Websites Are Dead (and Nobody Has Noticed)
Having a website is the worst way to make money online.
“$10K a month from a tiny niche market”, the YouTube video said.
“How on earth …”, I mumbled to myself. I had to click the video. 30 minutes later, I bought the first info product. 4 days later, I bought the second one.
I’ve been seduced by a guy named Ryan Levesque (in a good way). He’s currently one of my favorite online marketers.
But as I got sucked into Ryan’s tempting sales funnel, I made a disturbing observation. It is this:
Although I bought two of his products, I have never ever visited his website.
This fact got me thinking:
- When was the last time I visited a proper website? (Answer: I don’t know)
- Why do I not know whether my favorite online creators have a website? (Answer: Because I’m mostly on YouTube, Medium & Twitter)
- Are websites going extinct? (Answer: Everything seems to suggest that …)
Cause Of Death 1: Centralized Networks
90% of all internet activities happen on the big boy’s stage — YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google. And this trend is just increasing.
Twitter- and Medium-founder Ev Williams puts it like this:
“Over the next few years, there is no doubt content and attention will continue to shift from tens of millions of web sites to a few centralized networks that people access via apps on their phones.” — Ev Williams.
In such a brutal environment, how much time do people have left to spend on your little website?
Let’s be honest — having a small website feels like living in a lonely house at the edge of the forest, while everybody else is having a big party in the city nearby.
The amount of data in the world doubles every two years. Naturally, people are simplifying their thinking patterns to master this massive info-overload:
- If you want entertainment, visit YouTube.
- If you have problems, visit Google.
- If you’re ready to spend money, visit Amazon.
To stand a chance in today’s online world, you better make your point quickly. Research indicates that you have only three seconds to make a good first impression, be it offline or online.
Cause Of Death 2: Specialization
If you’re a little older, you know that homepages used to be a thing in the late 90s and early 2000s. People built websites to be cool.
The secret formula to success?
A little text about yourself, a picture of your dog, some blinky banners, and you’re ready to roll.
To get my point, have a look at this masterpiece:
Back then, the motto was simple:
“Let’s build a website, and find out along the way how to make money from it”.
Websites used to be the Suisse Army Knives of the internet. They did a lot of things, but nothing particularly well — and that’s where the problem begins.
Suisse Army Knives may be helpful in nature, but not in the most crowded market of human history.
Today, even the biggest websites on the planet serve a very specific purpose. And even then it takes hundreds of extremely talented engineers to make that software look simple and intuitive.
How is it possible to succeed in such a competitive market?
A New Paradigm: The Minimal Entrepreneur Stack
In the age of the cloud, smart online entrepreneurs think differently.
There’s no need to build an expensive website from scratch without having a clear goal in mind. It’s also extremely inefficient to learn all the necessary skills and technologies to build a website.
Instead, modern entrepreneurs ask themselves only one question:
How can I use existing tools and platforms to achieve my goals in the most efficient way?
Online business is similar to playing Lego, and APIs, SaaS software, and free online tools are the Lego building blocks.
To prove my point, let’s have a look at the success strategies of the most successful online entrepreneurs:
Daniel Vassallo, a former Amazon engineer, sells a portfolio of info products to his 70 k Twitter followers. By doing that, he has made $346,768 in 18 months. I have no idea if he has a website.
Zat Rana, one of my favorite online writers, has built a big audience on Medium. Last year, he started a Substack-newsletter and now makes around 40.000 dollars a month. I visited his website once.
Ali Abdaal, my favorite YouTuber, is a former doctor who started his YouTube channel as a side-project. Ali now has over 1.3m subscribers on YouTube. He earns over $30,000 per month by selling courses on Skillshare. I don’t know if he has a website (nor do I care).
Conclusion
Do you really need a website?
Or do you actually want to build an audience, test your business idea, or sell your course?
Take your time to think this through.
Once your goal is clearly defined, ask yourself which tools and platforms will help you to achieve that goal.
In 99% of cases, having a website is not the correct answer.
