The Biggest Internet Business Lesson I have Learned

I like to have something going on the side in addition to my regular job. In the past, I’ve run my own websites and designed websites for others. I’ve had a go at a couple of different ways doing things, some of which have worked out to greater or lesser degrees of success. For all of these, I have done all the work myself: graphics, coding, marketing, and SEO (search engine optimizing). In fact, the multidisciplinary aspect about this is what I love so much. I love how it takes all these seemingly separate endeavors and combines them together in an emergent fashion where the whole is remarkably greater than the sum of its parts.

I’m working on something new that I’m not ready to reveal just yet, but before I get to blogging about that I wanted to go over the biggest lesson I’ve learned along the way so far: write a business plan and stick to it. This applies particularly to myself, but I think you might find it useful, as well. Your mileage may vary, as they say.

Write a Business Plan

That’s pretty classic, but until now I never wrote out my plans. Notice I didn’t say you should have a business plan: I said you should write it down. The difference is huge. When your plan lives only inside your head, it’s subject to the mental and emotional weather in there. When I started gvod, I barely had any concrete ideas for it. I knew that web video sharing was going to be big, even before Google Video started making embed codes available. I knew that with such huge amounts of video available, human-filtered video blogs would become a big thing. Other than knowing these things (and I was absolutely right about them!) I didn’t really have a plan or a design. I knew I wanted to have fun and if I could make some money with this new AdSense thing, that would be cool.

I should have thought things out more thoroughly before implementing them. I changed things around way too much and I did it far too frequently, and I know it pissed people off. If I had a plan that I had put some effort into, the ride would have been a lot smoother. I viewed what I did on gvod as an experiment, but I experimented too much when I should have just let things be.

I actually made this same mistake again with a site that I almost launched called Video Bubble. Again, I saw how the video thing was exploding and I wanted a piece of the action. In this case, it was more deliberately focused on having a revenue model, even if it was advertising. I thought I had a niche to serve with Video Bubble, but again I should have been more thorough in my planning by writing things down. I had already bought the domain and hosting, nearly designed the site, and even started a preview blog before I realized that running it would have been too much work for too little money.

For my new venture, I wrote a business plan. The value in actually writing things down is immeasurable. The difference in how this experience feels to me is incredible. It’s very solid and put together, because I literally had to put it together. Writing something down forces you to be specific, logical, and orderly. Not only do I have a business plan, I also have a plan for technical aspects of site implentation and design, a marketing plan, and a document for prewritten content. I also keep a low-tech paper notebook for ideas, lists, and brainstorms.

Stick to Your Business Plan

As I mentioned above, one of my mistakes was changing things around too much, too quickly. This time around, I’m forcing myself to get my plan right the first time and I’m going to stick to it. Writing it down is one way to help make sure that happens. Blogging about this is another, because if anyone cared to they could hold me to my word. Losing traffic and having people upset with you isn’t fun, but that’s what happened before. Gvod might have lasted longer if I hadn’t messed around with it too much and squeezed all the fun out of it. It’s in my nature to be mentally leaping about to the next thing and to the next, and to the next, like a monkey (which, appropriately enough, is my Chinese astrological animal). But you can’t do that if you want to create something reliable and trustworthy. And if you want people to give you their money, you must be reliable and trustworthy. So I’m sticking to my plan, which is coming along nicely so far, and I’ll be blogging about this whole experience as I move forward with it. Sorry I can’t tell you what it’s all about yet, but I can tell you what it’s not about: it’s not about video!