The Secret to Building a Website Worth $1M
Every time someone writes about how they made $250,000 in one month with an iPhone app or how they make five figures every month just by blogging, untold number of people set their mind to go out and do the same thing. If those people were able to do it, how hard could it be right? Let’s just copy them!
The difference between a site worth a few thousand dollars and a site worth more than $1M is in the details, though… literally. Listen to the developer of that iPhone app:
We obsess over details. It makes for better apps. Camera+ was no different than any of our other apps in this regard and it’s taken literally dozens of design sessions to get it in the state that it’s currently in. I’m talking about hundreds of hours just for the app design.
But we’re passionate about this and love doing it so it hardly feels like work to us. Spend substantial time making your app look and feel good to the user and it’ll likely pay off.
Or the five-figure blogger:
The best way to make money with a legitimate blog is by focusing all of your time and attention on providing your readers with as much value as you can.
They’re not saying this to discourage you or to hide their real secrets. It’s true. If you really want to have a million-dollar website, you have to sweat the details and create real value.
Let’s Look at Some Examples
I bought Lobster Boats from Rick Latona a while back. It’s not the thinnest of sites in the world, but it’s pretty weak — nothing more than really just the minimum required to make it, technically, a “real” site. I could build links and drive traffic to a site like that all day long, but I’d always be swimming against a very significant current. It’s just not delivering any real value. This is the type of site people build and then wonder why they’re not making any money.
Online MBA is a big step up from that. The design is better, the content is much better, and it’s delivering some real value.
And then there’s TrueCar — a site so amazing that people link to it and tell their friends about it all on their own. A ton of development went into this site and it shows. Building links and traffic to this site is like shooting fish in a barrel.
So Which One Are You?
The easiest way to tell is by how hard you have to work to get someone to link to you. If it’s always a struggle, you probably need to step back and spend more of that time working on making your site great.
There’s no shortcut to a million-dollar site. Quit trying to find one.
(What do you need to work on? Check out The 3 Reasons Your Traffic Is Struggling and Are You Sure You Have a Great Website?)
from Ask Shane.org










