And where do you end?
Most small web-site owners fail because they try to do everything themselves.
Just because the web offers plenty of free resources for learning new technologies, doesn’t mean you should go out and learn all of them and try to build it all yourself.
When you want a phone, you don’t start a phone company. When you want an internet connection, you don’t try to become an ISP. But then when it comes to your web site, why do you try to do everything yourself?
We try to do the web designing, copy writing, the programming, the automation, the database stuff – just about everything – just because it can be done for low- or no- cost. And we lose sight of the core purpose of our ebusiness – which is to develop products and/or services, market them, increase sales and make money.
You should be focusing on developing your business – and not on programming and supporting your web site and your ebusiness.
Make sure you can invest a few dollars upfront. Yes, open source software does help, but go for best-of-breed open source software, and go ahead and also invest a little in commercial software that will help you automate and run your ebusiness.
You will save thousands of dollars in the long run by investing in…
- professional web hosting rather than free or cheap hosting
- purchasing Dreamweaver instead of trying to wing it with Nvu
- buying low-cost professional looking templates than designing the graphics and look-and-feel yourself
- subscribing to one fully integrated, ebusiness automation service like 1SiteAutomation.com rather than trying to pull it off with a mish-mash of 20 different open-source and commercial scripts patched together
You get the drift.
Outsourcing doesn’t mean you have to farm out your work to someone who doesn’t speak your language in some remote corner of the world – it just means getting someone (or something) else – like a professional , or professional software – to do it. Get your friends, colleagues or relatives involved. Do some networking online, ask folks who have been doing it, and you can easily get some good recommendations.
Yes, I know I contradict myself when I say “do not try to be a superhero” – but even Michael Jordan couldn’t do it without great role players by his side.
Beg, buy or barter – but don’t try to do it all yourself.
If it can be automated, you shouldn’t be doing it. If someone else could be doing it instead of you, then you shouldn’t be doing it. If it’s not making you money, you shouldn’t be doing it.
That is the fastest – and probably the only way to succeed in one lifetime.
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