I recently had an opportunity to sit in on an informal discussion between a successful website owner and a start up business. The discussion focused around how to make the start-up’s website profitable in the shortest period of time. The advice was sound and to the point, yet the start-up raised many objections to the website owner’s advice and I thought ‘wow… here is someone who knows what they are about and how to make a dollar, providing FREE advice to a beginner, yet the advice is going to go unheeded because the start-up isn’t seeing the big picture in an objective way’.
So, I thought rather than explaining the ins and outs of making money online, I would focus on what SHOULD be, for most people, just plain common sense. Sorry to those readers who thought I was going to reveal some secret that only marketing people know… the truth of the matter is, there is NO secret that only marketing people know. They often lack the common sense and objectivity that business owners also often lack when it comes to their own business.
Firstly, we need to be in the right frame of mind, so here is the Golden Rule of Marketing…
BE OBJECTIVE
Ignore what YOU want and instead, focus on what customers/visitors want. We all have different tastes, needs and wonts when it comes to websites. Often, we take ownership of something because we have paid for it. Part of that ownership is a need to control the object, whether it be a TV, a puppy, or a website. The important thing is to avoid the ‘I WANT’ attitude. Instead, get inside the minds of your customers and find out what THEY want. You’ve heard the ‘If you build it, they will come’ line from Field Of Dreams… although that’s not entirely true (you need to Market your website) the point is that if you build something that people WANT, they will buy it. If you build a website with your customer’s needs as the highest priority, then you will have more success than if you built it to make YOUR wants a reality.
Now we are in the right head-space, let’s look at this as we would a To-Do list (we like lists, they make hard things simpler);
- Be Objective (okay, we covered this one)
- Customers are your bread and butter - make them your highest priority
- Listen to advice from experienced and successful people
- Don’t be afraid to duplicate success - If it works for your competitors, don’t be scared to use it
- Never miss an opportunity
- Don’t fear failure - failure only makes you learn that much faster
- Nothing is free - there is always a catch, so don’t act all surprised when you find it!
- Find the right people - don’t manage everything… to borrow a line from the Meaning of Life…you aren’t qualified!
- Take risks - you’ll never be successful if you are afraid to experiment
- Don’t blame others for failure - take responsibility for the end result. Don’t blame the customer for not liking your website, don’t blame the designer if they designed exactly what you wanted.
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket - there are many streams of revenue out there, so don’t always presume that revenue can come from only one source. Look for opportunities to make more money.
- Don’t preach to the masses, preach to the converted - don’t sacrifice your financial security for the sake of ideals that are not popular. You can’t retrain people to think like you. If you are in business, you need to think like the average consumer.
- Every dollar is valuable - you have to earn every single dollar you make. It isn’t free, it doesn’t come without risks and responsibilities, it doesn’t grow on trees. And finally,
- Be a follower before you lead - we all want to be the leader in our chosen field. You have to start somewhere, so follow the crowd until you are in a position to lead them.
Okay, well that’s the philosophy of how to make money, but would the article’s title not suggest that I am now going to tell you EXACTLY how to do it? Sorry, you will have to wait for Part 2 which will be coming shortly. In that article, I will explain the various methods of generating revenue that can be applied to almost ANY website.
Tags: being objective, generate website revenue, Making Money, objectivity and websites, website revenue