While all projects are different from one another but there something they all have in common. To have a successful website or any other type of business you have to go through the process. If you think success goal is a million dollars you have to realize that before you can make a million you have to make your first $100, then your first $1000, then $10,000 and so on until you get to your goal. Even if you achieve your goal doesn’t mean that all if safe and you don’t have to worry anything else. With every dollar you make you add a dollar to the things you have to worry about.

Things to consider, if you’re starting a blog or have blog, there are more 125,000 blogs that come out everyday, more than 2,000 web services launch every week and many more other sites like ecommerce, corporate and portfolio sites. The biggest problem is that the internet users in general grow by only %3 to %5 a year, so all the new sites as well as the older sites compete for relatively the same piece of the pie.

Before the start of 3 Phases

Before you jump into the mayhem of getting through the 3 phases and becoming successful you need do a few things so that you can enter Phase #1.

What you need to do:

1. Research
2. Plan
3. Brand
4. Strategize
5. Develop a functional product or service
6. Do some tests

***If you’ve done all of above and now are ready to jump in then who am I to stop you so let’s get to it.

3 PHASES OF SUCCESS

Survival

Basically the survival of the fittest, the more prepared. You don’t necessarily have to have feature full or absolute perfect product to enter, as long as it’s functional and delivers what you have promised. Also you don’t to have a lot money, having money is a bonus but not the differentiator.

125,000 blog/day, what you want to do is separate yourself from majority of these other blogs. %99.99 will fail before they even enter survival phase, if you are on the same ship as them, well guess what, you will fail with them.

This phase requires you put in as much energy and resources as you possibly can. 18 hour work days are just beginning, you have to market your brains out, and sometimes you have to invent new ways of marketing and promoting your site. At the start of this phase nobody gives a crap about you, your product or services no matter how brilliant and unique it is. This is when survival of the fittest gets a whole new meaning.

Survival is also about knowing that while you’re working your butt off there are tens of other projects that are trying the same thing. If you have a new blog and dying to get a mention by other more popular blog owners then consider this, most of the popular blog owners wait out the opportunity simply because they don’t want to write about a blog that could die in a few weeks not to mention that they are constantly being bombarded with your own competitors and they can only mention a very few at a time so they rather bet on the safer projects.
Survival is not something you accomplish like passing a test. It is something you have to do day in and day out. For as long as you have competitors fighting for a piece of your traffic you’re stuck in survival mode.

Some of the site currently in Survival Mode: TechCrunch, Mashable, Twitter, Yelp, Glam, Federated Media, BlogAds, OpenID,

Some of the site downgraded to survival: Microsoft, Yahoo, YellowPages, Skype, Technorati,

Establishment

Still survival, but it’s on a different level. It’s when you have overcome all challenges and now you’re on your way to becoming mainstream. Your challenge is not about getting traffic but about keeping traffic. Innovation has become your biggest hassle, your competition is fierce and ruthless, and your server and maintenance costs are going through the roof.

It’s a great place to be! But if you’re not careful and aggressive somebody else will take your place and send you back into the first phase.

Establishment phase is like a VIP room, you may have a chance to get in but seats are limited only the best get in, but if they don’t keep at it they will be asked to leave.

Some of the site in Establishment: Google, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, FireFox, ING Direct, DIGG,

Leap

The dreamland, or could be hell. In this phase your biggest problem is the users that use your site or product. They are very demanding, they want constant innovation and if something goes wrong everybody will talk about it. I’m not going to get into this too much.
 There are only a few website in this phase that I can think of. Like Ebay, Amazon, and … 

NOTE: This website is mostly about the Survival Phase. In my Opinion if you are in the Establishment or Leap phase then helping you is beyond me what you need is big consulting companies like BCG,  McKinsey and Bain