Financial Mistake #4 - Not Diversifying Within Your Business | Nitro Marketing Blog

This is the 4th Mistake in the "13 Financial Blunders Newly Successful Internet Entrepreneurs Almost ALWAYS Make" series.

4) Not Diversifying Within Your Business

This one has two parts to it.

The first part was discussed briefly yesterday in Mistake #3. That was the mistake of always pursuing the next opportunity rather than focusing on one business or project until it is successful.

Robert Allen made this a popular topic with his book and training on Multiple Streams of Income.

Many people took this to mean in the online world they should have multiple web businesses, and would start one business or site after another. And like I mentioned before, always chasing great opportunities but never building a real business.

Another common thought people have is…

"If I am making $200 a month from this one site, if I have 50 sites in 50 different markets I can make $10,000 a month."

However, what they don't realize is each new site increases the amount of time and effort to maintain those results. And by the time you end up with a dozen of them you are completely overwhelmed and they are all suffering.

Some people may say, "But this business is limited in opportunity." And in some cases that may be true, but I am sure you are seriously underestimating the amount of opportunity that lies in your business.

For example, my buddy Jermaine Griggs has built a business that does over a million dollars a year teaching people how to play the piano by ear, over at www.hearandplay.com. The reason he was able to do that was because of this next part…

The second part of this mistake is…

The "one trick pony" businesses.

These are web businesses that depend on the weakness of one. They have one source of traffic, one source of new customers, and/or one source of revenue or product.

Then, when one of those sources goes bad, the business is in serious trouble.

We saw an example of this in the past when the Google Slaps happened. MANY people were totally dependant on Google Adwords to generate traffic to their site. Then when Google made a change and said they would no longer let them advertise that way, they were out of business, literally overnight.

Another example is somebody who has only one product. They then have to spend more and more time, effort and cost to keep finding new customers to buy their one product.

Like the great marketing minds in the past have said, it is as much as 10 times easier and cheaper to sell another thing to an existing customer than to find a new customer.

Over time these people can't keep up. They either can't find enough new customers to maintain the volume, or their competitors become better, smarter and faster and they can no longer compete. Then they wake up one day and realize this great little business really wasn't a business, because it doesn't work anymore.

What's the solution?

Having multiple streams of traffic and revenue within your business.

So instead of relying on just one traffic source such as Adwords, you also have affiliates, email marketing, search engine traffic, social media traffic, offline traffic, banner advertising, CPA networks, etc. In total we have a list of 23 different traffic methods broken down between The Big 3 (PPC, SEO & Affiliates) and then 20 more Traffic Enhancers.

Then, you have multiple ways to build your email list, multiple front end products, multiple backend products, a monthly continuity program (we call it P3 - a Predictable Profits Program) and a number of other sources of income.

The Nitro Blueprint System we developed for our use and our clients over the years is based on having multiple sources of traffic at the top of the funnel, multiple front end feeder products, multiple backend products and other sources of multiple revenue streams.

And they all feed off of each other. So the work that is put into creating a new traffic source feeds into all of the revenue sources. And the new revenue source is fed by all of the traffic sources.

I call it the "Empty Box Principle" and everybody I share this concept with tells me it has changed their entire way of thinking. After we finish up this series of Financial Mistakes I will create a video for you sharing the Empty Box Principle we use, so you can implement it as well.

The take away from today's mistake…

Instead of trying to have multiple businesses, have one business and build it out so it is diversified by how it generates traffic and revenue.

On Monday I will share Mistake #5. This is a VERY controversial topic that up until now has been ignored. However, it is a topic that needs to be addressed because I guarantee you have either faced it already or will face it in the future.

~Kevin