Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

There are definitely times when I wonder if both my partner and I were completely insane on the day we decided that I should open a mainstream web design business. I very likely was insane at the time and my partner is always mad so it was probably a perfect conjunction of insanity and boredom that started us on the path to where we are today.

Actually last week ... and the beginning of this week ... have been those sort of questioning times for me. You just have to ask yourself if you were crazy to start a business that attracts people who expect a multi-page website to cost less than a week's worth of burgers ... or people who bought a domain name yesterday and can't understand why their website is not appearing on the first page of Google today.

Yes, for some reason, we do seem to see a lot of people like that and they seem to come in clumps ... like weeds. We might go for anything up to a month without seeing anyone like that and then there's a change in the Earth's magnetic field and they're coming in every day.

Fortunately there might have been a change for the better over-night ... maybe the huge earthquake that registered over 8 on the Richter Scale and luckily happened way out in the Indian Ocean last night changed things ... or maybe it was just time for more sensible people to appear.

Whatever it was, a couple called in this morning for some training with their new online shop and instead of asking dumb questions they asked all the right questions. They don't look like astute business people but they sure did understand that they need to get value for their time and the dollars they were investing. They understood that when it comes to pay-per-click advertising they need to measure the return on investment to make sure that they really are getting a return.

They also understood that it takes time and effort ... a lot of time and effort ... to get good rankings in the search engines and maybe that time and effort could be better used attracting customers in other ways.

They just seemed to know the right questions to ask of us and of their business as it goes forward and I'm sure that they will do well.

So do you know the right questions to ask? Do you know the right questions to ask of yourself? Do you know the right questions to ask of your business?

Do you even bother to ask any questions or do you just plough ahead doing what you've been doing here for years and hoping that you will survive? Whatever stage you're at in this industry there are a bunch of questions that you should really be asking yourself.

Questions like 'Do I really want to be doing this for the next 10 years ... or the rest of my life?'

'Do I really want to limit myself do building free sites and galleries or are there other more challenging things that I can be doing here in this industry?'

And then there are the questions you should be asking your business. The answers for some of these questions are found in your financial statements and you can hide from their brutal truth for years if you want to ... but if you're wise you will often be asking questions of your business.

You will be asking questions like ... 'Am I really making a profit or am I just surviving'?

'Has my income continued to grow or has it levelled off ... or maybe even begun to drop?'

'Is one part of my business bringing in more money than all the other things I'm doing?'

'Am I getting real value for every dollar I spend on building my business ... or am I wasting my money because I'm don't bother with details?'

'Am I getting real value for the time I put into this business or was I making more per hour when I was working in my old job?'

Now the answer to that last one can be something you would rather not know but if you're serious about your business then you really do need to know the answer. Sure you might still be making more money than you were in your old job but how many hours a day did you have to work in your old job and how many hours a day are you working now?

Of course most of us are going to be working harder now than we were before but is all that hard work really worth it? There's another scary question you have to ask yourself sooner rather than later.

If you're not asking yourself questions about how you are surviving personally and how your business is really doing ... if you're just looking at the broad picture without drilling down to the scary details ... then you and/or you're business could be failing right now and you will never know what's happening till it's too late.