It was father’s day yesterday and for me that meant a trip across the island to see the old man. It’s something that I don’t do nearly enough, I really should make more of an effort but then again we all live such busy lives these days?
Anyway, my dad is from a generation of people that don’t even pretend to understand computers, the internet or anything else more complicated than a kettle. I always really struggle when he asks (as he always does) “How’s business going?”, to give any answer other than OK. Yesterday though my dad being my dad was able to pick up that everything was not in fact OK, he wanted more detail. The question is, how do we (those of us making a living online) actually explain what the hell we do?
Our conversation went along the lines of me saying how busy I was and him telling me not to worry as I’m obviously making plenty. Busy = money. But that’s not the case is it? In a normal job, you work more hours, you earn more money. You get paid for your time. I think this is what 99% of people expect. In this world it’s not the case, it’s just not like that. For example a large part of why I’m feeling stressed at the moment is down to my hours, I’ve been averaging a 14-18 hour working day for the last couple of months. I’m working like that because even though I’m still making money I’m starting to earn less. Why? I don’t know, general world economy stuff, my traffic is up, my websites are still popular but I’m just seeing less of a return from the traffic. In the great scheme of things the cycle will come around again but I’d rather not wait. My answer is more traffic, more links. You try explaining that to a bloke who literally could not turn a computer on. But it’s not just my dad, my wife, family, friends all really struggle to grasp the concept of what I do to earn a living! It got me thinking about how could I justify my work time in a way people could understand, this is what I came up with:-
2-4 hours – Writing new content. I need new content to keep the visitors to my websites interested and coming back for more. I don’t get paid directly for writing this content.
2-4 hours – Link building. The more people who link to my pages the more visitors I’ll get. I can either swap links or try to find different places I can place a link for free. I don’t get paid directly for building links.
1 hour – Answering e-mails. Lots of people see all websites as businesses, not just a person rambling online. Sometimes they want help, being helpful is a great way of building online relationships that can result in links and traffic. Sometimes e-mails are from advertisers asking about rates. I don’t get paid directly for answering e-mails.
4-10 hours – Writing new software. I can either sell this or give it away for free. Giving away free software is a great way of getting more links and visitors. I don’t get paid directly for writing new software although I make a bit from selling programs once they are finished. This is the bit I enjoy.
You look at that and I should be very poor! None of my work time directly relates to any money. So where does the money come from?
Advertisers – Other companies are prepared to pay to have their products shown/linked to on my websites. They can either pay a fixed rate, where they pay me a fixed amount each month to show the ad. Pay-per-click, where they give me an amount for each click their advert gets. Pay-per-impression, where they give me an amount for every time their ad is shown. Finally there is Pay-per-action. This is perhaps the hardest idea to grasp, essentially it means that when one of my visitors follows an advert that leads to an action (maybe they buy something, or sign up for a newsletter) then I get paid an amount or percentage. None of this money is earned directly from the hours I work.
Software – I do sell a few programs. This is the closest to running a traditional business that I get although I stiil have to spend time getting the people to the software.
Getting Paid For Everyday Stuff – This is where time can be money. Getting paid for the internet searches I do, getting paid to look at other peoples adverts, getting paid to fill in a survey. They can all add a little bit. Online people will pay you for the most mundane things.
So the large bulk of what we do isn’t dependent on the hours we work, it depends on how many visitors we get and what our click-through/conversion rates are on any given day. For everything other than Adsense my rates vary greatly. It’s all part of the game that we accept, the trouble is explaining that to our friends and family when we’re all grumpy from putting in too many hours!
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