subject: The 80/20 Rule - Apply This Marketing Productivity Strategy to Your Online Business and Your Life [print this page] The 80/20 Rule - Apply This Marketing Productivity Strategy to Your Online Business and Your Life
If you aren't familiar with the 80/20 rule, it's the concept that comes from the Pareto Principle, stating that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your inputs. As applied to your online marketing business, you can think of it as it relates to what you do each day. You can also apply this to measuring and improving your day to day life.Typically, about 80% of your income will come from 20% of what you do. In other words, if I am working at my computer about 6 hours a day, only about an hour and twenty minutes of what I do will account for the type of work that makes me any money. The idea is to figure out which activities lead to income generation, and which can be better done by others or not at all.About 80% of your sales will come from about 20% of your clients. I have found this to be true, and continually work at reaching a higher number of sales from those who have never purchased from me before.Entrepreneur and author Richard Koch discussed this in his 1999 book entitled Living The 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More. In this book Koch explains how we can apply the 80/20 rule to other aspects of our life. He suggests that we can improve our health, relationships, and our level of income by taking this seriously.So how can we apply this principle to our work and personal like in order to improve our results? I believe it is in thinking every day about improving what we do in an incremental way. For instance, if you are writing and submitting one article each day to the article directories, work on improving the quality of the article and making sure that the link in your resource box leads back to a site that will be considered relevant and appropriate by the reader.In your personal life, choose an area to focus on that needs improvement, and then take one action each day to reach your goal.Online we are able to see the results of what we do in our businesses very easily. Take a look at each activity you engage in to see if it is income producing or busywork. Everyone will have a different set of criteria they use for this, but remember that we can improve what we can measure.
