I Have No Product - How Can I Have A Business?
By Kelly Lowe
Having a business does not necessarily mean having your own product. Whether you realize it or not, most brick and mortar businesses do not have their own product. Grocery stores sell products that are produced by other companies. Real Estate offices sell real estate that belongs to other people, car dealerships sell vehicles that are made by automobile makers, and even banks sell products based on other people's money!
There is no reason why you can't sell other people's products to get your business started as well. This doesn't mean that you will always want to solely sell other people's products – everybody knows that the real money is in your own products. But selling other people's products is a way to start a business – and a way to add additional income to an existing business, even if you do have your own product.
Often, people make starting a home business a lot more complicated than it actually is. Sure, you want a plan – but don't plan it to death! Some people plan so much for so long that they never actually 'start' their business. If you are selling someone else's products, all that planning isn't really necessary. In fact, you can literally start your business in one day.
1. Choose a product or a category of products to sell based on your own interests and the popularity of the niche. You can use the keyword research tool at http://www.overture.com to determine how popular a niche is by seeing how many searches have been performed recently for keywords related to that niche. Choose your niche and then find some products. Look for products at http://www.clickbank.com , http://www.paydotcom.com , or http://www.cj.com .
2. Once you've chosen your niche and your products, get your own domain name and webhosting. Go to http://www.godaddy.com for the domain name, and then go to http://www.hostgator.com for your webhosting. Choose the Swampy account at HostGator for the best value. You can add an unlimited number of domain names to your account at no additional cost as your business grows. You should also consider http://www.xaviernelson.com/lifetimewebhosting/ where you can get lifetime hosting for a one time fee.
3. If you know how to design a website, get your website up, and start filling it up with content. Write articles for your site that relate to the products that you are selling, and put your affiliate links in those articles. Post those articles on your site, and also sign up for a Google AdSense account at http://www.adsense.google.com for additional income.
4. Start promoting your website – you are officially in business! A good way to promote your website and start building an opt-in list, which is essential for anyone doing business on the Internet, is to join in Joint Venture Giveaways. One such giveaway is launching soon at http://tinyurl.com/ttkms . Look for other joint venture giveaways as well. You will need a product to give away. Look for private label rights products, or create your own ebook for this.
That's all there is to it. Of course, there are other ways to promote your website that you will learn about as you go along – but this is a starting point. The biggest mistake that most people make is taking no action at all. If you follow the four steps above, you have taken action, and this will motivate you to take additional action.
Stop thinking about it and stop planning. Jump in with both feet! Getting started will cost you less than $25 bucks, and there is no time like the present! This initial investment of your time and effort will lead to bigger and better things!
About the Author
Kelly Lowe is a real work at home professional, and Editor-In-Chief of Real Work At Home Info at http://www.realworkathomeinfo.com/. She strives to show people how they can really earn a fulltime income from home.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Top Ten Brainstorming Techniques for Business Success
We experience creativity every time a fresh idea pops into our minds. We recognize creative imagination in everything from a pastel painting to a business plan. By trying these ten tips, you will discover some amazing creative abilities that may surprise you.
1. Substitute someone else's perspective for yours. How would a teacher, lawyer, actor, artist, explorer, journalist, psychologist, engineer, homemaker, child, or accountant approach your idea or subject? Don't know? Ask them!
2. Look at your idea through the eyes of a critic. For each idea, make a list of all criticisms that may arise. Try to develop as many solutions as possible for overcoming obstacles or repairing weaknesses in your idea.
3. Connect your idea to other worlds or fields. Look at the worlds of Politics, Art, Science & Medicine, Hollywood, The Ice Age, Astronomy, Astrology, Ballet, Animation, The Army, Asia, Teaching, Music, Europe, and the like. Can you make an analogy, and what ideas can you draw upon from these fields and worlds?
4. Magnify your idea. What can you do to enlarge, expedite, extend, strengthen, exaggerate, dramatize, or improve your idea?
5. Simplify your idea. Can you condense, trim down, compact, minimize, or narrow your idea?
6. Change your idea. Modify the name, color, sound, shape, form, function, smell, taste, and properties of your idea.
7. Make your idea meet the needs and wants of the masses. Does your idea meet the basic needs and wants of more comfort, money, food, shelter, time, space, convenience, attractiveness, health, and beauty? If not, alter your idea to meet one if not all of these needs and wants.
