As soon as I started making decent money with my websites (e.g., $5,000 monthly or so) I started calling myself an “online entrepreneur.” I would use that tag on my social media profiles, on my about page and what not.
Then around one year ago I started to think about it, and I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t really an online entrepreneur, I only pretended to be one, because the name was cool and could impress people (or so I wished…).
In reality I was (and still am) just a guy making money on the Internet with my websites. Sure I make over six figures annually and have many freelancers working with me part time, but I still don’t think that makes me an entrepreneur. In fact if you go to my Twitter account now you’ll see my bio as “Internet Geek,” which I think is a down to earth definition of what I do.
I do want to become a real entrepreneur, though, but I believe that the path to it is longer and more challenging than most of us tend to think. In my opinion an online entrepreneur is someone who has a real online business, and this involves having some office space, full time employees, a product or service you sell, and customers.
Having only some of those factors don’t qualify you as an entrepreneur. For example, I do sell products on some websites (e.g., courses and ebooks), and I do have customers, but I don’t have an office space yet and I don’t have full time employees, so I wouldn’t call myself an online entrepreneur.
This is just my opinion though, and I would like to hear what you guys think. What is an online entrepreneur in your opinion? Does having a couple of websites that make good money qualify you as one?
Update: Thanks for the kind words guys. While I also agree with most of your comments, I think one important aspect I forgot to mention is the risk factor. An entrepreneur takes risks, and if things work well he reaps the rewards. Starting a website has no risks, unless we are talking about someone who will invest a lot of money into that website. In this case yes I would call such a person an entrepreneur. If you just start a site paying $10 for the domain and $5 for the hosting plan, then I wouldn’t call you an entrepreneur, even if one day your site starts making a lot of money.
0 comments:
Post a Comment