What comes to mind when you think about cost overruns in your internet business?

A lot of people probably think of outsourcing projects that have wound up costing more than originally expected, whether because of poor planning, a bad freelancer or changes to the project in midstream.

There's another type of cost overrun that most people wouldn't consider - the projects you do yourself that wind up taking a lot more time than expected.

I don't know how many times I've sat down to complete some seemingly simple task, only to have it take far longer than planned because of one unexpected problem or another.

I've done Wordpress updates to fix security issues, only to find out the new version of Wordpress breaks one or more of the plugins I use, making the website act strangely or worse, not work at all.

Or I've sat down to add some articles to one of my sites, only to find the server it's on has some kind of problem and none of the sites hosted on it are working.

I'd usually chalk these things up to chance and just deal with it, putting something else off that I had planned on completing.

But the fact is, these problems actually cause cost overruns, only in time rather than money.

If you have a freelancer that went over budget on a project more than once, would you continue to work with them? Probably not.

If you're doing things that wind up taking more time away from other money-making activities, and doing them more than once, you're essentially letting your costs get out of hand.

This is why having systems in your business is so important.

If you have systems in place, they can help keep jobs on track, whether you're doing them yourself or you're outsourcing them. If something unexpected comes up, you can turn to the procedure for it and get a pretty good idea of how much time it will take. At that point, you can decide whether to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it for you, based on how you value your own time.

If you don't have a system for it, make one the first time you solve the problem so when it comes up again (and chances are it will) you'll have a point of reference. Both for the time it should take and the steps you needs to take to solve it. It's hard to remember exactly what you did to solve the problem six months ago if you don't have a record of it, and you'll waste a lot more time figuring it out a second time.

Your server is down? Find the server troubleshooting procedure. Upgrading a Wordpress installation? Check the Wordpress upgrade procedure first.

Systems are the basis of most successful internet businesses. Even if you're doing all the work yourself, make a system for when you can afford to start outsourcing.