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Money, Media and the Other Thing

Barack used all sorts of media to his advantage and had a great budget to back it up.  So, what does this have to with a blog about website development?

Budget.  You should have a realistic budget for your website.  If your website is your business or an extension of your business, you must have a realistic budget; otherwise you are literally wasting your money.  Ask John McCain.  Every dime he spent on his campaign is wasted money—because he lost.  He gets no value out if it.  None at all. 

So, how does this factor out?  Let’s take a quick look:  It is written that Obama had four times as much money to spend as McCain.  So, McCain (as the loser) can write one book about losing the presidential election.  How many books do you think Barack Obama can write about winning the Presidency and the next four years being a President?  A lot, right?  So, do you see how putting up a good strong front with a healthy budget is really going to pay off for you later?

Having a lackluster budget which will give you a lackluster website will create a losing situation for you.  Therefore, you have wasted your money.  If you have a budget of about eight hundred dollars for your website, you have lost and wasted your money.  If your budget for your website is close to five thousand dollars or more, you have a good chance of winning. 

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I saw a BMW the other day from about forty feet away.  I saw a Volkswagen Beetle from about two hundred feet away the day before that.  And the day before that, I saw a PT Cruiser about three hundred feet away. 

I’ve ridden in about a half dozen Chevrolet, Ford and GM cars in the past several months and I couldn’t recognize one if it was staring me in the face. If it sat on me or ran me over, I wouldn’t know if it was a Ford Capri or a Chevy CheesePuff.  (As you can see I just made up some names; that’s because I couldn’t recall any actual car names and models for this blog entry!)  But a PT Cruiser, Volkswagen and BMW come to mind so easily.  They come easily because they are designs that are so recognizable.

Volkswagen doesn’t need a logo. It is a logo!  The PT Cruiser is a logo.  These models have not changed in years and it is so easy to recognize them from so far away.

If I saw a well detailed Volkswagen Beetle, I would not know in what year the car was produced. It could be a 2002 or a 2008.  I wouldn’t know. I’d have to ask.  But not true with so many cars out there.

I saw a Honda Accord the other day about twenty feet away and going about forty miles an hour past me, but I knew immediately that the car was at least ten years old.  I knew this because Honda Accord has changed its body style about ten times for the past ten years.  Each new model dates itself.  How crazy is that?  (By the way, I recognized the Honda Accord because I had previously owned one, otherwise it would have been just another car to me.)

If you have memorable design (that is consistent and uniquely you) you don’t have to work that hard on building your branding.  It comes naturally.

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I get a lot of calls from people who have a great idea and want a website but they really don’t want tell me this great idea (for which I need info to develop or even discuss their website).  First and foremost, congratulations on your great idea; but its usefulness is only to you and maybe to the 0.0000001% of people you will encounter.  In other words, no one is going to take the few words you say about your idea and suddenly run with it.

If your concept is truly a good idea, only you know how it will function, who the target market is and how to develop the process.  There were plenty of MP3 players out there before the iPod.  Was that a great idea that someone could turn with just a few words?  No, the iPod is a product backed by a series of decisions

Secondly, you are telling a web designer, not some intellectual property stealer.  In other words, we (web designer) are in the business of developing website, not stealing intellectual property.

I recently had someone call me about an idea about a website which was about baby sitting schedules.  The conversation is somewhat in-depth, but when they gave me the written outline (which was scribbled in notebook paper, scanned and then e-mailed), it was in some type of code—which I could not understand.  The babysitter was now the “said client” and all sorts of jargon to hide what was really going on.  Even knowing the background of the project (from our initial phone conversations), I could not make heads or tails of the project based on the cryptic outline I received through the e-mail.  I quickly passed on the project. I’m still not going to steal it.  It’s a good idea, but a web designer is not a baby sitter scheduler entrepreneur.

In sum, don’t get in the way of your great idea.  If you really have doubts about divulging the secrets of your great website idea, then ask to see the web designer in person and develop a trust with that web designer over several meetings.  Don’t try to get interested web designers over a phone call and a cryptic e-mail.  The only ones you will get that are interested in your project just may be the one will steal your project.

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Don’t fall into the trap of “making money on the internet”.  Ask anyone running a legitimate business online—either solely an internet business or an online version of their brick and mortar store—they will tell you that it’s nearly a full time job to run the online business.  It’s not a passive pursuit where you kick back and watch the money roll in.

I get many calls from people wanting to develop an online business as a “side business.”  It’s not impossible but very, very tough.  And many times they fall into the trap of selling ads on their website with the thinking that it will be easy passive income–even if it only turns out to be few hundred dollars a month¹.  (Don’t get me started on what it takes for people to actually get to your site and everything else that’s involved in generating that “passive income.”  That’s another article.)

I recently got a call from a young man who wanted to create a website, so he could sell Google Ads.  This always sends off warning bells in my head because it tells me that the person is really just grasping at straws and looking at the whole internet backwards. 

To start, you first should have a great site that gets lots of traffic before trying to sell ad space.  That’s usually how it works—especially in the off-line world.  Any advertiser is going to ask what your numbers are: meaning how many people read your publication, what the target market is and so on.  However, with Google Ad Words and Ad Sense, much of that has changed².

Without having an existing website, my phone caller wanted to have one developed, so to sells ads (GoogleAds).  No matter what his idea was, I knew it was not going to be good because of this backwards thinking.  Anyway, when he told me he wanted to showcase Windows Paint images, I just cut him off at the pass and told him that I was unable to do his project and kindly cautioned him about the pitfalls of “making money on the internet.”

I have dozens of examples of people who have called me with this type of backwards thinking.  If you read other articles you may find I have brought up those examples from time to time.  It is a common theme.

1. To even make a few hundred dollars a month on many online ad programs, it takes a lot of click-throughs,–somewhere in the tens of thousands.  Each click will only be a few pennies.  Do you have that much traffic?
2. The special novelty about Google Ads (as part of Google’s AdSense program) is that they (Google advertisers) do not care how much traffic you get because the ads are not paid for until someone clicks on the ad.  This is not a piece about Google Ads and how they work, but this prospect wanted to sell ads on a website not yet developed.  This is all backwards thinking.

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Henry Paulson and George Bush obviously have never taken a marketing class or even consulted with a web or interactive designer before pitching this 700 Billion Dollar Bail Out to the American public. If they did, this bill would have passed with flying colors. Let me explain:

They (the bill’s supporters) were pushing a whole lot of numbers without a whole lot of explanations. They should have set up some kind of website like www.700BillionDollarRescuePlan.com and put up a short presentation on how this bill would be good for the American public.

They could have visually explained how this bill would be an investments package, where the government is going to “buy” the bad mortgages now, allowing the banks to offer more credit (being relieved of the bad loans) to the American economy, and then later sell those mortgagees once the market rebounds.

This would have proved a much more successful approach, rather than standing before a podium with a microphone and tell the people that they wanted to pass a 700 billion dollar bill to help the financial markets. And oh, by they way, it’s a three page document.

I believe Newt Gingrich had a website when trying to push the “Contract with America.” I understand time was of the essence for the Bush Administration, but they still could have pulled off what I had explained.

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