Now I Won’t Go As Far As Romancin Myself / Or Dancin With Wolves Or Runnin Wit The Bulls
So lately I've been working on a new idea for a web business. I've got a good idea (I think), I've even got a bit of a business plan. That is to say that I've got an marketing plan, a target market, and a good looking website (again, I think). I've even got a partner, who is not only smarter than me, but is someone I trust implicitly. Which are the two most important things to have in a partner. And if things go to plan, sharing profits 2 ways is better than going it alone and never making any profit.Today I was using my favorite surfing method - randomly- and I came accross a site talking about YouTube's success. For some time I've wondered how YouTube can actually be a profitable venture, and how on earth an 18 month old 'company' (if you can call it that) was sold for $1.5 billion. Well it turns out that for an ad on the home page (and not a subpage) that will get 400,000 views... its costs $175,000. If they only get 400,000 hits in one day (they actually get over 1 million) that makes $5.25 million a month. The article also said that the rumour is that they pay $1,000,000/month in bandwidth costs alone. Which of course is not their only overhead. They do of course have to deal with escalating hardware costs, and software engineers, and all other technical things that keep a system like that running. (can you imagine the size of their database!?!?)
Now of course the problem is that everyone is hopping on the bandwagon of success that is online video streaming. Of course the first/easiest is the one that will always win, as YouTube has proven.
Which leaves me with a bit of a quandry. My online business is taking 2 established online systems, and combining them 'into a winning formula'. The two systems couldn't be more different and I think that there could be a hit in the making, but it comes back to how easy it is to use. And that's the crux of it. We can make a system that is the best website since YouTube, but if it takes you ages to learn and use.... it will fail and someone will whip up a counter site faster than you can say.... um... counter site.
Now that I have loads of marketing research done, I now need to start doing online easability (not really a word...) research. If you know of any sites that relate to this... answers on a postcard (or email).
oh yeah... and I've hacked my work laptop so that I can install all my web editing tools... now I can work on my site at work, and look like I'm the most productive person here!
Note: to do the random surf thing, drag this link to your link bar, and surf away!
Title: Public Enemy, First The Sheep Next The Shepherd from There's A Poison Goin On
posted by Wally @ 9:46 am
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