This week’s Carnival of Small Business includes The Biggest Mistakes People Make When Starting Their Online Business, from Kenton Newby. I might be prejudiced because it includes some things I’ve been writing about for a while, but it seems to me like a useful list. Some highlights:
- Thinking they don’t know anything someone else would be willing to pay for.
Good point, and good to put on a list of mistakes; in this case it’s their number one. Many people just never get started because they think everybody else knows more. I think they’re waiting for some magic answer that they think others already have, but which they can’t find. It’s tough, but you have to know that the answers aren’t always written in the sky.
- Setting prices too low.
Yes, please. I think it’s the most frequent error in startups. You don’t have to be the low price offering. Your pricing is your first message about quality.
- Not aggressively testing and tracking.
Yes, thank you, it’s like planning without following up, a waste of planning. The web gives you amazing resources for tracking results. Use them.
- Moving from one strategy to the next.
Frustrating sometimes, but Strategy Needs to be Consistently Applied Over a Long Term to Work. Better to have a mediocre long-term strategy consistently applied for years than a series of brilliant but contradictory strategies that never last long enough to matter.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
