Don’t Fall for the Amateur Trap!

You Know You’re a Web Business Amateur When…

1. Your e-mail address is your ISP address; not your site’s dot com.
2. You don’t have any contact information, physical address or contact form on your Web site.
3. You site’s design is obviously (to everyone but you) home-brewed and not created by a professional.
4. You have not secured your site to accept payments or sensitive information.
5. Your site has numerous broken links and no custom 404 (Page Not Found) page.
6. You believe that the more font colors (and the larger) the better.
7. You mass market instead of target market.
8. You have the attitude that you can do what you want because you can.
9. You ignore advice from seasoned professionals because you don’t like the time, effort or knowledge acquisition that will be required of you.
10. You believe “Top 10″ Search Engine rankings should be easy to attain and that you deserve them with no effort, plan or long term strategy.

Definition of an Amateur?

amateur –noun

• a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity
• characteristic of or engaged in by an amateur; nonprofessional
• one lacking the skill of a professional
• lacking professional skill or expertise; “a very amateurish job”; “inexpert but conscientious efforts”; “an unskilled painting”

Don’t fall into the “amateur trap” and believe that without the skills, knowledge and understanding of how business is done online that you can and will succeed. Those who assume that Web development and online marketing are “easy” are the ones who learn the hard way.

Even with Frontpage or any other HTML Editor, you may be able to move things around, but you certainly will not end up with a polished and professional presentation when key elements are disregarded or completely missing. If it were so easy; everyone would be succeeding — but instead success is enjoyed only by a minority of commercial Web site owners.

If you don’t understand; don’t want to understand; don’t want to make the effort to learn the things you need to understand, you simply will not succeed online. Online success doesn’t happen by osmosis or because you slap up some files to a Web server and call it your Web site.

Sites are stagnating and shutting down daily. Even sites created by professionals and those with experience that have been online for years are failing. No one has this medium completely figured out because it is an arena in flux.

The online success formula is elusive to even the most experienced. Assume otherwise to your peril. Time to leave the amateur behind…