Ok. So you are at home, you have no money. You have read all the existing “Y and X
created
this website in a garage and got reach beyond their wildest dreams” and you think “wow, this web 2.0 is the next big thing! This is my chance to make it big!”
Well…I am afraid it is time to bring you back to earth... and this will help you.
Here is my list of lies about web 2.0 we are supposed to believe, but shouldn’t:
- People like to share
No. People like to acquire. They like to acquire possessions, knowledge, friends, love…and everything else. People only care for themselves. Even when they’re sharing, as any good Buddhist book would tell you, most people are doing it for the good feelings that this sharing gives to them. Repeat after me: people are selfish. We only care for what we want, and how we feel. Nobody cares about you, your projects or website. If you are able to align people’s interest with your project, people may share something with you or others. If not, forget it. Re-read this paragraph. It is the most important one of the whole post.
- You can do it in a few months
Again. If you don’t have the money, it may take you years. If you have the money, it may take you days. Everything is possible. Do you have the cash to compete?
- You’ll get venture capital, they’ll fund it, and you’ll all get rich with your great idea!
In my view, seeking venture capital is akin to selling your soul to the devil, most times without getting to sleep with Angelina first (believe me, I tried). Venture capitalists are there to make money, as vultures are here to eat corpses. VCs are usually very smart people. Many smarter than you. Do you really think that they’ll give you a chance if they can get away with the whole cake? Are you prepared to read and understand a complicated partnership contract? Do you have the money to pay a good lawyer to analyze it for you before you sign? (they do) Are you sure you are ready to fly with the vultures? If not, stay away from them.
Some people are like a vacuum cleaner. You talk to them and you are already losing money. Stay away from that kind of people. Don’t try to run before you walk. (But don’t worry too much about them, VCs will only talk to you for 2 secs when you have already shown the viability of your project at least with a) profits or b) a community in the thousands of members)
- Building a community is easy
Oh, man, what the hell have you been reading? Building a community is incredibly difficult in most circumstances. It requires skill in marketing, psychology, logistics, and a sense of empathy that borders the telepathic powers. It also requires patience.
Unless you can bribe people to be part of your project ($$$) or you are Google and you can almost force them to do it because you’ve surrounded them in a circle of services they can’t live without, (if you are reading this post, you are a few billions short of doing that probably) you don’t have a chance.
Besides, have you tried to create a professional website, send a newsletter, set up and populate a forum with entries, network with community members on Skype to encourage them to share and communicate, set up a parallel blog for your project, populate it with posts, send a few hundred emails around, submit your posts to social bookmarking websites, write articles to promote your project, eat and sleep…have you? Because if you haven’t, you should know that just that is what lies ahead for you. You can wave goodbye to your social life. Do you still think that building a community is easy?
- You can build a community quickly
No. It depends how well you do it, and how much money you have to create buzz around the web. Without that, you are and will be nothing. Even if you are very lucky and have some friends at Digg or Reddit, your traffic won’t stick, unless there is something incredibly valuable for them, perfectly presented, that they can’t get somewhere else and is incredibly easy for them to get.
- Anyone can do it
Not true. To make all this work you need Business, Psychology and Technology skills, to start with. You also need real life experience dealing with people, so you can detect when they’re lying to you (this will save you time and disappointments). You need a strong will. You need focus. You need to be decisive. You need to be a risk-taker. Are you still up for it? Do you have all that?
- In design, simplicity is always better
No. The need for simplicity in design is proportional to the intellectual capacity of your community members/target market.
Certainly simple layouts look quite nice. But if you have plenty of information to show, and your target market appreciates quick access to that information, you are better off showing as much as you can of it right away, to ensure that they click on something and stay in your website. Everything is relative. (By the way: never believe lists or articles from people that seem to know better (like this one). Rules are not set in stone. Be sceptical about everything. Test everything by yourself)
- Everyone is motivated by money. If I offer enough money, people will come.
No. Everyone is motivated by different things. Even if you offer a lot of money, most educated people using the internet don’t need your money. Unless you can offer them something else that is of value to them, they won’t come to your website/community. The problem is that you won’t know what is important to them, and most of the time they won’t tell you (don’t we all hate polls?). There’s where your telepathic powers will come handy.
- You have to use Flash, childish looking icons and graphics to make it look 2.0
Again. It depends of your target market. If you use childish looking icons, a big chunk of your market may be put off. Maybe you live in a world of MFC websites (“made for children”) but not all of us live or like to interact with that kind of designs. If you use animations where they’re not needed, you’ll put people off. You may like cartoon aesthetics. Not everyone else may.
