Top 7 Fatal Assumptions for Online Startups
Continuing with my 2-day Top # post marathon - this is the top fatal assumptions for online startups.
The internet is easy. It just sits there waiting for you to use it. When you don’t want to browse or do work, it says hey, that’s cool with me, I’ll just chill here for a while. The internet is also the cheapest piece of property one could ever purchase. If the internet was a world, I would have maybe two acres - but I could build a very vertical house with that piece of land. Before I go on about the jungles, oceans, and porn… let’s think about business. The purchased space on the internet can also be used for businesses (if this is new to you, go ahead and shut down your computer). People create websites to profit! You can bend and shape the website to look like anything… except a wagon - thanks to the e-Wagon Abolishment Act of 1963 (thanks, ARPANET!).
For some unexplained reason, people think they can put up anything online and make money. This observation holds true for maybe 1 person per year… and it happens to be this guy:
If you aren’t that guy (who strangely resembles me at 4AM), then read this list.
7. Maintenance is easy. Maintaining a website is difficult. Databases crash. Stuff needs to be added, moved, removed, and corrected. Sometimes your site is down. Tech support is slow - and if you are tech support, it will probably be slower. It costs a monthly fee. I guess it could be worse.
6. People will click your Adsense ads because they are classy. People will not click your ads often, if at all (at least in the beginning). Not only that, but when they do finally click, you might earn $0.05… if you’re a lucky one. On top of THAT - Adsense has a running history of canceling peoples’ accounts for fraudulent clicks or other hair-splitting reasons. Ads are not classy. Internet users are trained to ignore them.
5. Is that your daily visits graph… or are you just happy to see me? Ever tried to start a site with banner ads as your main form of income? I run across this all the time. Webmasters basically use Digg as their primary source of hits. While this may be instant gratification, it is short-lived… and you will figure out that 2 clicks per 4,000 hits is a bad statistic. This creates what I call the Digg bell curve - hence the title of the list item:
If you are trying to start an actual business based off of Digging your site, get ready for some hard times. The internet is a tough audience.
4. My prices speak for themselves! Marketing is a good thing. Putting up a website is not enough. If you aren’t actively telling your friends, family, coworkers, and pets - you aren’t marketing enough. In fact, telling people (and animals, for good measure) close to you is simply skating on the top of the giant iceberg of potential marketing. Advertise yourself everywhere. Do it shamelessly. Any publicity is good publicity.
3. Trust the paid web builder. Sure, Jim the Web Guy may not be wrong on some stuff… but that doesn’t mean he’s right on everything else. After seeing the work of many of the less expensive web building companies (remember, you’re on a budget), I have decided that business owners would be better off figuring everything out on their own.
Pro Tip for Business Owners: Making a mediocre website is easy. Stop paying web developers so much for making this junk.
2. My design is hurting my traffic. Design doesn’t kill websites - people kill websites. Have you ever browsed the internet, seen some popular websites, and said “How the heck does this piece of junk get hits?!” The answer to this is simple: the site is easy to use and it has content. Anyone can create an epic website, but making a successful one takes content. Not just any content - it takes good content. Improving your website shouldn’t mean you gave it a face-lift. It should mean you added better, more targeted content. Content is king.
1. The user will understand. No - the user will NOT understand. Stop thinking that we know everything. If a 5-year-old can’t do it - no one can. I don’t think this needs any more explanation.
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