Snap! Websites
Work in progress
Snap! C++
Work in progress
Snap! C++
Submitted by Alexis Wilke on Thu, 09/30/2010 - 19:04
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Most of us will fail at one thing or another before achieving great success. You have to realize that if your very first business venture is a top success, you've got very lucky. No! I'm not saying that it never happens, but it is not the usual case. The one main reason is that you need to gain experience to know how to handle your business to reach success.
My company has several websites and only a couple actually work and get thousands of hits every month. Now Snap! Websites is on its way.
A quick explanation about this Google Analytics screenshot...
In regard to websites, there is a good failure example: a website that reached its allotted bandwidth limit2.
Obviously, you know what happens in this case... Even so the message tells you to, you just don't try again, ever. So if you start an online venture with a website sitting on a web server with limited bandwidth, this is what will happen and you will lose many leads and possibly (likely) some existing customers. Well... unless your name is Twitter.
You probably heard Failure Is Not an Option. This is now the name of book about Apollo 13. Very frankly, those guys got extremely lucky and I'm glad they made it back home, but that saying does not apply to a businessman.
On my end, I have tried creating businesses many times. For instance, in 1999, I had the idea of creating a website where patrons of restaurants could go to order food (see Order Made!). This would be neat and at the time I was in London so quite many customers available all over the place. Yet, that was the wrong time (especially in Europe) to create such a system. People were not yet receptive and many would not get their credit card out to pay something on the Internet. So I started a great website just to find out that the market was not ready for it... Later I learnt that Papa John's created their online ordering system in 1999! Today it is the biggest restaurant online ordering system in the world.
One important thing, by the way, don't foresee any business to work at full speed from day one. It generally takes some time to get traction (unless you have a lot of cash to advertise up front or you already have a large list—your list is something I have to talk about at some point! In pretty much all cases, until people know you, things move relatively slowly.)
All I can say is... hang in there. You'll make it happen. It may not be this time, it may not be next time, you may have to think of 10 other ideas, but it will happen.
Ah! One more failure for me... I said I'd reach 1,000,000 or less in Alexa's position by September 30, 2010. I missed it, albeit close, it's still over 1 million at 1,082,510.