The adult Internet business tends to attract a lot of independent-minded entrepreneurs. It attracts the kind of people who generally don’t like rigid rules, and like the fact that an online business knows very few limitations in terms of potential. These same things attracted yours truly to the Internet in 1997, and it’s the primary reason why I’ve made Internet development my calling card ever since.If I had to name one of my own weaknesses, it’s my tendency to want to handle almost every aspect of my business personally. I like to get my hands in everything from content development, to marketing the business, to the technical side of running things like security and website design. I’m interested in photography, in HTML and PHP, I know how to use Photoshop, have a decent eye for layout, and I’m also interested in effective writing, building relationships, Web analytics and search engine marketing.

Now remember when I said an Internet business knows few limitations? Well, there is one limitation that affects all of us – and that’s time. No matter what you do with your day, you still only have 24 hours, and some of those hours you probably need to spend sleeping. At the start of each and every day you need to ask yourself what you can do personally, how you can spend your time effectively, so that at the end of that day you can say you made the most amount of progress possible.

The mistake I see so many industry business owners make time and again, and I’m guilty of this myself, is to think they can handle everything on their own, or even in-house. No need to buy decent content, I’ll just make it myself! Why buy advertising and traffic when I can just get out there and work message boards, social media sites, or Google? No need to pay a graphic designer, I can handle that well enough!

While it might be true that you can handle any of these tasks on your own, be honest with yourself when I ask if you can handle ALL of these aspects of running a successful adult Internet company on your own.

So if you’re honest with yourself, that leaves two choices. You can hire people to work for your company, which sometimes is the best approach, or you can purchase goods and services from other companies that help you grow your profits.

Advertising is especially important to me because YNOT provides this service to adult companies, and I personally know a little bit about what goes into that, so let’s start there. A lot of small companies with a product or service to offer the industry often think that hiring someone to post on industry message boards is a good substitute for a solid marketing campaign. There are a few reasons why this isn’t often the case.

First, other webmasters are generally perceptive enough to know that there are a lot of unreliable companies in this industry, and almost every single one posts on some message board somewhere. It costs nothing to post on a message board, so any unproven adult company can do it. Maintaining a consistent, sustained marketing campaign though is a totally different ball of wax. Fewer companies can pull this off, and those who can generally have a level of stability that the others probably do not. Message boards are a great way to keep up your industry relationships, but probably not the best way to make your company stand out from the rest.

Second, hiring someone to sit at a computer all day and network doesn’t always make a lot of financial sense. You have to pay that person for his or her time – and often that turns out to be more expensive than buying an effective marketing campaign. If the person you hire is smart and capable, asking that person to post messages all day might not be the best use of his or her time; if the person isn’t capable, do you really want that person representing your company? If your employee only posts a few messages, how much exposure are you getting? Time is money, folks. If you crunch the numbers, you may be surprised to find that buying ads/traffic is often more cost-effective than farming clicks in-house.

How about software development? There are plenty of advantages to designing software in-house. You get to specify exactly how you want your software to operate. But even if you hire coders from a country whose name you can’t pronounce, coders aren’t cheap – and software development takes time. That coder in the Philippines might be playing World of Warcraft half the time he’s on the clock for all you know. And even if you negotiate a price based on the final product, it will be a lot more expensive than simply finding an existing product that is flexible enough to meet your company’s needs.

Content is a no-brainer for most adult companies. Unless you plan to focus completely on content, then it makes no sense to produce it yourself in most cases – not when it’s so cheap to buy. I know we all WANT to produce content because, well, it sounds like a lot of fun! But even if you know a little about photography, you aren’t going to be able to compete with the companies that are putting almost all their time and effort into the craft.

Saving money is on everyone’s minds these days. But some laws of business won’t change just because times are tough – and the simple truth is, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. You’re going to have to spend something if you want your business to grow – whether that something is your time, compensation for employee labor, or goods and services offered for sale someplace else. As the owner of a business, it’s your job to dole out your resources effectively – and sometimes that means making a purchase. So analyze all the needs of your business, then plan where you’ll spend time, and where you’ll spend money. Don’t forget that every minute you or your employees spend in one area is a minute you can’t spend elsewhere.