Successful Sites vs. Successful Businesses

Is it possible to have a successful website and not have a successful business? I certainly think it is. Here's what I think the qualities of a great site are:

• Provides unique and valuable information


• Encourages frequent visits


• Users feel like they are a part of a "community"

If you have those things you will likely eventually have a successful site on your hands. The most popular forms of sites that meet those requirements are:

• Blogs


• Forums


• Wikis


• News sites


• Social bookmarking or tagging sites


• Social networking sites


• P2P file sharing sites


• Podcasting and Vodcasting sites

These sites are a crucial part of the internet, but aren't necessarily good businesses. You are basically forced into using advertising as your ONLY source of revenue. By doing that you really limit yourself to:

• AdSense (or other PPC ads)


• Affiliate links


• Sell your own advertising

Unless you have an IMMENSE amount of traffic, it is hard to generate any significant amount of money from those sources.

Those types of sites are best used to SUPPLEMENT your business. For example, this blog is not a successful business for me (I think I've made like $10 in AdSense since I started the blog about a year ago). However, it does an amazing job of introducing me to other entrepreneurs and promoting my businesses through another channel. In that sense it is a very successful website and a successful tool for my businesses, but the blog in and of itself is not a successful business. Make sense?

Reality is that most successful online businesses have some other source of revenue, be it by selling a product (Amazon), service (eBay), or information (ESPN Insider). The best online businesses combine the aspects of a successful site with their revenue model to differentiate themselves.

A great example is Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble. They both sell the same books online, but Amazon absolutely crushes B&N in part because of the community aspect they create by allowing users to review each book. I don't know about you, but I never buy a book without checking the user reviews on Amazon. They've managed to differentiate themselves from the competition by creating a reason for people to visit their site other than to buy a book.

There's nothing wrong with having a successful site - it's an amazing accomplishment that you should be proud of. Just don't expect to quit your day job because of it any time soon.

**EDIT**
I'm not saying that it's IMPOSSIBLE to turn a successful site into a successful biz or that if you have a successful site that it CAN'T be a successful biz, just that it's MORE DIFFICULT to succeed if advertising is your ONLY source of revenue. You should certainly try to turn it into a successful biz. I recently wrote an article about doing just that - I just think it's waaaay more difficult than having your own revenue source.

As a YE looking to get a quick return on your investment, I think we spend a disproportionate amount of time building great sites and not enough time building successful biz's. Too much time focusing on traffic and not enough on dollars. That's where the inspiration for this post came from.