Planning To Diversify And Change Course

Our little trip to Genting Highlands was a great was to get away from business and just have fun. But it was also an eye opener. Up there, we saw so many ways people were making money - from vending food to novelties.

Since returning from the hilltop, I’ve been extremely busy catching up with my websites and more importantly, meeting a few mall management people about the possibility of setting up a store - either a stall in a food court or kiosk selling merchandise. We’re also exploring the possibility of selling food at a couple of our local coffee shops.

Our home catering business has been good to us. Without it, we would surely have sunk into the depths of despair and discouragement during our employment crisis nearly five years ago. The truth is, even though the money is good, we find ourselves being tied down to a really fixed and uncompromising schedule. Sure, we can play around with our time, but it boils down to this - our home catering business is a totally hands on money maker. It only makes money when we work. If we take a break, not only do we NOT make money, but we have to give our customers a refund. Not exactly what you’d call passive, residual income.

Another problem is that with me being so tied to our home catering business, I don’t have the time to devote to building my online income (not to mention this blog). My websites also require my attention. SEO just doesn’t happen. Not only am I in very competitive categories, but I also have to handle marketing and content building. The good thing about making money online is that I can leave my sites for a while and they would still generate income. It’s just that Google is an unpredictable beast and if you want to play the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) game, you’ve got to keep up to date not only with changes to their algos, but with hundreds of competitors looking to take your spot in the SERPs. To put it simply, I am plain lucky to hold on to my page one positions given the low number of hours I am putting in. But the bubble will surely burst sooner or later.

So, my wife and I have decided that we need to specialize - with each handling our own business. She will look to diversify by setting up one or more food stalls where we will employ staff to handle the day to day running. I am already looking into setting up an online store. As we do this, we will still carry on with our home catering business. We’ve given ourselves 2 years to get our food stalls and online store profitable enough so that we can decide whether or not to let go of our home catering business. If all goes according to plans, we will still be busy - counting money that is and hopefully enjoying loads more free time. At the very least, we will have more streams of income (online and offline).

Five years ago, I thought working at home would be free and easy. Yeah…. right.

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