What Are You Afraid Of: Marketing Survey Results About Business Owners Going Cyber

After two weeks of surveying my visitors, I am finally
making an attempt to draw some conclusions. Reading my
visitors replies to the survey questions, I sense one
common concern in one way or another: lack of money
and lack of profits. One person even said, "help me
make money first then i'll send you a payment".

Another theme dominating in people's replies is the
confusion about too many details involved in starting
a web business. If you already have a web site, you
know what this means. Just step aside for a second
and take a look at your business from a newbie's
prospective.

You had to design a web site, put it online, figure
out a way of accepting online payments, find out where
and how to advertise, how to capture your visitors'
e-mail address and how to contact them later to remind
about your products. The list can go on and on, and
if you are not web savvy, you might find yourself
scratching behind your ear not knowing where to
start.

Here are some of the common concerns my visitors had:

- How to reach target audience
(creating a flow of target traffic)
- How to focus their online efforts better
(web business management)
- How to make their web site to sell on the first visit
(direct marketing)
- Lack of time and how to overcome it
(efficient use of time spent online)
- Not enough customers
(finding and selling to a target customer)
- Lack of money to start a business and advertise it
- Fear of technology (general Internet knowledge)
- How to automate some time-consuming tasks
- Making a web site look more professional

Most of the people who filled out the survey are either
stay-at-home moms or people with full-time jobs who
desperately want to make enough money with their business
to quit their jobs. Nothing new there, all right. The
words "fast" and "easy" were mentioned in the replies
quite frequently which tells me that most people who are
starting an online business still don't have a realistic
idea of how much time and energy is involved in making it
a success.

They say, the first million is the hardest. So, please,
do me a favor: the next time you see a "make money while
you sleep" ad, pass it by.

Milana Nastetskaya is a full-time web developer and the
author of 3 books: "Create Your First Business Web Site
in 10 days!", "65 Instant Web Answers!" and "How To Install
and Troubleshoot CGI scripts".
http://www.firstbusinesswebsite.com
http://www.instantwebanswers.com
http://www.installcgi.com