Especially if money is an issue (and it usually is), we find that if we just put in a little more effort, we can do things ourselves and save a little money. For other things, you have to consider whether you have more money or more time – If you have more time, you can learn to do things yourself for free. If you have more money, then you might want to pay for a service to save you time.
To use a very broad, sweeping analogy, you might think that you can’t afford to advertise. The truth is you can’t afford not to advertise if you want a business. Having your home business online is for the most part much less expensive and easier than having an offline business. You can reach millions of people with a simple webpage and an email service. If you tried to reach half that many offline it would be very expensive and labor-intensive.
However on the other hand, online you don’t have the advantage of ‘foot traffic’ like you would if you had a store, and signage, etc., to attract people. So you have to be pretty thorough in your descriptions and illustrations so that people will feel confident they are getting what specifications they need. In either case you would want to do things that are attractive to people. Whether compelling words, or beautiful pictures.
You can’t afford not to be fully engaged in your business. Whatever that means to you, you should be on top of things. If you are not doing things for yourself then you need to be sure they are being done, are done correctly, and eventually produce the results you desire. Some things will be obvious, such as if you never make any money, you will, if you are serious, change what you are doing or how you are doing it after you have given it a reasonable amount of time.
We must be a bit creative sometimes and always flexible, keeping an open mind. We must be patient and have faith, but also willing to change things if necessary. One other thing you cannot afford to do is get discouraged or quit trying. Even if you need to take a ‘time out’ for whatever reason if that will keep you going, you should do whatever needs to be done. Even if you need to postpone things so as to give yourself time to save some money for operating expenses, that is preferable to not doing anything or just giving up because there are obstacles.
“Failure is not falling down but staying down.”
