It always shocks me that whenever I mention that you should treat a website as a business rather than a community that people accuse me of being too selfish and not caring about “loyal readers”.

What absolute crap.

Don’t you realize how lucky and valuable you are to be online these days?

Here’s what 99% of people online miss:

A visitor to an online business is a potential customer and much more loved than a mere community member.

Let’s break this down. If you visit a site that runs purely as a community or gathering of “like minded individuals” you are monetarily worthless and most webmasters would not hesitate to ban you if you did something that they didn’t like.

For example, imagine that Text Link Ads wasn’t a business and just run as a hobby and didn’t make any money - would it matter to the owner how many members it had? It wouldn’t matter anywhere near as much as he’d have a lot less motivation to keep members happy.

On the other hand, consider the actual state of affairs where Text Link Ads takes 50% of what you earn and is a money making business. Oh boy, do they love you now! E-mails are responded to quickly and they’ll do their best to help you out. Heck, they’ll even pay you $25 just for you to refer someone else to them!!

Being a customer means that you are automatically cared about!

We are so lucky

I love visiting sites that are big money makers because I know that when I go there that I am much more valuable to the owner than on any community site. Shoemoney values his RSS readers at around $2 each and that means he sees me as being more valuable than most “community” webmasters will.

The bottom line is that when your website is a business, your visitors are your customers and you should do whatever you can to make them happy and give them what they want. Conversely, when you visit an online business, expect to be treated well.

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