Build It And They Will Come - This Ain't Hollywood, It The Internet Jungle

By Author: John Tang
Total Articles: 512
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A new era of the internet has been brewing for some time now. A more visitor focused view has emerged which I credit to web 2.0 . Long is gone the build it and they will come framework, if it even existed. But as the internet evolves, there are still thousands upon thousands of websites still thinking in a backwards theory. The main reason for this is because most people think they can put up a website, sit back, relax and start counting their millions. Unfortunately this is not the case.For every 1 success story, there are at least 100 unsuccessful ventures which have not seen the promised millions. And on the internet, it is not different. In fact the ease of setting up a website has only multiplied the failure rate.

So, why is it that most websites do not succeed? We could ask the same question for any new business offline as well. The law of supply and demand is one factor but there is another underlining problem with most people's thinking process when venturing into a new project.

You have to know how your customers think, what they want and how you can show them that you have what they want.

Let me ...
... give you an example;

Let's say I want to start a video site. The site would gather the best videos from the web according to the parameters I have setup and display them on my site.

I start gathering videos about street races, dirt bikesand etc.

I then notice that my site is starting to get some good traffic, about 100 to 200 people a day.

I start doing online marketing campaigns, and after 6 months I am getting a steady stream of 10,000 visitors a day.

But for some reason I still have not bought my mansion. I forgot to actually come up with a plan to monetize the traffic. OK, so I put some generic Google Adsense on there and it start bringing in about $100 dollars a month (Average Google Adsense income is $20 a month) so I'd be doing better than 80% of people out there.

I want the big bucks now. So I start going after dirty bike companies, street racing accessory companiesand getting some sponsors. Now, I'm making about $2,000 to $3,000 a month.

Then I hit a wall. I've noticed that no matter what amount of money I throw at my marketing campaign, I can not generate more traffic. There are several factors like lack of a huge audience, improper optimization of marketing campaigns, overall lack of interest in my videos. Or maybe the audience of street racing and dirt biking are not the type who watch videos online, but rather be outside instead of in front of a computer whichcan be attributed to my lack of success. But there is one thing I did wrong from the very beginning. I used the Hollywood cliché Build it, and they will come.

The problem is that I did not do much research into the audience that I would have been targeting. I did not understand their mentality. I did not learn their likes and dislikes. I went in head first because I thought people would like the subject. If I had done some research, I would have seen that people love videos of fights more than dirt bikes and other niches that could have been monetized better.

I did not create a business plan, revenue strategy or a customized marketing strategy for my audience.

This concept of creating a website which is built for user experience rather than the owner's own egotistical goals is what Web 2.0 is true about. It is about giving the user the experience they prefer and letting them do what they want to do with the brand. This is what YouTube did and with 1 year of building that site, they sold it for 1.65 Billion Dollars to Google.

I want to talk further about YouTube and the experience they brought to the internet.

First off, youtube was not the first video site,but it was the first video site to listen to the consumers at the highest level. Youtube allows visitors to post their own videos on the site. The power given to the visitors is almost unlimited. Of course, the brand could have suffered dramatically if it went into the wrong direction(such as people uploading porn), but then YouTube would be the biggest unique video porn site. I guess as long as they are making money, they would not have minded.

However, that's not the point I'm trying to drive at. YouTube gave their visitors a blank canvas.YouTube let the users log on to it and let them do what they wanted. Visitors drove traffic to the site by wanting people to see their videos. Visitors were the marketing campaign for the site and YouTube credits the users for the success of the site.

YouTube saw a potential demand for a site that allows people to share their videos. There was no supplier but the idea of allowing visitors to share is what makes them unique.

Now, I know that there were several video sites before YouTube but most of them put ads in front of the videos and sometimes at the end of videos. This was to attract marketing dollars. This is one of the reasons for YouTube's success. Early on,they felt that there should be no ads before or after a video.Just give the visitor the experience the video was suppose to have, and run with it.

It was an instant success. The fact that there were no ads in the videos made the site even more popular.But,how does the site make money? They decided to monetize the site only after the amount of traffic on the site justified it and they had the brand loyalty they needed. They did it smoothly too. They did not impose ads onto the consumer, but rather placed them around the consumer's experience. If you go to the site, you will realize one thing. The site is oriented towards visitors. That's it. It would be a marketer's dream to come in and place ads all round the site but that would have turned the visitors off.

This article is not about getting revenue from a site, but rather getting traffic to a site and keeping it there.

When you communicate to consumers that they are free to use your services and have some great services which will create brand loyalty that the marketers dream of; at that point, it will be up to you to decide on how to create a revenue stream without upsetting your loyal visitors, and still make your sponsors happy. There is a thin line between user satisfaction and sponsor satisfaction, but I believe YouTube has found a perfect balance. Now, it will be up to you to come up with the next great idea and see if you can find the perfect ying to your yang experience.