8. Add more value. What will add more value? Add extra features, durability, safety, thickness, accuracy, guarantees, uses, and freebies.
9. Examine what others have done. Emulate professionals and experts who have had great success with a similar idea or product. Are you facing a problem that has already been solved? Use the past as a tool for experimentation and learning.
10. Flip a coin. When you cannot make a decision, flip a coin. Once the coin falls, use your intuition and gut to make a decision. If you feel comfortable with the result, go with it. If you feel uncomfortable with the coin toss, make the opposite decision.
About The Author
Bea Fields, Southern Pines, NC, USA; bea@fivestarleader.com
http://www.fivestarleader.com/
Bea Fields is an Executive Coach and a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. She is also a Consultant, Trainer, Public Speaker and author of the Five Star Leader e-course. Her area of expertise is that of Leadership Development and Marketing for Executives, Managers, Small Business Owners, and Political Leaders.
1. Substitute someone else's perspective for yours. How would a teacher, lawyer, actor, artist, explorer, journalist, psychologist, engineer, homemaker, child, or accountant approach your idea or subject? Don't know? Ask them!
2. Look at your idea through the eyes of a critic. For each idea, make a list of all criticisms that may arise. Try to develop as many solutions as possible for overcoming obstacles or repairing weaknesses in your idea.
3. Connect your idea to other worlds or fields. Look at the worlds of Politics, Art, Science & Medicine, Hollywood, The Ice Age, Astronomy, Astrology, Ballet, Animation, The Army, Asia, Teaching, Music, Europe, and the like. Can you make an analogy, and what ideas can you draw upon from these fields and worlds?
4. Magnify your idea. What can you do to enlarge, expedite, extend, strengthen, exaggerate, dramatize, or improve your idea?
5. Simplify your idea. Can you condense, trim down, compact, minimize, or narrow your idea?
6. Change your idea. Modify the name, color, sound, shape, form, function, smell, taste, and properties of your idea.
7. Make your idea meet the needs and wants of the masses. Does your idea meet the basic needs and wants of more comfort, money, food, shelter, time, space, convenience, attractiveness, health, and beauty? If not, alter your idea to meet one if not all of these needs and wants.
8. Add more value. What will add more value? Add extra features, durability, safety, thickness, accuracy, guarantees, uses, and freebies.
9. Examine what others have done. Emulate professionals and experts who have had great success with a similar idea or product. Are you facing a problem that has already been solved? Use the past as a tool for experimentation and learning.
10. Flip a coin. When you cannot make a decision, flip a coin. Once the coin falls, use your intuition and gut to make a decision. If you feel comfortable with the result, go with it. If you feel uncomfortable with the coin toss, make the opposite decision.
About The Author
Bea Fields, Southern Pines, NC, USA; bea@fivestarleader.com
http://www.fivestarleader.com/
Bea Fields is an Executive Coach and a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. She is also a Consultant, Trainer, Public Speaker and author of the Five Star Leader e-course. Her area of expertise is that of Leadership Development and Marketing for Executives, Managers, Small Business Owners, and Political Leaders.
5 Things You Must Understand About Marketing to Any Niche
5 Things You Must Understand About Marketing to Any Niche
By Joseph Then
easynicheproduct:
Looking at the title of this article, you might wonder whether or not it could possibly provide you with any valid information. Aren't all niches different? Don't all niches require a different marketing strategy? The answer is both yes and no. While the strategy will remain the same for each niche, you will need to tweak it to fit whatever your specific niche happens to be. Below, I have listed five general prinicples that you will need to understand, regardless of which niche you are marketing to.
1.Effective niche marketing requires a defined niche market. In the initial stages of your planning, you will want to clearly define who your target marketing audience is. If you can't clearly determine who that group is, then you will more than likely have a hard time finding them. After you have marketed to this group, you will then want to move on and market to a broader base; but to begin with, you will want to target this group.
2.Effective niche marketing requires that you, the marketer, determine the interests of your target audience. What is it that your audience wants most? Is it some other product that is already on the market, but with an added feature that is not available anywhere yet? If that is the case, you will want to target that base and offer that feature.
3.Marketing effectively to a niche also requires that you gain at least some credibility with regular buyers with in that given niche. If they already have their experts and their favorite products, they will have little incentive to strike up an interest in you and your products, unless you give them a good reason for why you are a viable alternative or an excellent complement, as the case may be. You can do this in a number of ways, but perhaps the best is to partner with other sites in your niche that are not directly competing.
