| A Developer's Dilemma: Profit vs. Progress |
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As a kid when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always answered 'rich'. It seemed logical, since the people that I was supposed to look up to all had one thing in common, they were rich (or at least richer than I was). So upon finding out that the richest man in the world got that way by developing software, my career path was set, especially since I had already fallen in love with computers by that age. I'm sure I'm not alone in that story, but that is how I got into this business. What does this have to do with the article? Well, this article is about the series of choices a successful site owner must face. So whether you already own a successful website, or some hope to someday, stick around as I hope that some of the choices I was faced with can help you. It all began in high school when I started about a dozen different websites over the course of my final two years of school. Money was not very important, as I really didn't have bills to pay at that age, not to mention the fact that I enjoyed everything I was doing. As I got older, and got a reputation for being good with web development & marketing, I had companies willing to pay me to help with their sites. It was quite flattering to be in high school and have companies wanting to pay you 20 times what your friends were getting paid. It almost felt like I didn't deserve the money, despite the fact that I was able to triple or quadruple the companies investment in a matter of weeks. The fact was, I just loved doing it, and if I hadn't received those calls, I'd almost certainly be doing those same things for free anyway. By the end of my senior year, I got in the habit of expecting those sorts of returns for my time invested. I read countless books on business, attended seminars, and it all lead me to believe that I should feel entitled to the money I received, because it is after all work. (a word which I grew to loathe). I was a student of marketing, and wanted to understand how I could take that next logical step. I grew my business to impressive proportions (to me atleast), and it seemed I was at a brickwall, and could not go it alone any longer. So now that I had graduated college, moved out to attend cothe university of my choice I now had a stack of bills to pay every month,so the ability to simply work for the fun of it became slightly more illogical. The next question became how can I continue the business without spending all day working to keep it going, all the while juggling classes, trying to have some sort of social life, and enjoying myself all the while. It quickly became clear that I would have to pump more money out of my websites by putting up more advertisements and generally doing all those little things I once prided myself on abstaining from. I should say up front that this was not a greedy move, but one made out of necessity. I was investing ALL of my time into maintaining the business and keeping the websites running smoothly, and frankly needed a break. In the end my time was finite, and I still had that dream of getting rich somehow. I just did not understand the total costs involved in making this move. As I started getting serious about monetizing my sites, I stumbled across a form of marketing online that holds paramount the ability to get the most money out of each and every one of your visitors at all costs. You can tell these sites by their single page sale pages, with long drawn out benefits of some product, testimonials telling how great their product is, and then when you get to the bottom of the page you see the author smiling and an 'Order Now' button... and maybe he even took the time to scan in his signature to make it look more professional. It is the concept of treating your visitors like lambs for the slaughter that I was so repulsed by, but there seemed to be so many successful people following this method that I thought it couldn't be wrong. There is a whole range to this, the most tame being perhaps Adsense ads, or the product reviewer gives overly positive reviews as a result of getting free stuff. Don't get me wrong, we all have to pay our bills somehow- but don't do it by hurting your users. Once you've established a base it can be very tempting to go down this road, all it takes is copying a little more HTML or sending out a mass email, and you have a few thousand dollars extra in your pocket at the end of the month. What I am saying is to take a step back and to understand just what made your site so successful in the first place. You most likely didn't try to take advantage of your users, or else they wouldn't have come in the first place. The cost of hurting your community will always outweigh any short term profit you can book by using them. I have seen countless websites begin to move down this path, and slowly deteriorate. I've always felt the need to say something to these people as it is happening, but advice like this is almost always taken as critical, and personal as to the site owner I'd be attacking their business skills. So the purpose of this article is to hopefully catch one or two site owners before they fall down this slippery slope. It always seems so innocuous to add a small advertisement here, and see your revenue grow and then a small promotion there which you know in your gut is disingenuous to your user, but decide to go forward. Perhaps the reason Google was so successful has more to do with their 'Don't be evil' than people know. I suppose what I am saying here can be applied to more than web sites, but that is where my experience lies and would not want to step too far. That slight bit of evil that is in the choice to add an extra advertisement when the money isn't really needed, is truly remote, but how you react to that slight little feeling can be the difference between continued success and failure. Going in the opposite direction and siding with your users will pave the way for future growth, however difficult it is to detect the positive impact is rest assured it is there. In the end I made many of these mistakes, and couldn't see clearly just what made me successful in the first place. I just hope you will give these same decisions a little more thought when you come across them, and not opt so quickly for the easy road. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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