It’s odd how the most obvious things can take longer to realise. Here’s one that has been dawning on me. I love building websites. But websites are only tools; each one a different kind. Blogs are expression tools, for instance.  And when websites are revenue-generating websites, they’re business tools. Each one is a business. Perhaps a tiny business, but a business nonetheless. With a model, a plan, costs and revenue and customers and suppliers.

But that shouldn’t be scary, right? Starting and running Electric Book Works has been super-hard, so starting a business seems scary when I think of what that took. But the scariness and the complexity is not built into the business. It’s built into my mind.

In the 52sites experiment, we’re really going to have to build super-simple businesses that largely run themselves – the websites are just the most visible part. I’m going to have to get over some neuroses, especially the one about taking myself too seriously.