I was writing the final chapter of my book on website marketing a few weeks ago and was wondering how far I'd progressed with it in the past nine months so I ran a word count. 44559 words.
And you know what this told me? Precisely nothing. Nothing of the tips and advice contained in the book or its likelihood of becoming the next global Bestseller.
Last week I looked in the mirror at the 30 year old staring back at me and thought:
"30? What does this number actually mean though?"
Precisely nothing.
Hey Numb Nuts! Do You Know The Number Of Numbers That Are Numbing Your Thinking?
You do this Numb Nuts Number Obsessing with your website, I know you do. In fact - YOU know you do but guess what - the numbers tell you precisely nothing! Here's some numbers you might be numbing your thinking with:
The number of pages viewed on your website every month
The number of visitors coming to your website every day
The number of your ranking in Google for your most important key phrase
The number of your global traffic ranking according to Alexa.com
The number of people that signed up to your mailing list yesterday
The number of people that visited your website using a Mongolian Internet Service Provider
These numbers mean precisely nothing. On their own they are worthless. Accumulatively they mean slightly more than nothing. Why? Because none of them put cash in your bank account.
Enough Is Enough!
Next time you share war stories with another website owner ask them the question:
"How is your website performing?"
I bet you that not one single person will respond with a comment relating to the most important number of all - PROFIT! I see this all the time in business:
What?! Have these people lost their minds?! Let us consider some better responses:
Michael: "How's business going?" Anon: "Brilliant - we are now operating at twice the level of profitability of last year"
or
Anon: "Last month we made more profit than we made the whole of the first quarter!"
Start to do this with your website - I dare you. Forget the statistics. Bin the hit counters. Throw out the mailing list numbers.
How much profit has your website made you this year? Scared to answer? Don't know the answer? Then surely you're just throwing money away by having one aren't you? You're steering your ship blind-folded.
In fact - you are running on guesswork - the world's most ineffective business fuel.
No Matter How Old You Are You Need To Wear Glasses
Have I finally lost my marbles on this one? No siree. It's true. You need to wear glasses the whole time you conduct business and when you make any decision relating to your website.
You need to wear PROFIT-TINTED spectacles that enable you to focus constantly on whether what you are doing will generate profit for your business.
Wearing your profit-tinted spectacles means that playing the little animated game an associate sent you when you're supposed to be completing that marketing project will be impossible.
Your profit-tinted spectacles work just like X-Ray specs - the only difference is that it's your daily To Do List that gets stripped down to the bare essentials and not the person you look at whilst wearing them.
Pick a number, any number? No, pick profit - it's the best number there is.
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