A New Year, New Focus, New Goals

As the new year approaches I’ve been spending a lot of my time looking at the web properties I own, my motivations in creating them and the purposes they serve in my life and business today.  The short answer for most of them was that they no longer served any purpose at all. No matter how sentimentally attached I was to them even after innumerable years of laborious effort, I had failed them.

Yes,  I said that I failed them. A concept, blog or website does not fail the owner.  Either the owner lost interest, lacked focus or simply did not put the needed effort into the end product that would have allowed it to reach the intended level of success.  Or the concept was flawed at the outset and the person behind it never bothered to do the necessary research, thus leading to an inability to survive.

In either case it is not the concept that failed, it was the person behind that concept that failed.  Even the failure of the concept isn’t a bad thing if taken in the right light.  We learn from failure, we seldom learn anything from success.

Out with the old, in with the new

The new year is as good a time as any to look over what you have on your plate, check projects and determine whether or not these projects still have any value in the grand scheme.  For me it was time to finally let go of several sites that I had poured myself into for years.

The reality was that they weren’t going to get any more of my time and that they had not been profitable in a very long time.  I’d held on to them for sentimental reasons, not practical ones. these sites just weren’t doing what they should have been.  They were costing me time and money, not making my life better nor helping anyone else.  It was time for them to go.

On the other side of the coin, there are several ideas that I had begun but then found I hadn’t had the time for.  These properties have potential and are back on my list of things to get going this year.  The only reason that they aren’t generating a profit is that I didn’t give them the opportunity to do so. That’s my own fault and I need to remind myself of that whenever I find that I’m getting whiny about it.

This blog is among that second group. The past year has found my attention devoted to other things to the point that my own namesake web presence has done nothing for me at all.  This will no longer allowed.  With all the chaff tossed out the window I now have the time to focus on things that should have been making an impact, on setting a brand or on helping other people.

When was the last time you examined your priorities?

If you haven’t looked over your projects and objectives in the last six months or so, you might want to take the opportunity to do so. Remember, your goals change, so do your priorities.  If you are pouring your effort into a project that you no longer care about, how well are your efforts being rewarded?

It’s also a good time to check the pulse of your readers as well.  One of the blogs I discontinued this year was once a very profitable venture. It was packed full of useful information, insight and topics that were extremely relevant tot he topic.  The problem with it was that the public at large no longer cared.  Nobody was visiting. It had died long ago, but I’d kept it around for my own reasons.

In this industry you have to know when to let something go when its time has come. Sentiment in your own projects doesn’t make a buck, it costs money. Don’t beat a dead horse. It still won’t run.

Make this year your year

Take the time to examine where you want to be by this time next year.  Drop the dead weight.  With the time you’ve gained, start a new and more rewarding project of give more time to something that’s been neglected.

Use the renewed energy you’ll have from losing the chains of something you no longer loved doing and pour it into something you can’t help but do. and remember:

The man who works at what he loves never really works at all.

What are your goals for the new year? Whatever they are, I wish you the best of success with them.

Peace. I’m out.

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