My First Dot Com: Idea to Implementation
My first entrepreneurial endeavour has been a website. It was fairly easy for me to come to this decision mainly because I’ve always loved web development and design, so I had a natural bias toward an online business venture.
Why do a website?
I based my decision on the criteria below:
- Something that I had a passionate interest in, so that as I worked on it I would be having fun.
- Needed a business that required very little start up capital. Being a new graduate, lots of money isn’t something I have at my disposal.
- Utilize my skills. I am fairly good at software and not too shabby in design as well
With all these in mind and the motivation I felt from the success of so many other online businesses to date I decided to try my luck at a website for my business venture, my first dot com.
Choosing a topic for the website
This is a very important step. I’ve read in many blogs about the importance of doing something that you are genuinely interested in. I have to agree with this belief. I wrote a list of things I like to do while I am online or on the computer along with the relevant websites associated with each item on the list. An example list is as follows:
- news - digg.com, slashdot.com
- blogs - shoemoney.com, smallfishbigmoney.com
- misc - facebook.com
- web and graphic design - tutorialized.com, braineak.com
A quick look at the online trends and a social networking site seemed like the way to go. In the end I chose a simple yet interesting topic and decided to take the social networking approach.
Check out the competition
Everyone says it and I will repeat it, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Now that I had decided on a website and a concept behind it, I paid numerous visits to as many sites that were similar to the one I intended on developing. My belief is that if these sites are operational and successful then for mine to even stand a chance it must at least match the look and basic services of these sites. Turn your competition into your comrade, by looking for what is missing in their sites and making a list to incorporate it into yours. This will help to get users interested if you offer something that is lacking in the other options.
That’s it for the idea portion of my first dot com adventure. It all boiled down to three steps
- choosing to do a website in the first place based on my current income and skills
- choosing a topic that interests me and that I am passionate about
- Learning from the big guys that have already established themselves
In my next post I will talk about my implementation experiences. Thanks for reading.
