How To Succeed In Business With Small Audiences

When choosing a niche or simply measuring your business progress, it’s easy to focus on your total audience size.

We all want to have as big of an audience as possible. We see websites with hundreds of thousands or even millions of visitors and think,

“Why couldn’t that be me? What am I doing wrong? My content is a lot better then theirs, and look how successful they are!”

This is a dangerous way to think, and can set you up for the wrong targets.

The reality is, it is possible to make 10x the income with an audience a fraction of the size, and it’s dependent on several different factors.

Let’s look over some of these now, and prove that audience size – for the most part, doesn’t matter when it comes to online business success.

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Plugins And Apps Won’t Save Your Website

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Oh boy, here we go.

I wanted to put out this PSA, because I see this on a near-weekly basis – both in the blogging space, and the eCommerce space.

Many bloggers have been sold the lie that if they put out “great content” and work hard, people will magically find it, they will amass an audience of raving fans, and you’ll be able to retire to a life of luxury.

The same thing happens in eCommerce. Launch a Shopify store, put some products up, and the sales will roll in.

Of course, it doesn’t take very long to discover that things aren’t so simple.

So, you may find yourself asking, what gives? Where is everybody? Where’s the money?

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The 5 Types Of Bloggers – Which Strategy Is Right For You?

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So you’ve decided to start a blog. Congratulations!

But did you know that blogging is an extremely diverse business, and the business model can vary entirely depending on which category of blogger you fall into?

In fact, just about everything is different. The strategy you take is different, the type of content you’ll release is different, how you market your business is different, and how you profit is different as well.

Fortunately, all bloggers fall into one of five categories. Knowing which one you are (or rather, which you’re hoping to become) will shape everything you do going forward.

Read over each one of these carefully – one of them will surely stand out to you!

Without any further ado, let’s look at the different types of bloggers, so you can determine which style appeals to you the most.

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Your Company, Or Your Life?

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What price would you sell your soul for?

What price would you pay for ‘success’? Would you trade your entire life away for a chance to make it, even if it left you miserable, and you were working in a company that wasn’t right for you?

Just like a job, it doesn’t make sense to work on a company that doesn’t bring you satisfaction, even if it makes you a lot of money.

This year, I had to make a very tough decision, and confront some harsh realities.

After nearly 5 years, I have stepped away from my eCommerce companies to return back to my roots – building and marketing online businesses, that don’t require my constant presence in order to grow and thrive. I’ll be providing strategic guidance to the new people running it, but it will no longer be my day-to-day focus.

I believe that it’s possible to build a business that helps to support your entire life, rather than consuming it.

When you realize that your business model is simply not going to fit into the life that you want and there’s no way you can make it work, it’s important to recognize that and make the appropriate changes.

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Your Impact – A Look Into The Lives Of Your Customers

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When running a company, it’s easy to get caught up in systems in processes. Numbers and figures. The day-to-day problems that need to be resolved.

And as your company grows, this problem usually only gets worse. You become so wrapped up in the immediate needs of your company, that you’re unable to step back and see the bigger picture. And unfortunately, this type of mindset often becomes reflected in the company’s leadership – which has an even more devastating effect on employees.

Recently, I went through a very stressful period for one of my eCommerce brands. Orders surged as buyers switched to online shopping shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and it became incredibly overwhelming for my staff and I.

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You Are Vulnerable – Decrease Your Company’s Reliance On Social Media

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It’s finally happened.

For years, I have been preaching here how dangerous it is to become reliant on one company.

Why it’s dangerous to rely on one platform to send you traffic, or one website to sell your products and services.

This mistake can be so costly, it can shut entire companies down overnight – leaving you with nothing to build back from. It’s incredibly scary.

Two weeks before writing this post, I logged into Twitter to discover that my account had been suspended. I received no email regarding the suspension, and was not told what rule I supposedly broke that led to my suspension.

In fact, I only found out when I went to tweet (as usual) to my 21,000 followers, only to be greeted with this wonderful message:

Twitter Suspension Message

Ouch.

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