As web designers, we see it all the time. The “I want to be unique and different, but I want my site to look JUST LIKE that site I just saw that is selling the same things and has the same concept as I do…” (Did that sentence even remotely make sense?) A cynical person would say that there is no individuality left in the world, “you can’t reinvent the wheel, you can only improve it; yadda yadda yadda.” While that is true, you can appreciate other websites and take artistic pointers, you don’t have to copy. Ask yourself how the designer or owner of that website would feel if they were to come across your website and see that you had copied their vision right down to the logo, color scheme and tag-lines. The real question here is “WHY?” Why are you starting a website project? If the answers have to do with the following 7 reasons, turn off your computer, go outside and every time you say or think the words, “Website” , “Online Start-up” , “Shopping Cart”, or “Business Loan” flog yourself repeatedly with a sharp, thorny stick. 7 Reasons NOT to start a website 1. Everybody else is making money online, why can’t I too? 2. I have an amazing product and EVERYONE will buy it from my website. 3. I have some extra money set aside and I’d like to take a stab at an online start-up. 4. I’m bored. 5. I am starting my own line of (insert here), it’s not manufactured yet, but I know it will be a hit! 6. I want an online business, but I don’t have any money to start one. I know I can borrow money from friends/family/bank, etc. 7. I want to try something new. I’m certainly not here to discourage you from starting an online business, I make my living through website design, but I can’t sit back and let good people make the same mistakes over and over and over. I’m an expert at failure: I used to own a website business (shopping cart selling bath products) that made absolutely no money whatsoever. I was stealing from Peter to pay off Paul weekly and it was very humiliating. I barely broke even at the end. In retrospect, I would have rather taken that money and thrown it into a large trashcan, and then thrown a lit match inside that trashcan. It certainly would have been more stimulating than the year of working for no pay, long hours, regret, depression and failure. So before you choose to hire that web designer, please take the above into consideration.