Running an online business is appealing:
- No commuting to the office
- No bosses
- No fancy dress
However, in reality, running an online business is tough, and you can run into many barriers along the way.
That’s why more than 90% of online businesses fail within the first 4 months!
Business burnout is rarely related to the product or service being provided, but instead it is due to all the other aspects of the business weighing you down. Worse yet, many people make the mistake of underestimating the time needed, and compound the problem.
It becomes stressful.
The trap of unmanaged hosting
- How much is your time worth?
- Are you managing your own server?
- How many hours per month do you spend managing your server?
- Do you have more productive things you can do with that time?
All online businesses need hosting. And rarely is that online business itself in hosting, or even a related field. What often happens is that the lure of a cheap VPS price overrides what should be common sense.
So many businesses just default to the cheapest solution (self-managed VPS), and then soon find they have no idea what they are doing, yet continue to plod along anyway – wasting tons of time in the process – time that could have been spent on growing their actual business.
Managing a website is already tough enough, and already leads to burnout. Adding server management just makes it worse. A key to avoiding burnout is to avoid these unnecessary tasks.
Daily online routine
While many consider a routine to be a negative, that’s not the case. When you have an online business – no boss, no office, etc – routines are good. It prevents procrastination and time wasting.
For example, here are some common tasks:
- check email
- check site traffic, analytics
- add a new blog
- check e-commerce site, ship orders
Have a set time to do each task, and do not get sidetracked by phone calls, text messages, new emails, and whatever else modern technology tries to drown you with.
If you’re more creative in the evening, then schedule that as blog-writing time. If you’re more cheerful in the morning, then have that set aside as business hours for landline phone, meetings, or email, to interact with your customers.
Set up a system that you feel comfortable with on a daily basis, and try not to deviate from it.
Also, remember that sleep deprivation is a major cause of burnout. Don’t over-schedule yourself, and allow yourself at least a full 8 hours of sleep.
A daily or weekly to-do list can also help, outlining tasks that must be completed.
If you handle tasks and deadlines in a haphazard manner, then:
- it will cause stress
- your online business will seem like a burden
- and you’ll be another statistic, one of the 90% that failed
Take holiday, claim leave
Even though you’re working from home, being your own boss doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to a vacation. Too many business online owners are overworking themselves. It’s not good for your health, not good for your business.
But here’s the problem: Your online office will be vacant.
No, not your home office, but your “online office” a.k.a. your website.
Lots of business owners stress about “is my website up?” and cannot help themselves but to check it every few hours. Even when you aren’t on vacation, this is a terrible time-wasting chore.
Managed hosting solves this problem.
You’re not solely responsible for your uptime: the host is. If anything fails while you’re gone, you can rest easy knowing that somebody is attending to it. Your site isn’t just dead until your return.
You can also monitor your sites with services such as Pingdom or New Relic. (New Relic standard comes included with all EuroVPS’s VPS plans.)
So take a break, clear your head. You deserve it. We have your back.
EuroVPS says “live your life”
Work to live, don’t live to work.
We understand online businesses. We are one! (Not a sole proprietorship, mind you, but not a boutique on high street either.) We understand your worries. You can work during working hours, and relax with friends and family during non-working hours. If your site goes down while you’re asleep, we’ll make sure that it’s back online before you awake.
We take care of hosting and servers so you don’t have to. And that’ll keep burnout at bay.