- You can be the next Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Larry Page (Google) or one of the youtTube founders (what were their names?)
Jimmy Wales is a smart man that has tried lots of different things in his life. Some have work. Many others have not. What he has done is not easy. You just don’t know about his failures. It doesn’t mean he didn’t have them. Remember that.
Larry page and company had a background that allowed them to create something people sorely needed, at the right time in the right place. I heard in the grapevine that the trend-setting simplicity of Google’s design was due to the lack of knowledge of HTML by its founders. In any case, Google’s founders were able to surround themselves with the right people to get to where they are, that mean they’re either incredibly smart, or incredibly lucky (I would guess the first one)
Yes, you can do it. But never think it’ll be easy. And remember that for every Wales and every Page that make it, there are +5.000.000.000 people who didn’t make it. My advice: be realistic, start small, choose your niche carefully, build from the ground up and work smart, not only hard.
- It is an open field, everyone is welcome
No. There is an invisible elite on the internet you should know about. There are two kinds of huge readership websites that you would like to get linked from, in order to get traffic for you new project.
One: newspapers and other established media companies with a strong presence online. (e.g. The Guardian, CNN) They won’t link to you easily.
Two: top bloggers. They won’t link to you easily either, unless your cash talks to them first. As in anything else in life, their ego has been multiplied for a factor of 1000 for every 10 visitors to their blog that they have gotten. Don’t believe me? Try it! (exception Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. They responded to my emails. They turned me down, but they –or someone on their behalf- responded)
- Corporations are not interested in your niche, so they’ll give you time to grow.
Corporations are interested in taking everything they can get. If you are still having a chance, it just means that your market is so tiny that they haven’t paid attention to it. YET. But they will at some point. In that moment, you may have worked X years in your project, and suddenly, when you are already running out of steam and illusion in the whole thing, some giant multinational comes with a stupid name and a few millions in advertising budget and blows you out of the market in a second.
You may have a first mover advantage. So what? That doesn’t mean what it used to. Get a good backup plan. Don’t leave your job just yet...
- People will be loyal to your community
No. People are not loyal to anything. In all spheres of life, people are only loyal to their self interest, and thus will leave you in the blink of an eye if and when a better offer comes along. No doubt about it.
- You won’t make any enemies! It is about people! In web 2.0 we are all friends!
So you think “If I go after a niche that nobody is paying attention to, I offer something unique, I shouldn’t bother anyone” Wrong. Some people want your market, even if they have not paid attention to it before. Some other people are plain losers, and like to undermine other’s efforts for no reason (like a bastard who reported me for spam and cost me my hosting and email address). You’ll have at least those two enemies as soon as you put something up on the internet. If you are making it right, you’ll have enemies. And the better you do it, the more you’ll have.
Neither in web 1.0, nor in 2.0 or 54.0 people will let you succeed without paying a price, if they can help it. We are always competing. We all want to be the best and only. And some play way too dirty. It is people’s nature. Watch your back.
- You’ll be bought by Google
Dream ooon! I know you heard the American Dream speech too. I know you’ve seen on TV the people who won the lottery as well. Well, I have news for you: Google and the other big potential purchasers have better things to do than buying your website, unless you have achieved critical mass (by the time of youTube’s acquisition, it is said that the site had hundreds of thousands of visits) This is not a lie in itself, as it is a myth. For every company that Google buys, 92837943 were not bought, and many disappeared never to be heard of again. Remember that when you are landing from your rosy cloud. The American dream is a lie. And Santa Claus and the fairies don’t exist. Sorry. Eventually someone would have had to tell you anyway.
- You can do most of this with free tools
Hahahhahha. You must be joking. Most free tools are crap, most of the time. They’re usually limited in the time you can use them for, or in their functionality, unless you buy the “premium” version. ($$$).Getting those tools for free is illegal. Hosting is not free. Domain registration is not free. Your time is not free. Have you ever heard of opportunity cost? It is the value of the time spent in something, compared with the returns of the investment of that time doing something else. If you didn’t understand very well this previous phrase, don’t worry about it, your opportunity cost is very low.
Hey. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you can’t do it. After all, I am still trying to do it. And I believe I will.
I am just saying that you have to be realistic, and that a post like this can save you endless hours of frustration, hard work, broken dreams, and the occasional stab in the back…on your way to the top. As the founder of Trendirama.com, I have been also invited to believe these lies, and learnt from experience. Appreciate these words. They’re golden knives. They hurt you, but they’re golden nonetheless. Good luck!! (hey leave your comment if I forgot anything and I'll do a better post)
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