Growing Up in the Industry
Posted On: 2009-03-30
Ok so it's Monday ... I know, that should be the start of the week but lately those weeks just seem to blend into one another with no break in between. Perhaps it's time I took a little bit of my own advice and took some time off just to unwind.
Well actually, come Easter I am. Steve and I are heading up the coast to a resort for a couple of days and nights of not doing much other than relaxing. And just to make sure it happens we booked a room with a view last night.
I was interested to read a thread on a webmaster board yesterday that discussed whether or not it was a good thing to try and take advantage of the one day bonus offers that so many sponsors are using these days to try and boost sales. It was surprising to see that so many webmasters are like me and just don't see the value in them.
Steve and I played that game a few times when the one day bonus offers began to appear years ago but it soon got to be a total pain ... especially if you had developed a cycle of site building, gallery building and submission. You could really work your fingers to the bone to get sites and galleries up to take advantage of the offer and then find there were delays in getting them listed so you missed the bonus days ... or you just got no sales on that day.
I suppose that hustling for those bonus day sales may work for some but it seems that there are lots of us who never had much success with them and I don't like wasting time.
Yesterday, just out of curiosity, Steve wandered back to a board that he used to hang out on quite a lot until a year or so ago just to see what was happening. He was amazed that in the first two pages of thread links he only found two names as thread starters that he recognized from the days when he was there.
At first I think he was a bit shocked but then this is an industry where many people grow up and move on. There are some boards out there that attract a lot of newbies ... there are other boards out there that attract a lot of noise and not much else ... and then there are a few boards where the long term business people in this industry still hang out.
I think that's what he was seeing in this board. It was a noisy board but not one that serious workers would hang out on for too long. The topics being discussed on the board were also interesting ... they were pretty much the same topics that people were discussing there years ago.
There was talk of billing providers, people wanted to know about monetizing their TGPs, others wanted link trades, webcam sponsors, information about warning pages and even more requests for information about 2257. Yes, the serious long-term webmasters in the industry don't seem to meet on that board anymore.
And in some ways that's exactly the way things should be. As you mature in this industry your perspective changes and the big parties and lots of notoriety are going to attract all the wrong people. Once you realize that and get down to some serious work then your business really can grow.
Sure you can carry some of your important contacts on from those boards to other forms of communication ... email and instant messaging are good for that ... and you can develop those contacts into some very profitable joint ventures. However many of the other people that you meet on the boards just become a distraction and when you learn that time is money you stop wanting to waste time with people who are going to hold you back.
That seems to be the way it's been for Steve and me and it can do the same for you even if you're a content provider. Once you start to grow beyond those noisy boards and you have a reputation for producing quality work at reasonable prices the people with the real money follow you even if you're not touting for work on the boards.
It's when you make that break from the boards that you discover just how much time and effort you've wasted there and how big a nuisance some of the smaller clients you've picked up on the boards can be. They're the ones who are never going to grow big simply because they don't understand that they have to spend real money to make real money.
And if you're one of those guys who try to push content providers to do incredible deals for you then you need to grow up in the industry too. You need to learn that you get what you pay for and when you learn that lesson then you just may start to make real money too.
Hmmm ... somehow today's column seems to have turned into something of a rant. That's certainly not how it was meant to be ... maybe I really do need that time away next month.