One of my Facebook covers I made in the past.

         Technically I am taking a month break, but if it goes really well it will be indefinite. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule? 20% of what you do will make 80% of your income. Facebook was no longer in my 20%. I recently did an inventory on things that were making me money vs things that were just time consuming for this year. In the past Facebook made up most of my income.

        What changed you ask? The answer is Facebook. The algorithm kept changing over and over, and I would keep adapting and once I figured it out, it would change again. I had a Facebook page for my photography it was reaching in the thousands and through it I was getting clients. Then Facebook went on the market and started to only show your page to less than 15% of your fans, unless you pay for the rest to see.

       The mistake I made when I started, I invited all of my friends to like my page. Now my friends are more likely the 15% that Facebook shows my work to. The interactions dropped significantly. So I created another Facebook page, this time I didn't advertise it to my friends, it too reached the 2,000 likes but very organically. I was averaging 100 likes per post, and a few comments. I could work with that. I also created another page to be more fashion based. Then the algorithm changed again this time the pages which both had organic followers were averaging 6-20 people reach per post. So I abandoned the Facebook page entirely. I noticed some of the great photographers I followed who had of 175k likes were averaging about 100 likes when they were averaging 2,000 likes!

      I begin focusing on the Facebook Profile. I noticed that if you changed your profile pic or your cover, Facebook notified all of your friends. That too changed. The likes and interactions were getting smaller and smaller, and quite a few people who follow me say they never saw my work anymore on their timeline. I used to network on Facebook with other creative, but that too begin to go down, my timeline became very uninteresting very quickly. I caught myself more interested in the trending section. Facebook became more of a newspaper than a social platform. I had the gossip section, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and other Hollywood unnecessary drama. Government news and conspiracies, occasional weather channel news and etc. I find myself wasting time for no reason on Facebook.

       I didn't write this for people to feel sorry for me, nor to stick it to Facebook. I always believe a company should be free to do with its product however they wish to do with it, as long it doesn't infringe on peoples rights or privacy, of course. Facebook is no longer a mutual relationship to me, I would drive traffic to their site and it no longer would drive traffic to my site. It took too much of my time and I had nothing to show for it. For other people it is still very beneficial, their numbers were really high before Facebook changed, so they are still in the green, but for small businesses and freelancers we must find another way. It is always better to have your own site and build traffic to it vs building traffic to an organization site that will shut down eventually.

        As business owners or freelancers we should always keep an inventory of our work and see what is cutting into our productivity. For me Facebook was one of them, what is one of yours? In the comments below tell me what is cutting into your productivity or what has helped you make 80% of your income.


-Clyph Jean-Philippe
www.ubwinc.com 
Instagram :@ubwinc