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ROI on Your Time and Money

What’s your return on investment?

A lot of times people only think of this in terms of money they invest, but even more important is what your return for the time you’re investing in an activity.

Are you tracking everything in your business…both money and time spent?

If you’re not, you’ll never find the profit leaks which are occurring a daily basis. What caused me to think and write about this subject was when I spent time in my shopping cart running sales reports. I was looking at the sales numbers by product over the past year.

The numbers didn’t surprise me. What I found was that while every product has been profitable, some simply weren’t worth the time invested.

Once I looked at the profits of each product and compared it to time I spent creating the product originally (I had to look back at some of my old daily calendars to estimate this at times), the ones with the absolute best profit to time ratio fit into several categories.

1. The “group” type products have resulted in the best return on time investment.

These are products I created with someone else such as the A-to-Z Internet Marketing Truthprints and the Ultimate Interview Product Solution.

The #1 reason these have been a great ROI is they were created in no more than 3 days time total (and that’s including flying to and from where I recorded them). The sales copy took longer than this, but that is true no matter what the product.

2. Continuity programs have resulted in a good return also.

While I have to spend time on my own personal newsletter every month, the SALES COPY part is only done once (and then tested and updated) instead of having to constantly produce new sales pieces. Once you count in my profits from promoting OTHER people’s continuity programs, the ROI gets even better (since I’m not DOING their product). Plus with continuity you have to factor in the additional purchasers make because of the long-term relationship with you.

3. Set it and forget it products have done well.

One of the best examples of this is a Christian product I sell at http://www.NewChristianFinance.com. It is NOT a big seller, but Clickbank sends over a decent check every pay period…and I haven’t touched it in more than a year now. Zero…zilch…nada. Most of the sales are from affiliates who find it on Clickbank. Not a big winner, but I’ll bet you can understand why I’m putting more of these types of mini-projects together. The key here is to do projects that DON’T require regular updates. Adding in time to update the product would reduce the ROI.

How Does This Apply To You?

The above were simply from looking at my sales numbers by product. You have to always remember everything has an opportunity cost. If you spend 20 hours on this project, then that’s 20 less hours you could have spent on something more profitable long term.

You can also look at the time you’re investing in each business activity.

How much time do you spend on forums? How many sales has that resulted in for you?

What about your social media activities? Maybe you’re not after direct sales there. So how many JVs have you put together (and resulting profits) from the time spent?

Writing your blog? How is the investment coming along (this one takes some time till the investment is returned so look it long term like over a year invested).

When you take a serious look at the real numbers, you may be surprised. You may also find you need to reinvest your time in a different direction. If one area is producing much better for the time invested than other areas, expand it. Reduce the losers. And what works best for one person MAY NOT be what works best for you in your niche. That’s the big roadblock many people run into.

This is why you must look at your test results and your time investments…not everyone else’s.

Written by Terry · Filed Under All 

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Comments

3 Responses to “ROI on Your Time and Money”

  1. Jeannette Koczela on July 9th, 2009 3:18 pm

    This post is a very good reminder to calculate time spent on projects in terms of return. Sometimes we get caught up in doing something easy or fun but it doesn’t bring in the bacon.

    Also, is your newsletter 19.95 or 29.95? Your pages don’t agree.
    Thanks for the helpful tips.
    -Jeannette

  2. Terry on July 9th, 2009 4:02 pm

    Hi Jeannette,

    The price of the newsletter is $29.95. There still to be a few older pages that show a lower initial price for it. Sorry about the confusion.

    Terry

  3. Darren Scott Monroe on July 19th, 2009 10:45 pm

    Tery you have been reinforcing my mind with your info. It certifies my strategies and gives me that extra something to add to what I am doing!

    Thanks

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