Forum Moderators: phranque
Also, the site might exist, but between the time when we don't have enough money to run it and the time when it would get sold is too great. Not only would the site have to be taken down (and hence lose search engine positions and a user base) the site loses a lot of it's value. Since the site failed people might not see it as a viable market product and not want to pick it up.
But sites are being bought and sold all the time. Sign up for the Web Mergers and Acquisitions newsletter and you get a weekly update as to the site trading that's going on. It's fairly active.
Failed businesses are often like this, too: Customer records get sold to one person, the office furniture to someone else, the brand name to a third. When you've got a company in receivership, you've got to sell the company whichever way gets you out of debt the fastest. Same thing with online businesses.
Being almost totally insulated from the real world, they neglected one tiny detail : they were rubbish ideas, mostly badly implemented. Its hard enough to get people to buy things face-to-face, when you can smarm and simper at them in person, guage their reactions, and adjust. I know, I've done it
Its even harder to do it on the phone, using only your voice, and blocked from all the visual and body language clues, when they always have the option of just hanging up. I know, I've done that too
Its nearly impossible to get them to buy from a website, which they first have to find (the web is a very passive medium, telesales is far more proactive), then be interested by, then trust. The list of objections to buying is enormous, but almost no-one was looking at those, because they didn't know they had to. The focus was solely on the technology, and how sexy it all was.
Boo was the classic. Great look, good brand, technology that made the techies drool, no business plan. The site was very difficult, even frustrating, for a potential customer to get to the point-of-sale. When you could get on at all. If oyu were willing to risk getting the wrong goods. Late. If they arrived at all.
You get my point? It was all being driven by the wrong people, with no thought ever given to the consumer
OK, now I've finished the rant, lets examinehow it relates to the question.
Consider 2 websites, A and B. A is a typical dotcom, loads of VC, Jags for the directors, no idea what they are doing. B is the product of an individual or group who have spotted a gap in the market, where the benefits of the Web can be applied to a known business scenario, and the difficulties and complications that arise are outweighed by the benefits.
A will crash and burn in about 18 months, when it becomes obvious that 1) the revenue streams are actually trickles, 2) its all a lot more expensive than it looks. This company will likely be broken up, because who wants to buy a failure like that? The parts have some value, but not the whole.
B will plod on, grow organically, but cover its costs. Hence it is unlikely to come up for sale
Since these 2 general cases cover the majority of fully developed sites, that would explain the lack of them on the market
Kudos! I think you summed that up very nicely. I'm in the middle of what I hope is a B company and I've thought similar things for the last 2 years. Keep up the good posts!
