AP 0936: I No Longer Work in My Niche; Should I Keep Its Website?

AskPat 936 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 936 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a question coming in today from Billy from the Philippines, so let's get right to it. Here he is.

Billy: Hey Pat. This is Billy from SmartPinoyBlogger.com. First off, thank you for all the inspiration and all the value you put out there. You're such an inspiration for me and thousands of aspiring Filipino entrepreneurs here in the Philippines and all over the world.

Okay, I have a blog, which is related to my career before in computer networking, or computer engineering, it's called CCNAPhilippines.com. So it's about career certification in the IT industry provided by Cisco, specifically CCNA, or Cisco Certified Network Associate. So, like your Green Exam Academy blog, I share my journey, exam tips, and tutorials on this blog, aiming to help other Pinoys who want to be in the same field. I also created an ebook written in Taglish, or Tagalog English, that helps beginners understand the basics and fundamentals of networking. So it's a success and earning a decent amount since day one.

Unfortunately, last September, 2016 I was laid off, and inspired by you and other mentors I looked up to, I embarked the journey of blogging and online business instead of finding a new nine-to-five job. That's where Smart Pinoy Blogger came in. My question is: should I continue blogging and creating product on my old blog related to my previous career, where I no longer work, or should I go and move on to my new passion, which is related to blogging and online business? When you're in the same situation before, how do you transition from Green Exam Academy to SPI? This question keep popping up in my head and I would really appreciate your thoughts on this, Pat.

Again, thank you for everything. P.S. Meeting and interviewing you is one of my ultimate goals in blogging and online business journey, so I hope it happens in the near future. Thanks again, Pat. Cheers.

Pat Flynn: Hey Billy, thank you so much for the question, and yeah, I totally hope we can totally do that interview or meet in person one day, that would be a lot of fun. But let's get to your question here. Now, should you continue to work on a site that is already generating an income for you? Should you continue to improve it?

I would say, absolutely. You know, it's where you came from, it's proven, and there's probably ways you could optimize it right now. And that is a great thing that you shouldn't let go. I will say that when I transitioned from Green Exam Academy to Smart Passive Income, it wasn't a, “Hey I'm gonna give up Green Exam Academy and then all of a sudden start devoting all of my time and effort into Smart Passive Income.” Actually, about 90 percent of my time was still given to GreenExamAcademy.com and growing that and optimizing that and getting it to a point where then finally, it seemed, that it had that finite amount of information on it, or I couldn't really add anything or do anything else. I will say, however, that if I could go back into time, I would try and enhance that even more, now that I know more about online courses and webinars and all these other things. I could have probably 2X'd or 3X'd the income that I had coming in from GreenExamAcademy.com. Especially, and you probably know this too, Billy, people who are looking to pass exams, they're willing to spend a lot of money to do so. And they're willing to take more courses, even though they've already taken some from other people. So, if I had been smart, I would have done more online courses, actually gotten out of my comfort zone, and created videos. I didn't do any of that back then. I just had strictly the blog and I could have gone much further with it, and I would encourage you to do that as well.

Now, blogging about my success with Green Exam Academy, like how you are likely blogging about your success with your test site too, is a great way to build credibility in another spaces. But I will say that, in many cases, a lot of people try to do that. And you're good because you have that success outside of online business. It's where people start to talk and teach about online business and entrepreneurship without having any credibility—because they haven't succeeded in online business themselves, they just see somebody blogging about blogging and they want to blog about blogging too. Well, you need a success under your belt, which you have already, Billy, so that adds credibility. And that allows you to build authority and potentially help other people and build that into another business.

But I would say that you need to make sure that you are focused and really honed in on what it is that you can do to optimize what you already have, what you know that's working for you. That can add even more credibility to what you're doing. And if it's not taking time away from you to do that, to make your new site, then I would say it's okay. But if you feel like you are spending a lot of time on this new thing and it's taking away from what you could potentially do to grow what you already have, then I would worry a little bit. I think that looking back at my past, the way that I did it is a little bit of an anomaly. But there are a lot of things going on in my life that allowed me to build both things at the same time, and that's not typical. I would normally tell people to focus on one thing at a time, until you can get it to a point where it's automated, where it's optimized, where you know that you can't do any more with it. Now, I will say that having you leave that position, I don't necessarily think it has anything to do with whether or not you can continue to grow that, so just keep that in mind as well.

So Billy, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you and I hope to meet you one day, and wishing you all the best. And of course, I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show. And for those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there. Just hit the record button and ask away.

Billy, thanks again, I appreciate it. And now here's, to finish off the episode, a quote, which is an anonymous quote, but here it is: “There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. Just don't respond with encores.” That's funny. It's late guys, so I have a weird laugh right now. Anyway, thanks guys, I appreciate you, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye.