When I was 16 years old, I decided I was going to try to find a job because I needed money. The only way I knew how to do so was by searching job boards like Monster. While I was searching Monster I noticed a small link at the bottom of their website, which was a link to their stock quote.
At first I thought Monster was just another .com company that was making a few million dollars, but after analyzing their income statement, I realized that I was wrong. The company was actually earning hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
It was at this moment that I was inspired to create my first .com company. And naturally it ended up being a job board called Advice Monkey (I no longer own AdviceMonkey.com). My reasoning behind creating a job board was that if I could make 1% of Monster’s revenue I would be a rich kid. Sadly Advice Monkey never made any money and within two years I closed it down. Here is why it failed:
Solve a unique problem
The concept behind Advice Monkey was to help people find jobs through the web. Sites like Monster, Career Builder, and Hot Jobs solved that problem years ago. So why would anyone visit my website? Honestly, there was no reason.
Make sure your company is solving a unique problem that others haven’t solved yet. You may make some money creating another me too company, but your chances are slim to none.
Now this doesn’t mean you can’t enter a saturated market. You just have to find out what problems exist in that market and figure out how to solve them.
Be scrappy
I only had a few thousands dollars when I started the company, but that didn’t stop me from getting what I wanted. I posted a few messages on some popular web forums and convinced a developer to build me a website that was similar to Monster.com.
Although I may have seemed to be a scrappy guy, I wasn’t. If I was slick, I would have been able to get the website built for FREE. I could have pitched my vision to a developer and convince him to build the website in exchange for some equity in the company.
If you don’t have much money, don’t worry; you can still start a company. You just have to be scrappy and convince others to help you out for free. You will be surprised on how many people will trade their time for equity in your company.
Don’t get too comfortable
Getting your website up and running is the easy part. After it is up, you have to continually maintain and improve it. I did very little maintaining of Advice Monkey and it didn’t change with the times. This caused visitors to visit my website once and never come back again.
The web is evolving everyday. If you don’t evolve with it, you will not survive. Sooner or later your competition is going to make the necessary changes to evolve with the times.
A good way to evolve your website is to get feedback from your visitors. Remember, it doesn’t matter what you want, it’s all about what your visitors want.
Have a marketing plan
I know this sounds dumb, but a lot of people don’t think about driving traffic to their website until they launch it. When I launched Advice Monkey, within the first few months, no more than a 1000 visitors came to the website. To solve this problem I hired a few Internet marketing firms, and most of them didn’t drive more traffic, all they did was take my money and run.
Before you launch your company, have a marketing plan. Figure out how you are going to create buzz right when you launch your company and how you are going to continually grow it. Most importantly don’t take the easy way out by paying a good Internet marketing company, do the marketing yourself. You can do this by:
- Optimizing your website for search engines.
- Creating a viral website.
- Asking bloggers to blog about your website.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
To compete with my competition I added all of the features they had plus more. I thought if I had more features, sooner or later people would start using Advice Monkey. The features made the site complicated and hard to use, which caused my traffic to drop.
Features can be great, but only add them to your website if they really help your visitors. There is nothing wrong with being the most simplistic and easy to use website on the web. Some of the most popular websites, such as Google, succeeded because they were the simpler solution.
Don’t be afraid of your competitors
The easiest way you can grow your website is by leveraging your competitors’ traffic and data. I leveraged other job boards by importing their job openings into my website. I also got them to add Advice Monkey on their partner’s page, which helped drive traffic.
The key with partnerships is that they have to be mutually beneficial. You want to reciprocate the same amount of value that you are receiving, if not more.
I didn’t start embracing my competitors until a year into the business. Don’t make the same mistake I did and try to partner up with as many related websites as you can from day 1.
Conclusion
Although I made a lot of mistakes with Advice Monkey, it still could have succeeded. The problem was, I didn’t learn from my mistakes. If I realized them when Advice Monkey was still around, I could have made the necessary changes to improve upon it.
Hopefully you won’t do the same. 
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Your first entreprenurial adventure went a lot better than mine.
When I was five I took all of my parents old newspapers they were keeping, so they could take them back to the recycling center, and bundled them up so I could sell them door to door. Anybody see the problem with this? I think I had to shut down my venture after a couple days when sales came in way behind projections.
Thanks for sharing your story Neil!
Matt
ROFL! At least you were trying to make money at the age of 5.
It went better than mine as well. I ordered some knives from the TV shopping network and tried to resell them. However my network was only as high as my classmates in school, and none of them wanted to pay for a pocket knife. I was 16 at the time it has been 5 years and I still have over half of the knives. I should sell them on eBay…hmmm
You are lucky your principal didn’t catch you with knives at school.
I never took them inside the school, I would tell people about them and if they wanted one I had them out in my car.
Yeah, if I took them inside the school and got caught I would have gotten into some big trouble, heck they took my lighter away when I lite it once.
Smart move. At my school we couldn’t do that because they were allowed to search your car.
Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?
I don’t think you have those rights as a minor… or at least when you are on school property.
They can’t search your car for no reason, they only do it when there is a problem.
Did the school itself search the car or did they have to call security or the police? Besides they would actually have to ask you to search your car wouldn’t they because you would have to unlock the car, because if it is not in plan view they can’t really do anything about it.
I have no idea. I never saw anyone’s car get searched.
Did they just use it as a threat or did you ever hear that peoples car got searched? It sounds more like a threat that a high school would use to keep their kids in line.
I just heard it. I never saw it…
Maybe it was just a rumor.
No, you are right. When your a minor and on school property they can search your car anytime, they don’t even need probable cause. I saw this happen more than once when I was in hs.
Use your age to your advantage.
Yep they searched cars at my school too all the time but there was a huge drug/weapon problem so they probably searched more than other schools. I think no matter where you are at in the states they have the right if your parked on school property.
Yea, I think schools have tons of rights when you are on their property and under the age of 18.
I don’t think my high school would search cars at all… I’m guessing they would have to check to make sure the student is a minor because there are many high school seniors that are often 18 years old (I was one of them a couple years ago).
I don’t think most do.
That’s funny. One of my first adventures was selling Cutco knives. I went door to door a couple of times, but that just didn’t work for me. I tried getting referrals, but after a couple of months I couldn’t pull myself to knock on one more door or ask for one more referral. lol….I did get a couple of checks though. I remember doing those demonstrations…cutting ropes and stuff. It was funny.
That is a great way to learn sales. Kamran, the owner of Price Grabber, also sold knives door to door. He seemed to do very well. Hopefully you will follow in his footsteps.
Not bad footsteps to follow in. lol. Just not with knives. It was a very great way to earn sales. It was a trip to keep getting checks months after I stopped working their. Maybe this is why I like residual income plans ; )
Residual income plans are the best, but it takes time to ramp up. You don’t make as much in the short run, but in the long run you can make a lot more.
That is so true. I am always crunching numbers and numbers with residual income built in, always seem to win… Plus it provides dare I say… security, freedom, and piece of mind.
Once you grow your residual income high enough, you can sit back on a beach and relax.
O man, I’ve heard way too many stories about doing one of those gigs. People can make a lot doing it but it’s just not for me. I hate trying to sell stuff to people
I, too, have heard so many nightmares about selling cutco knives. The actual product, though, is great! My parents had purchased a set back in the day and those knives are still insanely sharp!
It sucks, but it is a great experience.
You have to do what your heart wants…
I was conned in to going through the CutCo sales pitch / orientation deal when I was about 17. One of the people teaching said they have to sell like crazy to family and freinds…I quickly realized it wasn’t for me and never ended up selling. I’m willing to be scrappy but pseduo-forcing friends and family in to buying your wares was not something I was comfortable with.
Ouch that sucks. I was conned into listening on an Emway pitch.
I get letters like every summer asking for high school and college students to do a job similar to that, except its for the company Vector. I never do it though because I really don’t feel like going door-to-door like that bugging people.
You should try it out. You will learn a lot.
Still. It’s impressive that you made the venture! However, this type of stuff is a challenging business. I hate having to rely on friends to try and make sales.
I do it. I like to do things myself, but that doesn’t scale.
lol, lol, lmao, rofl. That’s so funny. Interesting humor. I have to let my wife read this one. lol
I always wanted to go to door dressed up as a homeless person. I think I could have racked it in.
That’s funny. lol…lmao. Yup, then your first business would have been a hit. Who knows where you would be now. lol
One of my employees actually did this as a kid. He mad enough money to buy a Nintendo.
Oh snaps, I know he was excited… I love Nintendo. It made me a video game freak. Especially Tecmo Bowl. lol. Then Mario, and Duck Hunt, and Contra. I could on and on. lol
I never had a Nintendo, but I did play Duck Hunt. That was an awesome game. I used to take the gun and go close to the TV to shoot the ducks.
I had a Nintendo. It was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Christmas presents I have ever received. I also loved Tecmo Bowl and Mario, but I would have to say Mike Tyson’s Punchout was probably my all time favorite. RC Pro AM and Metroid were up there, too.
You can’t beat Duck Hunt.
It’s the thought that counts right?
LOL! It is better to try and make money, then to not try at all.
It also depends on your mindset and the values given to you by your parents. Most people do not want their children taking any risks.
That’s right. If I ever have kids, I will want them to take risks all the time.
I am glad I have an ally on my side. All my friends are too conservative. I have to make more friends like you
It is better that you don’t. This way there is more opportunity for people like you and I.
One of the richest men in Australia made his millions from people’s used newspapers. AKA recycling.
Recycling is a big business. It is the businesses we don’t think that usually make the millions.
Wow that is crazy. Do you have a link Network 21? I am interested in reading more about this man.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/2AFB.html
Make that “made his billions”.
He does have some questionable anti-competitive issues though.
Think about it: every year everybody throws away what he makes billions off, by the truckload!
Damn, that is a lot. Who would have ever thought someone could make that much off of recycling.
Yeah I read a story about him where the way he made his money was he controlled most of the recycling and got paid a high price to do it because of friends in the government who gave him many no-bid contracts for regions.
Some of those Forbes guys were really creative. Sadly you can’t make billions doing what most of them did. Times have changed and we all missed those boats.
Very Interesting Article Neil! I can vouch for the whole getting things done for free deal by exchanging something of great value in return -I checked out advicemonkey although I know you no longer own it and I could not figure out whats going on there right now..weird.
Thanks for sharing your story!!! and the trail of comments above are also very interesting…knives seem to be the trend here lol.
I would say Door to Door sales seems to be the trend.
And ironically…it was a great success in that it taught you all these lessons, and made you next company that much more successful :_) Great story Neil!
Sooner or later I figured out how to learn from my mistakes.
As long as you learn from your mistakes, you’re good to go. Sometimes you have to make the same mistake more than once to realize the magnitude of it.
The key is to not make them more than once. Sadly I had to make a few mistakes 3 or 4 times before I really learned from them.
Your still really young so at least your making your 3-4 mistakes real quick and then getting to the good stuff.
Actually my first few mistakes took a very long time to make.
Neil,
This is an awesome post! I often think that a great business idea is something that will just “occur” in your mind. I do agree with the fact that you have to find the “blue ocean” in your chosen business segment. I guess my biggest problem is finding out what that segment might be. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I need specific advice and I believe you nailed this one.
In the future, it would be good to hear about your thoughts on actually uncovering the company that will enable you to fulfill yours dreams. Thanks again for your excellent information!
You should go into a market that you love. You will do better if you are putting your time and effort into something you care about compared to something that you think will make you rich.
Isn’t that the truth. To build a business, it takes time, and if you’re not into, really passionate about that business, it makes it really hard to do what it takes to turn business into a successful one.
Yep, if you aren’t into a business you will get burned out really fast.
You should be having fun in anything you do. Once you are having fun, you do not feel the 12-14 hour days that you are putting in the business.
That is true, but if you are working that many hours for a year or two, with no pay, it won’t be fun. You can get burned out no matter what.
I understand you need money to survive but if that is the sole reason you are doing it, you are in the wrong business or profession.
Yeah you should learn to have fun in life and enjoy what you have, but without some passion for it you will lose motivation.
I read an article a couple of years back that said that the average person changes their profession 7 times. Not just jobs, but their career. That means there is a world full of people just waiting to find something that they love to do.
Vik, you never want to do things for money as you already stated.
Kenny, I think most people don’t ever get to do what they love.
You’re totally right. I don’t think so either. Somewhere along the line they either give up, put it off for to long, get frustrated…and etc.
It’s sad that most people will never know what it’s like to live out or even come close to realizing their dreams. I would like to see this change.
It is, but if everyone followed their dreams it would be harder for people like you and I to be successful. We need 9 to 5 employees that are just willing to do the job for a paycheck.
Yea, I don’t really see a point to getting into a business you don’t like, I think if you do that, you’ll end up giving up before it gets anywhere.
You shouldn’t because the chances of it failing are going to be high.
I understand that but what if that market the profit margins are not that great but in other market it is? Any suggestions Neil?
Then figure out unique ways to make the profit margin higher. I know this isn’t easy, but it is possible.
If that doesn’t work for you, find something else you love.
I agree I have seen businesses find extra ways to make the profit margin higher in ways that the customer felt like they were getting a lot more but the business increased the profit for example from $2 to $5 which is large if you are selling hundreds of product daily.
It adds up really fast. Just look at eBay and how all of those small commissions add up.
This is a great point! Especially since, when you don’t see profits coming in, you’ll be eager to quit if it’s not something you love. It’s great to dedicate yourself to something you enjoy and will show the enthusiasm to pursue fully!
Seeing the money roll in is always a plus.
I hear you on trying to find what your segment should be. Honestly though, even when I find a niche it’s still hard to get your name out. It shows how important marketing is.
It is always going to be hard. Nothing worth while is going to be easy.
I think the domain name was a reason you failed too. Advice monkey comes off like an information service instead of a job board to me. But for me the reason i failed is that i never got started to begin with. I am just afraid to dive in and get started .
Yea, I didn’t think that one through. Sooner or later I tried making it a content site, but that didn’t work either.
Well look at the name of this blog
How did you come up with the name?
It was in my domain portfolio at the time. Like most of my businesses, I didn’t think the name through.
What are you talking about? I love the name
It is so creative.
Actually I love the name too. I think it’s so clever…interesting, and right on for you.
Meh. Quick sprout is memorable, but it doesn’t reflect Neil’s personality.
I don’t know… uummmm. I kinda think it does. Young cool guy who’s made enough to retire at a young age, but spends a lot of time helping others quickly sprout as he did, investing in them… and he has quite the confidence in his abilities to succeed and overcome failure…
I dunno, but I like it and it has definitely caught on. (That was a really long sentence…lol)
Oh well… it is too late now. The name grew on me, but like anything else some people will like it while others will not.
Isn’t that the truth. You sort of buy names on a whim and then years later, find yourself stuck with them. At least this one is catchy and memorable!
Yea, it isn’t that bad.
Thanks! If you didn’t, it would be too late for me to change it.
Failures are great learning points. Micheal Jordan’s biography “Can’t Accept Not Trying” http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Accept-Not-Trying-Excellence/dp/0062511904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232954361&sr=1-1 emphasizes this. You grow by taking risks and certain % of those risks will fail.
I never knew he wrote a biography. I will have to check it out.
I do know that he didn’t make the high school basketball team when he first tried out. Imagine that. There’s something about a little failure and having to put in a little work, that makes winning all the more sweeter.
Damn, I would never guessed that either. I thought he would have been the best on his team.
I know right. But he worked hard and the next year he started to become quite the star.
Now I know he loved baseball, but that didn’t work out for him so well…lol. Anyway, I still have one of his pro baseball cards. Actually, it’s an “error card”.
As the saying goes: when there is a will, there is a way.
Great way to spam and try to make money Niheel
. You should’ve at least used tinyurl or bit.ly to shrink the link.
LOL, I forgot that it had his affiliate code. (or I think it does)
Yeah I am not sure either. I think there is an affiliate code in there somewhere
You didn’t think Vik, you assumed. Two different things.
You gotta nice blog though. Good info.
There is no affiliate code in there and if you want you can delete the link and leave the title of the book.
@ Vik: Amazon affiliate ID’s use “?tag=ASSOCIATE_ID” in the URL.
Or not… There is nothing a matter with making a buck or two… it’s all good.
Yea if Niheel wanted to use an affiliate code, I wouldn’t have cared.
Sounds good Niheel. Thanks for the info
No hard feelings.
I trust you. Your name is pronounced the same way as mine.
LOL. He is also a Patel. I think there is some type of conspiracy going on here..hmm.
There maybe. Us Patels stick together.
Hey Niheel just create a redirect next time and the link will look like a link from your site. Short and pretty…LOL
Just to play devil’s advocate, isn’t there a danger with these sorts of posts Neil that you only end up describing one vision of reality, because that was the outcome in this instance? (I appreciate you’re positioning them as insights rather than ‘rules’)
e.g. Facebook launched after Friendster (me-too products), and Intel says “only the paranoid survive” (competitors). I’m sure you could think of loads more.
This isn’t to decry the post, which has already got me thinking… just another perspective.
What works one time may be the reason for failure the next. “History is written by the victors” as they say.
Please see my comment on the total post. Fail safe formula!
“History is written by the victors”? But we can learn from our failures as well.
And if you want to be successful, you might as well learn from other people’s mistakes. This way you won’t make the same ones.
Don’t worry Neil. I have learned from your mistakes
Thanks. That really means a lot. I will try to blog more about my life experiences.
I think that is key. Talk about your hardships and what you learned and people will really appreciate that.
This is the main reason I try not to blog on my successes. I don’t feel that they provide much value.
I am not saying you can’t enter a saturated market, you just have to solve a problem your competitors did not. For example Facebook was social networking just for college kids. Google was simpler than Yahoo and provided better results.
Having competition is a good thing. It let’s you know that there is money being made in that market already. Plus you can make friends and leverage competition to grow faster and maintain growth.
Rich Schefren wrote a report about Agora Publishing, and it talked about the reason they were able to grow past a 100 million dollar info publishing company and why many others in failed to continue growth with them… and it was because they were able to cross promote, JV, and affiliate with other large companies.
You promote my product and I’ll promote yours. Making a good circle of friends. Products for the same niche, but solved different pains within the market.
There is nothing wrong in being second to enter in a market. It removes a lot of the risk.
Yup and you can have a better idea of what’s working already and what is not. It has also helped me get money for businesses I was launching because I could show them an example of a business that was similar and that was having success.
And if you are the second the enter the market, it doesn’t mean you can’t be the most popular player in the space.
That’s so true. You can still dominate. lol
Yep, just look at Google. They did better than Altavista even though they weren’t the first in the space.
I wrote a post on “Having an idea and becoming rich or making an existing idea better and becoming richer” a long time ago…it’s like 100 words but states the facts…linked in the name.
I’ll check it out.
It’s like some rules -> The first rule is don’t be afraid to break the rules. If you have an idea, never let anyone else stop you from pursuing it. But keep in mind their experiences as you go so you can avoid falling into the same pitfalls.
LOL. That is a really good rule that most people don’t follow.
could you be more spesific on the marketing plan ? thx
I just added 3 ways you can market your website for free.
LOL…. U were trying 2 mke money at the age of 5. nt bad actually
I wish I had that ambition at the age of 5. I would have been a lot better off.
“You should go into a market that you love. You will do better if you are putting your time and effort into something you care about compared to something that you think will make you rich.”
As you said, the stupidest thing you did was you copied instead of innovating. You did not BELIEVE in your product, infact you had no idea what you were selling, how to sell it etc.
I cant believe you had a thousand dollars to do that. The max you need is around a hundred which should have lasted you a few months.
Yea, I started a job board because I thought it would make me rich. I did not love what I was doing, which is why I closed shop within 2 years.
It’s really easy to find yourself copying others. When you see someone else doing something successful, it’s hard to break out of the mindset of just trying to do what they did.
There is nothing wrong with copying others as long as you can do it better than they can.
TRUE.
Everybody wishes easy way to find accurate results in shorter span of time and thats what makes a website grow or become HIT but what about blog ?
You can take the same concepts and apply it to a blog. For example, you don’t want to create another me too blog. What is going to make your blog different?
I too am a serial entrepreneur of sorts. Many years ago, I was told that all businesses must go through four primary stages and then the fourth one repeated ad-infinitum. Investigate, invest, implement and innovate. The fourth never stops and gets renewing the business on an ongoing basis. The problem is in following this very sand advise!
I like those stages, I will start applying them to my startups.
Thanks for sharing!
Good advice Nicole. I like it. I just took some notes. I like having different ways to see things or explain them. What about the fifth & sixth stage… test and implement again. lol
The first time I read the post I thought it said you were 6 – I was thinking – you knew about Monster when you were 6?
I think there is still plenty of opportunity in that space. I don’t think Monster or Career Builder have the area covered. Could go on and on about why.
I like that you included Don’t get comfortable, and Have a marketing plan. Just putting up a website and waiting isn’t going to drive traffic; and just because you love cats and love to draw cats doesn’t mean people are going to know that you do and will just magically flock to your site to buy your drawings.
There is, but people like Simply Hired are already trying to innovate in those spaces. If you can come up with something new, the possibilities are endless… but you have to spend time to innovate.
If you ask me, Neil, having the guts to try to compete (even at a smaller level) with Monster.com in the first place was very important. Many would never have. I think that’s the beginning of your guts that obviously helped you to start your other successful ventures. Somehow, if you hadn’t failed and learned from your first failure, who knows – you might not have made the progress you have made today.
The thing is, when you are young you forget about the small details. It wasn’t that I had the guts to compete with Monster.com, I just never thought about it.
Ha ha ha, that’s somewhat true. If you really knew the magnitude of what it would have taken, it might have scared you away from even trying. That’s why it’s said that we should think and behave like children if we want to succeed in life – throw away every inhibition and fear and believe we can do anything and succeed.
To some extent I agree. At the age of 23 I would have never gone into business if I didn’t start one before. I guess as we grow older we tend to take safer bets.
I agree I am just now starting to really plan my businesses better but I think it is not so much my young age anymore but that I have started 4-5 businesses that I learned from. When I first started I look back at my mistakes and think of how dumb they were. Business is a learning process because rarely does someones first business they start do well.
Cool, keep on going. The more you start the better you will get at creating new companies.
You don’t really need a unique problem, just a unique answer to the problem.
What did you mean by don’t get too comfortable, would be adding new products and giving coupons to former customers be a good change or are you talking more about changing up the look of the web-page itself.
Can’t speak for Neil, but I would say adding new products, and yes coupons to existing clients is certainly something that will give people a reason to come back to your site and keep it from becoming stale. A stale site, w/ stale selection will lose its appeal to customers who have already seen all your product. New trends are always cropping up and you have to adapt to continue success.
I don’t know if I would do major web page look changes unless you really think the currently layout is lacking in some features / design.
Not trying to plug my site, but to use an example: I haven’t updated or added new product to my site since about August when I added some hand drawn designs. I also think the site could have a much better layout – updating / changing the look for the second generation will be major, but after that I expect changes to be minor.
The site as it stands now is stale. Anyone who has gone to the site wouldn’t have a reason to re-visit it unless they remembered where they found that awesome shirt. Will it continue to produce like it has? probably not. Just putting up a website and publicizing it will only get you so far.
There are a ton of things I could do to the site to increase its appeal and possibly drive more sales. Like a weekly or daily update on a new design or a design from another shop, a much cleaner layout, etc.
I have built some prettier sites since that one first went up, and am still learning more code, so a major rework is in the works.
Thanks,
With the economy today you just never know why there is lower traffic/buying stuff on your site. It could be that people are cutting their spending or you have a stale website it is just hard to determine.
Use sites like Alexa and Compete.com to analyze your competition. If their traffic has dropped as well, that should be a good indicator.
I use Alexa and page rank, but I haven’t used Compete.com
I don’t like using PageRank because some sites that have a PageRank of 6 could be getting 1,000,000 visitors a month while my site has a PageRank of 7 and doesn’t get more than 100,000 visitors a month.
Yeah I have noticed that you have a high page rank but fewer traffic than other sites. But is traffic a factor of Pagerank?
Traffic is not a factor of PageRank.
I believe Compete is more accurate compared to Alexa. Page Rank is important as always.
I prefer looking at visitors.
I have used Quantcast which is a great way to show direct advertisers your demographics and amount of traffic per country. I use that in a combination with Google Analytics to do my stats. I think Google Analytic’s may be slightly conservative on the traffic though but it is better than many who use the cheap traffic monitors who show 3-4 times the amount of real traffic you have, it can be a great ego-booster but not legit.
I feel they have a lot of inaccuracies, but all of the other Quantcast competitors probably have the same problem.
Alexa can be misleading as it is heavily based upon the types of visitors you get. For instance, a site catering to web developers will likely have an inflated alexa rank since its user base will be comprised largely of people who use the toolbar.
It is very misleading. I barely use it.
The only time I recommend changing the web page is if you are doing A/B testing. You’ll never know how to increase your conversion unless you test your design.
I meant that you can add new products or change the web page itself. You just need to constantly be making changes and tweaking things to increase your conversions.
I like that. “Unique ANSWER to the problem”. Since the problems are usually the same all over the world, what we always need is a better and unique answer to the problem. That’s a good one. Interesting indeed.
I don’t know about that. After there is a solution has already been solved, people tend to get used to them. People get stuck in their own ways.
Lot’s of great info – I have been running a successful business, solely by word of mouth for almost 10 years. This have been great until about 1.5 years ago – Then a competitor came along with something new that “evolved with the times” and I’ve been slow to counter punch and now I’ve lost many loyal customers to their product. We now have a similar product but it’s very tough to win them back.
Start improving your product. Keep on trying new things and never give up. Remember, you have been in business longer than them. You have a solid brand behind you.
great article Neil! I totally agree with you that you often overlook the importance of simplicity. The Internet is so complex itself that visitors are overwhelmed by all the information and that’s why you need to keep it simple!
If you want to learn more about usability, you should check out http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/
You are right. I visited AdaptivePath.com blog and enjoyed the content from the different contributors/writers. Thanks.
No problem. You should also check out 37signals.com. Their blog isn’t bad either.
good advice about partnering up withe competitors. what type of incentives did you give your competitors to promote you?
In exchange for letting me use their job listings, more people would see them and apply for jobs. This made it easier for them to charge companies to post a job on their website.
I see, how about in my case, how can I get comp editors to work with me? Have any ideas?
I don’t have any ideas off the top of my head, but we could brainstorm them during lunch one day.
It is tougher on that aspect but I have actually guest posted on competitors websites in exchange for links which has worked out good for my websites. I have been thinking of starting a job website but I think they may be over saturated right now.
That’s a great strategy. Getting links from them boosts the number of relevant links you have and further establishes your credibility in the marketplace.
Links are a great way to increase rankings, traffic, and sales.
That is a great idea. It creates very relevant backlinks.
I really like the caption in the photo. I think trying and learning from your mistakes is better than success without knowing the reasons behind your success.
Your comment on being scrappy is priceless in my opinion. You don’t have to raise tons of money and pay an arm and a leg to get things developed. If you have a vision, and others see it, it’s not hard to get people to join you.
But, just a thing on equity vs cash on the development side. I am doing equity with a developer (who is awesome), and when I add the cost of sourcing a lawyer, actual project/business cost is higher (than free). Just a thought.
Glad to see you being scrappy. The thing with convincing others is that you truly have to believe in the vision first. A lot of people try to convince me on partnering up with them, when they don’t believe in the idea themselves.
Great post Neil. I think it was Dan Kennedy that said something like you have to find your core USP (unique selling position) and market that message like a crazy man. I have never forgot that. You want to be unique or be perceived as being a unique problem solver, “pain reliever”, in your niche.
On my small business marketing blog, I say that you are not in the business you think you are; you’re in the business of marketing that business, or you won’t have one.
Meaning, if your business is selling ice cream, you are not in the ice cream business, you’re in the business of marketing ice cream. It’s a different way of looking at things.
Because if you only think of yourself as being in the ice cream business, then you will spend ALL your time with “busy” work, the “keeping your hands moving” syndrome, and not enough time getting more tongues in the door licking on your ice cream.
Trust me! If you build it…they won’t come, But if you market it, they will.
I love this post.
Once you find your unique selling position, you have to figure out how you can convey that message to others. Things like website copy are VERY important on conveying your message.
Neil recommends “Solve a Unique Problem” . . . or . . . solve a problem in a unique way . . . either way, solve a problem that people are willing to pay for. Your marketing plan must include a pricing plan (profit plan) based on a compelling value proposition that you communicate very, very well.
Most businesses fail because they run out of money, and they run out of money because they don’t generate income, and they don’t generate income because people aren’t willing to pay for their offering.
Two reasons you have complete control over:
(1) you didn’t get unbiased feedback on the true value of your offering and confirm a realistic revenue projection of the market’s willingness to pay for that value
(2) you haven’t done an excellent job at communicating the value of your offering in terms your prospects can relate to their wants and needs
There is a big difference between creating cool, beautiful and handy solutions versus creating cool, beautiful and handy solutions that people value enough to pay a price that generates profits. Be honest with yourself, is it a hobby or a business.
I say solve a unique problem. Solving a problem in a unique way doesn’t matter if it is already solved. The goal is the solve a pain, and pains exist when problems haven’t been solved yet.
If, as you say, “solving a problem in a unique way doesn’t matter” . . . then we would have a market full of monopolies and no competition.
Owners of BMW’s are glad BMW solved more than just the problem of getting from point A to point B and did so uniquely compared to Ford or Toyota or Lexus or Mercedes. Examples abound where segmentation of markets highlights the opportunities to solve problems in unique ways.
The key is finding upfront what uniqueness matters to the customer, are they willing to pay for it, and if so, can you deliver this cosistently.
This is dfferntiating your offering and communicatinng your competitive advantage, it is what determines market leaders . . . it is not getting caught up in what you think the customer values . . . rather what you know they value enough to pay for.
Interesting point. I think Neil has a good point, but I understand where you’re coming from Chris.
Uniqueness matters, but only if you solve a pain. And it’s not just uniqueness, but your Irrresistable Offer.
BMWs solve the “pain” of getting from Point A to Point B …but In Style and comfort and with reliability.
Every luxury car has a different type of style, and it is that pain that they are solving. To the customer each car is solving a different problem… but how do you decide which one you go with?
…the one that has the best Irresistible Offer. And this is what as Chris says: “differentiating your offering and communicating your competitive advantage”…
Exactly. I couldn’t have said it any better. I probably should have read your comment before replying.
BMW’s goal wasn’t to solve the A to B problem. Instead they focused on a niche… people who are passionate about driving and want to get to point A to point B fast and in style.
Right . . . problem wasn’t unique . . . but BMW solved the problem in a unique way.
I think other car companies also solved the problem in the same way as BMW, but they were one of the firsts.
My first online blog went down the pan when I didn’t have enough time to research the subject. I dove straight in without realising how much work it really involved.
Now I currently run 3 small sites that I am not trying too hard to build up too quickly. I am starting small and hoping it grows steadily and allows me to keep up.
There is nothing wrong with natural growth, but you don’t want steady growth. You want viral growth. The quicker you grow the more money you will make.
But however that viral growth should not have any loop holes otherwise at any time such growth can move back towards down as well.
And you can use http://www.productplanner.com to make sure there are no holes in your viral loop.
I’ve used a similar strategy. The slow but consistent growth over a potential spike that might fall just as quickly.
Slow and steady wins the race.
In times of success, no one wants to hear about failures (losers). In times of failures, we want to hear about failures as positives experiences to move forward. Guy Kawasaki says: “Failure is the new success” based on this video from Honda : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiaPNlR5A4I
It’s good to see positive thinking. We all need it!
I think people always want to hear about failures. Successes can be talked about but they don’t provide as much as value.
you passed much troubles Neil before you reach this place you are , i think it need a book or more to tell us . really i’m proud it be here and read what you sharing us .
about your article :
i think that i should stop or refer to 2 points , marketing and the other about competitors
marketing is the hardest step in building a company ” any niche ” driving traffic is not easy specially if we talk about targeted traffic , much of us fail to get the customers by normal way ” s you said if you buy traffic you only pay them your money and nothing ” but better you use the long term plan ” SEO” for best results and it will last for long time .
second point is competitors , first you must know the best niche you able to be number 1 or at least on the focus , also you must like it then you start to build your company ” website ” then you can get the best results because you will have the best chance to get into this biz , also low competition mean you will not suffer in marketing . because in high competition you have to start strong ” costive” and maybe you don’t succeed , but it low competition you will have a good chance .
I am writing a book, it is just going to take a while before it comes out. I am really slow.
i’m waiting this book , take your time , for me i read all posts in quicksprout to discover what i don’t know , thanks for reply me
Sounds good. Once it comes out I will do a blog post about it.
I just read this in a book by Robert Kiyosaki – Cashflow Quardrant and had to share it with you, Neil. This helps to buttress the fact that failure is part of success.
Here goes…
“When I was in high school, my rich dad told his son and me that he had lost a company when he was in his 20s. “That was the best and worst experience of my life,” he said. “As much as I hated it, I learned more by repairing it and eventually turning it into a huge success.” Knowing I was contemplating starting my own company, rich dad said to me, “You may lose two or three companies before you build a successful one that lasts.”
