How To Be the Next Big Thing Online

With Facebook in serious decline everyone is asking what will be the next big thing? How will be the next leader in the internet and what will be the next trend that makes them big?

Now I have sat quietly on the sideline for many years watching companies come and go while I built up my little niche website hosting business which adequately pays the bills and makes me enough money do do what I like to do.

But don't think for one minute that I would not like to be a Facebook, a Twitter or Pintrest but I am unwilling to risk what I have to try to get to that level because I know that 95% of the people that do, fail.

But lets look at why they fail to try to understand what you can do to be the next big thing.

Walspace?

When myspace was in its hay day and every company wanted to be the next big social network Walmart spent $14 million developing their own network where they would use their marketing staff to sell walmart products.

It failed almost immediately because they populated it with profiles that were clearly selling Walmart products.

14 years old girls that say they like boys that shop at Walmart because they know how to save money and 16 year old boys that say they like girls that wear Walmart fashions because they look great. Well, needless to say, the trick was not met without some backlash and that ended that $14 million dollar project in one toilet flush.

Facebook for Pets?

Once Facebook took root and become number one, everyone wanted to build a facebook style website except with a new idea, one for pets, cars or dating.

Look, people are not going to leave facebook to go to facebook for pets.

None of those ideas ever took off and now that the whole facebook trend is pretty much over none of them ever will.

Different not Better

The biggest mistake people make is trying t make something better than something else.

Rather than coming up with a totally new idea like Pintrest did, people try to make sites like pintrestonlybetter.com which is the same except it has more features.

That is where most people lose their money because they are trying to compete with the existing trend rather than starting a new one.

Of course, it is hard to start a new trend and that is why sites like Pintrest, Twitter and other take of, because they d something new and offer something that nobody else has thought of.

Marketing

Of course having a great idea that goes unnoticed is the easy part, getting the product to the market and getting users is a whole other issue.

But if you have a great product, people will tell their friends, and they will tell their friends and so on and on... until you are huge.

But that means you need at least an initial push and that means more than telling your friends and family.

Companies spend millions on advertising one website just to launch it get get the first users on their website, without some kind of push there is no chance that you can get off the ground.

We spent over $100,000 just advertising our car classified in the hopes that it would create a steady stream of used car dealers for our website hosting business now at pageBuzz.com. While we did get a return on our investment we made one major mistake, we tried to go head to head with sites like cars.com and autotrader.com which had the bulk of the market share and all the momentum.

Now we never expected to beat them, but we figured we could care out a nice little niche in the classic car market which was our goal all along. However, the cost of keeping up with the site was far greater than what it could produce so we scaled it back to where it makes a little money for us and pays its way.

Another mistake we made was trying to launch half a dozen classified sites along with a new hosting business. We saw them as marketing plays, but at the same time, each required too much investment in time and money to really take off into something that could drive the hosting traffic we needed.

The number one mistake made by website owners is the underestimating amount of time and money it takes to launch a website. Forget about the tens of thousands of man hours to develop something new, the entry level marketing costs are huge and without a multi million dollar budget it is almost impossible.

Now youtube was a great story but they also had a huge influx of cash from investment capitalists and were on the verge of running out of the millions that had just when Google bought them. 2 more moths and we might not have youtube.

In fact, google ran youtube at a cost of almost half a billion dollars a year with not even 10% of that being returned in revenue.

"So when you talk about deep pockets to make something successful, there is a prime example. How many people can afford $500 million a year in hosting fees?"

Its no wonder why so few big ideas hit the market. The companies with the capital to do it get greedy like Walmart did, the people with great ideas don't have the financing to make anything happen and the people that are needed to make it happen, they are just unaware that anyone is even trying.

Someone will do it!

Putting all the pieces together is a big job and the people that do it, well them will become the next facebook.

There is one thing that I will guarantee 100% will not make you the next big thing online and that is not trying at all. Like they say, you have to be in the game to win the game.

So millions of people will try new ideas, fail and start over again next month and eventually, one person will find the right formula to make it happen.