The 80/20 Rule... What Do You Think?

This post was actually inspired by a reader's comment on my last post. Thanks for planting the seed Rick :-)

Also known as The Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule basically states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes orin other words, 20% of your efforts create 80% of your results. An example of how this could apply in business could be that 80% of your income is generated from 20% of your customers, which I have found to be fairly accurate in my own business. An example in blogging could be that 80% of your comments come from 20% of your readers, if your lucky... lol

Rick Vaughn said...

"As an avid reader of everything business. I'm a firm believer of the 80/20 rule. Marketing should be 80 percent of your time with 20 percent devoted to content. What do you think?"

Now... Rick is obviously looking at this from a unique perspective which I find very cool. He's not talking about the 80% being an effect of the 20% cause, but rather a relationship between two causes (marketing and content) to create a desired effect (success, readers, money etc.)

So let's think about that for a minute...

It's certainly and unfortunately true that a crappy product with a brilliant marketing campaign will most likely be more successful than a brilliant product with a crappy marketing campaign; but with respect to blogging, does this really mean that you should focus the majority of your time on marketing rather than on content. I don't really think so, especially not in the early stages of your blog or in a highly competitive niche.

I'm a firm believer in creating quality content first and the rest will follow. I'm not saying forget about marketing because it is absolutely critical to success, however I believe that you're much better off focusing on making your content stand out from the rest before you over-publicize a "mediocre at best" blog which could totally backfire on you.

So... What's the perfect ratio?... In my humble opinion... I would shoot for 50/50... you can start with the 80/20 but with 80% of your time focused on content.

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com

Time Is Money!

"Time is money." It's a very simple and very old expression, and also very true. Being in business for myself, I have learned that in order to be successful, time management is absolutely critical. There are many different aspects to any business of which an appropriate amount of time must be spent on each in order for that business to grow and prosper. Being able to "multi-task" is certainly helpful for the "day-to-day routine activities" however focused, individualized attention must be spent in areas such as research & product development, advertising & marketing, customer relations etc.

The same is true for building a successful online business or a successful blog. With respect to blogging, we've all been told that quality content and regular posting is the key, but if no one knows it's there it's pretty damn useless. So then we start searching for ways to build traffic and get ourselves some readers. There are a million & one ways out there to do this and it can become a "total time sucker" causing you to slack off on creating quality content and posting regularly. This can cause a negative effect on your blog because the last thing you should want to do is attract new readers to a stale and boring blog.

So, here's my advice. Make a schedule and stick to it. Write it down, put it on your calender and most importantly, keep it realistic. Choose the days and times that you will devote to your blog, whether it be an hour or two a day or 10 hours every Sunday and then break that time up for all the different areas that you want to concentrate on, but remember; we all have a life outside of the blogging world, so don't forget about your family and friends or your real job :-)

http://getrichquickreally.blogspot.com