Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

As any good webmaster knows link exchanges are vital to help get your site placed better in search engines and of course for a general increase in exposure. (In case you don’t know, a link exchange means to exchange a link with another website, you link to them and they link back to you.) The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry is huge and there are plenty of firms out there that specialise in placing websites in the top pages of search engine results for specific key words (or at least claiming they can). It’s a controversial industry because often companies offer guarantees of results when they shouldn’t, there are no guarantees with SEO.

When I first started out in web business, or at least with my first personal websites, I never thought about SEO. Most of the time I was indulging in hobbies so I simply created something that expressed my passion. I wrote articles and had friends and other people that shared my passion for the hobby provide content. It was a very natural process, not planned at all. At times I would go out searching for other sites on the same topic as mine and request link exchanges. I did this because I wanted more hits (more glory!) and in my understanding the more sites that linked to my site the better. I had no concept that this was contributing to my site’s SEO.

As a result of my efforts I was having a positive impact on my search engine rankings. I call this organic growth and really this is what Google was made to do, find the best sites based on natural linking patterns. Unfortunately with the advent of PageRank and the extensive research conducted into SEO, more and more people understand how websites are ranked in search engines and thus the natural linking process has become at times unnatural. Webmasters now actively pursue link exchanges with a passion because they understand that more links = better SEO. Often people use methods that try to take advantage of Google’s algorithms to boost their SEO when perhaps their content doesn’t warrant it.

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Download the MP3.

Here is my latest podcast about early adopters and beginners. After recording this audio I realised I never actually defined what an early adopter is, which is quite ironic considering the topic of the podcast. Just in case here is a quick explanation based on my understanding of the term.

Key Term: Early Adopter. You can break down the product or service diffusion cycle into periods based on when a user starts consuming a product or service. It can get quite detailed with many layers but simplicity’s sake I’m referring to early adopters as the very first customers to try a product or service. These people are on the cutting edge of their chosen interest area and consequently are looked upon by others as experts so the word of mouth influence they have is quite remarkable.

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About: One of the most difficult, yet important, issues you must decide as an entrepreneur is how much to charge for your product or service. While there is no one single right way to determine your pricing strategy, fortunately there are some guidelines that will help you with your decision.

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CoolAvenues: Google Inc. has launched a personalized service that will allow users to make a customized web-page instead of simple Google home-page. Available at the URL http://www.google.com/ig, this service will let users to access their email (through gmail accounts), Google News, weather updates, stock-alerts and also RSS feeds from other sites along with its main search box.

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I like this idea - SavvySoloCAST - by Michael Pollock who runs smallbusinessbranding. The SavvySoloCAST will collect audio cast (podcasts) interviews of entrepreneurs.

SavvySoloCAST: Tune in each week as I speak with successful, savvy solopreneurs and recognized experts who know what it takes to build a thriving business. Learn from their success. Be inspired by their stories. And most of all, use what you hear to become more savvy and successful in your own business.

This idea is similar to an idea I wrote about in my previous post, a What do you do with your life? Blog that collects audio interviews with a range of people talking about their lives, what motivates them, how they reached a decision on what they are meant to do in life (if they managed to figure it out!). I suggested that this idea was best left as a not-for-profit operation. Why? Because I don’t think it would be easy to make money from it, which I believe is an inherent problem with a lot of web business ideas.

Michael notes this problem too in this post about his SavvySoloCAST project:

You may remember my goal is to turn this project into a revenue generating entity, and frankly, I’m not sure how I’m doing that yet. The problem with “podcasts” is most of them are free, and so people come to believe all of them should be free. And if they’re not free, well then they’re just lame. Could go the advertising route as many blogs have done but that seems boring to me. More later as it picture gets clearer.

I’ve had numerous conversations with web entrepreneurs about this topic and many of them agree that the revenue models for web business are often poorly thought out and depend too heavily on advertising for success. Back in the DotComBoom it was accepted that you didn’t have to worry too much about your revenue model, it was all about investment capital and IPO’s. Of course this eventually led to a crash and nowadays web business, like normal business, has to show sound revenue models and profit forecasts. They need a sustainable way to make money - who would have thought that!

The Internet has largely been driven by free information. Users expect services and information to be provided for free and are very reluctant to spend. Previously entrepreneurs used the logic that they could capture the market benefiting from network effects and then worry about making money either from advertising or by charging for services.

Unfortunately many web businesses quickly realised that advertising revenue sometimes wasn’t enough to even cover costs let alone make a significant profit, and as soon as they started charging for their services their audience quickly ran off to the nearest copy-cat free service provider out there.

So what is a web entrepreneur to do? You have a brilliant idea that will likely find an audience but how can you make money from it?

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