4.Marketing effectively to a niche also requires fine-tuning. If you plan to release a new product to people who purchase in that niche, actually setup a beta testing session with those specific buyers. Allow them to use your product for free, so they can critique it, which will provide you with a means to upgrade your product, fix features, and add things on that could significantly improve the value of your product for buyers in that niche.
5. Marketing effectively to a niche also requires social proof. Again, this goes back to establishing credibility: in order to market to that select group, which already has its experts and heroes, you will want to generate some type of proof for the quality of your product. You can do this by creating a blog, giving out a demo of your product, and then asking demo users to comment on it on the blog.
And there you have it: five things you must understand about marketing to any niche. If you employ each of these tactics carefully - and fit it to your specific niche - you are certain to reap rewards far beyond your efforts.
By Joseph Then
easynicheproduct:
Looking at the title of this article, you might wonder whether or not it could possibly provide you with any valid information. Aren't all niches different? Don't all niches require a different marketing strategy? The answer is both yes and no. While the strategy will remain the same for each niche, you will need to tweak it to fit whatever your specific niche happens to be. Below, I have listed five general prinicples that you will need to understand, regardless of which niche you are marketing to.
1.Effective niche marketing requires a defined niche market. In the initial stages of your planning, you will want to clearly define who your target marketing audience is. If you can't clearly determine who that group is, then you will more than likely have a hard time finding them. After you have marketed to this group, you will then want to move on and market to a broader base; but to begin with, you will want to target this group.
2.Effective niche marketing requires that you, the marketer, determine the interests of your target audience. What is it that your audience wants most? Is it some other product that is already on the market, but with an added feature that is not available anywhere yet? If that is the case, you will want to target that base and offer that feature.
3.Marketing effectively to a niche also requires that you gain at least some credibility with regular buyers with in that given niche. If they already have their experts and their favorite products, they will have little incentive to strike up an interest in you and your products, unless you give them a good reason for why you are a viable alternative or an excellent complement, as the case may be. You can do this in a number of ways, but perhaps the best is to partner with other sites in your niche that are not directly competing.
4.Marketing effectively to a niche also requires fine-tuning. If you plan to release a new product to people who purchase in that niche, actually setup a beta testing session with those specific buyers. Allow them to use your product for free, so they can critique it, which will provide you with a means to upgrade your product, fix features, and add things on that could significantly improve the value of your product for buyers in that niche.
5. Marketing effectively to a niche also requires social proof. Again, this goes back to establishing credibility: in order to market to that select group, which already has its experts and heroes, you will want to generate some type of proof for the quality of your product. You can do this by creating a blog, giving out a demo of your product, and then asking demo users to comment on it on the blog.
And there you have it: five things you must understand about marketing to any niche. If you employ each of these tactics carefully - and fit it to your specific niche - you are certain to reap rewards far beyond your efforts.
4 Steps For Niche Blogging Success
4 Steps For Niche Blogging Success
By Khemal Dole
paychecksdirect:
Niche blogging has become an extremely popular method of earning revenue with webmasters and internet marketers over the years. The reasons for this are because blogs tend to be easy to get indexed by the search engines, they are very easy to maintain and update and they provide interaction with the visitors and the owner.
There are four simple steps that you should take in order to be successful with niche blogging and they are:
1) Find a niche. This is extremely important as it is very hard to compete with marketers and companies that dominate the much larger niches and they also tend to dominate the search engines for their keywords therefore making it much harder for you to gain good rankings and drive free traffic from the search engines, there is also the fact that the larger niches tend to have millions of competing websites all trying to get higher up the rankings.
You must choose a niche that you can compete in. You can find niches everywhere such as around your home, in the middle of your town, in shops, on article sites, in newsgroups, in magazines, in newspapers and many more places. Nearly anything that people will seach for on the internet can be classed as a niche market for you to earn revenue with.
Always be on the look out for good niches and never stop looking.
2) The content. People will only enjoy and come back to your niche blog if there is great content on it, I mean, why would anyone want to read a blog that was full of bad information? They wouldn't. You need to research and gain knowledge in the niche that you will be working in and you must be able to provide valuable and interesting information to your blog readers.
You can gain knowledge all over the internet and learn about nearly anything you wish with just a little searching. Look through the search engines, websites, articles and even other blogs.
The more you know about your niche, the more chance you have of providing an excellent blog for your market and gaining loyal readers.