So, Neil, it’s a good thing that your first business failed. That’s what was needed to enable you learn from it to build other successful ones that last (as you are doing now).
“Failure is success if we learn from it.”
Malcolm S. Forbes
on the somewhat contrary…but so true
“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.”
Mark Twain
Great post Neil.
Great quotes. I especially love the first one. Everything is a learning process. The more you learn, the better off you will be in life.
That’s right. You can always learn more and you don’t have to go to school to keep on learning.
You had me with “Solve a Unique Problem”. I work at an internet marketing company and deal with so many “Me Too!” businesses. They all say exactly what you did: “All we want is 1% of what so-and-so makes”. They’re like a grain of sand diving into a beach and hoping to be discovered. This ties in with “Have a Marketing Plan”. None of them do. Their marketing plan is “If we build it they will come”. As you know, that’s no way to build a business. Seems logical but I see it EVERY day.
If you help them out by telling them what they need to change to become a better company, you will make more money.
I share the idea that the life is a learning process in which mistakes are quite necessary attributes.
That’s right, every successful person has made a mistake.
Hey Neil! I have to agree that leveraging partnerships is the best way to launch a new site/service. With many niches I work on my clients’ behalf, we’re contacting super small bloggers with <1,000 readers. It’s perfect – they are already trusted ’sources’ for our niche and are usually ecstatic that someone is contacting them for THEIR opinion/time/advertising/etc. We’ve leveraged partnerships where bloggers have written/endorsed a service for $10 a month with this tactic!!! It’s an amazing ROI and helps to build a strong niche presence super fast.
Also, I started my first business in 7th grade – designing websites for local businesses. It was 1997 so they were full of animated gifs, frames, and many other things that make me shudder now!!!! Thank goodness they’re no longer up…
I like the concept of leveraging niche bloggers. I rather get press from niche bloggers than blogs with thousands of RSS subscribers that aren’t relevant.
Good post Neil. Simplicity is what I contribute through my company LotusBoost. I help other companies with a simple easy to use website that would be a thrill to use for their customers.
That’s right, you are a usability expert. Everyone needs design with simplicity in mind.
you are right in your choice. Simplicity is the main merit in hard times. Generaly speaking it is of genious.
Companies like 37signals and Freshbooks are doing very well during this recession. The main reason for it is because of simplistic products.
Hey what’s up Neil… I was just coming by to say GO CARDINALS… lol. Hope you’re having a great weekend. I am about to start gettin’ my grub on (that’s eating…lol) and a few tasty beverages.
Hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl. For some reason I liked the last one a lot better.
Actually I did too. But I love football so it was cool, plus it gave me a reason to make my Football Nachos…lol
In my life When I was failed my first business. My age was 20 years old. Many Older persons are told me the when you get the lost in first business or job. In future you never lost in any business and job. In India it’s one type of Gujarati Proverb.
I think you will always gets lost to some extent. People who have been in business for 50 years are still learning new things.
The interested part for me is that as a Child in Puerto Rico I always did have money… selling and delivery newspapers, painting other people’s front gate and helping cutting the yard or washing cars… my problem is today is hard for me to make some extra money… not easy.
You just have to figure out a niche and work hard. Nothing worth while is easy.
hey Neil have u tried comment numbering plugin for wordpress … this plugin shows the numbering of comments posted and i think it would look gr8 here as the comments out here are gr8 going
(not my site)
counsellingresource.com/features/2009/01/27/threaded-comment-numbering-plugin-for-wordpress/
I haven’t. I will check it out.
I think mainly 3 reason 4 failure in business.
1 Lack of market research when entering new markets, resulting in poor sales and return on investment.
2 Overspending. Or spending too much on frivolous luxuries instead of products and services that improve the bottom line.
3 Poor cash flow control: paying creditors to early, buying too much stock or giving customers payment terms that are too long, late payments and bad debts. These can all lead to a lack of working capital and cash flow problems.
Overspending is a big one. People need to learn when to spend money and when to not.
This was a topic of a recent Andy Liu post too, so many startups pour out money because that seems like the cool thing to do.
It usually is the cool thing to do, until you go broke. Spending money on nice offices or big parties is a great way to burn through your cash.
Starting a new business always need good marketing. Marketing is expensive and we need to spend some money too. I agree on the research part. We can save a lot studying more about our product and its users.
Market your own website before you pay anyone to do it for you.
Think of all the lessons you learned in that venture and how that’s paid off later on! Without that experience, you probably would’ve made even larger mistakes later on.
It paid off a lot. That is why I think if you have a dumb business idea you should consider doing it because it will teach you a lot.
I think mistakes are the Stepping stones for success, It has placed you where you are now. I think there is a lot to learn from you for young aspiring kids who want to be like you. Congrats
Thanks! And there is probably a lot we can learn from you.
In most cases, first business will always fail. We don’t learn anything if we don’t fail. Maybe, this is your first stepping stone to where you are now.
Failure is a good thing and we shouldn’t be afraid of it.
Might as well fail and learn why you failed when you’re a small business. Rather than get big and fail, and loose a lot.
I learned this AFTER I wasted $350 worth of Google Adwords vouchers. Not to mention I learned that Google Adwords SUCKS for certain types of websites (sites that need a LOT of incoming traffic and don’t sell anything) they should stick to advertising on blogs who ask for a monthly tenant purchase.
Well, now I know. So one day when I create an ad network that rivals Google’s (Oh just wait and see what I’ve got planned) I’ll know what to do (not suck like Google Adwords) and what not to do (suck like Google Adwords).
Or I can always go back to working on my Dooms Day Device…
â–ˆ Kris Tian â–ˆ
At least you won’t make that mistake again. It was a lesson worth learning.
It happens. We learn from our failures and we can learn from others failuers too. I tried to make money via chain marketing. Needless to say I failed to make money and ended up wasting some money in trying to make money.
At least you tried to make money. There is nothing wrong with failing.
I have started two businesses, and in both of them, I got failure. I think the main reason behind it is I didn’t have patience to wait for success. And, now I am in the field of SEO, but I am now more determined and patient to wait for success. I think the most important thing to be successful in business is ” To make mistakes, Learn from them and don’t allow it to happen again”.
If you are in the SEO business make sure you are only taking on clients you feel you can really help. Most SEO companies just take on clients because of the money and not based on the results they can provide.
Do you believe, I love my competitors.
Competitors are the biggest inspiration of my success.
I believe you. A lot of people love their competitors… I know I do.
Thanks Neil, (Off Topic)How does a tag line of a business can help to be a brand? I’ll appreciate your thoughts on this.
It lets people know what your business is about. It is all about messaging. If people don’t know what you are about, then why will they care to get to know your business.
