Barriers to Online Success – What Keeps You Down?

I love Twitter for many reasons. One – it lets you brainstorm in real time with other people. Because tweets are somewhat disposable there is no pressure to be Shakespearean. This allows you to tweet random questions. Some will be silly – others more serious.

Yesterday I tweeted the following question: Barriers to online success are: 1. connectors (one must have a network)
2. Money (little..but some) 3. Time 4. Tech skillz. What else?

Of course – it’s the “what else” part that I was most interested in.

Here’s why I asked.
Seconds before I tweeted this I noticed that Doc Searls shared a new hashtag to follow the fires north of Santa Barbara. A little bit later I noticed Chris Messina re-tweet it, which lead me to believe the hashtag was getting some success.

I don’t know if Doc Searls was originally behind the hashtag – but let’s pretend he was. One reason for the successful adoption of the hashtag would have been because of Doc himself. He has a big network (rightfully so – the guy is freak’n smart). But if I had created that hashtag, it probably wouldn’t have been passed around – and I consider myself to be fairly networked.

Another example:  Tom Cheredar created a Mixx community for NewAssignment.net. It’s a great idea – but it would take all our might just to get the word out.

So what are other barriers to success.

1. Connectors: You need people with large networks who buy into what you got. You need to spread the word.
2. Money. Yes – you need less and less money, but especially if you want a site with moving parts – you need a budget. Even just installing a Drupal site takes some tech skillz (see #4) or you need to hire ($) somebody with those skillz.
3. Time – self-explanatory.
4. Tech Skillz. That doesn’t mean you need to be a php, java, mad programmer. But if you have trouble navigating a Facebook group – you might have trouble getting any project successful online.

And these were just off the top of my head. Here’s what other people had to say.

• DoshDosh: “Ambition. Perseverance. Talent?”
• Tish Grier: “A sense of humor? ability to write good content?  a reputation in Silicon Valley? 😉 on that last one…”
• NewsCred: “Passion. nothing is easy, even in tech. one needs passion and loads of it. without it, success is nearly impossible.”
• Brian Boyer: “Caffeine.  Lots of caffeine.”
• Amy Sample Ward: “strategy (putting tools before the need, shiny coolness ahead of planning”
• Chris Vannoy: “Making a product people *actually* want”
• Celeste LeCompte: “Time is the biggest one in my book!”