Failure... Or Is It?

I thought I would write up a post concerning my first online business attempt. It involves triumph as well as failure, and some lessons learned in between.

First, let me tell you about the business. I am technology oriented (its my day job) and I thought, "Hey, I can bring in some extra money by doing work on the side!" The thoughts were flying through my head about what needed to be done, "I need a webpage!" and "People will flock to my website and pay me!". Well, my thoughts weren't exactly like that, but pretty much. I figured if I had a webpage and a reasonable price for my service that would be all I'd need.

First the webpage

So I purchased a domain (http://www.hodgecc.com) and opened "Hodge Computer Consulting" which provides local personal/business computer repair service for a price much lower than the "easily recognized" brands were offering it at in my area. Although I know technology, I am not that great of a web designer. I did what I could and put together something that I thought was fairly respectable. I still think it looks pretty good, but the code is definitely dirty and needs to be cleaned up at some point. I got the website added to a google analytics account to track the number of people viewing the site - and guess what, there wasn't anybody there. The only page hits where from me - very disconcerting. I knew nothing about SOE (search engine optimization) or anything else that a business website really needs to draw traffic and paying customers (and I am still learning). My first big mistake, but not my biggest.

Next the service

So, as I said before I wanted to offer computer repair service. I thought that at the price I was offering, people would be knocking down my door. Well, had my website worked they may have been but they weren't. Then one day, Lo and behold, I actually had a local business contact me for assistance. I went to their location and performed the work they wanted. They actually called me back a few times after that, but there have been no other customers.

A few problems: Although I did get some measure of success (although not really), I found a few things out. This was completely the wrong business to start. Not because service based models are bad, but because if my business did ever take off it wouldn't scale easily. What would happen is that I would not only be working my day job, but I would also be running around all night to houses or businesses and I would simply feel like I traded a good opportunity for more time away from my family - something I don't want. Not only that, but lets just take your day job and add another 8 hours of doing the same thing - lots of fun right? I think not.

So my biggest mistake was choosing a business that needs a lot of my time and really can't be automated. So now I am trying to come up with a way to change my service into a product that can be sold and doesn't need to have me standing over a broken computer. If you have any suggestions, let them rip - I would love to hear them. I will most likely post a follow up on what I do with the website.

So, my suggestions when starting an online business:

1. Make it scalable.
2. Make it something that can be automated.
3. Make your website look professional.

Thanks for reading!

Jason