Being in the middle of a recession does not mean the end of your business, however it does mean thinking ahead and changing the way you currently do business.

For example $47.5 billion is about to be spent on back to school supplies. However, almost half the people making those purchases will be looking for ways to save money.

A lot of those people will be looking online for those savings. The problem is that if your website is not ready then you’re running out of time. In order to prepare for an event like Christmas or a back to school sale you need to start getting your website ready months in advance.

Lots of people wait until the last moment and there is just not enough time to prepare the site and get the most out of it.

The recession is over yet 450,000 jobs were lost in the month of June, after the recession had ended.

I’ve seen a lot of my competition begin to struggle and many others go out of business. Yet prices across the board for web design services have remained intact. The recession caused people to tighten their grip on their wallets and useless products are no longer being purchased.

People are now thinking about how they spend their money and many are starting to pay off credit debt. If nothing else we’ve learned that nothing in life is for sure, including your job or the faith of the company you work for.

Companies have now started calling outsourcing, Cloud Commuting and it is being looked on as a good thing. It’s one of the things that have kept many companies in business and allowed them to keep prices low and keep current employees.

Geeks on Steroids has been busy this year helping many companies improve their web presence and turn old websites into money making machines. Source that have not been considered in the past are being considered today.

The difficult times are far from over but the companies that see this as an opportunity to change the way they do business will remain in business and continue to grow.

I’ve started playing with a new web site today; it’s a web design website for web designers. We’ve made it through the recession with one of our best years ever; however, the hard times seem to be just getting started.

As Obama creates more programs that will cause tax increases across the board, I’ve got a feeling the worst times are still ahead of us. We’ve decided it was time to increase the ways we make money and in doing so we’ve started some offline businesses as well as more online businesses.

It’s time to step up our game while it’s still doing well.

The new website will add a new division to our current company and will be tailored towards web design companies that want to outsource their web design work. We know that it is important to deliver on time and under budget, so we’ve had to update our staff as well as our computers.

It’s a long process and one we are just getting started with but we hope that it will allow Geeks on Steroids to stay ahead of the pack.

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore

I ran across what I thought was going to be a very good topic by Jordan over at WPW, however like most things on the web it fizzled out before ever hitting a high note.

This isn’t an attack on Jordan, as a matter of fact had it not been for Jordan I wouldn’t be writing this now.

I believe Jordan’s thread would have been a lot better had he tried new things as he went along. Other words, if something isn’t working try something different.
I currently make a decent amount of money online and have learned over the years that there are two important things when it comes to making money online.

They are the traffic and the sites ability to convert that traffic.

I’ve got sites that make me money day after day on some extremely boring topics. And even though the rest of the world is seeing problems in the economy, I think God that my business has continued to grow.

However, it’s not been without effort, I’ve changed directions more times than most people change their underwear. I’ve spread out into other areas to pull traffic back into the sites I’m trying to make money with.

Let me give you an example;

I’ve got a website selling silicone wristbands; November was the worst month we’ve had in a long time. In December we redesigned the site and hit a record breaking month however January and February sales started dropping off really bad again.

We decided to build a website about fundraising events and once again drove sales back up and hit an all time high in the month of March. As a matter of fact we broke records that had been set over the past years in that one month.

Why the rest of the world is dealing with a recession, I’m dealing with how to break records that were set last month. There are times in life when we have to change directions and try something new.