If you were to open a convenience store, you would think long and hard about the store's location. It would not make much sense to open it in a remote area with few customers. When you start a website, every person with online access is a potential customer. Have you ever wondered how many people actually use the Internet? Is it a few hundred thousand, a few million or more? According to the Internet World Stats website, out of a total 6.5 billion people on the planet, about 1/6-th of them go online. That is a staggering 1 billion people! Obviously those who could potentially access your website is less than that since for example not everyone speaks the same language. If you are developing a website in English then you have access to at least 330 million people considering just North America. Of course there are many more English speaking countries so that number is much larger (link). In addition, consider that there is still the other 5 billion of the population that does not have online access. Every year more people get access to the Internet as the infrastructure is improving worldwide while the cost of access is decreasing. It might be that growth in North America is slowing down but it is increasing rapidly in less developed countries (link). I hope these numbers help you realize a couple of important points. First, if your website does not get much traffic at first don't give up. You just haven't reached all of your potential customers. This brings me to my second point. Marketing is important to success and I hope that you now understand why. In a later article, I will discuss how to properly market your website in order to drive traffic to it. For the time being just take some time to comprehend what a vast economy the Internet really is and the opportunities that exist therein. |
