Fellow Chicagoan and pay per click expert Perry Marshall wrote a neat article on a litmus test for a new online business . He articulates why it’s important to use a niche market if you are an entrepreneur creating an online business. Looking back at the number of online businesses people created using iScripts business software solutions, it appears to be true.
I hear it every time I talk to potential customers requesting our software products. When I ask customers that are already using, iScripts SocialWare sometimes they say, “I want to create a website similar to Facebook or LinkedIn. My question is why? When you are trying to create a Facebook clone or Amazon clone, it should be targeted for a niche market if you really want success.
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Over the last 7 years we helped thousands of online businesses to start and expand. We worked to crate internet businesses with very unique business models and the once with simplest business models. We have noticed some these businesses flourish and grow like wildfire, while others never amounted to anything other than waste of time for us and the promoters. We have learned from the successes and failures of clients. We learned how to start an online business that has a high chance of making it big. And also figured how fast your business grow depends only on how much you know and how innovative and creative you are. It has not much to do with your marketing budget.
We have put these lessons into a free email course on how to create an online business. It is for you to learn from what we have with thousands of online businesses so far. Go here to subscribe to the free course on how to start an internet business and grow it.
If you are looking to create a social networking website, either for you or your employer you have noticed there are number of options. Even if you had created websites or online businesses in the past you might have noticed creating social networking sites are challenging. We have polled a number of people contacted us for creating their social networking sites, why they have not finished anything yet. Some of these people had some really killer ideas. But they still fail to create a social networking websites. One thing we realized from their responses was that you get overwhelmed with information and the tasks.
We developed the social networking script 3-4 years back and helped number of social networks to go online. So we have created a small email course How to create a social networking website . It’s a free email course, anybody who wants to create and grow their social networking site can join. We have helped thousands of our customers to create and grow their rock solid communities. We put our lessons learned from those experiences to your use.
So if you want to create and grow your own social networking website, this is for you.
I see a number of online businesses getting started using hosted platforms or encrypted software solutions. Initially it might be okay when you think you know exactly what your customers want and need. As things progress you will realize the business model you had in mind may not be very accurate. Success of a great business is to adapt to a successful model early in the life of the company. The slower you are, more painful it is going to be.
There are number of articles about the flexibility of business models. Two main examples cited are Paypal and YouTube. Paypal started out as a company to beam money between palm pilots. Fortunately they figured out how to reinvent their model in time. YouTube started out as a online dating site. Imagine what if YouTube was created using a hosted application or using software which is encrypted.
Some of you creating the online businesses know exactly what your business model is and know who your customers are. Good for you, since you are among the tiny fraction of entrepreneurs. For most of us mortals, we have a good idea of what we want to do and we have an idea who our customers are what they need. Beyond that we have not done any user group research that would cost us tens of thousands of dollars. Our focus group testing is normally at beta launch or for some, after the site launch. Sometimes we know we have been right all along, sometimes we figure our models need little bit tweaking. Wouldn’t it be nice if you have freedom and flexibility to do so? When you are using a hosted solution or an encrypted software solution you will not have the freedom to do so. Before you buy any web business software, you want to know if you what it takes to customize the software and what’s involved and the cost. You would be surprised with the answers from many solution vendors.
iScripts develops the turnkey web software and distributes it with full source code that runs behind it. We don’t encrypt anything at all and we are proud of it. It’s not the smartest thing to do for a software company to share the source code with the world. We understand it and we are fine with it. We want you, our customers to have an option to change your online business anyway you want to. With the source code, you can get any PHP programmers to make the changes. iScripts can also do these changes for you. In most cases we would be the most economical and timely solution as we created it from scratch. You come to us for customization because you choose to, not because you have to.
Compared to hosted solutions and SaaS offerings, installable software might be teeny bit time consuming to install and set up. You might save few minutes in setting it up. But you are trading it for being stuck it in a rigid business model for a very long time. Once your business is established what would be the cost of migrating to a new platform if you can at all. However for short term projects hosted or encrypted solution is very well be fine.
Here is the bottom line you might need the flexibility for your business model more than you think. It’s good to know you have the option with us at iScripts.com