Niel, at what point did you give-up on Advice Monkey?
Roughly 1.5 to 2 years after I created it. After a year of creating it, I started making money from Internet marketing consulting.
Good deal. I am looking into the ecommerce side of things at the moment, as I have a “failed” internet business under my belt too. Kinda gave-up after 2 yrs too. It was an indie music download/ networking site.
Will frequent ur blog more often – try to write more
Keep on trying! You can always start another business.
I have launched several businesses and I think there is one thing that goes above all. And that is persistence, realize that your blog/company won’t grow overnight and that it takes time. Especially with Internet Marketing. Be satisfied even with only 1000 visitors per month, usually we tend to forget what a large number that actually is. Imagine a hall where you preach to 1000 people. Now that puts things a little bit more in perspective doesn’t it. I have to say that I absolutely love your post and learning from your mistakes is definitely the key to success.
That’s right, you have to be persistent and patient. Don’t expect your growth to expload over night. For example Wine Library TV does really well, but Gary put in tons of time into it before people started paying attention.
How’s this for a sad business story?
After buying and selling relatively expensive and small items on eBay [making roughly $5-$12/hr] I decided to spend around $200 on Blue Host for 2 years hosting services, after which I realized how impossible it was to sell stuff, even at razor thin profit margins, due to the fact that I simply didn’t have enough inventory [or the money for more] to pull off making my store trustworthy [even though I intended on providing the best customer service humanly possible].
The moral: DO NOT SPEND $200 ON HOSTING if you do not have around 100 or more items.
200 dollars for hosting isn’t too bad. I pay a lot more every month.
Well.. maybe 50 or more items would be enough, but I definitely fell short of that and realized it a few weeks into run out of things to fine tune on the site.
You can make money. You just have to learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them.
So I read over the comments and now I am convinced that you own the site and not just this article. So, now I guess I’ll ask what I’d ask anyone else who ends up in the first 10 results of a popular search query in Google… How the heck did you pull that off?
I know about making search engine friendly pages and about content [I made a comment about how I didn't have enough]. I also have plans for quantity and quality of material as well as a constant flow of new material, but it leaves me hanging, because the last website should have shown up in the first several hundred search results [I actually typed in the tag line word for word and it didn't show the site!]. The only way I could get it to show up was typing in the actual domain name.
So… how do I make it so that my site shows up 100 results from the first result. I’d at least feel like something went right if I could manage to get that far. Anyway, I don’t mean to sound depressing, but it is disheartening. I thought I did a pretty good job on the last site and it makes me reluctant to try it again.
I would read Seobook.com. It will help you increase your search engine rankings.
It more than 200 comments right now so maybe I’m copying someones idea.
Well, we have another conclusion that combining simplicity and a niche will give you success.
What about shares in the project? How would you share with a programmer?
I don’t think that alone will make you successful. You need more.
There is nothing wrong with giving away shares, they just need to vest over time.
Neil,
You mention that you hired marketing companies and all they did was take your money and run. I am very curious on what exactly they actually did? Any market research? Any suggestions that they made? I work for a marketing company (of sorts)that doesn’t do internet marketing. Not that I am taking offense to this comment,but I hear this a lot. I for one work my ass off for my clients and wonder what hell these other companies are doing. Obviously this is a problem that could use a solution.
They claimed they were going to optimize my site for search engines. They didn’t really do much of that…
yeah this mistakes should be fix with our lesson.this is can be a good lesson for me.thank you neil
No problem! Best of luck with your ventures.
The KISS method of keeping things simple is one that I have really embraced over the last year, especially during the development of my current .com company I am working on.
I have even stripped down a lot of ‘features’ before even launching the beta, and will use user feedback to determine which ones to add in later, and the right time to add them in.
I almost got a little ‘heartbroken’ when I decided to deactivate a lot of the extra features, but I am now feelin’ real good about the simpler version
Also, you make a very strong point for getting started with the marketing and doing it yourself.
This approach has worked well for me also, and I have already built a nice list of site users for the first beta test.
The advice you gave in your other post about not getting caught up in getting everything ‘perfect’ (if there is such a thing as perfect) will save a lot of entrepreneurs the traumatic experience of NEVER launching lol!
Hopefully you will like my new company, KISSmetrics.
You’re right. Sometimes what we want is not what the consumer want and we are heartbroken, however we are there to fulfill THEIR need and not ours, that’s a great point!.
Jon
That’s right. As long as the customer is happy, you should be happy.
Neil, you’ve inspired me to make my own company (I’m 15) – I mean, I currently own a few websites making me $X,XXX a year but I don’t have anything that could make me some big money, so hopefully I can learn from your mistakes and be successfull
You already have a company. You just need to expand upon what you are doing.
Hey Neil,
Your story was cool…I thought I would make some money by selling crayons..but those would be not just normal crayons but crayons with multi-colors and above it scented ones…I use to mix different types of crayons to 1 crayon and then put some Agarbati (joss sticks)…However I found only 2 of my friends who use to trade them with me …and that too for free…Until I moved to higher standards where we started using water colors…
-Baba
I love it. You can’t go wrong with entrepreneurship.
This is great. Once again, hearing things that caused you to fail can help us all learn from your mistakes. Thanks for sharing these!
Awesome! Hopefully you don’t make the mistakes I made.
Best of luck!
Stupid but funny to me.
My first business was a lemonade stand in my neighborhood.
The problem was there wasn’t enough traffic and I drank all my product while waiting for non existent traffic.
Well, at least you tried.
Yep, and thankfully I haven’t done all that bad since then!
It was well worth it then.
As I tell my parents, I wish they would have let me make more mistakes early on.
Wow, I never thought about that way. My parents were protective too. Had they let me make more mistakes rather than trying to help me “save face.” Maybe things could have gone differently, possibly more capable of trusting my own gut.
Plus he got some experience at a young age.
Trying is half the battle!
If you never try, you will never succeed.
That is an awesome business. I never got to do that.
Great tips as always. Even though you don’t post daily like many I think this blog is probably one of the top as far as really giving advice people can use.
Thanks! I need to start posting more often.
I concur. Quality is better than quantity. =)
thanks for your honesty. I belive understanding and admitting your mistakes is the first step for success.
Cheers,
Peter
It is, but you also have to learn from your mistakes. Admitting is a good first start, but learning is the most important step.
You say:
“I would have been able to get the website built for FREE. I could have pitched my vision to a developer and convince him to build the website in exchange for some equity in the company.
If you don’t have much money, don’t worry; you can still start a company. You will be surprised on how many people will trade their time for equity in your company.”
I don’t think this can be done. Can you find one person that will accept this deal? Because I couldn’t find anybody!
Just keep on calling developers. Or try to meet them at local meetups. Sooner or later you will find someone.
