Never Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

We have all heard the saying before: “never put all your eggs in one basket.” And boy does it apply to all of us bloggers. Blogging is like any other business. There are going to be risks and rewards involved along the way. Blogging can be hard at first. You have to do hard work to build a community and develop a following. There are a lot of things that you need to get right to become somebody important in the blogging world. But once you get there, it’s so easy to take things for granted. That happens to a lot of people. You just forget what it takes to get to the top. You start slacking off and don’t stay on the top of your industry. And maybe your success gets to you and makes you feel better than you really are. But sometimes you do almost everything right and still lose your edge as your industry moves on and leaves you behind. That’s when you need to have a real strategy to bounce back and get back to the top.

As a blogger, you should understand the risks involved with blogging in your specific niche. Let’s say your blog is about HD-DVDs. Now that the technology is dead, how are you going to make a living off of blogging? I am sure there are still disgruntled HD-DVD buyers who could be interested in your blog. But it’s an unfortunate situation to be involved in. You should always aspire to have a real backup plan to fall back on when things go awfully wrong. If you put all your efforts behind one project and stop learning and innovating, you are going to lose in the long run almost every time.

Here are a few ways you can leave yourself and business open to a disaster:

• Blog: it’s OK to have only one blog and focus all your time and effort on it. But you should always have a backup plan to fall on. You want to have other ways to keep putting food on your table just in case your industry passes you by. You should follow your industry news at all times to make sure you see the curve-balls that are coming your way. Those folks who got burned when HD-DVD went out of business could probably see it coming if they were following the news. I don’t recommend having 100 blogs just to protect yourself. But make sure you have a backup plan to keep your business going even through tough times.
• Revenue: so you have built a blog and used Amazon Associates Program to help you monetize your work. That’s all fine and dandy. That doesn’t mean you should stop testing other revenue sources. If there is anything I have learned from the recent events in North Carolina and New York is that you should put too much hope in a single affiliate program. If Amazon, which has the best affiliate program around, is willing to cut its affiliates in a flash, you should be worried.
• Staff: have you heard of too-value-to-lose staff members? Let’s say you have a programmer that does everything for your business. What if he/she decides that they don’t want to work with you anymore? That’s why you should always have a few other contacts handy just in case. Your projects won’t wait for your programmer to change her mind, so don’t become over-dependent.

There are many other areas that you should be concerned about and plan for ahead of time. This is not rocket science but risk management 101. You don’t want to leave yourself open to unwanted risk. Blogging about a topic that could disappear from the face of the earth is not such a smart idea. Using a content management system that doesn’t have a certain future may not be that great of a decision. Nor is relying on one part of your business to make a living. You should always have options to avoid disasters. It’s not just smart. It’s essential.