the keyboard, it was time to reinvest in my business some. While I could have gone out and bought that new HDTV my wife and I have been looking at. I instead picked up a new camera that is going to help out my biking sites A LOT. With better high ISO quality and 7 fps shooting, this Nikon D300s will be able to catch trail side shots much better than my previous Nikon D80. (Luckily for me…a lot of my reinvesting money is on stuff I like too!)
Pictures are a huge part of the biking culture and I have been relying too much on the support of my community and friends for shots to use on the site. What I really need to do (and the reason for the purchase) is capture my own shots for the blogs. Now…armed with a Sigma 10-20 super wide and the Nikon D300s, I have zero excuse for not lugging around this heavy beast with me on rides to capture the shots I need.
As a nice side affect…photography is a hobby of mine so I get to enjoy it for personal reasons as well. Like shooting my two girls laying on a couch.
Now…does anyone have a Sigma 70-200/f2.8 they want to donate to RobbSutton.com? 😉 You can keep up to date with what I am posting on Flickr through the widget on the sidebar.
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