About Me 0126: Making Money With Website

Have you ever made a large cash withdrawal from a banking machine only to wonder a few days later where all the money went? Think for a moment: Where did the last $100 you spent go? Stop for a minute and write it down. Chances are you can account for most of it, but there may be five, ten, or twenty dollars missing from your list.

Why You Should Track Your Spending

What does it cost you to live each month? Some people under-estimate their expenses because they forget the things that don’t occur every month.

Did you include your gym costs even though you pay them once a year?

How about your house or car insurance?

Did you include the cost of your haircuts, your contact lenses, or your vacation?

Do you pay someone to shovel your snow, clean your windows and carpets or do your taxes?

What about your vet bills, the flowers for your garden or patio, your best-friend’s birthday present?

Some people under-estimate their expenses because they actually don’t know how much they’re spending on things like take-out, clothes, and coffee. Over and over when I show folks how much money they’re spending on the non-essentials of life, they’re gob-smacked. Well, the only way to make a budget that will work is to know what you have been spending so you get some sense of what you’re going to have to change.

One of the best ways to gain a perspective on your spending habits is to keep a log of everything you spend, each time you do a transaction. The idea is to figure out where you’re spending all those dimes that seem to go missing each month. It’s also about learning more about yourself and where your place your priorities. This isn’t about shame, blame, or deprivation. You don’t have to change anything you don’t want to change. But you should at least know. With a spending log, you’ll have a clear picture of what you’re getting for your money.

When you do all your money management in your head, it’s very easy to forget things — sometimes important things — that will have an impact on your overall financial life. You’re always guessing how much you have left. And you shouldn’t really be surprised when your account is overdrawn. After all, if you don’t know how much you have, how can you know how much you can spend?

If you don’t believe you can find the time to maintain your budget — collecting receipts, entering details onto your budget, adding it all up and balancing it out — think about the time you have to spend solving the problems that arise from not taking care of the details. And think about all the money you waste on overdraft fees, interest costs, and ATM transactions. You’ll have to decide whether you’d rather live life peacefully, or continue waking to the specter of financial worry rattling his chains at the foot of your bed.

I'm seeing this sort of pitch a lot lately:

"We are the next such-and-such company" or "we take such-and-such company concept to the next level" or "unlike [insert billion dollar website name here], we have added a killer feature and thing-a-ma-jig that changes the game."

Fill in the blanks with the buzz words of the moment and I'm sure you'll get the idea. Why the sudden urge to jump into certain markets rather than others? Well, call me crazy, but for many an amateur, I believe it might have to do something with dollar signs in the press. (Let's just say $50 billion for the sake of example.)

What disturbs me about this trend is the sheer number of people that are concentrating on web companies built for "investment dollars" or "ad revenue" rather than built for immediate income-generation. Sure, Web start-ups are inexpensive to launch, but I still contend that to stay in business they must earn money. Not every website is going to get an investor onboard or a strategic acquirer interested—not by a long shot—and you have to at least afford Ramen noodles to sustain yourself.

When I partnered with a fledging start-up to help build a Web 2.0 company back in the early 2000s, I quickly fell victim to a lot of this same hype nonsense. Except at that time, it wasn't "social networking", it was video sharing. YouTube had just started to come about and I wanted in the game. Like every other Web start-up in that space at the time, we too were "revolutionary" and a "game-changer."

Only problem: we had no immediate revenue model, based our financial forecasts totally on sponsor and ad revenue, and could not keep up with the site traffic. Investors wouldn't touch us because we were still too small, yet expenses kept piling up. In the end, the company folded and tons of money was lost (and probably is still being paid off the original founders' credit cards today.)

I certainly don't want to discourage the brilliant Web engineers out there whose business models are sound; however, I do want to discourage the other people out there (yes, you know who you are) from jumping on the "$900 million bandwagon" simply because you think your idea is better, cooler, or has more features than a site that already exists. In fact, if you have the word revolutionary in your pitch, just go ahead and wipe hard-drive clean right now.

Think before you code. Just because you can build something, doesn't mean you should. Time is your most valuable asset and you want to make sure that the enterprise you are committing yourself to has a real chance of providing you with sustainable revenue. You must truly understand how your business will make real money before you bank on some unrealistic expectations concerning traffic. If you are making money, the potential to raise investment dollars becomes all the more real.

Remember, it is never a smart bet to try to build an "acquisition" rather than build a business. After all, if your business cannot survive on it's own you'll need to exit the company way before any exit strategy can even occur—because you'll be bankrupt.

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About Me 0126

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Making Money With Website

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