As a lifestyle, entrepreneurialism has always demanded the self-employed be prepared to wear many hats. Business owners often perform executive, sales, managerial, productive and janitorial tasks on daily basis, partly due to pride of ownership and sense of excellence, and partly because technology allows them to. While this gives owners a better sense of all aspects of their businesses, it can also cloud their critical judgment and decision making abilities.
I was once asked to review a new website for an online business. The site took its owner several years to complete. He made it while working two other jobs in order to fund the creation of his own business. Building the website helped him focus on his dream, keeping the spirit alive during those long years of saving money from double shift days with nights and weekends spent on the business. Needless to say, the site is massive. Unfortunately it’s also kinda clunky.
A good SEO is an honest SEO though sometimes one’s honesty is a bear trap waiting to bite you. The site, though it was a labour of love, was not ready for primetime and I had to tell him so. Knowing his business back story didn’t help matters. I hoped he hadn’t quit his day job. Needless to say, the experience left a mark on me. Unfortunately, it was kinda clunky.
The person was a dedicated do-it-yourselfer. Naturally he defended his work saying he had read articles by several SEO experts, including my own and applied the ideas throughout the site. I responded that some of what he had done was ok but overall there were so many unique issues a simple review would not have been useful to him. Eventually, this story came to a happier ending than it could have. He ended up redoing large sections of his website based on suggestions he talked myself and other SEOs into giving him. Thousands of other’s aren’t so lucky.
In a similar vein, yesterday while interviewing Neil Patel on WebmasterRadio our conversation turned towards the need to hire social media optimizers to keep up with the ever expanding social networking space. I found myself wondering how a self employed business person, who also doubles as their own chief bottle washer, makes informed decisions about where to spend a relatively small marketing budget, especially if they are just starting their online business.
Recalling my experience with the emerging entrepreneur and his five-year old dream of building a supply business online, I often wonder how business people new to the web make critical decisions in the first place.
Why an online business? Who told them an online business was a good idea in the first place? Where do they get their initial information from? Are local business centers adequately prepared to help set up online businesses? How complete or up to date are their sources? Are there secondary advisors or professional mentors helping them make sense of the information available to them on and off-line? Is it an SEO’s responsibility to act as online business coach if the business clearly needs it?
The advantages of using the Internet as a means of communication are obvious. The ways the Internet has changed entrepreneurs and their decision making processes is somewhat more subtle. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand that.
For the past fifteen years, the Internet has provided unprecedented opportunities for individuals to create and manage their own businesses. Many online businesses have been created by people who, in most cases, would otherwise not have found a way to satisfy their dreams of self employment. My first attempts at entrepreneurialism nearly two decades ago were both almost dead before they started due to the enormous entry costs associated with opening a brick-and-mortar business.
It is hardly surprising that fifteen years on, the Internet economy is doing pretty well. What is surprising is that it has done so well even as most of us participating in it have been making it up as we’ve gone along. Along with unprecedented opportunities, the Internet has brought us unprecedented situations.
Twenty years ago, nobody could have envisioned a better advertising system than television. This year, more money is going to be invested in online advertising than in will be spent on television ads. Though a major chunk of incoming cash comes from Madison Avenue the bulk of the “new” online money comes from the small to micro-business sector.
I hold a huge respect for small businesses and the people who run them. It’s a tough and sometimes terrifying reality of long hours and sleepless nights. It takes a lot of courage to start one’s own business but more than courage, it takes a lot of knowledge. Making critical decisions about something as detailed as the structure of an online business is tough and, even for experienced webmasters it isn’t getting easier. In most communities there are small business support systems such as a Chamber of Commerce or non-profit community / business development organizations. It would be good to know those organizations were able to offer fundamental information to emerging online entrepreneurs.
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/1665/
