A team for an online business

[CharlieB]

Hi

I've got a few ideas for online businesses similar to social media sites and groupon but I have no skills in coding for websites. Although I am trying to learn. However my friend is a talented website designer and we have spoken about doing an idea together. My question is what sort of role do I play in the team if my friend is making the website? I know an online business isn't simply just making a website and plonking it on the internet hoping people find it so can you please let me know some of the other roles that would be good for me in an online business.

I see myself as the ideas man and getting people together to see them though to fruition. But that dosent mean I can just put my feet up and boss people around so what roles are there that I could do?

Also how can an online business make money off the freemium model (like wikipedia)? Is it a case of having a certain level of traffic would benefit someone who would want to buy it due to the potential of having advertising on the site and the value is placed on the website because of this?

[BarbaraKParker]

Yes that is right. Certain value is being placed in the website's domain name. Advertising should never be underestimated since this can give massive income.

[Museboxx]

well wiki is popular because they have User generated content and it's really quite accurate and because they have set it up to be extremely user friendly, people just used it.



If you're doing a discounts website, I've got a friend who is working on one and it's very intensive.

after 18 months online I want to say to start by building a list. Start by collecting names for a database of people who are looking to get your type of discount service...

[CharlieB]

Hi

I've got a few ideas for online businesses similar to social media sites and groupon but I have no skills in coding for websites. Although I am trying to learn. However my friend is a talented website designer and we have spoken about doing an idea together. My question is what sort of role do I play in the team if my friend is making the website? I know an online business isn't simply just making a website and plonking it on the internet hoping people find it so can you please let me know some of the other roles that would be good for me in an online business.

I see myself as the ideas man and getting people together to see them though to fruition. But that dosent mean I can just put my feet up and boss people around so what roles are there that I could do?

thanks for responses so far guys, but does anyone know about the other questions I asked? I'm really interested to know

[Quick Site 4 Me]

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if i really believed in someone's idea enough to take orders from them.

What skills can you bring to the table?

Are you paying these people that you are delegating tasks to?
Making it worth their while is probably a good idea if they are doing all of the actual graft.

You could be picking up the phone and making arrangements to get sponsorship, advertising slots etc.
Start making some cold calls

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How We Make Money Online
Why you need a wordpress site
Spending Before You Earn.

[rockden]

i think your better plain and your great money earn these idea and i appreciated your team and your thinking i think you taking a great success these topic social media site owner many traffic and success is 100% nice job keep it up

[CharlieB]

I should clarify, does the CEO of an online business similar to groupon, facebook, twitter, airbnb etc have to be able to design the website? If not then what roles should the CEO be doing for an online company?

[cellphoneguy]

^^No, the CEO doesn't have to design a website. However IMO, the CEO should have a vision and ensure that if they are not designing the website themself (especially for a startup) that it matches their business model and objectives. As they say, Marketing is about 80% of your business while the product and/or service provided is 20%. I'd value marketing skills over website programming skills in a CEO. Plenty of experts out there for hire to administer a website (for a price of course!). GL!

[CharlieB]

thanks! So what typical ways do CEOs organise marketing? Does this just mean you set up a facebook and twitter page and chat about anything that relates to your start up? Or are there any other major ways...

[cellphoneguy]

^^That is somewhat of a loaded question because it is going to depend on what industry the business is in. As far as social networking, the impacts of social networking sites is going to vary again depending on what industry the business is in. Social networking probably has the biggest value in comparison to cost because you can reach a considerable sized audience with very little $$ investment. However IMO, traditional marketing (ads, radio, tv, print, etc) and satisfied customers still holds the key to the success of the company.

[urbandrinking]

At least for the start of the project you can be the SEO man. It is very simple, if your partner creates an admin page for link exchanges, all you will need to do is fill in the boxes and find the related sites. Go and sign up to every web directory you can find. All very very simple. This will keep you busy for days on end, and by the time you get this done you will feel you are contributing a lot more to the website, because believe me, as simple as SEO is to actually do, it is very time consuming no matter what route you take.

You may not be able to design the site, but there is nothing stopping you adding content to the website. As long as your admin page is easy enough to use which would depend on how your partner creates it, there is tonnes of work for you to do!

[youngmitch97]

You can promote/market the business which is equally difficult.

teachmeswag

[TedR]

Charlie,
You don’t get to be just the idea guy unless you are
1) funding the entire project yourself or
2) you have earned your right to be the idea guy.

Saying that you are the idea guy is like saying that you want to get a bunch of people together who are going to willingly do whatever you tell them to do. That isn’t going to happen.

What you want to do is become a team leader. A team leader (a.k.a. entrepreneur) conceives of a project in his head. He commits that project to paper in the form of a written business plan. As part of that planning process, he identifies what needs to happen to take that project from conception to fruition. He identifies what the most important pieces of that puzzle are. He assembles a team of people to perform whatever pieces of the puzzle need to be done. This is why it is so hard to build a successful business from scratch completely by yourself. Almost nobody has all those skills to get all those pieces of the puzzle together without getting outside help.

If you are the kind of person who can organize something like that to make it happen, then when you contact the other people who are going to perform their piece of the puzzle, they are going to respect you for your skills and be willing to do what is expected of them. That is when you transition to becoming the idea guy.

You can’t start out just being an idea guy. You have to start out being the grunt who gets his hands dirty in every aspect of your business. Then you work your way up to being the idea guy.

Besides, unless you understand the kind of grunt work that is involved, you are unlikely to be coming up with ideas that have real potential.
Everyone who has ever thought of starting a business is an idea guy. An entrepreneur is someone who can organize what needs to be done and then make it happen.

Everyone has had a great idea at some point in their life. You will probably have a thousand of them between now and when you die. You don’t get paid for coming up with a great idea. You get paid for building and executing a plan that is built around a great idea.

A couple other thoughts to leave you with:
1) What benefit is your website going to provide to people?
2) What specific kind of person are you providing that benefit for? Who is the target audience?
3) Why are people going to want what you offer instead of what they already have or are already doing? You must have a very good irrefutable answer to this question and you must be right about it. If you are wrong about it, you are very likely to fail.

You must answer those questions if you really expect to succeed. Keep looking for ideas until you have one that you can answer all those questions about that still excites you. Then build your plan and execute it.