Stay Focused!

One of my biggest struggles is staying focused on a particular project. I’ve probably handicapped myself by building several websites in different verticals, but I think keeping focused is a key to making money.

If you haven’t read Frank Schilling’s latest blog post, I think you should take some time to read it. While there, you might want to re-read some of the archived posts, but today, I want to discuss the importance of staying focused.

Frank wrote something that gave me pause: “blogging is an opportunity to vent and reflect, but when you’re venting and reflecting you’re not growing.” For Frank, blogging may be more of a distraction from his business than a way to grow his business. For me, blogging has become a business. For all of us, there are many things that distract us from our various businesses. Sometimes it’s career-related and other times it’s family-related. These distractions usually can’t be avoided, but there are times when other distractions cause us to lose focus.

Many of us spread ourselves too thin, especially when it comes to our domain businesses. We build many websites and hope to get some Google love, to result in traffic and revenue. We tend to neglect some of these websites over time and hope for the best. I don’t think that’s the wise approach.

My feeling is that if you are going to choose a domain name to develop, make it something you are passionate about and stay focused on it. Continue to build it out and turn it into a hobby. A great hobby is one that is profitable, so worry about earning money after it’s established. Focus on making a great website that others want to visit, and the money should come.

If you are like me and have a tendency to jump from project to project, think about Frank’s post and try to stay focused. Create a plan for your website before launching it and stick to your plan. Quality begets quantity. One great website with fresh content and insight will almost certainly be better than a bunch of scattered website projects.

Stick to something you enjoy and focus on it. This will help you grow and improve your business.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

10 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for sharing this insight Elliot. It is definitely difficult with pie in the sky dreams to stay focused on projects but you are absolutely right. Trying to work on too many things with too many ideas just makes your brain too scattered to be putting in any real quality into your most important project(s).

    Frank is absolutely right, liquidating domains that have nothing to do with your projects, are not bringing in the appropriate revenue or are taking too much precious time to develop need to be sold or dropped. This is something that I have been working on and hope to have my portfolio down to strictly that handful I want to develop and use or I have a clear end user in mind.

    I am not sure if I agree with him on the future of domain names though or where they are going. But you have reminded me of a great resource besides your blog to get some insight.

  2. I think when Frank says blogging is a distraction he means for him. Running one or more blogs is a viable business for many these days, and can’t be overlooked as a potential income stream. In fact, it is probably one of the easiest ways to start your own site and keep content fresh. A teenager can start a blog as a part-time business while going to school.

    His other point, to focus on your good names, is great advice. While many have been pairing the crap out of their portfolios (including me), the flip side to that is to focus on your good names, get quality content on them, and drive traffic to them. I’m planning to do more of that this year, to see which names have been making me the most revenue and add more quality and content for the visitors to those domains. I hope he’s right in saying this year will be a good one for domain investors.

  3. Great post! I have paid a developer to built one of my niche directory sites and now the site is just sitting there. It’s even #9 on google without any articles or real content. But for some reasons I have moved to some other “mini” project believing no one will be interested in advertising on my site etc. etc. etc.

  4. actually there is nothing wrong with taking a step back , review and blog about it.

    Puts things into perspective and allows you to see oppertunities or dangers.

    So i guess whatever works 🙂

  5. Eliot@
    I also posted the same question to another in the domain comunity who replied. My further comment to clarify my post =
    Mike@ Thank you for your comment. The request to comment is simply to flag up what seems to be a technically smart step around for TDL domain regstrations and therefor of concern to all domain registrants. We understand the importance of the smartphone & poss AppleTV. If I register “any-long-tv-insurance-carinsuranc.com Could I advertise Car Insurance with a QR code as my principle point of contact ? My question is really Has the technology takes us back to where Google wants us to be, all renting real estate from Google with no domain marketing advantages ?
    I would be grateful for your views ?

  6. Thanks for this post Elliot. It made me contemplating my current projects once again.

    I like Franks advice of having a plan…seems like a simple idea but I will be the first one to admit that most of my ‘development’ is impulsive instead of well executed plans. The results are poorly ranking sites and not making money.

    One reason for many people might be that they are working alone -perhaps even detached- whether as an individual or a sole propriertor. It may take some time before we realize whenever we steer off course. I guess having a detailed plan may improve things while at the same time finding a balance on the amount of projects one can handle.

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