Where You Are Most Exposed?

Posted On: 2015-10-09

I have to admit that title is definitely not original. I swiped it from a post on the Elegant Themes Blog about disaster recovery if you happen to use WordPress and, because of where this column appears, it just seemed too appropriate to ignore.

Of course in this business we're all about exposure ... lots of it ... because people want to see it and it's a fun business to be because we're out there on the edge ... doing stuff that lots of other people wish they were doing.

But of course it's not really like that at all is it? It's hard work and while we're dealing with lots of naked tits and ass we don't get to see much of the real thing because we're way too busy trying to make a dollar. So we've got to be careful not to let the hype lure us away from that reality.

We've got to run our small businesses like a real business because that's what they are. We could just jump in and do nothing but churn out galleries and free sites. We could tell ourselves that we simply don't have time to do anything else.

We could convince ourselves that as long as we're working then everything will be fine and we really have nothing to worry about but then we could save ourselves all that hard work and go and stick our head in the sand because the end result will be the same.

If we ignore the world around us, if we ignore the fact that there are a myriad of factors beyond our control and any one of them could destroy our business then they certainly will.

Big business ... those huge companies that make us look like a pimple on an elephant's ass in comparison ... are forever looking at everything that could possibly impact on their business. They are forever doing risk assessments so they know what the problems are that they might have to deal with and if we want to survive then we need to know what the problems are that we will have to deal with.

We have to step away from our work occasionally and take an objective look at our business so that we can spot the potential problems that could bring our business crashing down. You need to know what you are most exposed to, where is your butt exposed so much that it's guaranteed to get kicked?

Where do you start? What do you think about? Well for the last two weeks both my partner and I have been fighting a particularly nasty strain of flu. Even this morning we both woke up feeling great but by 8am we both felt like crap again and it's hard to work when all you want to do is crawl into bed and go to sleep.

So what happens to your business if you were to become ill? What would you do to keep your business ticking along? Where would the first cracks appear if you couldn't work for a week and what can you do to prevent those cracks appearing.

How exposed are you to financial problems? How would you cope if your major sponsor didn't pay you for a couple of months?

Over on Porn Resource earlier this week I went back to the time when the billing company that was doing all the billing for my paysite disappeared in a puff of smoke. All the money they had collected for me over the last month plus all my rebills disappeared and the financial fallout hurt ... a lot.

What can you do to protect yourself if something similar were to happen? And don't hide behind the excuse that you only use the biggest and most trustworthy sponsors. A couple of years ago one major sponsor simply stopped paying one of their biggest affiliates because he sent them too many trial signups that they couldn't convert in time to make his payment.

In some ways being such a whale would be nice but not if you end up doing all that hard work for nothing. So think about your financial exposure and what you have to do to reduce the dangers of losing everything if a sponsor decides that he doesn't have to pay you this month.

And how are you going with all the legal requirements that we webmasters have to jump through these days. Are you keeping your records up to date or are you cutting corners and leaving yourself exposed if the next knock on the door is the law?

There are lots of other ways that you can be exposed. Are you taking proactive steps to keep hackers out of your websites? Do you keep backups of all your work? Are you focusing all your websites on just one server with one host? Are you looking after the important tools that you use or are they a heartbeat away from breaking down?

If you want to go on growing and having fun then it's time to think about how exposed you are to disaster.