Elie's Return on his Time Investment

Elie Kochman, owner of Optimal Upgrade Consulting, is a prolific and articulate writer who also happens to be a technology guru (who’s not afraid of a challenge). I found him on AdviceTap.com and the name of his company intrigued me. Contact Elie before you upgrade that system and be sure to read his own blog at Business and Networking: Advice to Home-based and Small Businesses.

In January 2009, I launched my consulting company, Optimal Upgrade Consulting. As part of the launch, I created a website that described my background and the services I offered. Additionally, the site had a blog, which quickly became the focal point of the entire site.

Initially, the topics I wrote about were as varied as the schedule, but after a couple months of wandering through a variety of topics, I settled on writing about issues facing the owners of small businesses. Not a huge surprise, considering that my target audience is small business owners.

I also settled down on a schedule, writing an article each business day. The effort of writing and maintaining my site has grown, now occupying about 45 minutes per day. My posts are published at 7:45 AM Monday through Friday, and I respond to every comment left on my site. I submit my articles to various sites, hoping to increase my readership.

Yet, my site does not make me any money, despite spending several hours per week there. Oh, sure I make some money off the ads on the site, and I’m an Amazon affiliate, so I make a few dollars from that as well. But my grand total in income from the site is less than $200, which translates into about $0.50 per hour spent working on the site.

If it’s not the money, then why do I keep up the effort? It’s because of e-mails like the one below (a short extract, not the complete message):

My name is Edward; I am an entrepreneur and launched a start-up late last summer. I have read your blog posts and I am a fan, especially of your advice! I loved your post Project versus Hourly Pricing. Well, the reason I am writing you is a personal one. I would appreciate tremendously your opinion on my product. I am in the process of adding new features and abilities and I would love to hear your opinion on it.

How did Edward find me? He read my posts, and then, when he needed some business advice, he got in touch. Now Edward is a client and has more than paid me for the time spent writing that post.

Edward is just one example of how my site attracts clients. What my site does is allow me to establish credibility before the need arises. By the time a potential client contacts me, they’ve been reading my posts for months. The client feels like they know me. I’ve established trust with them.

Getting involved in social media can seem like a lot of work with little return, and it’s easy to become discouraged. It took me 9 months of writing before I got my first client thanks to my social media excursions. Only 3 months later, the next client got in touch with me. I now have several active clients as a direct result of the effort I’ve been putting into social media over the last 15 months.

Trust takes time to establish. In order to benefit from social media, you have to establish that trust, and it can only be done slowly. Making this even more difficult is the fact that there doesn’t really exist a good way to measure progress. If you stick with your plan, however, and keep listening to what others are saying about you, success will come in time.