Expectations For Internet Businesses

I have cut, sliced and diced hundreds of onions. So many that when I cut one particular onion open and saw two perfect smiley faces smiling back at me, I had to laugh. I was amazed at how perfect these images seemed. To refresh my memory of what onions normally look like, I cut into another onion and found the look I usually find - one center and concentric circles. This onion produced two smiley faces. Totally unexpected! Sometimes it is better to expect the unexpected.

In any business people try to predict their success and rely on statistics to back up their predictions. With the Internet this method doesn't always work.

Many people start Internet businesses and plan to be successful. They've got a great business idea and they invest money and time towards building the business. They have done what they thought they could do. What sometimes happens is that they don't get enough traffic to sustain the business and they stop trying. This is not what they expected.

On the other hand there are people who start an Internet business and have no expectations of being wildly successful, but they enjoy trying new things and testing different methods of getting their business to work. Quite by accident they find little tricks that end up building their business. Repeating this as a regular work habit can make the site profitable.

Think about your expectations of your Internet business. Is it going well or is it a project that you have abandoned?

In a search for "websites that fail" an article was listed called, "The number 1 Reason Why Most Websites Fail." You would expect this site to tell you about reasons sites fail, however this site was an example of failure. Mistakes on the page were causing major errors that failed to pull in the correct information in five different areas.

This is the advice they give. "Websites do fail. Lots of them fail. You will see many of them every day. Some of them fail to inspire or enthuse. Some fail to get found at all. Some fail to get completed. Some fail to understand the needs of the people visiting them. But there is an underlying common reason for all these failings.."

This site expected to be an authority on why websites fail, but lost credibility because their own site was failing. That wasn't what was expected.

In 1969, Honeywell International Inc. developed a computer that sold for $10,600. The kitchen computer was developed to let people track and record recipes, the only use engineers could think of that people would want out of a home computer. That was what they expected people to wanted to do. Not one of the computers they designed sold. Did they expect that when developing this product? I'm quite sure they didn't.

When you start your business on the Internet remember to expect the unexpected. It will give you patience while you work on your site and build it and continue to build it. Sometimes it is better to expect the unexpected.

"In life there is nothing more unexpected and surprising than the arrivals and departures of pleasure. If we find it in one place to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. You can not lay a trap for it." ~ Alexander Smith, Scottish poet

"Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience." ~ Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Sony Corporation

Sometimes it is better to expect the unexpected.