Today I came across an article at Inc.com about Jason Fried. Jason was answering questions about the way he works. This part stuck out to me:

Our blog has more than 100,000 readers, but I don’t post every day. I write when I have something specific to say. I recently wrote a scathing piece on the tech media. It really bothers me that the definition of success has changed from profits to followers, friends, and feed count. This crap doesn’t mean anything. Kids are coming out of school thinking, I want to start the next YouTube or Facebook. If a restaurant served more food than everybody else but lost money on every diner, would it be successful? No. But on the Internet, for some reason, if you have more users than everyone else, you’re successful. No, you’re not.

I wholeheartedly agree with him. The sites which have the most users have some information capital, for sure, but they may not have a sustainable revenue stream. I believe Jason Fried and 37 signals have one of the best business models and some of the best products online.

I believe I came to this realization a long time ago: any services that I build need to be profitable from the beginning, and can self-sustain even on a limited user base. This is where true value will be for the users of your site.