Did you know that most websites will eventually close or get abandoned by their owners within the first year?
In a world where more and more people get connected to the internet, you may wonder why the vast majority of websites fail to reach a significant portion of the internet audience and get abandoned before they make any serious money.
The answer will not surprise you. It’s the lack of originality and creativity. It’s the lack of commitment from the website owners, be it time, effort or financial commitment.
Lack of Originality
One of the most serious mistakes that webmasters often make is that to think that because a particular website has succeeded, they can copy the same model and get a share of its business. Take for example myspace. Since myspace has become popular, a lot of people have tried to duplicate the success of myspace by launching social networking websites similar to it. What they have basically achieved is to get a clone of myspace without adding anything more to it. Now, why would a person want to join a social networking website that is in essence identical to myspace but without the crowd that makes myspace so attractive?
You can find plenty of free or paid scripts nowadays that offer the same features of almost any well-known and successful website. You need a script that would function like digg.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com, etc…? Just search the internet and you’ll find plenty of those scripts. But don’t make the mistake thinking that you can install this script on a website and expect it to be as popular as the initial pioneers. If there is no value-add, there is no compelling reason for anyone to join up a service that is essentially a clone of an already well-established and well-known website. You can find plenty of clones of popular web services that use off-the-shelf scripts but very few to no people visit them and they are essentially dead.
Therefore, stop thinking that you want to be a myspace-like, or digg-like, or any other website-like. Be original. There is nothing wrong with copying an idea but you must add to it. Better yet, you must find a unique idea, a revolutionary idea. And you’ll be on your way to earn lots of money on the internet.
Lack of Commitment
When webmasters start a website, they often underestimate the amount of work that is needed to make the website successful. One of the most challenging tasks is promoting your website, getting people to know about your website and getting decent ranking with search engines. There are other tasks that are also very demanding such as updating your website with new features, new content or fixing bugs, managing your website such as answering emails, keeping your visitors or customers happy so they may return, fighting off spammers, preventing fraud, etc…
The most pressing task when starting a website is promoting it. This requires a huge commitment that you are not likely to see the benefit immediately and that you would need to sustain for a long time. This commitment requires a lot of time and effort and a lot of financial resources.
As an example of the work ahead, you would need to contact other webmasters to exchange or buy links with (this is called link building and is a must to get good ranking from search engines which typically judge a website popularity by how many other websites links to it). You would need to write articles or hire writers to write about your website and submit these articles to press release websites or news-sharing websites. You would need to post or talk about your website wherever you can. You would need to think about any other way to let the word out about your website.
Some of the items listed above may result in an immediate spike of traffic that would die down after a few days and would need to be repeated over and over again. Others would not have an immediate impact (such as link building or other search engine optimization – SEO – techniques) and you are not likely to see any benefits for several weeks if not months.
You also can not do it on the cheap. You would have to spend money initially on your website even though you would not be earning much in return. If you don’t want to spend any money initially, chances are, unless you are extremely lucky, you will not be able to make it. Invest your initial funds wisely. Ask your fellow webmasters about what works and what does not work and spend your money accordingly. You can join a webmaster forum such as WebmasterGround.com to get a tips from other webmasters. Also, don’t spend all your money in one shot. Any initial success may be short-lived. Instead, start slowly, budget for the long term, and spend your money in a sustained fashion. Learn from your experience and allocate your money to promotion techniques that have proven successful. Don’t get too concerned or loose your patience if you don’t get any immediate return.
Sustained commitment is undeniably what makes or breaks a website. If you don’t have the patience to work hard, spend hard and see very little benefit as you go, your website will likely fail to take off as you will quickly loose motivation.
How much time, effort and money should you invest before you know that your idea will not turn into successful website? That’s the million-dollar question. My answer is if you give it your best (do everything that you can to promote it and spend as much money as you can afford) for a full year and your website fails to take off, it may be time to ditch it.
