Not really. But almost.
I posted last week at Mom Masterminds about my feelings lately regarding my business. And I thought I would share it here so perhaps it could help you avoid the same mistake. I’ll go ahead and paste that now.
“I swear, sometimes I wish I had only 3 websites. If I knew I could get a good price for them, I would put several up for sale. I have been in a kind of funk for about 3 weeks now, and it’s lifting, but part of it is because I feel like I’m scattering my seeds everywhere and diluting my efforts too much. I’ve been thinking about what I really want and what I really enjoy in my business. I no longer want to do what I don’t want to do. And I don’t think I have to. Let me explain.
What I really love is blogging. I don’t have to make myself do it or talk myself into it and I don’t procrastinate about it or do any kind of mind games to get it done. I’m envious of people who ONLY have a blog. That’s it. All their focus goes into it and they do it full time.
I really like affiliate marketing. I don’t particularly like creating products. I don’t wanna do it anymore. Wah!
I have a couple sites that produce a really nice income with minimal work. I can add a teensy bit of content or get another incoming link once a month (or less) and they just keep on pumping out income. That’s fine.
But then I have several small websites in my niche that I feel could ALL be incorporated into my larger site or blog. Some of these aren’t making much money, and I feel their content could be more valuable on a website that IS my focus.
How do you decide whether to move stuff around and reorganize stuff or just let it be? Or sell it?
All this disorganization makes me a little depressed. I know if I had fewer websites I would feel more energetic. Bleh.”
I got all sorts of helpful responses, including:
“Oh Carrie, I so know how you feel! I have too many sites and I know it. I’ve grown out of quit a few of them and my interests in life have taken me in completely different directions.”
and
“You’re in charge and you can start over.”
and
“Your experience is helping me tone down me newbie enthusiasm and focus on the plan!”
and
“Carrie I get it completely. I have never enjoyed being a virtual real estate owner. I much prefer to keep my efforts as centralized as possible.”
After I posted this I felt much better just knowing that other work at home Moms felt the same way I did – which was scattered and pulled and guilty that I wasn’t giving some of the projects the attention they deserved. But I also got to work and started moving towards my goal of fewer projects, done better. More centralization, less scatter.
I sold one website to a wahm who is perfect for it. She’s already marketing to that niche and it was a perfect fit for her.
Then I simply deleted another that wasn’t performing. The domain was about to expire anyway. First I took a look at stats and stuff to see if there was any value I could put on another site, which I did. I moved some of the decent performing pages to another site. Then I kicked it to the curb.
Then I took a serious look at one of my biggest projects, Natural Moms Talk Radio and the blog that goes with it. The site and blog are a little bit inconsistent, and to boot there is another blog that I use just for articles. So.
Right now someone is working their magic on the whole site. It will be centralized into one big blogsitepodcast thing. It’s getting new snazzy graphics and I can hardly wait. Everything I do to the site, whether it’s an informative article, a podcast episode, or a blog post, will boost the rankings of the domain and the other parts of the site, whereas now it’s disjointed.
I feel so much better.
I have another site that’s going to be up on the chopping block soon.
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