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- Jun 11th, 2008
- 12 Comments
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Imagine YOU live in Anycity, Anystate, USA and notice that your local shopping area is not selling Widgets!
EVERYBODY NEEDS WIDGETS!!
so you decide to take the plunge and open up your own local Brick and Mortar ‘We sell the BEST Widgets’ Store. You take another mortgage, borrow from your savings and family and open shop.
Unfortunately, if you are like the majority of small business owners… you do some business, but slowly (or maybe like a stab to your heart quickly) realize that maybe.. just maybe people don’t need widgets as much as you expected, or neglected to consider that the ‘widget store’ a few miles away is in a preferred location, with twice the amount of stock. Another small business. Another failure. Another statistic.
Over high up on my pedestal I look down on the mom and pops.. rather pity (in fact fear comes to mind too).. Don’t you know the place to be is ONLINE? Can you empathize with the hard worker who is putting his guts into this business only to cater to the people in his/her immediate vicinity? Its like being a first hand witness to the Rat Race in action.
BRING IT ONLINE
The motto could be ‘why aim to serve FEW when you can aim to serve MANY’
Typically I educate that the cost of failure when venturing online is almost non existent next to offline businesses that fail. Domain names cost $10, hosting is $120/year, free website builders abound. All you have to lose is time.
That’s if you want to make a small splash on the web. I however, plan to drop a cannon.
As I am currently positioned to dump a sizable amount of money into a website, I am faced with this thought:
Have I been naive all along?
Is there really as much difference to someone putting all their eggs into one expensive fancy website and someone opening up a local store?
Certainly the web has a much much wider market than Anycity, but how hard do you have to work to attract just the RIGHT visitors from the billions of website users, and competing websites. Will my ‘example’ 80,000 web visitors be comparable to the 80,000 pedestrians that walk into your local store? Statistically a greater %age of people who walk in a store will actually make a purchase than actions will result (even it be giving away something free!) from a visitor to a website (I made up this statistic but I am sticking with it). This actually means that you need probably triple to quadruple the quantity of website visitors to reach the same bottom line. This requires proper online promotions and staff to market the proper channels, which means ongoing costs.
Are websites becoming the new Brick and Mortar?
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- 12 Comments
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Are Websites the new Brick & Mortar? | Construction Materials (June 11th, 2008 at 8:19 am )
[...] THE BRICK HOUSE wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptso you decide to take the plunge and open up your own local Brick and Mortar ‘We sell the BEST Widgets’ Store. You take another mortgage, borrow from your savings and family and open shop. Unfortunately, if you are like the majority of … [...]
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hair irons (June 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm )
If you have the know how you can set up sites or stores without a lot of hassle and money. Then in that case throw them up and give it a whirl. But too many times I see people throw away thousands on a site that never gets ranked in the search engines and thus never makes a dime.
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Jeanette (June 12th, 2008 at 6:24 pm )
So true. Rather than spending good money after bad on “trying” different sites, I think resources are better spent on working with a mentor. After all there are a lot of good ones out there who can save us all(not just the newbies) a lot of time, effort and money!
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Ady (June 12th, 2008 at 7:48 pm )
I think the first 2 comments are very true, but I get the feeling that Andrea is not just taking the “plunge” in the dark. From all the blog posts and experience Andrea has - I don’t think Andrea would invest large sums of money without first testing that the idea has solid potential and without first working out the idea with her various “secret admirers” (aka mentors).
Good luck Andrea - let’s hope the world is ready for you!
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Mr X (June 13th, 2008 at 4:29 am )
If you have an offline business and you perform your activities to average standards you will probably make money.
If you perform your activities to average standards online you might make some money you might not but you wont see any of the big numbers you hear and see on CNBC about the successful internet startups who make billions … To get to that level being average isn’t gonna cut it … even if you have millions in the bank to spend on marketing consultants like Andrea Yager …
To make it online you’ve got to be more than just great. You have to be super fantastic great. Your websites, your seo, your ppc, your unique selling proposition, your critical non-essentials, your product launches, your email campaigns, your product development, your blog posts, your front end products, your backend products and services, your marketing your whatever must be super fantastic great.
Andrea if you get your new venture to the super fantastic great level you can take advantage of the true potential of the internet to yield higher profits than you could ever produce offline, but if your venture is anything other than that you’d be better of investing your money in blue chip companies.
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Andrea (June 13th, 2008 at 9:27 am )
Thanks everyone for your feedback.
I know my knowledge my be ‘head & shoulders’ above many others .. but as I mentioned in a few posts past.. talent, even if you are doing the right things, doesn’t always get noticed. Well maybe this is not what I said, rather a variation. How many (talented!!) aspiring actors, musicians, and yes businesspeople are there and how many will actually get recognized? True the web opens up many more opportunities, but there are other ingredients such as timing, luck, and divine providence
Ady thanks for your vote of confidence and Mr X - well you have continued to thrill me and frighten me at the same time.
Keep it up.
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Dental Websites (June 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm )
Websites can be a way to earn money and i think this will bring more awareness to people in the coming years and everything in this world is becoming available online. This facilitates the life of people in many ways. Really nice article you wrote and consideration made. Thanks.
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SEO India (June 17th, 2008 at 9:38 pm )
Awesome blog.. i really enjoyed reading it…
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A Mesa SEO (June 20th, 2008 at 3:11 am )
This seems like a bit of a stretch, but it was an interesting read!
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Andrea (June 24th, 2008 at 6:33 pm )
totally a bit of a stretch. Love having fun and being a bit ridiculous here. Thanks for joining.
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Andy the Air Conditioning Expert (June 26th, 2008 at 2:29 am )
As long as you know how to manage your website, I guess you’ll definitely earn more income. Interesting post and very informative.
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Breakdown Cover (July 7th, 2008 at 9:18 am )
The problem is, ost people have considered haveing a website to make them money.
There is so much competition out there, that it is juts as hard as bricks and mortar. In fact only 10 places per first page of google, for any business worldwide.Mark
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