I saw an article in the New York Times the other day about working 10 hours a week and making $10 million a year. The article profiles Markus Frind, who started an online dating website, Plenty of Fish. The main thrust of the article is that Markus barely works at all and just sits back raking in cash. Are there any other web entrepreneurs out there who are sick and tired of hearing this story over and over? This is all I ever hear, and I secretly dream about it while working on my projects, but it doesn’t match up well with the real world of late nights and no money.
Hmm, let’s look through the NY Times article and see what the keys are to creating a cash-cow website:
- Just sit down and create a site as an experiment in teaching yourself a new programming language.
- Ignore the interface and usability. If stuff looks bad, just say, “Users don’t care about that.”
- Forget about customer service and moderation. Crowdsource it to the forums.
- Don’t charge users for anything. Rely 100% on advertisements.
- Lie in your hammock and collect checks.
Ok, I’ll admit, this is the life I want to live. This is the dream of all us web guys. However, I’m starting to suspect that the vast majority of “successful” web entrepreneurs invest a lot more effort and reap much smaller rewards. How many of us out there are pulling in $50, $100, or dare I say it, $500 a month from our projects? If I could get Obsidian Portal to generate $100 a month, I would be ecstatic. After paying off the hosting fees and whatnot, my take-home would probably be less then $1/hr. Still, it’s a goal to shoot for.
We can’t all be Digg, YouTube, or Facebook, but that’s OK. Success has different levels, and if we can just generate enough income to justify the amount of time we spend working on the sites we love, then that’s success. I just wish the media would profile a few more of us who live on the wrong side of profitability, work until 3:00 in the morning, and jump for joy with every subscription or CafePress T-shirt we sell.
Are you like me, barely scraping by (or not, as it were)? Drop a comment when you take a break from furiously writing code or begging someone not to cancel their account…
January 18th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Sorry for the last post, slip of the keyboard.
Great post! I, like you have been slaving away on a new project for over a year now, and we are nearing launch. There is so much that goes into it! From development to marketing, from business development to legal. I know many other people are going through the same thing, I’m just glad you posted about it.
Keep up the good work,
Chris
January 18th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Indeed, taking an online venture from zero to success isn’t just an overnight effort or 10 hour a week for a couple of weeks, there are definitely far more than that, most of the success stories reflect only a portion of the actual situation, thus creating a false perception for general public that is not fully involved in it.
January 19th, 2008 at 1:09 am
“- Ignore the interface and usability.
- Forget about customer service and moderation.”
“Ok, I’ll admit, this is the life I want to live. This is the dream of all us web guys.”
Really is it (the dream)? How sad!