If you can’t, it could be the pitch or that they don’t believe that your idea won’t succeed.
Thank you for sharing Neil. Hopefully I won’t do the same. Sure each person had experienced failure in business. But this is a process that must do.
It is, but just try to avoid failures when they could have been avoided.
One of craziest things about you, Neil, is that even with failed business after failed business, you were still being hired as an internet marketing consultant.
You’ve got to love the fact that even if we fail in personal endeavors, we can flip those failures into consulting gigs.
There is nothing better than to find a client making the same mistakes I have made. This way I can say “nooooo don’t do that!” Lol. I’ve had a handful of clients that said “it’s easy for you to tell me x, y, z, because you’re succssful. First off, it’s not true. Second, the internet was easier to deal with in the 1990’s. I still make mistakes and find myself to be better at sizing other people’s business’ up. It’s been easier for me to consult for others than it is for to utilize a lot of my own advice.
Another thing I’d like to point out in terms of the person who said their first businss failure was at age 5, or even you, at age 16, is that you’re destined to succeed. Think about it, although at five years old, that child didn’t realize that the newspaper is obsolete after it’s print date, his/her mindset still understood that people buy and sell stuff. That was still a business minded move, too bad the recycling industry wasn’t as lucritive as it is now. I think anyone who wants to start a business while still under the umbrella of care of their parents, is destined to succeed, even after a few failures.
You can’t give up. If you give up you will never succeed. I just keep on pushing forward until something good happens to me.
Neil,
I make fortune cookies for a living and wish I could go back and change some things also. Failure is what makes us smarter!
That sounds like a fun job. I would put cool notes instead each cookie.
Thanks for sharing your story Neil
Its a refreshing change to hear somebody talk about failures and not just their successes! great post!
No problem. I hope it helps you become more successful.
These are some good tips to do. I do think solving a unique problem is a big thing. Many people try to make companies that are exact copies of other companies and it doesn’t work out well. I’ve never heard of being scrappy, but then again, I know how to develop websites myself so I always just did that.
I disagree. If you don’t solve a problem then you are just creating another useless company that people won’t need.
Bearing failure not only affects specific Aim, it can cause entire facilities to grind to a halt. Don’t address the immediate problem by simply installing a new bearing; investigate the cause of bearing failure. You may be able to prolong bearing life, improve productivity by identifying and resolving issues.
Yep, you have to get to the root of the problem or else it will keep on coming back.
The tip on creating a viral site to start out with is a good one. It is important to never lose hope when starting a new business venture.
You have to keep on pushing forward, or else you will never make it.
I usually have an pessimistic when one day my blog position and traffic is decrease. But that’s what we say an effort. Better effort you do, better result you get. Thanks for your info Neil
No problem. Keep on pushing away and you will do well.
LOL. getting too comfortable. This happens to all first timer entrepreneur. When the competition gets heavy then you know when you are slacking.
It happens a lot. Once you make some money, you don’t want to put in the time to make more.
Robert Kiyosaki says they mostly fail because it’s the wrong offer for the market (no message to market match) but he also says “if 19 out of 20 businesses fail, you need to be ready to start 20 businesses”.
Interesting advice, but with proper research you shouldn’t need to go through 19 other businesses.
It is a numbers game. I have done alright because I have created so many businesses, not because I am smarter than the next person.
Great points on getting too comfortable. The rush of getting a new site launched then seeing traffic is great. After that initial rush its easy to just sit back and not promote anymore.
You should never get too comfortable. If you are, you need to figure out how to get that energy back that caused you to not be comfortable.
The thing about the internet is its still evolving at a young stage for marketers and businesses online. There’s an open market out there you just need to find where they lie at. Websites developing templates for Myspace.com users is a excellent idea which was a huge niche. The only problem is some people didn’t have any Web Designing, HTML, PHP, CSS skills. So now here’s another niche for individuals to take in which was teaching computer language skills for people who want to create templates, websites, etc. It goes on and on. Excellent post Neil!
Good point. Thanks for pointing out that niche. People like Zac Johnson have made hundreds and thousands from the MySpace.com templates.
I was reading about a young girl that makes money doing that too. I can’t remember her name, but she makes millions every year from creating templates for myspace, and facebook users. That’s cool!
Yea, there was an article in the news paper about her.
Well, I’m afraid that sometimes, in pursuit of perfection, I tend to make things way too complicated. I appreciate that you mentioned this point. It consumes a lot of time and effort, and it’s is often totally counterproductive.
K.I.S.S Some of the best ideas are the most simple.
Here are some of the reasons why business my family have had failed.
1) When we had a super market, employees stole from us alot.
2) When we had a pizzeria, we didn’t investigate the pizzeria enough before buying it, and we had to pay back taxes from a previous owner, that really set us back in the hole before even starting the business. Not to mention that on our first day we were really busy, and 2 of the employees decided to quit on the first day, they no-showed which really screwed us over and lost alot of our business clients.
Till then,
Jean
Ouch, that’s a bummer. Talk about bad luck. Unfortunately, employees do cause may challenges, but if you can find the right ones to mold and train, you’ll find yourself living a lot happier.
thanks for sharing neil..
i remember my first venture when i was trying to sell gum at school(i was about10).. the uniqueness of my business model was the country i was attending school in banned chewing gum.(yea shocking) i got my “inventory” during weekly family visits to a neighbouring country. profits and margins were coz my sales were in a currency that was higher than the currency of my inventory.
you must have guessed, mom caught me and that was the end of it.
*hint: not many countries ban chewing gum
ROFL that’s hilarious. Too bad your mom caught you.
Most people don’t think about driving traffic to their website until they launch it.But without it your website is nothing just another uselesss.com project.Find a niche before starting a project because the competition is huge in some niches.One more thing you must be realistic about your goals.If it is your first business online do not attempt to compete with the sharks like Neil did.
Be unique.
You never fail if you never give up if the website failed and you tried somthing new then you never did fail. You business may have not suceeded but you learned alot which means what you suceeded.
Very interesting post here Neil. I will try and learn from your mistakes even though personal experience can be better than anything else!
Thanks
Personal experiences are the best, so if you must, than please make as many mistakes as you can
If you can though, just learn from mine and save yourself the time.
You have mentioned a very good saying:
is solving a unique problem that others haven’t solved yet.
When doing any site, i have to put that in mind, then i am sure it will help.
Yes, put it into actin because without any action, there won’t be any reaction.
I got what it takes to beat my competitors in my blog. I don’t mind whether they have a team of SEO or SEMs I can beat them using my dedication and heart.
I agree 100% with you there, Niheel. I don’t think anyone ever truly succeeded without failing in the beginning.
i think that it is about Business and things you should/shouldn’t do when you start it.
No risk=no reward. So it’s wise to just fail forward fast.