Is your website focused on the things that really count? Learning how to apply this concept to your website could be one of the most productive decisions you make.

I am talking about the Pareto Principle, otherwise called the "80/20" principle.

It is a simple concept really.

It says 20% of any effort is responsible for 80% of the results. This concept can theoretically be applied to any situation.

Pareto At Work

If you've ever worked in a corporate environment, you may recognize this phenomenom. If you had 10 people working on a project, it is very likely that 2 of the people did about 80% of the work. The other 8 people slowly plugged away and came up with the remaining 20% of the project.

As far your site is concerned, if you have 10 products or services, it is very likely that 2 of the products (20%) are responsible for 80% of your revenue. The other 8 products make up the remaining 20% of your revenue.

The big breakthrough for you is to recognize which small portion of things that you are doing are responsible for the largest return for you work. You would do much better in focusing on the 20% of things which have the 80% return, and not focus on the least productive efforts as much as possible.

Here are some examples for your site:

* Advertising - You may find that payperclick advertising brings in 80% of your traffic, while banner ads, ezine ads, and all other forms of advertising only has a small return comparitively. You would probably do well in focusing more of your efforts on maximizing your payperclick accounts because it generates more return for the effort.

* Bundled Products or Services - If you offer a variety of services or products all bundled together, you would do very well to find out which ones are the most desirable to your customers. You can do this by surveying them right on your site. Once you know which "20%" of the features are in highest demand, you can focus a lot of your ad copy on those features as they likely could generate 80% of your sales.

* If you discovered that your affiliates are bringing in 80% of your sales but only take 20% of your time, it makes sense to focus even more time developing them for an even bigger return.

A Few Notes About Applying The Pareto Principle

It is important to keep in mind that you do not necessarily want to abandon the efforts which are only showing a 20% return. The key is to manage your time wisely so that you are more focused on those things you could be doing to maximize the profits to your site. Your time is better spent working the highly productive angles as much as possible and then devoting some spare time to the efforts which are less productive.

Even though it is sometimes referred to as an 80/20 split, obviously that is not always going to be the case. It may be more like 90/10 or 70/30, either way, the principle does appear to play itself out pretty regularly.

The point is that a minority portion of everything you do is bringing in a majority of the results. The more aware you become of this phenomenom, the more you are going to recognize and benefit from it. Focus wisely to maximize your efforts.