Isn’t it funny how everyone has a good idea for a website/service that will make money?

Does this ever happen to you?

Every now and then one of my friends or colleagues gives me a call with a new idea for a website or service to offer. They call with excitement and a tone of voice that sounds like they believe they’ll be rich soon. They never do any due diligence to see if the same exact service or niche is already being filled. Even when their idea is unique that seems to be all they want to do, tell me the idea. Tell me the idea and collect some sort of paycheck for basically doing nothing but talking to me like a lush would to a buddy during a long night out.

It’s a real shame too, some of these ideas are genuinely good. Unfortunately, I only have so much time. I usually require them to do some leg work.

• Something like research what other services are out there that compete or are related. Make a list. 
• Define an initial feature set.
• Brainstorm our business model.
• Define costs
• Brainstorm marketing ideas

Most people never get past step one. This weeds out the majority. Some will actually define a feature set, but then tend to drop off past the business model. Defining costs almost always loses everyone else.

I may start giving quotes to these people with the ideas, but that would require more questions that they probably wouldn’t ever get back to me on.

I dug this old post up from a blogspot blog that I have and never use anymore. This was from circa 2004, but still holds true.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is to have advertisements that play any kind of sound when the page loads. These are usually flash advertisements. This is very rude, this is like talking to someone while they are trying to read the newspaper. This gets even worse when the noise coming from the advertisement is some voice over speaking. Please, I did not come to the page to view all the ads, so only speak when asked to. Mute the damn thing by default. Let me un-mute it if I’m interested.
This is a new form of popup, and if your not careful, you’re advertisements, like pop-ups will be disabled with browser plugins or extensions that are already available but not widely used… yet. If such ads were to become annoying enough and numerous enough then you might see browsers including flash and/or ad blocking technology built in. Be cautious with the annoyingness factor of your ads. Be courteous of how you’re perceived or you may be shut off altogether. This goes beyond sound at startup, this advice should be taken for all annoying assuming aspects of the ads. Please don’t pop up floating divs, or expanded flash viewports that must be closed manually. These are other annoying aspects that may be turned off if it persists further. This would mean a shut down of valid browser features for webmasters that deliver wanted content.

In your face sales is annoying. No one likes it.

Webmasters - Demand that your ads adhere to a set of non-annoying guidelines to avoid people leaving your site or blocking your ads altogether.

Marketing guys behind the ads - Adhere to the same guidelines, else you may find yourselves getting blocked completely.