Sorry about the brief hiatus.
Anyhow, a bunch of us from CP are working on web-based businesses/initiatives and, therefore, several posts in the months ahead will focus on what we’ve learnt. We have not announced any of these projects yet but we will when the time is right.
A few observations:
1) Whilst the barriers to entry are virtually non-existent, the primary side effect is that getting through the white noise is significantly more difficult.
2) Whilst A web-based business (a web-based anything, actually) can exist and develop a reputation exclusively online, I’ve found it makes a ton more sense to promote the initiative offline as intently as you do online. SEO and Adwords is great, but is no replacement for “check out this thing we’re doing online”.
3) Whilst juggernauts form very quickly in break-through web-based businesses, ‘reverse niching’ is a very good tactic for success. Facebook starting out as a social network for colleges before expanding… what’s to stop someone from reversing the project and building a social network for college students only?
4) Building an identity independent of your core project before deciding on the core project helps a lot.
Using Twitter, Capitalist Punks and Project Badass (the code name) as case studies, I’ve learnt the above.
The observations are not unique to online businesses, which is kind of the point. People often fall into the trap of believing because it’s online, business is conducted differently, yet I’ve found the reverse to be true: if it’s online and you conduct your business with a level of service and accessibility brick-and-mortars (should all) strive for, you’re more likely to get my money.
And here in sunny South Africa, where internet penetration and online literacy pales in comparison to the European and North American countries who make up the bulk of the web-published content, we have to be significantly smarter about how we blur the lines between the online and offline world when targeting South African consumers.