I have read it, I have wrote it and I have heard it again. “Keep it simple!!!!” I just didn’t always really know what keep it simple meant. If you want to do something well you have to focus. Even more so in a boot strappers business world. The proliferation of micro niche businesses means that there are many people out there doing many highly focused things extremely well.
The ease of building websites, adding content, blogs, podcast, e-books, etc. means that you can virtually construct a dozen web sites in an afternoon that would put to shame a masterpiece web site from 5 years ago. This also means that there is a load of garbage out there.
When I started in the online business world I chased the easy niche sites that could be built quickly monetized with AdSense and affiliates. I quickly realized that one, this is really not all that fun and two, that it is a never ending hamster wheel. As Google continues to slam niche sites I am glad that I didn’t invest too heavily in that hamster wheel. What I also found was that while getting these sites off the ground was fairly easy maintaining them could be a chore. It takes a long time to update and add to dozens of different websites. Staying up to date on a dizzying number of vastly different markets was also a challenge. This approach is the antithesis of the information diet.
I have gone through a number of scale down phases where I will limit my focus to one or two promising business and use the 80/20 approach to get ahead. I have also found that just when I think I have zeroed in my focus enough I still need to zoom in more. For me this means focusing on tiny specific aspects of my business, such as Twitter marketing for a week. I like to learn a small aspect, figure out how it can be automated, and move on. This allows me to actually get things done and build businesses that are sustainable.
I am still not at a level that will allow me to leave my day job but that just means that I have to be more deliberate and wise about how my time is spent. If you are stuck in the vicious circle of never really feeling like you are getting ahead I suggest that you take inventory and start to purge. Figure out what the 4 or 5 most important aspects of your business are and focus on each one separately for a week or two at a time. I guarantee you will see results.