I want to do some Internet business. I would like to have a good business idea. Can you help me?" Mohana asked me. She is a middle aged housewife living in a small town with a population of half a million.
"Who is greater, money or man?" I asked Mohana. She replied, "My attitude has always been that man is greater than money. There can be no argument about it. However, at this moment, money is very important to me. I assure you, it's a temporary situation!"
"If you start a business - any business - with the right attitude, you can grow without limits." I told her and continued, "A few years ago, Craig Newmark, a man with good will for his neighbors, started an email newsletter to announce upcoming cool events in his hometown. It spread through word of mouth and grew big within a few months. Then he converted it into a website - Craiglist. Over time, people started posting items on the list in different areas, jobs, stuff for sale, and apartments. Soon people became dependent on Craiglist to find out what was going on in their communities."
"How many people use it?" Mohana asked. I replied, "More than 10 million people use it each month. Cariglist serves more than 6 million classified ads and 1 million forum postings each month. If you provide a trustworthy, efficient, relatively non-commercial place for folks to find all the basics in their local area, life will respond and bring you prosperity you can't even dream of."
"How much money does he make?" Mohana asked. I replied, "His annual income is $10 million (Rupees 40 crores)."
"In my city, there are more than 10 such websites. How can I compete with them?" Mohana asked. "There are thousands of such websites. Can you please tell me the name of the website in your area that you trust or at least the name of the person who runs it?" I asked her.
Mohana was silent for a few seconds and then replied, "I rarely visit those sites. I don't know anything about the owners, I don't have trust in them and I don't think I have any personal attachment or sense of personal relationship."
"When you want to buy something, your best friend recommends a model based on her personal experience in a poor language. A stranger recommends another model in a powerful language. Which one will influence you?" I asked her. "Certainly my friend's recommendation will influence my decision. I trust my friend. My relationship with my friend is more valuable and important than the way she expresses an idea." Mohana said.
"In our city, the so-called community websites don't give this sense of personal relationship. They think only about their business and not about the visitors. Many website owners install automated software programs for various functionalities and think those goodies will take care of the needs of the visitors. Automation is important but they are incapable of creating personal relationship. If you do things differently, you will see that people love your site and stay glued to it. Money will flow in from all directions," I told Mohana. "I understand your point," Mohana said.
"This is the lesson you must learn from Craig: give people a voice, a sense of trust and even intimacy, consistency of down-to-earth values, simplicity and freshness of the material. If you base your website or blog on these values and think only from your visitor's point of view, your business will grow quickly," I told Mohana.
We spent the following two hours in research and prepared a step-by-step business plan. (You can find a copy of it on the website SeekLuck.com. Such documents run into 10 pages. Because of the space constraint, they can not be reproduced in this column.)
Within a month, Mohana started a small website to serve her neighborhood. Every day her website attracts 200 visitors. Last month she earned $100 (Rs.4,000). If this trend continues, she will certainly earn five digit income in the near future.
If you don't aspire to become a Craig, at least, you can try to become a Mohana and duplicate her success. A wonderful world of prosperity is waiting for your call at your door steps. Will you call it and allow it into your room?