Bizdriven was featured in the following blog carnivals which also contains excellent selections on business and entrepreneurship:

-Carnival of Entrepreneurs #36: August 27, 2007
-Carnival of Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs #6
-Carnival of Small Business Issues - Edition 17
-20th Edition - Carnival Of Network Marketing - August 28, 2007

For the last few months that I have been blogging, I have also been interested to see how to earn money or push my business objectives through blogging.  As a person also in the ICT industry, I wanted also to gain first hand knowledge on how web banner advertising works.

So I signed up to put some ads in the blogs, as well as signed up to be an advertiser to bring traffic to my blog and our other websites.

I found out one thing — I was excited, and for a good number of times every day, I would go to google adsense to check out  how much traffic I have been getting, and how many clicks were there, and how much I was earning.  I would get excited when I earn ’so’ much.  I am sure numerous bloggers can give you many tales on how excited they are to earn money — money that can’t even pay for their cup of coffee.

The truth of the matter was that I was spending 5 to 10 times more to advertise my blog than what I was earning in return…. But what I was spending did not excite me.  It was that I could be getting income as well — and as many people in the web industry or even in many other industries rationalize — of course you are spending more than what you are earning, but once you make your name, your advertising or marketing will slowly decrease while the traffic will continue to increase such that there will come a time when what you are earning will exceed your advertising, and voila!  you have a viable business.

However, as experience will tell you, that DOES NOT happen most of the time, and there will come a time when you know  that you have to give up.

It is in the very nature of entrepreneurs to be so enthused, and to think that day will come.  But it may never , and before you start spending 10 dollars to get your one dollar in business, start to work on the business plan earnestly first.

Dont’ get into the mistake of focusing too much in growing your sales at the expense of your bottomline!