it is all about the data

This is definitely batting out of order as we haven't discussed anything about starting an internet company, what you need to know, what you need to sell ... but I need to point this out first!

Whether it is customers or potential customers or newsletter readers, an internet company is all about the data. The product or service can change but your company is all about the data. An email address can be worth 10 cents and a purchasing customer can be worth $80 (about what eBay paid for Paypal per user) and everything in between based on what the customers are doing. These are longterm thoughts but when you start, don't waste your first 10,000 customers by not getting all the info you can.

I was about to buy a company from a guy in Sweden, really is was just a pretty cool software product and the guy had over 100,000 users of this product. It was a free product but he had a lot of users. Turns out he gave away without even getting an email address so I passed on the deal. Why? With 100,000 users I could ahve remarketed other products, my products, an upgrade a newsletter ... endless amount can be done but I needed the data. I am sure I would have paid this guy $5,000 for the product on eBay (I buy everything on eBay) and data but it was worth a lot more if he had the data. Probably upwards of $20,000 but I do not think he ever sold it. All he needed to do was require a first name, last name and email address to get his product free.

From day one ... get the data. Get it by a newsletter, get it by requiring it prior to purchasing ... just get it.

Remember, just because you have the data does not mean that you have to send endless emails and annoy the customers ... but if they came to your site, they have some degree of interest in what you are doing.

I use a company called Skylist to manage my email lists ... great company, a little pricey but the guy who owns it, Josh Baer, has made a name for himself on the Can Spam side. His word is good so it helps legitimate marketers get into the big mail services like AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail. Very important and not very easy

More about this later, but get the data!