When I launched the membership site about a year ago I decided to set a membership limit at 1,000. Recently we have been getting a lot of word of mouth marketing and our growth rate has surged beyond my wildest expectations. We recently raised our price to try to curb growth, but promotion associated with that caused another rush of sign ups and even after we raised our price we did not see any slowing down on new subscribers. We reached our capacity and are closing off new premium memberships for a while.

Ironic that success creates a host of other issues, but I care too much and work too long. And I don’t want to lower the quality of our customer interaction and customer service to scale it to the moon. Recently I watched some TED videos about career crisis and motivation. One of the most ressonating quotes was Alain de Botton’s “You can be successful at everything. We hear a lot of talk about work/life balance – nonsense. You can’t have it all. So any vision of success has to admit what it is losing out on.” It’s so obvious to read that…but I certainly needed to hear it. ;)

In the worst recession in 80 years (perhaps a depression) I am not asking anyone to cry me a river for getting too much business. It is a problem most people would love to have. But we are drowning in opportunity with our other sites doing great and this site growing a bit quicker than I was planning on. Since opening I have made over 15,000 posts in the forums, and the rate of posting has only increased as our membership has risen. Just a couple months ago I was at ~ 12,000 posts.

As I have poured myself into this site we built a community I am proud of, but am falling behind on some other fronts – this week I was late writing a guest column for another site, I have 1,000+ emails in my inbox, and I have grown far too chubby (as seen in recent videos).

Our current customers will keep getting the same great customer service they have been, but I just turned off new paid submissions so I can lighten the load for a while. It is hard to justify letting my health slide to earn a bit more when so much of the earnings just get handed over to corrupt bankers. If I earn a lot but die young I can’t really count that as getting ahead. Well I guess I could, but I don’t want to. ;)

If you would like to be notified of when we have some capacity again please sign up for a free basic account (you get a bunch of cool bonuses) and I will let you know when we are open to new customers again!

Thanks for reading and thanks for your help in building this site into a strong well known brand with so many loyal customers! :)

Oh, and here are some last minute keyword tips!

Continue Reading: And We’re Full!

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