D_Blackwell - 1:14 am on Sep 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

Actual products almost exclusively. No 'information products' (ebooks and such), and no AdSense on any product site. We've got some MFA sites, but they make nothing. Garbage. I've concluded that, for us, when putting up a quality content site, we might as well be selling the products rather than panhandling change sending referrals. Getting fired by my biggest client has 'made' my future. I do almost no webwork for anyone but myself anymore. I am doing the work. I should get the chance to cash in.

We're a family business. I ship very little merchandise myself. I don't even see most of it, living about 4 hours from our shipping location. We stock everything in-house for every website. My brother fills the order and ships. That's all he has to do when an order comes in. Then he's done. Most everything is automatic or close enough that the manual work is machine-like. Five minutes on his end per order? $25 or $250 - it doesn't really affect the time to ship. He's been doing it long enough that just looking at an order will tell him which box to grab, and we've got a monitor right over the shipping table so orders are double and triple checked with no effort. (The faster path to losing real money is to ship an order incorrectly!) A custom alarm (the Star Trek red alert on a loop) sounds when an order comes in, so he can kick back if things are slow, but bang out an order at any time. He's got a temp guy so that he's not locked into seven days a week and burnout. Putting in video and audio cost nothing. Though we trust the guy and he's a good guy, I'm not stupid enough to trust the guy. It's business (and very 'unobtrusive'); though no secret.

I manage the books, marketing, website, from here. The arrangement allows us to email a Receipt, complete with Delivery Confirmation number within 15 minutes of submission pretty darn close to 24/7. On my end, I probably put another five minutes into each order; or have my perma-temp 'Girl Friday' handle the final details. She can work here, but mostly works remotely and sends me completed files. I stole her from a deli shop here in town.

Although I am not in a 'hiring position' anymore, in a previous life (restaurant management before the knees blew up), I hired, as much as possible, people that gave me service that was 'above their pay grade'. Took them from wherever I met them. The girl in the deli was way too smart for her job, and treated well below what she gave to it - easy hire. More money, better work, more potential, absolute respect..... Over a period of weeks I already knew that she was the kind of person that would be good at anything she wanted to try. When the time was right and I couldn't afford not to have somebody local backing me up, I gave her my card. People that are good, pleasant, professional - are likely to be good at anything in which the take an interest.

I work pretty diligently, but am organized to the extreme, so the time I spend varies widely according to priority. One site may see almost no effort put into it for several months at time; just coasting along. I may spend all day and night adding to another site for a week. I may do nothing at all beyond monitoring AdWords campaigns for several weeks at a time and spend the rest of my time on personal projects that I have hopes for. I do monitor the AdWords campaigns pretty closely. It's a lot of money going out every day and though 'even keel' is my goal, things can change in hurry and that can get expensive. I do not delegate or get lax on how each and every campaign and keyword is doing. In the blink of an eye a keyword that I don't even really care that much about can get a lot of clicks, at much higher than expected CPC. I will pause that keyword quick it isn't converting.

Right now, I am maybe 75% through the process of self publishing a book (to be printed in Italy). I have very high hopes for the run, and see a 'series' potential. That is getting a lot of time right now. Self publishing doesn't have the best reputation in some circles, but I feel well positioned to make the project(s) do well. We shall see. It looks like pre-sell will be very high, so that does a lot to mitigate the cash commitment.

So - answering your question about time is difficult, because the money making sites sometimes take 100% of my day; every day for days at a time. Other times, brother, mother, and Girl Friday (who is getting more and more authority) run everything, and it's just not the big a deal. Order fulfillment is the least of my interests. Pack it, ship it. Mostly time is a factor of how much content I want to build into the site, deciding on the rate and ultimate reasonable limit of expansion. Launching is where the big-time time is at. Starting with nothing and forcing my way into a niche. Nobody is getting rich. No one site is would impress anyone here. The collection is a nice grouping though. Everybody is making a decent living. Mother was a Senior Financial Analyst and sees that standards and practices (along with checks and balances) are in place and enforced in every area. She doesn't actually 'do' that much, but her wealth of high level experience makes these important controls a minor undertaking for her.

I, or Girl Friday, or both of us, go down once a quarter and take an inventory for every product of every website and spend a couple of days looking for any organizational improvement opportunities. The inventories are done before we arrive, so just a matter of double-checking accuracy, looking for discrepancies - standard stuff. Trust, but verify - even family. Business comes first when it comes to business. Family comes first when it comes to family. They can be blended, but, IMO, they are never the same.

Always on the lookout for products or niches. Always willing to add something completely new. Always willing to walk away. We've room to grow all around, are willing to do so, but don't have to.