Continued from page 1
Think $30 here or there won't make any difference? Think about this. Do it twice a week and you've just lost over $3,000 for
year in potential business. And when you consider that some of that $3,000 in business would have become repeat business, you're cheating your business out of some serious income.
Apply same thought process to when you actually ARE working also. What's better use of your time -- writing an article for this week's issue of your ezine which will hopefully be picked up by other sites and publishers, thereby providing you with valuable free publicity -- or stopping what you're doing every ten minutes each time you get new email? And reading it.
Remember: hour or two you spend writing your article needs to return equivalent of $40 in income. Writing articles is equivalent of free advertising. You can *easily* generate at *least* $40 in income with that sort of no-cost publicity. My articles published on other websites and in other ezines bring me hundreds of new visitors each week. All for about two hours worth of work on my part. No amount of time spent reading email will ever do that.
Contrast how much income you generate by reading non- business-related email during working hours. Zero. It makes absolutely no contribution to your bottom line. So, don't do it when you're working. Do it on your own time.
By having your "hourly rate" uppermost in mind at all times, you can always decide what's best use of your time. Quite simply, it's whatever alternative will make a direct contribution to your bottom line.
Now, obviously, no-one's going to step forward and hand you $20 every time you complete an hour's work. You're not someone else's employee - you're running your own show.
Some weeks you'll put in 50 hours but will only receive $100 that week. Or less. But other weeks, you'll put in same number of hours and bank $1,500. It's swings and roundabouts.
It's a good idea to review your expenditure of time against revenue generated on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to get an accurate picture of how you're tracking.
The point is to know what your time is worth so you can ensure you're getting maximum return on your investment that you possibly can.
It will also help you to determine when all-important big step of hiring employees is most cost-effective thing to do. If you can generate more income from each hour if you are free to devote your time to business development activities than it will cost you to pay an employee to take over routine, administrative tasks that are currently sucking up all your time, you should hire employee. If you don't know what your time is worth though, how will you ever know when that time has come?
So, next time you're not feeling particularly motivated to write that article and think you'll maybe just go read newspaper for an hour or so instead, consider this. Would you rather spend $20 to read newspaper at 11:15 on a Tuesday morning or would you rather read it for free at 7:30?
Time is money and money is time. Spend them wisely.
------ ** Reprinting of this article is welcome! ** This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you include following resource box; and (2) you only mail to a 100% opt-in list.
Here's resource box to use if reprinting this article: ------ Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical business ideas, opportunities and solutions for work-from-home entrepreneur. http://www.ahbbo.com
None
