This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, thanks for tuning in today. This is Side Hustle School. I'm your host, Chris Guillebeau. And if you've been listening for a while, by now you know how it works. You open a business and get tons of money, right?
You start a new website, you put something out for sale, and then your biggest problem, like we try to be really specific and break this down here, your biggest problem is finding a big enough wheelbarrow to fit all the cash in to take to the bank. It's just so difficult. Then of course you got the taxes. It's so frustrating to make so much money that you have to pay a percentage of it in exchange for roads, education, fire services, when your house catches on fire and so on. Well, of course, I might be exaggerating a bit because it's not always, if ever, so simple.
In fact, lots of times you open a website and nothing happens. That is what today's listener is experiencing, a more common problem we could say. He makes a website with something for sale, opens the shopping cart for business, and no one buys. In other words, he doesn't need that wheelbarrow full of cash or the wheelbarrow to fill the cash just yet. Okay, that's probably coming up soon, but first, how can we help him with this situation?
I launched my website and nothing happened. That's our listener question for today. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Patrick and I've been following the show since episode number one. I'm a long time listener, but first time question asker. Often we hear stories of someone who opens for business and they get a flood of customers, so many that they can't keep up with demand.
That's awesome, but it also hasn't been my experience. I spent a lot of time building a website and when it was ready, I posted a link to it on my Facebook page. A couple of people commented or liked the post, but otherwise nothing happened. I know I need to do more marketing, but it just feels discouraging that I didn't have a better response right out of the gate. Is this common?
Have you ever experienced it? Thanks for any help, Chris. [Music]
Hey man, thank you for calling in. I've definitely experienced this myself. It is definitely common.
In fact, not only have I experienced it myself, I have experienced it with an audience where it wasn't just my personal Facebook page, in which case your Facebook page, your friends on Facebook are not necessarily your ideal customers. So it's not too surprising that you would launch a website and if there's no other way to get the word out, except through your personal Facebook page, then nothing happens. Well, in my case, I've had it happen where I have an audience. But I think the bigger problem here is, it's not just about the website because there are millions of websites out there. One statistic suggests that every day there's something like 250,000 new websites that come into the world.
So when you're thinking about something to sell, the website is just one part of the process. It is just a tool. I mean, it's an important tool. You need to have some sort of platform, but what's most important, what really matters here are the core elements of any business, which we talk about from time to time. Any business, large or small, has these three basic elements, a product or a service, could be either one, then a group of people who want to buy it, we could say that's your ideal customer, your target market, lots of different ways to formulate these same concepts and a way to make the transaction.
So a product or service, group of people who wanna buy it and a way to get paid. So in this situation, for Patrick or anybody else, I would spend much more time making sure I had a match between those first two elements, the product or service in the target market. You can have a poorly designed website or sometimes no website at all, but if you have the right product or service and there's demand, it doesn't matter. You could also have an amazing website, but not the right match and then you're not gonna have any sales. So anything else is just details, but you can't move forward without those.
So I would just reorient and say, what is this business all about? What am I really trying to sell? Who are the people who need this product or service and how can I reach those people? And your answers kind of filter down from there, but that I think is the process to go through. Not, I just made this website, I put it out and no one purchased.
So focus on those first elements. I think you're gonna have much better results. Let me know how it goes. Listeners, if you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, we will continue to feature them along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks so much for tuning in today.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
