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Last weekend, I spent a lot of time updating our Web Business book, which should be available as a print book in October (we've been selling the old ebook version for a number of years). Anyway, for the first time in quite a while, I hired an outside editor to work on the project. Her schedule meant I had to give myself a strict deadline to get my updates done. (As my husband is fond of pointing out, "nothing happens without a deadline.") Well, it worked, and thanks to our IdeaWeaver software, I was able to reorganize and rewrite everything in time. I'm happy to report that all 59 thousand words are now in the capable hands of the editor.
In addition to updating all the Web-oriented information, I also wrote a couple of new chapters about general business practices. Many people we've run across seem to think that online business is somehow different from any other business. It's not, as I point out here in one of my favorite passages from the new introductory section:
As Web developers, for years, we have heard people say longingly, "I want to start an online business, so I can quit my crummy job and work from home." Or business owners will tell us that they plan to put up a Web site "when they have time."
Of course inertia being what it is, most of them have done nothing at all. Or if they have done something about getting their online business started, they spent a whole lot of money on "get rich quick" schemes that didn't pay off.
Let's face it; if you were planning to become a pig farmer, it makes sense to learn something about pigs before you start. Yet people seem to think that it's different with the Internet. They think you can just pay someone to put up a Web site and suddenly untold riches appear.
The reality couldn't be further from the truth.
In the writing I do, I don't get to write about pigs often, so I amused myself with a mental image of a bunch of pigs sitting around in a pen looking quizzically at the frustrated owner trying to figure out how to open the gate.
Sometimes running a Web business feels kind of like that. We're hoping our book will help people open the gate ;-)
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