Quantity

Location: Breithaupt Park, Kitchener

Description: A shelter in a wooded area containing numerous picnic tables, at least four rows deep and twenty long.

Story: "Look, your idea has merit, but I don't think it'll work. You've got a decent business model, but you don't have a way for it to gain traction." His boss shrugged. "It's just not going anywhere."

Steve took a defensive posture. "All it takes is one person, me, to start generating a lot of content, and then we'll have loads of hits from search engines. After that, it'll take off in no time."

"Let me put it to you this way: if I created a website that only had the joke: 'Why was 9 afraid of 7? Because 7 8 9!', I wouldn't get many visitors. Even if I created loads of pages with that same joke, I still wouldn't get anywhere because all I'm offering is quantity, not quality. Then again, if my entire site had quality pages all revolving around that joke, studying why it's funny, what other languages have similar wordplay related to numbers, etc. I'm still targeting a niche market; we'd be lucky if most people stuck around for more than one page.

"But let's say there's a sudden crazy for numerical wordplay and the site takes off. That's great, but unless people are willing to spend money for more we still aren't getting anywhere. Will they buy '7 8 9' t-shirts or coffee mugs? Probably not because it's a verbal play on words, not a visual joke. There's just no way to market it."

He sighed and looked over the papers on his desk; no matter how he rearranged them, the pitch fell flat. "You've got a product to sell and a way to do it, but unless you can get people to the site for cheap and keep them coming back, it's a fad at best." He returned the files to their folder and handed them back to Steve. "Just because you build it, doesn't mean they'll come."