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Learnings from the failure of ka19.in

Sometimes, i like browsing sites that i made. it gives me a sense of achievement. Today i browsed over to ka19.in site to be rudely greeted by a redirection to blueline computers. Would have been nice to get a notice from the owner, but i guess he didn't find the time.
Anyway, a year back when talks of redoing this site were going on, i remember clearly telling yathiraj (the owner) that the site would be a better online store than a social network. but since i'm paid for doing what i am told to do and not to shoot my mouth off, i stopped advising him and concentrated on delivering the site. after that, things turned sour due to payment issues.
At that time online shopping was not such a great thing and facebook was everybody's vice. But the idea of being a warehouse and low margins at big scale without the overhead of a pricey showroom was pretty amazing. its still amazing now, but quite honestly, i have enough on my plate so as to not to dabble in this.
however i usually take away something from failure (failure is failure, either mine or anyone else's). so lets see what we can learn from ka19.in
  1. If you are small fish and doing the same thing, in the same way, as the bigger fish, that's an quick, sure and short path to destruction. Be small, think small. start out to capture one niche. make sure that you are a member of this niche, or study it thoroughly.
  2. Since you are small and have a small customer base, be super consumer supportive. This means that you should listen to your customer and take both positive and negative feedback. This will give you excellent word of mouth and increase your base.
  3. Learn to network. Seriously, learn to network. at the least, have a page on facebook, twitter and google+. This will help new people find you, not a bad thing.
  4. Leverage information technology. Not just billing. It could even be some app that you can sponsor. You can even mention apps to any websites that have you advertised, this will help you out indirectly. However the issue here is that it should actually help the customer. If you can use facebook and twitter to better/further your business, so be it.
  5. Customer is king. Read it again. your business should first think of the convenience to the customer. Everything else is secondary. Understand that the customer is giving you his time, so value it. Any business that doesn't respect the customer usually dies. Competition is a lot, business is still the same or getting less. One of the working business models of business these days is to pass on the extra profits to the customer. Everyone likes more for less.
These are just observations that i have made, so please do tell me if you disagree or otherwise in the comments.

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