Clues to online success in today's down business environment

What type of sites get the most traffic?

The sites that get the most traffic are the ones backed up by well-known brand names and heavy marketing, especially when such sites provide useful free services, such as search and news and can serve as a starting point/home base for inexperienced users; also sites that are locked in (or set as the default starting point) for users of services like AOL and MSN that have millions of users.

I believe it would be much more interesting to consider what kinds of new businesses and sites without brand recognition are likely to get the most traffic, without having to make obscene marketing investments, because they provide experiences that users find not just tempting, but addictive. That's what I'll focus on in the following answers.

What are the dominant trends today with regard to traffic? What criteria are the primary motivators for online visitors at present?

Start with the strengths of the Internet, such as:

• First, the Internet enables people to connect with people -- that is the main draw, what makes people come back, what makes the Internet an intimate and necessary part of their lives.
• Second, the Internet can help you get immediate satisfaction/gratification -- answers to questions, purchase of goods, entertainment, getting free stuff, winning.
• Third, the Internet can provide massive choice (a la Amazon) and hence access to otherwise unavailable information and products.
• Fourth, for the active (as opposed to the passive user), the Internet is a means for self-expression, self-publishing, exhibititionism, anonymous masquerade-style role play, for creating a new self.

• human interaction sites, including chatting with people who have similar interests, dating services, and pornographic activities (not just delivery of prepackaged content but opportunities see and hear live and to get reactions to your words and images)
• multiplayer videogames, where tens of thousands or even millions of people are available at all times to match with one another for contests, and/or where massive team games can take place with dozens, hundreds, even thousands of simultaneous participants
• person-to-person (p2p) sites that enable millions of people to share files, getting free access to commercial content (text, music, video) that otherwise would cost (many people would willingly spend hours and take virus-related risks to get something for "free" that they could buy around the corner for a few dollars. Ego, identity, challenge, etc. come into play.  It quickly becomes more a matter of self-expression than just "saving money"; it becomes an addictive behavior)
• gambling
• sports
• health

If a site presents an addictive experience/service such as those listed above, it should do quite well, growing by word of mouth.

If a site has other aims -- like providing useful information or services -- and wishes to reach a wide audience at low-cost, then what matters most is providing lots of good text content and designing the pages and the site to be search-engine friendly. (See my articles linked to from http://www.samizdat.com/search.html and http://www.samizdat.com/marketing.html).

Is the broadband-networking phenomenon more hype than reality?

High-speed, always-on access (as opposed to dial-up access) for individuals at home is growing at a ridiculously rapid pace in the US (cable and DSL). As a result, new business opportunities are opening up that involve heavy use of video/audio.

What is the connection between networking and broadband?

The Internet is a network -- THE network of networks. Broadband simply means fast delivery of content (a bigger pipe so more content and more complex content can move more quickly). At slow speeds video is less than useless -- just an
annoyance. At high speeds, you take it for granted as an element to be built into entertainment and business solutions.

Today, in the US, pornography sites like Hustler and mainstream sites like CinemaNow are delivering full screen streaming video. In other words, you can watch full-length movies on your PC (with a broadband connection) with the same quality as watching a video tape or watching a movie over cable television. Obvious business models in place already -- pay a month subscription fee and you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, as many times as you want; or pay-per-view with thousands of selections, and you determine the start time, and you have access to that movie for 24 hours (as opposed to cable television where you have just a couple dozen choices, and the provider sets the start times).

Any future trends in this regard?

Just use your imagination. How can video/audio enhance the addictive experiences listed above?

For instance, consider sports sites. espn.com has enhanced its offerings of sports-related information with "gamecasts" -- java applications that provide live continuous updates of ongoing sports contests, like baseball games. mlb.com (major league baseball) now offers for a "season fee" (as opposed to a monthly fee) access to live and recorded radio broadcasts of
every single major league baseball game.

If you have audio or video content, the growing high-bandwidth Internet audience opens a wide variety of possible business models for delivering that content to the home, as part of a Web-based business, and for making money.  

This articles and hundreds of related items by Richard are available, in plain text, on CD ROM My Internet: a Personal View of Internet Business Opportunities (B&R Samizdat Express, 2002) for $29. That same CD also includes the full text of his books The Social Web, Take Charge of Your Web Site, Shop Online the Lazy Way, and The Way of the Web. It is available from Amazon and from our online store http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat, where you can buy an entire library for the price of a book.

This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com

Please visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

Return to B&R Samizdat Express

Buy Richard's book Web Business Bootcamp (published by Wiley) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471164194/brsamizdatexpres

.

<