3) The traffic. If you want to earn revenue via your blog then you will need to get traffic to it, there is nearly no other way at all to do it. The good news is that there is traffic everywhere on the internet and it is not particularly hard to get it.
You can get traffic to your blog through link exchanging, banner ads, submitting articles, doing press released, using forums, pay per click, email marketing, social networking and many more methods, all you need to do is find out where your market prospects are and drive them to your blog.
Find websites related to your niche that receive a lot of traffic and find a way for you to gain some of that traffic either using paid methods or free.
4) The monetization. You have to monetize your blog in order to earn money, obviously. You can monetize a blog through a number of methods such as adding pay per click ads to it, affiliate links, links to your own products or resell rights products, accepting paid ads, capturing email addresses and marketing to them and more.
The best way to find out the most profitable monetization method is to simply test them. Test which method brings you the most money and stick with it, all you need to do is switch each method around after a certain time period to find out.
By Khemal Dole
paychecksdirect:
Niche blogging has become an extremely popular method of earning revenue with webmasters and internet marketers over the years. The reasons for this are because blogs tend to be easy to get indexed by the search engines, they are very easy to maintain and update and they provide interaction with the visitors and the owner.
There are four simple steps that you should take in order to be successful with niche blogging and they are:
1) Find a niche. This is extremely important as it is very hard to compete with marketers and companies that dominate the much larger niches and they also tend to dominate the search engines for their keywords therefore making it much harder for you to gain good rankings and drive free traffic from the search engines, there is also the fact that the larger niches tend to have millions of competing websites all trying to get higher up the rankings.
You must choose a niche that you can compete in. You can find niches everywhere such as around your home, in the middle of your town, in shops, on article sites, in newsgroups, in magazines, in newspapers and many more places. Nearly anything that people will seach for on the internet can be classed as a niche market for you to earn revenue with.
Always be on the look out for good niches and never stop looking.
2) The content. People will only enjoy and come back to your niche blog if there is great content on it, I mean, why would anyone want to read a blog that was full of bad information? They wouldn't. You need to research and gain knowledge in the niche that you will be working in and you must be able to provide valuable and interesting information to your blog readers.
You can gain knowledge all over the internet and learn about nearly anything you wish with just a little searching. Look through the search engines, websites, articles and even other blogs.
The more you know about your niche, the more chance you have of providing an excellent blog for your market and gaining loyal readers.
3) The traffic. If you want to earn revenue via your blog then you will need to get traffic to it, there is nearly no other way at all to do it. The good news is that there is traffic everywhere on the internet and it is not particularly hard to get it.
You can get traffic to your blog through link exchanging, banner ads, submitting articles, doing press released, using forums, pay per click, email marketing, social networking and many more methods, all you need to do is find out where your market prospects are and drive them to your blog.
Find websites related to your niche that receive a lot of traffic and find a way for you to gain some of that traffic either using paid methods or free.
4) The monetization. You have to monetize your blog in order to earn money, obviously. You can monetize a blog through a number of methods such as adding pay per click ads to it, affiliate links, links to your own products or resell rights products, accepting paid ads, capturing email addresses and marketing to them and more.
The best way to find out the most profitable monetization method is to simply test them. Test which method brings you the most money and stick with it, all you need to do is switch each method around after a certain time period to find out.
How to Launch a Career With Your Blog
Your blog can get you the career of your dreams.
fastcompany:
Silicon Valley start-ups and media behemoths aren't the only ones realizing the rewards of the rebounding Web economy. Already, many A-list bloggers have generated significant income from running advertisements on their blogs. Though with an estimated 53.4 million blogs expected to launch by year-end, according to Perseus Development Corporation, it's safe to assume that not everyone is going to get rich from blogging. So what's in it for the up-and-coming blogger, beyond creative self-expression?
Blogging can be transformative –- placing you on a new career path, earning you a book deal, or catapulting you into the field of your dreams. Just ask some of the folks we spoke with.
"My blog has led me to change my life," says Jeff Jarvis, author of the media and news blog, Buzz Machine. "I left my corporate job to take the consulting gigs, speaking gigs, and writing gigs that have come my way as a result of the reputation I built up through my blog."
Jarvis, a former critic for People and TV Guide and a founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, gained blog popularity while criticizing mainstream media and lauding citizen media. He eventually said good-bye to his full time gig to consult for The New York Times Company and the Guardian, among other media companies. He's also associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. "All of that came about from the blog," says Jarvis.
