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At some point in the past year or so, virtually every American has thought they should try their hand making a buck or two online. Perhaps the idea came as they were cleaning out the basement, wondering if all that junk could be sold online. Or maybe its hobbyist in their workshop or sewing room imagining selling their craft goods online. Or maybe still its the recently unemployed considering exploring the work-from-home option.
I’ve got news for all of them; 8 out of 10 ventures online will fail spectacularly within the first year. And the outlook isn’t promising for the two that survive their first year, either. Because top ten lists continue to be all the rage (props to Letterman), I submit my 10 truths of making your fortune online: - There is no fast (legal) money. You’d hope that by now people would know better. But victims of 419 scams still make headlines routinely and the mere fact that late night commercials for “Internet-in-a-box” and “turn-key” e-commerce solutions even exist suggest that new suckers are born at an alarming rate. Even my grandmother could use Google to perform a simple search so it’s amazing that somebody would invest thousands of dollars on a product advertised without performing a simple search to see if there is any evidence to support the claims made.
- 99-cent e-Books on eBay offering secrets to making money online are worthless. I can, in one short paragraph, sum up every single e-Book ever written on the subject. In a nutshell, these e-books say that in order to make your fortune, you should buy more e-books from the author and turn around and sell them to other people. In other words, it’s a ponzai scheme, and it doesn’t work. And if you really must know what is inside, perform a search for the e-Book title on Google; not surprisingly, virtually every single one is available online, FREE.
- If you blog, your content actually has to be INTERESTING to others. A common revenue pattern is for a individual to start a blog, and then use in line advertising such as those AdWords (Google) , adCenter (Microsoft), Yandex and Baidu. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there, but only a tiny fraction are read by people with any degree of frequency. Why? The simple fact is that most blogs are not interesting to more than a extremely select group of people, most of which will never see your blog in the first place. Blogging is an important new technology that should be considered by many; but unless you are an experienced writer, blogging for money probably isn’t your calling.
- It helps to have a product that people ACTUALLY want to buy. One of my first ventures was selling Stained Glass craft products online. While the products were certainly interesting to the relatives that were making them, they were clearly NOT interesting to the masses, judging by our monthly sales. It’s wasn’t for a lack of trying; we had high placement in search engines; and well planned advertising. However, despite a world of nearly 6 billion people, only a minuscule fraction were looking to buy handmade garden stakes. Sales were unable to support the expenses of running a business online, and the company folded.
- ”If you build it, they will come” only works in the movies. You’ve got a great product that people want. Your pricing is very reasonable. You have a professional website that has been thoroughly tested. Your sales aren’t what they should be. Why? Odds are your not taking it to the customer. If you had a tough time as a kid selling cookies and calendars door-to-door, then the hard truth is that selling online in the nameless/faceless Internet isn’t going to be any easier. Sales don’t begin with finding the product, they begin with finding the customer.
- Most websites suck. Unless you have years of experience in web development, prospective web entrepreneurs should leave web design to the professionals, period. (Freelance for your church or local rotary club does *not* count). Most users have an attention span somewhere between a chicken and a puppy. A poorly designed website is guaranteed to scare off a large chunk of the very audience your hoping will pay your bills. These users expect things; things provided by technologies now mostly out of reach of the average Joe. In other words, if the only thing that AJAX’ is brings to mind the powder scrubber, then you really need to outsource. There is no middle ground here; if you only *think* you know what you’re doing, you don’t.
- Nobody else wants your crap either. The probability of you having a hidden-treasure in your garage is virtually NIL. Not too long ago, I was helping my father with his yearly ritual of cleaning out the basement, when he wondered out loud that most of the stuff was still good, just of no use to him; surely it must still be of use to somebody. And selling old stuff online certainly would soften the blow of getting rid of an item that, when it was purchased, cost quite a sum. The unfortunate truth is that eBay has been for some time a “buyers” market, as there are far more sellers than there are buyers. In other words, unless you uncover a 1951 Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card, you’re probably not going to fetch anymore for your used items online than you would on a garage sale.
- Page views mean nothing; Conversions mean everything. I have come across so many that focus attention on getting traffic. Not that traffic is a bad thing; it is a very good thing, assuming the traffic are the buying type. It’s extremely important to understand they type of people visiting your site; generating traffic is remarkably easy. Finding traffic from people looking to buy the very product your selling is profoundly difficult. Avoid any scheme or advice that is aimed at generating traffic without *explicitly* addressing the audience with which it will bring.
- Just because you’re the only one out there, doesn’t mean your first-to-market. Rather, it more likely means that you either haven’t done enough research on competitors, or all your competitors have already proved that there is no market after all. If you haven’t thoroughly analyzed your market, you are setting yourself up for absolute disaster.
- The best kept secrets are exactly that… Secrets. Having been involved in e-commerce in some form over the past 10 years, my inbox is filled every morning with tips and advice on how I can leverage some tool or technology to increase sales by outrageous factors (I have a special Junk Mail filter just for you, Steve Weber). I can assure you, they don’t work. That isn’t to say that they didn’t work at one point in the past; however either consumers or the websites involved have long since adapted and the so-called secrets just simply no longer apply. And if I ever do figure out the process for turning lead into gold, believe me, you won’t find me talking about it.
And that rounds up my top ten. Yes Virginia, the chips are stacked against you. But no real entrepreneur wouldn’t let that stand in their way, nor should the above truths stop you. If you are truly serious about your venture, then you have already overcome one of the most challenging aspects of all… yourself. Good Luck!
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