Today was one of those days when you are really busy but enjoying so much, everything you’re doing you hardly notice time disappear.

To many Adnams is seen as a company with lots of resource and funding but in reality things are no different to many medium sized companies. One thing that makes Adnams stand out though, is the ability of it’s staff to pull together, share experiences, ideas and above all perform multiple functions.

Engineers become distillers, wine experts doing photography and web professionals producing video and podcasts.

The key to successful business is having staff that are flexible and if that business consists of one person that flexibility needs to come from you.

If you are ready to take the challenge then you should be able to pick up any task at hand and give it a go. Much of what I now know about online business has been self taught, through trial and error. Many nights working out how code, I have know idea how to write, works, studying online campaigns that have been successful and reading book after book.

So, I find it really hard when people tell me they don’t “get” online or they are not technically minded, they can’t write and they want it all done for them. This stuff isn’t rocket science and to be honest most businesses are more complex than any of the individual online components. Whether it’s blogging, social media, SEO or dealing with images.

What a lot of people get wrong with online is trying to do it all for nothing and then expect not to have to put the time in. It’s a compromise, time over money. If you can’t take the time to figure out how to set up a blog, I can do it for you, but I charge £50 an hour. It will take me 5 minutes to set up but my minimum is £50. You’re not paying for the time it took me to do it, you are paying for the hours I spent studying in my own time, so I could do it in 5 minutes. You could set up a blog in minutes yourself after spending an hour or so reading or watching videos. And I would encourage everyone to do so, if you really like I’ll take that £50 for showing you how to do it.

So you now have a blog, ah! You want content? Well get writing. What! You don’t know what to write. Do me a favour, you run a business selling widgets, write about widgets, what should you write about widgets? Whatever you feel like, your the expert, aren’t you? If you really can’t write about your own product or service how did you put the business plan together? How did you write the marketing copy for that brochure. Oh, you want me to write content? Okay, £50 an hour. 5 articles, 1 hour research and 1 hour writing per article that’s £500. So that’s the first five weeks blog posts, want to put me on a retainer? £100 an article per week.

What was that, you want your site to appear in the search engines? Some basic research and an hour a day will give you a long term SEO strategy you can rely on. Me? Of course I can, shall we say 2 days a month article writing and link building at £400 a day? Too expensive? Well you won’t find anything comparable any cheaper, how long will it take? I recommend a minimum of a year but even then you’ll need to consistently reproduce this work to stay ahead of the competition.

Video? Of course I can do video, but it’s not really that difficult. Anyway, filming, an hour on location, an hour uploading, an hour editing let’s say £150 for a 3 minute video. Once a month sure.

Podcast, yes I can do podcasts, well actually I only learned how a few months ago, I am not really that good at it but if you can’t be bothered, I’ll do it. A podcast a month including recording, uploading, editing and iTunes production how does £250 sound?

Okay so you have your blog, SEO, video and podcast all the elements of a successful online business. Wait a minute, what about social media? You have to be kidding, this is where I draw the line. I will take money off you for all of the above and I will even show you how to use Twitter but you must actually Tweet yourself!