ATLANTA — Diana Harbour reached what for many people would seem like entrepreneurial nirvana: appearing on ABC’s “Shark Tank.” But at a recent viewing party for her TV segment, Harbour’s eyes kept darting from the show’s airing to her laptop.

Online traffic to the 33-year-old’s fashion business, The Red Dress Boutique, was skyrocketing.

“Please don’t crash the site,” Harbour said quietly to herself.

Too late. Her website crashed within a minute, done in by millions of hits.

The Shark Tank giveth, and the Shark Tank taketh away.

At least 11 Georgians have survived a monthlong ordeal to land on what has become the nation’s biggest stage for people who start something from scratch. Among them are an Atlanta emergency doctor, a former pro wrestler and two moms. At the end of October, Patrick Whaley appeared on the show and pitched a line of weighted training clothes developed by Titin, his small business.

The show, in its sixth season, puts entrepreneurs before a panel of potential investors who can be both encouraging and brutalizing as they decide whether to strike a deal.

Most Georgia entrepreneurs who have been on the show say the experience was remarkable.

It can send sales soaring, they said. But they also warn: It’s not likely to make you rich.

“Almost everyone I know on ‘Shark Tank’ says it was a rising tide that raised their ship, but it wasn’t a tsunami, and it didn’t allow them to sell the boat,” said Amy Baxter, whose segment on the show aired this year.

A physician, Baxter pitched her Buzzy4shots device, which lessens fear of needle injections. She didn’t take offers made by the sharks, but her website traffic jumped from 300 hits a day to 35,000 just after the show aired. It also got her attention from potential partners and customers, including major buyers and distributors overseas who learned of the product through international airings of the show.

“Shark Tank” feeds some viewers’ quiet desire to better their lot. But entrepreneurship in general has broader importance in the nation’s economy. New and young companies are a big driver of job growth, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship.

On “Shark Tank,” the climax to each segment is whether the sharks will strike a deal to invest in one of the ventures. But getting funding wasn’t a priority for some entrepreneurs on the show.

“I didn’t want their money,” said former pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page. “I wanted to have their knowledge.”

Page pitched sharks on his exercise and nutrition system called DDP Yoga. But he didn’t get a deal after offering investors a 5 percent stake in his company for $200,000.

Funding from investors can help build a business, such as by expanding websites, ordering crucial inventory or launching marketing campaigns. There also are expectations that entrepreneurs who strike a deal on “Shark Tank” will get invaluable advice from the sharks, all of whom have built their own successful businesses.

The show is taped months in advance of airing, and not all of the segments will appear on TV. The entrepreneurs usually get about two weeks’ notice before the airing.

Page used that time to prepare, such as adding 27 servers to handle extra web traffic.

After the show, he pulled in $1 million in sales in six days, he said. That’s equal to a fourth of his revenue for all of last year.

Aaron Marino went on “Shark Tank” to pitch his Alpha M DVD system designed to show men how to dress with style. Marino said his real goal was to draw attention for his YouTube channel, where he gives advice on style and confidence for men. But all his mentions of those broader online offerings were cut during editing.

“I made one sale that I can directly tie to the ‘Shark Tank,’” said Marino. He concluded his DVDs weren’t a good fit for the show and were priced too high — $197 at the time of the airing. On his website, “The traffic was good for about five minutes and then it went away and never came back.”

Harbour had heard about “Shark Tank’s” impact before she and her husband, Josh, landed The Red Dress Boutique on the show.

During the show’s taping, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and tech entrepreneur Robert Herjavec agreed to invest $1.2 million for 20 percent of the business. The deal changed in the months that followed, but Harbour was barred from disclosing anything until after the show aired.

Meanwhile, she and her husband worked closely with Cuban’s team to bolster the website. And they spent an extra $250,000, mostly for more clothes to sell.

When the show aired, the site almost instantly went down and mostly stayed that way until the next afternoon.

“We definitely lost sales,” she said. But she still logged more than $500,000 in sales the first three days, registered tens of thousands of emails from customers and added close to 80,000 Facebook followers.

Said Harbour, “We’re exhausted.”