Compound Growth of an Online Business
On Sunday, I posted about how little I was actually earning from my blogs, and how I hoped to enter a steep learning curve in order to improve this. I’ve never been shy of writing content, but the social media arena has always been something I’ve never quite got round to entering. So I decided to hold my hands up and admit to being a total newbie, and see where things go from here. I have entered the steep learning curve of twitter, blog promotion and blog optimisation, and I am looking forward to enjoying the ride. So how realistic is it to expect to follow a growth curve which keeps on going up, and how can website builders ensure that their growth is exponential, rather than just solid and linear. Or is linear growth better?
Well, I have always found the prospect of compound growth far more exciting. Prior to turning my attention to blogging and offline print maps, I maintained a 60-70% annual growth rate on Flightmapping.com. Of course, the big question when anyone makes claims of massive growth is what level they are starting from. It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out that 1000% growth from £10 per month is still just £100 per month. But what if that is just the start, and within a few short months, you can double that figure again several times over?
Of course, the possibilities are endless - and there is no reason why a relative beginner can’t build up a substantial and stable income through building highly relevant content-focussed blogs - providing that there is a revenue stream which can be built from them. It is no use blogging about a subject which either has very few potential readers (although believe me, on the internet, there are people out there into just about anything), or which is just not going to generate much revenue (note to self - stay away from long political rants!).
So what are the dangers?
Judging by the endless streams of spam on twitter, the first pitfall has to be to go down the ‘I made millions of dollars online and so can you’ route - almost all of these systems are built on bringing more people in below you in the pyramid, and they just aren’t actually out there to generate any kind of sustainable income, except for those who are in right at the very start. Quality content blogs take time to build up, and this is the big question. Do you have the time to spare? Can you sit back and wait for your websites to grow? Well the good news here is that you will never have to sit around twiddling your thumbs - on the internet, everything can move like lightning, so it’s totally unlike opening a retail store and waiting for the punters to come in off the street. The simple question is - can you build up your website(s) quickly enough? Well, as long as you are starting off by building your website as a secondary income generator, the answer should always be yes. Expecting to become a millionaire overnight is almost certainly going to land you in disappointment.
So even if the rate of growth slows down as you get bigger, it still pays to go for explosive growth.
Happy blogging!