Hugh McLeod, artist and creator of the blog, GapingVoid, which was rated as the most influential UK blog in a recent survey conducted by Edelman and Technorati, has also parlayed his blog into a consulting gig from his former career on Madison Avenue executive. McLeod's blog began in 2003 as a forum for sharing his thoughts and his cartoons about blogging, marketing, and life. He later turned Blog Cards and limited editions of t-shirts, both bearing images from his cartoons, into successful ventures. Later it led to other professional opportunities as a marketing and blogging consultant for the South African vineyard, Stormhoek. He also does marketing for a bespoke Savile Row tailoring firm, and recently acted as blog consultant for the feature film, Hallam Foe.
"My focus has shifted away from the blogosphere a lot in the last year, towards the more capitalist world of selling wine," wrote McLeod on his blog this week.
Blogs can also lead to full-time conventional employment, particularly for people who work in media. Blogs can provide a talent pool, from which mainstream media outlets recruit staff. In the past month, two bloggers were hired for high-profile positions in mainstream media because they earned reputations for their unique approaches to writing celebrity gossip. Corynne Steindler, editor of the media gossip blog, Jossip, was hired to write for the New York Post's Page Six and Gawker's Jessica Coen was hired to be deputy online editor for Vanity Fair.
"It makes sense for people to discover talent this way," says Jarvis. "I've had people tell me they wouldn't hire [a writer] without reading their blog. I've encouraged all my students to start one."
Gone are the days of sending in clips or walking a portfolio into an office. Employers, like everyone else, are checking out potential hires on the Internet with a few clicks of a mouse. Writing a blog, could improve your chances as a candidate because an updated sites boosts your ranking in search engines and offers potential employers a full sense of who you are. "I have gotten a couple of freelance clients from my blog, simply because they liked my writing style," says Laina Dawes, a freelance writer and the creator of the blog, Writing is Fighting.
"I also think that by linking to articles you have written, online or otherwise, tells your readers that you are active and serious about writing or whatever profession that matches your personal blog to your chosen profession," Dawes says.
According to Jarvis, a personal blog can function as a promotional platform for people in any profession.
"When people go looking for thoughtful people to work with, like anything else, they're going to Google it. If they come across you, and find that you have good things to say, you're steps ahead of the next guy, who the person doesn't know," says Jarvis.
Sarah Brown, who writes the blog, Que Sera Sera, used her blog to promote Cringe, her reading series in which people read excerpts from their teenage diaries.
"I've really lucked out in that my blog-reading audience has helped promote my non-blog endeavors," says Brown.
Sarah now has a deal with Crown to write a book based on Cringe and she is co-producing a Cringe television show.
"I'm glad that my recent success was buoyed by my blog and its readers, but is not actually blog-related," says Brown. "I'm much happier being known to the world as the person behind Cringe who also writes, rather than the person behind Que Sera Sera who also Cringes."
Brown joins a long list of bloggers whose blogs have led to book deals with major publishing houses.
Stephanie Klein, writer of the blog, Greek Tragedy, caused a stir in 2005 with her six-figure, two book deal. Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette and Jessica Cutler of Washingtonienne, also signed big blog-to-book deals.
While books based on blogs have met with mixed success, the fiercely loyal community a writer can establish through a blog keeps agents and publishers searching the blogosphere for their next author.
It is the community that a blog engenders that can lead directly or indirectly to career opportunities.
"Blogs enable you to have a relationship with your public, whatever that public is," says Jarvis. "Having a conversation with people -- that will yield dividends."
fastcompany:
Silicon Valley start-ups and media behemoths aren't the only ones realizing the rewards of the rebounding Web economy. Already, many A-list bloggers have generated significant income from running advertisements on their blogs. Though with an estimated 53.4 million blogs expected to launch by year-end, according to Perseus Development Corporation, it's safe to assume that not everyone is going to get rich from blogging. So what's in it for the up-and-coming blogger, beyond creative self-expression?
Blogging can be transformative –- placing you on a new career path, earning you a book deal, or catapulting you into the field of your dreams. Just ask some of the folks we spoke with.
"My blog has led me to change my life," says Jeff Jarvis, author of the media and news blog, Buzz Machine. "I left my corporate job to take the consulting gigs, speaking gigs, and writing gigs that have come my way as a result of the reputation I built up through my blog."
