Business on the internet is booming as evidenced by the likes of people like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban who have all made fortunes with internet based companies. More fortunes are being made daily, and black entrepreneurs can’t afford to miss out on these huge economic opportunities.
There are many black entrepreneurs who are already staking their claim in internet business and our goal is to present their stories of success so that you too can be inspired to follow in their successful footsteps.
Although the internet allows businesses to focus on a global market, we want to encourage our readers to not overlook the tremendous opportunities that are available for black owned and black themed web businesses, so we put together a list of 10 reasons why you should start a black website.
1 – YOU RELATE TO BLACK PEOPLE
When it comes to marketing products and services to black consumers, there is no one better qualified to do it than someone who lives and understands the black experience. Time and time again we see non-black companies drop the ball when targeting black consumers. They do this in a variety of ways, such as ignoring or misrepresenting our unique cultures and diversity, such as lumping us into a one black fits all blacks mold. We like to be marketed to our tastes, and not just our skin color. When you see an ad with one black in a group of non-blacks, almost 100 percent of the time, it’s marketed to white tastes and the black person is simply giving the illusion of inclusion. We still have to deal with stereotypical portrayals of ourselves at the hands of others. This is mainly because even in this so-called post racial society, they simply still don’t know what makes our people tick.
As a black entrepreneur, you know what makes us tick, because you are one of us and you should be able to tap into many niches where blacks are under and poorly served by others
2- MORE BLACK ROLE MODELS ARE NEEDED
In keeping with our theme of Empowerment Through Entrepreneurship, it’s highly important that young black professionals and children have constant motivational reminders in the form of successful people that look like themselves. Without getting too preachy, many of our people have been miseducated to view themselves as inferior. This lie can be extremely hard to disprove when they constantly see black people at the bottom of the economic food chain. Too many of our youngsters think that the only route to financial success is by either being a pro athlete, an entertainer, or sadly a drug dealer. They are constantly told that the odds aren’t in their favor for those professions, but let’s be realistic, for many, those are the only major successes that they ever see, so that’s why they emulate it. They need to see and be inspired by your success.
3- COMMUNITY BUILDING/ECONOMIC SURVIVAL
To quote Nelson Mandela, “Until we have a very strong business class, it is going to be difficult for us to make real progress.”
It is no secret that all over the US, our communities are in critical condition economic wise. Dr. Claud Anderson, author of Powernonics, states that if we don’t turn this around soon, then black people are on the fast track to becoming a permanent underclass. The main key to reversing this path is through business ownership and controlling resources. Make no mistake about it, web business is big business and Black websites can help to create wealth and jobs that can in turn strengthen our communities
4- BUILT IN UNDERSERVED CUSTOMER BASE
A proven key to a successful web business is to identify an untapped niche and provide valuable services, products and more to that targeted market. Like I explained in my article Pay Blacks Some Attention, They’ll Pay You Money, you’ll find that oftentimes black consumers are extremely ignored or poorly served in a multitude of industries. This poor treatment of black spending power should be viewed by you as opportunity. If you find that an industry has a huge black customer base, but the business ignores, alienates, or simply caters poorly to black people, then there is huge success awaiting you if you cater your website to blacks in a way that truly connect with them.
5- BLACK SUB NICHES
Building on number 4, once a black niche is identified, don’t make the same mistake as many non-black companies and lump all black people into a one size fits all mold. Because we are such a diverse people, we must target all facets of our people. Not only does opportunity await you in catering to black people, but black sub niches need some attention too. Success can be achieved by catering your websites to black men, black women, black moms, black dads, black teens, black couples, black students, black professionals, and so on.
6- BLACK SUPPORTIVE PRIDE
It’s easy to get discouraged about starting a black website when you constantly hear that blacks won’t support black businesses. The truth is blacks will support your black endeavor. It’s just has to be “good”. Black people take special pride in supporting “good” black business that are not just black owned, but also bring value and good service to their customers. By you providing a “good” black website, you’ll be giving us more to be proud of, and we definitely need and want more black businesses to be proud of.
7- IT’S NOT HARD
Creating successful websites does require hard work, but it’s not rocket science. You don’t have to be some computer whiz with super hacker coding skills to be successful. Nowadays, there are premade programs like WordPress or Weebly that takes care of all the technical stuff for you. All you have to do is add your own custom content. For those things that are too difficult for you to handle, you can always contract someone to do it for you. To find out how easy creating websites can be, I explain this in detail in IF YOU CAN USE FACEBOOK AND TWITTER, YOU CAN MAKE MONEY ONLINE.
8- LOW OVERHEAD
The cost of starting and running a website is extremely affordable. You literally can run a site with basic hosting for under $10 a month. Even if you add a few bells and whistles to fully optimize your website with things such as a mailing list, custom themes, podcast hosting, etc, it’s still cheaper than a traditional brick and mortar business. Much cheaper!
9- CATERING TO YOUR OWN WORKS FOR OTHER RACES
Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Korean, Vietnamese and all other ethnicities in this country don’t just survive, but they thrive in business. They understand that catering their businesses to their own people’s cultural tastes is a recipe for success because the mainstream tends to alienate them just like they do us. They show by example that if you take care of your own, your own will take care of you and will be your bread and butter. Black people have been disillusioned to believe that we must cater to everyone and not focus on race, not even our own. We view this as reverse racism, yet every other group caters to their own race and culture. Catering to your own people is not racism, nor is it wrong. When you mistreat, or refuse service to customers because their race is not the same as yours, then its racism…and that’s not good business.
10- FREEDOM
A successful web business, just like an offline business, can provide entrepreneurs with time and financial freedom that working a regular 9 to 5 can’t. Obviously, you get to set your own hours and income and when things are going great, you can take off without approval and you can give yourself a pay raise without jumping through corporate hoops. A successful website can literally be run from all over the world, or at least wherever you can get internet access. You can make money in your sleep, and with good niche sites, you can set your website on automatic with little to no attention from you and still make money. That’s what I call freedom. What 9 to 5 job can you do that with?
Do you have more to add? Let me know what you think in the comments.
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