What’s your motivation for building a website?

It seems like a lot of the make money online type blogs have been talking about motivations lately. I’m not sure if it’s coincidence or just a meme that’s going around. The common idea seems to be “do what you love” and while that’s much better than “do what you think will earn money” it’s not really the greatest reason to start a site. What are some of the common motivations for launching a new internet venture?

Build a site you think will make money. Have you heard about mesothelioma? It’s a nasty type of lung cancer most often related to asbestos exposure. There were tons of class action lawsuits around asbestos and lawyers found that they could make good money from people with the disease and eventually they found Google Adwords. Since it was a lucrative area the advertisers were paying $10, $20 and at some point over $100 per click. So what followed is tons of webmasters creating sites to try to drive traffic to those ads. But of course none of them really knew anything about mesothelioma and the competition in the search engines for the term was out of the world. These webmasters had no real interest in the topic, nothing value to add to the topic and little chance of actually getting any traffic or making any money.

Build a site around a topic you love. This seems to be the most recommended idea being tossed around and it’s certainly better than trying to build a mesothelioma site. There are a few problems still lurking here however. Say you love the TV show Lost. While you could start a website about it there are about a billion others that already exist. Unless you have something unique to bring to the table there’s little chance that your site will succeed. Another problem is if the thing you love is not of interest to very many (or any) people. As much as I love my kids the only people who would want to read about their daily exploits are their grand parents. Now you may find that you really do want to start a site in a crowded field where you have nothing original to add or you may wish to serve the grandparents up some day to day stories but realize that such a site is never going to be a money making venture.

Build a site around an under-served need. Is there something that you really wish existed on the net? A resource for some topic that you know a bunch about but don’t see anyone else addressing? These are where the winning ideas come from. Lets say you want a quick an easy way to tell your friends what you’re up to and find out what they’re up to. You look around and no one is doing it. Voila! Twitter is made. Or maybe you really want a way to communicate with the parents of your kids little league team. If you search for a solution and can’t find one or can’t find one that works the way you like chances are you’ve found and under-served need. It’s something you’re interested in so you won’t give up or get burned out quickly and you have an idea about how the need should be served so you’re adding value to the net.

Now every in reality not everything you come up with is really going to be an under-served need. There may be a solution out there that you’re not aware of. Or the need may be limited to so few people that its really not worth serving. But ask around to a few friends who would be in your target demographic and see if they also experience the need and are unaware of a solution.

Finding and meeting an under-served need is not easy. The obvious ideas all seem to be taken. But if you’re looking for an idea for starting a new website spend some time thinking about what it is you’d like to see that isn’t yet out there. If you can find a need and fill it you’ll have a recipe for a site that can keep you interested for a long time and potentially provide a significant amount of income.