Can I stop people from finging my website until I finish it?

Beleive it or not, this is one of the mast asked questions I get asked on a daily basis.

WAKE UP PEOPLE!

Nobody is going to find your website. That is the harsh reality of the internet.

People think they can open a website, tell the serach engine what they want them to send people to buy and collect the money flowing in from the sales.

Based on the eary 2008 reports, Google Inc pays about $1.5 Billion to acquire traffic each quarter. Now you expect them to bring you traffic when they are paying people like you to send them traffic.

Lets look at a different scenario. Lets say you get a phone installed in your home for a new business.

How many people are calling on the first day or week to buy the service you are selling? I could be wrong, but I would guess none.

So why do people think that the internet is any different? It is not.

Until you get your name out there, until you create a customer base, until you advertise, you wont have anyone going to your website.

99.99% of new website owners give up in the first few months because nothing is happening. No people are showing up, no sales are being made and there are no big paychecks showing up in the mailbox.

So what are you to do to get traffic? Well, look at google, they buy it.

You can buy it from them at a slightly higher price, you can adverstise, you can advertise or you can advertise.

The next thing people do is buy 10 websites since one is not getting traffic, maybe if they have more websites then they can get more sales.

Hello! Is there anybody in there?

I don't care how many phone lines you install in your house, you still wont have people calling to buy your product.

I usually cringe when people ask if they can prevent people from getting to their webite while they build it. Since they have not typed even one word on one page and they are already concerned that they will have too much traffic and people will be buying their product before they are ready to sell it.

I can be pretty certain that they don't understand that it will take some hard work to actually get people to the website and it will only be a matter of time before they give up.

I had one client with a retail store. He called me after 6 months and compained that he did not have any sales on the website.

I asked how he was advertising it. Did he have the website printed on the sales receipts, was he e-mailing his retail clients, was he doing any advertising. At which point he told me that he did not want his customers to know about the website which had the same name as the retail store. He wanted to let the 2 businesses run on their own.

Now, he went to the store every day, hired employees, ran TV ads, newspaper ads and paid $3000.00 a month for a store front and he was expecting his $10 website to do all that by itself.

After 10 minutes of him screaming at me that this was a horrible waste of money for him I was just speachless and in shock.

For some reason people think the internet is magick. That it will do everything for you, pour customers into your lap and feed you endless cash.

Now, had this gentelman advertised his website while advertising his store, he cetainly would have made back the $10 a month he was spending on the website. After all, that is one sale in most cases.

I guess what I am trying to say is that you should not expect from your websites. You would not buy a wrench and wait for it to fix your car, you would not buy paint and wait for it to jump on your walls. So why would you buy a website and expect people to be there the day you open it?