Jarvis, a former critic for People and TV Guide and a founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, gained blog popularity while criticizing mainstream media and lauding citizen media. He eventually said good-bye to his full time gig to consult for The New York Times Company and the Guardian, among other media companies. He's also associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. "All of that came about from the blog," says Jarvis.
Hugh McLeod, artist and creator of the blog, GapingVoid, which was rated as the most influential UK blog in a recent survey conducted by Edelman and Technorati, has also parlayed his blog into a consulting gig from his former career on Madison Avenue executive. McLeod's blog began in 2003 as a forum for sharing his thoughts and his cartoons about blogging, marketing, and life. He later turned Blog Cards and limited editions of t-shirts, both bearing images from his cartoons, into successful ventures. Later it led to other professional opportunities as a marketing and blogging consultant for the South African vineyard, Stormhoek. He also does marketing for a bespoke Savile Row tailoring firm, and recently acted as blog consultant for the feature film, Hallam Foe.
"My focus has shifted away from the blogosphere a lot in the last year, towards the more capitalist world of selling wine," wrote McLeod on his blog this week.
Blogs can also lead to full-time conventional employment, particularly for people who work in media. Blogs can provide a talent pool, from which mainstream media outlets recruit staff. In the past month, two bloggers were hired for high-profile positions in mainstream media because they earned reputations for their unique approaches to writing celebrity gossip. Corynne Steindler, editor of the media gossip blog, Jossip, was hired to write for the New York Post's Page Six and Gawker's Jessica Coen was hired to be deputy online editor for Vanity Fair.
"It makes sense for people to discover talent this way," says Jarvis. "I've had people tell me they wouldn't hire [a writer] without reading their blog. I've encouraged all my students to start one."
Gone are the days of sending in clips or walking a portfolio into an office. Employers, like everyone else, are checking out potential hires on the Internet with a few clicks of a mouse. Writing a blog, could improve your chances as a candidate because an updated sites boosts your ranking in search engines and offers potential employers a full sense of who you are. "I have gotten a couple of freelance clients from my blog, simply because they liked my writing style," says Laina Dawes, a freelance writer and the creator of the blog, Writing is Fighting.
"I also think that by linking to articles you have written, online or otherwise, tells your readers that you are active and serious about writing or whatever profession that matches your personal blog to your chosen profession," Dawes says.
According to Jarvis, a personal blog can function as a promotional platform for people in any profession.
"When people go looking for thoughtful people to work with, like anything else, they're going to Google it. If they come across you, and find that you have good things to say, you're steps ahead of the next guy, who the person doesn't know," says Jarvis.
Sarah Brown, who writes the blog, Que Sera Sera, used her blog to promote Cringe, her reading series in which people read excerpts from their teenage diaries.
"I've really lucked out in that my blog-reading audience has helped promote my non-blog endeavors," says Brown.
Sarah now has a deal with Crown to write a book based on Cringe and she is co-producing a Cringe television show.
"I'm glad that my recent success was buoyed by my blog and its readers, but is not actually blog-related," says Brown. "I'm much happier being known to the world as the person behind Cringe who also writes, rather than the person behind Que Sera Sera who also Cringes."
Brown joins a long list of bloggers whose blogs have led to book deals with major publishing houses.
Stephanie Klein, writer of the blog, Greek Tragedy, caused a stir in 2005 with her six-figure, two book deal. Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette and Jessica Cutler of Washingtonienne, also signed big blog-to-book deals.
While books based on blogs have met with mixed success, the fiercely loyal community a writer can establish through a blog keeps agents and publishers searching the blogosphere for their next author.
It is the community that a blog engenders that can lead directly or indirectly to career opportunities.
"Blogs enable you to have a relationship with your public, whatever that public is," says Jarvis. "Having a conversation with people -- that will yield dividends."
Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas That Made It Big Time.
WeirdTechNewsHub:
1. Million Dollar Homepage
1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that’s perhaps the dumbest idea for online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.
2. SantaMail
Ok, how’s that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple million dollars richer.
3. Doggles
Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.
4. LaserMonks
LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord.
5. AntennaBalls
You can’t sell antenna ball online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn’t make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire.
6. FitDeck
Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what military pays.
7. PositivesDating.Com
How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.
8. Designer Diaper Bags
Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that's big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie's company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.
