In October I made the most money ever via Amazon Affiliate links.

A whole $54. Yeah, I know, you’re totally jealous.

I’m rolling in Benjamins right?

Joking aside, I bet you couldn’t guess what the big product that earned 80% of that income was can you?

I’ll give you a second to sit and think about it.

Off focus

When I started out I billed myself as a ‘WordPress Developer’.

I had no specialty at all, I just built sites with WordPress.

And some people paid me for it.

Now they didn’t pay me very well, but of course not, because I wasn’t selling on value at all.

I was just saying give me a PSD and I’ll turn it in to a WordPress theme.

Like 90% of the other ‘WordPress’ businesses out there.

Probably just like you.

My Focus

I’ve got a few properties going.

My company SFNdesign focuses on eCommerce and Membership sites. Sure, I can still build a theme, but that’s not what I specialize in.

I still actually build themes as part of many projects, but people come to me for help with custom tools for their eCommerce or Membership site.

Here I focus on one thing: Helping you learn to run a better business so you can live the life you want.

The life I want

Today I got up at 7am (yeah that’s late, the baby was up till 1am) and ran 5km after reading my kid a story and getting her ready for school.

Then I road my bike to work.

Which got me to the office around 9am.

I’ll leave at 3pm to return something to Future Shop then take the long way home which will be a 15km bike ride.

That means I’ll be home around 4pm and have an hour to hang with my kids before dinner.

That is the life I want to live.

Not rushed and lots of time to be an awesome dad.

Each of my business decisions is framed around that.

Will that next opportunity mean I have to travel regularly and cut a bunch of my time with the kids?

Then it’s not a good opportunity for me.

I want to help you learn to be effective (not efficient, which is a post for another time) so you can build the life that you want.

It doesn’t have to bear any similarity to what my life looks like.

Back to Amazon

Now do you have a few guesses about what someone bought after clicking on my Amazon link?

It was this quad-copter (yes that is an affiliate link).

That has nothing to do with the content I write here. Someone just clicked on of my links and then bought the copter.

That brought in about $46 of the $54 earned.

It’s tempting to break your focus and chase short term dollars.

People also bought about 20 books after clicking on my links and that brought in the rest.

It’s super tempting to start looking for products that have good affiliate fees and guess what all the books I read and recommend aren’t in that category by a long shot.

Starting to write about all these other random products though wouldn’t hit my focus of the site.

Recommending good books that help you run an awesome business does fit with the focus of this site. Even though that’s not how I’m going to make a bunch of money on affiliate fees.

Your Focus

Most small businesses I talk to don’t have a focus at all.

They simply run from one project to the next many of which have little similarity at all.

They chase the short term dollars instead of building a truly established base of being a specialist in one area.

It takes a while to really establish yourself as a specialist, but that’s where the highest earning potential is.

Specialists aren’t commodities like the rest of the ‘WordPress’ companies out there.

Read about some specialists I know

I charge more than many agencies because I specialize and they don’t.

Do you have a specialty?

photo credit: wiredforsound23 cc