Where Is The Difficulty Of Online Entrepreneurship?

Quite a lot Consumer Seeing the overnight success of Twitter and Facebook, I thought, "this is too simple, and I can do it." If only that were the case.

In fact, network It's really hard to start a business. What I am talking about here is not technology (though this part is also very difficult), it is the commercial operation part: that is to establish user groups and find ways to make money. These are the real difficulties.

Whether emerging companies or already mature enterprises, if you want to build a successful network. media Assets, the following are the indisputable facts that must be faced.

All good domain names have been snatch. All the real domain names have been snatch, and every such domain name is expensive. This means that when you choose a domain name, you are either creating words or creating words (like YouTube) or intentionally spelling mistakes (such as Digg). But these names are not easily remembered by users and are not easy to input correctly.

Once you have found the right domain name and set up a website, you want to get media coverage, which is another problem. The modern public relations channel is in a state of rupture. People don't read newspapers very much, and newspapers only cover some news. If the founder is not a successful success, if you fail to win the venture, your business will not become news. Blogs can increase exposure, but blogs have limited audiences.

Offline advertising has little effect on increasing exposure. Don't spend money on billboards, TV commercials, radio or print media ads, because which one will not increase your audience. People's concerns about offline advertising will not translate into their online actions. Spending money in such a marketing way is doomed to failure.

Online advertising is not that effective either. Banner ads on the web will not work because no one will click on them. Search advertising is a good choice for one-time visitors. (if you do have something to sell, and those visitors want to arbitrage), they will not turn into a system visitor. In this way, you can only win one user at a time, which can not create a large user base for you.

Optimizing search engine is a choice, but its utility is limited. Of course, you can search for visitors everywhere, and visitors increase as well, but there will not be direct traffic and no fixed visitor group. To make matters worse, long tail searches such as "German shepherd's daily supplement of vitamins" are also very competitive. Only Wikipedia can build itself into a top-level website through such search engine optimization. Even so, Wikipedia also needs the help of Google (Google) 2% traffic.

If your company is a mature media company, your offline brand will not necessarily bring you a large number of ready-made online users. The Internet is a completely different medium. Some old media brands have encountered many difficulties in transformation. Look at the online business operation of some newspapers and magazines, and the answer is not known.

As far as online business is concerned, digging the corner of competitors will not result. The two most traditional way of fighting for market share, that is, price and convenience, is not applicable to online businesses. The Internet media itself is free, and entering every website is a click of the mouse. The quality of website itself is the only way to get users. Your website must be able to give users a different experience, which is not easy.

If you can win over your users through all the above obstacles, your return is low fees. The rate of online advertising is priced according to CPM. In general, the average CPM of typical news or media websites, such as web search or e-commerce, is between 1 and 2 dollars. But if it's social networking, forums or other social networks, CPM will drop to 0.15 to 0.30 dollars. That is to say, if you want to make money, you must have a large number of page views.

In other words, Internet media entrepreneurship is not suitable for cowards. First of all, it is not easy to win a certain group of users, let alone achieve real profits. At present, e-commerce and Internet search are successful examples of the Internet media. Of course, some successful network media also run many other businesses.

So next time you see a company build a website, win a big market and start making money, don't mention it because everything is too easy or just luck. Instead, you should admire the success achieved in such a difficult environment.

Markson is one of Blekko's founders and vice president of marketing, Blekko is a search engine company in Wood, California, and is still in the secret operation mode.