Are you ready? This week’s confession is around money. And not making it rain.
I’ve been feeling pretty good about the way that my specialized business has been going. I’m happy with my inquiries and am booking new projects often. But, I want to be clear—just because I feel great, that doesn’t mean that I am raking in the money in my niche business.
Specializing has definitely been something that I am investing into. I’m investing time, and I’m also investing into my learning through taking a variety of initial projects at pretty reasonable rates. I know I’m not necessarily charging premium rates yet, but I also feel like I’m still figuring out a lot about this target market and the best way to deliver services.
I just ran a report in my accounting software, and I found that my niche SEO services have only accounted for 12.6% of my company’s revenue in 2018. That was through about mid-October, so there’s a few months of the year yet to go, but only 12% of company income has been related to this specialized business. That’s pretty tiny.
What I really want to share transparently today is that I’m definitely putting in a lot of time and effort, but it’s definitely not where most of my company’s revenue is coming from.
When you specialize a business, it does take some ramp up time. It can really feel like starting over, including in what you charge and how much money you’re making (especially if, like me, you don’t have a huge portfolio of past experience in your niche). I didn’t jump straight to a premium specialist rate for these services, and you may not start there either.
Specializing may not initially make money rain from the sky. I still think it’s worth it, and that it makes future earning potential way larger, but it may take some time to get there.
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