Quite often, people may be seen rushing into any kind of business just to make money. Some succeed, some don’t.
But how many of them would remember the business days with tenderness and say to themselves those were the days..’? Also, how many of the successful business people enjoyed their work? Is there a connection?
How is it running a business
Now that it has become as easy to setup an online business as to press a few buttons and outsource all the work to the search engine optimization folk, quite a number of people have decided to benefit from the freedom of reaching all the world at once with the help of the Internet. But how many of them will be profitable?
Statistics say that only 5% of newly started businesses survive the one year period. And about 20% survive the next year. Does it mean that it is hopeless to start a new business? Does everyone have even chances of being one of the few successful online entrepreneurs?
Enjoying running a business
But let’s forget about the success chances for now. Let’s think of the ways we live our lives. As human life is pretty short spending several decades in business is a serious time investment. Are you willing to waste those years or enjoy them? Is there a way to enjoy running a business? Is it possible to succeed, if you run a business you enjoy managing?
Everyone (or at least I assume so) has a hobby. Be it baseball card collection, gardening or house-building. Would it be possible to run a business from a hobby, or have a business you’d enjoy running?
Let’s see about running a business, related to your hobby. Sure, some hobbies can not be monetized, but it is not the main criterion. You can always find a job or a business, related to your hobby. Enjoy kiting? Can build one yourself? Start a kite manufacturing business or just promoting other kite models to earn referral revenue.
Of course, sometimes you can’t sell what you hobby, but you can find a related job. As you should enjoy your life, it doesn’t matter how you earn your money, with an 8 hour a day full-time job or a 12-14 hour a day business.
Earning from a business
When applied to online business, most hobbies can be monetized. Here’s what you can do to earn from any hobby:
- define a goal for your interest website you plan to monetize later
- create a site about your favourite topic
- fill it with articles about your hobby (from all points of view)
- build an online community on your site
- list other useful resources/sites in your industry on your site (run a directory)
- sell a useful e-book about your hobby (and audios and videos, etc)
- handcraft something related to your hobby and sell it online (e-Bay may be helpful here, too, apart from your e-commerce site section)
- allow other topic lovers to contribute content and ideas to your site (in form of guest forum or blog posts, comments, articles, (free) e-books, etc)
- advertise products, related to your topic
- promote real quality products (the ones you’d use yourself) of other companies to earn affiliate income
Generally, all it takes is an established site about a topic with a friendly community. Then you can monetize it to bring more benefit to your visitors.
But, there’s one drawback of such strategy. You will need to work hard on your website. It’ll be months (and maybe a year or two) before you start seeing the income to pay the bills. Maybe you’ll fail to gain income, because you are not a real marketer or a sales person. But the chances are you’ll be enjoying running your own business.
Of course, you can learn to enjoy running your existing business, even it is not related to your hobby. It can be related to your other interests. You can enjoy providing value to your customers, perfecting your skills and product/services quality, etc. But the goal here is to enjoy what you are doing.
Why enjoy the business?
Why is it important to enjoy what you are doing? There are a couple of reasons:
- you actually enjoy your life while working
- you already know and understand a lot about your business (from hobby or your interests)
- you can find new, out of the box, ways to improve your business, because you enjoy working and you know a great deal about it
- you eagerly learn new things about your topic, communicate with other like-minded people
- you can find new natural ways to promote your work
Though it may seem like just another factor for succeeding in business, it is not just a factor. Sometimes, it can be the decisive factor that will push you through the barriers in your start-up. Sometimes, your passion and knowledge will point you in the right direction to market your business more successfully. And, of course, when you enjoy your work, you’ll produce high quality product or service or anything you touch. And nothing can beat product quality.
So whether you enjoy your work or not is not a factor. Mostly, it is the difference between a successful business and a failure. But most importantly, it is the difference that makes you enjoy your life while working and it can’t be disregarded that easily.
Conclusion
In such competitive business environment as the Internet is, it is important to have an extra edge over your rivals. Your passion for your business, coming from your interest and desire to learn new things about your topic, will allow you to succeed and take over your competitors more easily. And you’ll continue living a happy life during and after running a business.
P.S. “Sure, it is only what you say. Has anyone successful said the same?”
You bet. Check out the last phrases in this video.
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Yuri Filimonov is a freelance website optimization and usability consultant, who writes about improving websites to gain more visitors,
customers and profit at his blog, http://www.ImproveTheWeb.com.
