Nathan Hangen

How to Mix Business with Pleasure

I remember when I first started building websites for profit and to be honest I didn’t really have any idea what I was doing. I was reading all the guru hype and thought that if I could just build a cool website, people would come and give me their money. Boy was I wrong! I was not only going after niches that aren’t very profitable, but I was also spending too much time trying to be the next MySpace or Facebook. I wanted to be a one hit wonder so I could retire to the beach and sip margaritas for the rest of my days.

Needless to say, things didn’t go according to plan. It wasn’t long until I realized that running a business was tough! I have a lot of things I am passionate about, but for some reason I just couldn’t connect the two together. I either had too much fun and didn’t make any money, or I chased after the profits and got very little enjoyment out of it.

I knew that it was possible to make a living doing what you love, but I was desperately trying to figure out how to get over that mountain. What I realized was not that I was going after the wrong niches, but I was simply going about it all wrong.

The Business Side of Things

First, let’s talk shop about the business side of things. This is the part that frustrates many entrepreneurs and either distracts them from their profitable ventures or leads them to exhaustion. Things like accounting, article writing, graphics, and copywriting are not my forte. I like to create, but I’m not very good at much other than writing and producing content. I enjoy the blogging side of things, but the rest of it takes more time than in should and isn’t as professional as I need it to be. As a result, I finally caved in and starting hiring professionals to handle the things that I’m not very good at. I found a graphics guy and started paying him to take that burden away from me. I found article writes to help me create instant affiliate sites, and although I still do a lot of my own copy, I hired consultants to rip my content to shreds so that I could learn how to do it better.

The point here is that there are things that need to be done to build your business that either cost you more time than you can afford, or distract you from doing what makes you money. Either way, when you divert your time and attention to things that bore you and waste your time, you are stuck in the hamster wheel that grinds many entrepreneurs to an early crisis. Rather than let these distractions get in the way, quit thinking that you can’t afford to pay professionals and start hiring them to help you. I know, it isn’t very easy to shell out your hard earned cash, especially if you aren’t making much, but I promise you that it will help your business grow. If you are experiencing a short term cash crisis, consider reading The Webrepreneur’s Guide to Funding Your Business so you can build up a nice cash reserve for projects like these.

Double Your Pleasure

Now, let’s talk about how you can inject a little bit of fun into your business so you can still make some cash doing what you love. If your projects aren’t going so well, then maybe it isn’t the niche so much as the approach. As a triathlete and runner, I have several fitness sites that I tried to use as a platform to sell eBooks and eBay products. I wasn’t making any money doing that. Eventually, on a whim, I threw in some AdSense and some Amazon ads and next thing I knew I was making a few hundred bucks per month on each site. Not bad for a small change!

On the other hand, there are times when you won’t be able to sell anything on a website. In these cases, you might want to try selling via a newsletter or by creating a free report or PDF embedded with affiliate links. If you are looking to establish an authority presence and sell your own products, then you’ll need a lot of content, built up over time, before people start to feel comfortable buying. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, but for the most part making money online requires more patience than technique. Just keep refining your approach until you find what works.

The point is, you can still make money building websites and creating products in niches that you enjoy. You just need to find the missing link between what your audience needs and what you are able to provide.

Eventually, you’ll be able to separate the winners from the losers, and at this point you should cut your losses and dump the sites that are not profitable. Instead of trying to keep a dying site alive, spend the time developing and building up the sites that are making you money. Eventually, you’ll have a winning formula that you can duplicate time and time again. This is when things get fun and the work doesn’t feel so much like work anymore.

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• 3 Ways to Turn Your Passion into Profits
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• Why I Left Beyond Blogging

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