Can you predict your income?
They like the security of knowing that they'll get a salary payment once a month whatever happens. If the roof falls off their house, then they'll have a salary to help them. If they suddenly find out that their house is built on an old mine and it's going to cost $X,XXX,XXX to fix, then at least they've got their salary to help them through.
For many people on the planet, they're happy to live this way.
When I left my J-O-B in 2004 and went full-time with my online business, i had already been running the business part-time for 4 years.
And during those part-time years, I had the same fears.
But as time went on, I had also come to realise that the roof wasn't going to fall off my house and I wasn't going to discover that my house was built on a mine right after I handed in my notice to my employer.
Believe it or not, when you've left your job, life carries on the same as it did before you left. When you wake up in the morning, the sun still shines (well, not in Scotland much) and the world keeps turning.
Now, I'm not saying here that you should be reckless. No way. Common sense applies big-time - and I'll leave you to decide what that means in your life.
For me, one of the most important parts of my work as a full-time business owner is carefully monitoring my numbers. If you do this, you can really reduce the stress of working for yourself. You lose that 'out of control' feeling that you sometimes get when money's coming in, but you don't really understand how much, or where it's coming from.
Sure, you can put up a site and make money out of it, but if you don't know how well it's REALLY doing, how can you...
1. Improve it to convert better?
1. Forecast future earnings?
2. Grow it incrementally?
If you know how much each of your site visitors is worth to your bottom line and you monitor this for a while, eventiually you'll find you can predict your income with a fair degree of accuracy. The same applies to your list.
So take from this whatever you want - these are just some musings from a wet and windy Scotland, having forecast what my PayPal balance will be on October 31st.
Cheers,
Neil
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. -- Mark Twain
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