Lots of the Blogging/IM/MMO gurus tell us it is a smart move to immediately buy your domain name and hosting for you blog or online business. Without thinking, this seems to be the logical step to take, right?
WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!!
I’m no guru – in fact I am just an upcoming blogger from Nigeria faced with huge challenges (don’t pity me) but I’d prove to you with facts and URL links.
It’s high time we faced some hard facts…
The advice is a truck load of trash if you want to earn online (If you are reading this, I’m 80% sure you’re in it for the money too). It is an idea that can leave a foul taste in your mouth.
Remember the saying about a fool and his money? They are soon parted!
One thing I have been learning to do lately is not join the bandwagon of bloggers or online entrepreneurs who do things thoughtlessly. Several Thousands of bloggers have bought domain names and hosting BEFORE even making a dime online. I did too with my blogs. To make matters worse, I did without any certainty that I will earn any money from my blogs!
The Wisdom of the greatest entrepreneurs is this…
NEVER invest fully in a business you haven’t yet tested and proven will be profitable on a bigger scale.
Warren Buffet, the greatest investor and capital allocator of all time does not invest in what he does not understand and even though he was very close to Bill Gates, he refused to buy internet stock not even Microsoft stock’s!
Going against this is not only precarious, it is reckless.
Let me prove my point…
Do you know that four of the biggest boys on the Internet refused to register their now uber successful domain names until about 365 days after they their business models were proven to yield some measure of success?
Check this out:
Yahoo.com – Web presence started in 1994. Registered domain name in 1995!
Google.com – Conceived in 1996. Registered domain name in 1997!
Facebook.com – Business launched in 2004. Bought domain name in 2005…
Twitter.com – You might find this a little weird… But still follows the same trail of “test before you invest”.
The original idea for twitter was created in 1999.
Back then, no adequate platform were available to run the idea on a massive scale so it was shelved for a seven years, till 2006! Talk about an idea years before its time.
Apart from this, Twitter’s first ever online presence was on a different domain (www.twttr.com, obviously inspired by flickr.com and some other considerations) that now redirects to twitter.com (Check out the original twttr.com site here).
The domain name that all the MILLIONS of twitter users know and now use was bought SEVEN YEARS after the idea was first ‘born’ and THREE FULL MONTHS after the web based prototype was hosted!
Jack Dorsey (the initial idea man behind twitter) is successful today because he had 7 years of proof that his unique web-based text messaging concept was eventually going to work. I’m not suggesting you spent that much time but test and prove too.
If he did not, he would have would have set precedence for squandering money on bad ideas – a repulsive thing to investors.
This act puts him in the realm of savvy internet entrepreneurs that took time to ensure their ideas will be successful before making long term though relatively small financial commitments that owning and maintaining a domain name demands.
My point is this…
While starting out in business, if you misuse “$10″, you will most likely do the same with $10,000,000.
There are many more examples of the “test before invest” concept but these should convince you.
If you follow the evolution of technology, you’ll know that Google’s first presence online was on a SUB-domain on Stanford University’s web site (http://google.stanford.edu/). See proof here!
Isn’t it weird to think that one of the MOST successful web businesses today took off on a free SUB-domain for another site – meaning Google used free hosting while in beta phase!
Take a cue from that and from Seth Godin blogger extraordinaire who uses a free platform.
The summary of all my grammatical rambling is this:
“Test first. Earn money. Invest and grow faster.”