Why building a website does not mean they will come

I'm pretty speechless. I just got off the phone from the owner of a website who wanted professional SEO Services so ther social website could be found on Google. I asked how they intended to generate an income stream or what kind of business model would they use to generate sales from this type of website and received the reply "We don't know".

I'm not fond of working with people who decide to go down the route of building a website with little thought on how it will bring them $$ (or £££) and how they will differentiate themselves and stand out from the crowd.

I'm getting "JAW ache" (Just Another Website ache) when I look at the site, its generic, looks templated and doesn't inspire me.

The industry is full of people who have these types of websites that typically have little invested in them and then go nowhere. The individual then thinks they have been taken for a ride by people in the web industry tarnishing our reputation. Sure the web designer responsible (if there was one) might have wanted to point out that building a generic website and jumping on the social networking bandwagon to hopefully make a few dollars won't likely work without careful forethought, but its not their responsibility ultimately is it?

I'm thinking I will be seeing this a lot in 2009 as people either with redundancy money or those without funds but desperate to take a chance will start coming out of the woodwork for poorly thought out websites that they think having ranked in Google's SERPS will change their lives. For most I fear they will be seriously disappointed. I am so hoping I am going to be proved wrong.