Bassackwards Business Model

For the past 6 years or more I’ve sat in on a variety of conferences and seminars where one topic seems to rise to the top – “how do we take full advantage of the Internet?”

For starters, I’d like to see how many businesses take full advantage of anything. Few of us are efficient enough to do that. Fewer still even know what advantage they’ve got in the first place.

The Internet has been seen by too many traditional businesses (i.e. brick and mortar) as a panacea. Whatever ails us can surely be fixed somehow by the Internet, can’t it? I know, let’s create an email newsletter. No, wait a minute, we’ll produce an ebook. Could we build a shopping cart and sell our stuff online? On and on it goes with mindless dialogue of people seeking fast answers for complex problems.

For many years Seth Godin and others have been preaching a reverse strategy that is contrary to conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is build a good business, then incorporate technology, including the Internet. New wisdom is build a business that centers on new technology and social trends. In other words, consider Facebook and the Internet when you architect your business model.

But there is yet an even newer business model, which isn’t really a model at all. I’m not sure what you’d call it. It’s a process, a philosophy and a rough sketch. It baffles traditionalists. Amazon made no sense to most people. For years Amazon lost money. Yet it was valued at ridiculous numbers. Few understood the phenomenon. But other sites began to do the same thing – build traffic. Build traffic, then figure out how to make money later. Such thinking turned the world upside down. Wall Street didn’t understand. Hardly anybody understood. It was counter-intuitive to everything we knew to be true in the world of business.

Today, there are thousands, perhaps millions, of start ups that are trying to climb the mountain of bassackwards business. They’re trying to build web traffic. SEO (search engine optimization), Google Analytics and other technologies are part of the process. Content isn’t always king. Sometimes things just catch fire thanks to a YouTube video, or a high-profile blogger writing about something or somebody – and the next thing you know, it’s red hot!

Things can happen fast on the Net, or not at all. Aaron Wall started learning SEO in 2003. He became one of the top SEO experts earning well over $500 an hour. He wrote a critically acclaimed, and highly usable ebook, SEO Book. He launched his website and things rolled along nicely. But recently he’s abandoned the ebook business model. It wasn’t a model he was in love with. He just went that route because he knew the world of SEO changed so fast that no printed book could possibly keep up. The ebook technology solved that problem. But now he’s migrated away from the ebook to a subscriber-based website. He also migrated to Drupal, a content management system that is more elaborate and allows him to better manage a subscriber-based site where most of the content is premium (or paid for).

Wall is typical of the genius required to change and adapt. He hasn’t attempted to squeeze his services into a preordained model. Rather, he’s allowed the technology advances to dictate how he’s able to best serve a customer base that suits him. The ebook got him many fans, and readers. But many, like me, were amateur SEO folks. I bought the book, but I’d be lying if I told you I use it regularly. I’d be lying if I told you I read it all the way through. It’s an extensive volume. But there are others who are actively involved in SEO. They need dedicated help that no ebook can provide. They’re willing to pay more than a one-time charge of $79 for an ebook. So Wall now has a service for these people. $100 monthly. No contracts. Cancel at any time. It’s a month-by-month service. Many people who need SEO right now can subscribe. Then as their needs, or interests change, they can unsubscribe if they like. Wall will be able to extract the more serious SEO clients from the merely curious. His services will likely be more precise and efficient. And his clients will be paying a premium (and likely well worth it). Wall delivers value.

Wall is just a single example of the bassackwards business model where the business doesn’t dictate the need to squeeze in some use of technology. Rather, the technology allows a complete change in the delivery of the service, the business.

Today it would not be unwise to consider how to best reach prospective customers with technology and construct your business accordingly. It’s all about delivery. It’s about access. It’s about traffic. It’s about management of all those things. Traditionally business has been interested with these things, but we’ve had to limit such ideas to the physical realm, not the virtual realm. So, it’s high time for most businesses to turn themselves upside down, inside out and examine their approach. It’s not time to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Is it ever?

The Internet is not a quick fix. It’s not a magic bullet that will solve every sales or revenue problem facing businesses. You must do more than build a website. It is not true, if you build it they will come. They won’t. Getting traffic is extremely difficult. But if you find a way to get them to your site, then you must give them some compelling reason to stay, and you must provide something valuable for them (either free or fee-based, or both).

Proof of how hard all this really is are the abandoned sites that litter the Net. Digital space is full of derelict sites that haven’t been updated in years. People and companies thought it would work better than it did. They thought it would happen faster than it did. They found it harder than it first seemed. So they just stopped. Some presumably searching for the next magic pill that would fix their problems.

I often wonder why some companies are paying for hosting on a site that hasn’t been updated since 2004. What are they thinking? No web presence is better than a derelict presence. Like any business activity, web-based activities require smart thinking and hard work. Just because it looks easy doesn’t mean that it is.

Reverse your thinking. Stop thinking about your widgets and think about your customers. How can you better reach them? How can they find you? What can you deliver to them? How can you best serve them?

Wait a minute! This isn’t really bassackwards at all. Isn’t this how it should have been all along? Putting customers or prospective customers first – then figuring out a way to better reach them, and serve them?