9. TruGamerz
Faux-suede padded covers for game controllers and gel thumb pads for analog joysticks? No one will buy that. Forget it. The product proved to be so popular, it got picked up by Target.com and Walmart.com and annual sales new exceed half a million dollars.
10. Lucky Wishbone Co.
Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.
1. Million Dollar Homepage
1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel – that’s perhaps the dumbest idea for online business anyone could have possible come up with. Still, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old who came up with the idea, is now a millionaire.
2. SantaMail
Ok, how’s that for a brilliant idea. Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents 10 bucks for every letter you send to their kids? Well, Byron Reese sent over 200000 letters since the start of the business in 2001, which makes him a couple million dollars richer.
3. Doggles
Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? Boy, this IS the dumbest idea for a business. How in the world did they manage to become millionaires and have shops all over the world with that one? Beyond me.
4. LaserMonks
LaserMonks.com is a for-profit subsidiary of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, an eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your cartridges. Hallelujah! Their 2005 sales were $2.5 million! Praise the Lord.
5. AntennaBalls
You can’t sell antenna ball online. There is no way. And surely it wouldn’t make you rich. But this is exactly what Jason Wall did, and now he is now a millionaire.
6. FitDeck
Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines, and sell it online for $18.95. Sounds like a disaster idea to me. But former Navy SEAL and fitness instructor Phil Black reported last year sales of $4.7 million. Surely beats what military pays.
7. PositivesDating.Com
How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.
8. Designer Diaper Bags
Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that's big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie's company, Diapees & Wipees, has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.
9. TruGamerz
Faux-suede padded covers for game controllers and gel thumb pads for analog joysticks? No one will buy that. Forget it. The product proved to be so popular, it got picked up by Target.com and Walmart.com and annual sales new exceed half a million dollars.
10. Lucky Wishbone Co.
Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out. Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
How To Make Money Flipping Websites
THE ANGLE: Improving and Reselling Web Properties
Jermaine Jones Story
http://411hype.com/
The 20-year-old aspiring producer is a hip-hop fanatic. Yet even though his locale is far more about Tennessee twang than beats and bling, Jones has found a way to pursue his rap passion and earn some easy cash without having to leave home--thanks to his clever exploitation of yet another method of making money on the Web.
Last August, Jones paid $1,000 to buy 411Hype.com, a website about all things hip-hop. He beefed it up--added some forums about fitness and health, for example--and managed to boost traffic by a couple thousand unique visitors, to 7,000 a month. Then, in late March, Jones put the site up for sale on a marketplace called SitePoint. He was bombarded with offers, quickly closing a deal for about $13,500. "I spent less than an hour a day on the site," Jones says.
For obvious reasons, the big acquisitions by News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, the Yahoo brain trust, and the boys at Google get most of the media attention. But every day, scores of small-scale Internet entrepreneurs are buying and selling simple-to-make, simple-to-run sites for thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars. These aren't just domain-name plays. The strategy involves spotting the potential of an existing website and then rehabbing it for your own portfolio or flipping it to someone else--and it's taking off, thanks to the froth created by high-priced deals like News Corp.'s $580 million acquisition of MySpace. "The feeling is there's massive growth to come," says SitePoint CEO Mark Harbottle, "that it's all just starting to explode."
While several places exist online to buy and sell already-built websites--eBay has a section, for example--SitePoint, a tech-focused publishing company, is the favorite of Web-savvy entrepreneurs. A year ago SitePoint added a market-place where, for a minimum of $10, people can list their sites for sale or auction them off. Demand has soared: In April, SitePoint added about 400 new listings, a figure that's growing by about 25 percent per month.
All sorts of sites are available--blogs, game sites, dating sites, entertainment sites--requiring varying degrees of expertise to run. You can build a site from scratch and flip it, or take Jones's route: Buy an existing site you think you can improve and resell. The key is to understand what you're buying. Start with the basics: See where the site pops up on a Google search. Amazon's Alexa.com ranks traffic. The seller will provide revenue stats, and you can scan message boards at SitePoint to assess a seller's credibility. And, of course, you need a plan.
411Hype.com, for instance, was a basic message board with various topics related to hip-hop when Jones bought it from a college kid who had never bothered to seek advertisers. At the time, the site was getting about 1,000 unique hits a day. To broaden its scope, Jones added topics he thought would appeal to his demographic, mainly guys in their teens and 20s. He spent time on the forums at SitePoint and DNForum, another popular site for small Web entrepreneurs, and posted threads saying he was looking for advertisers. That generated inquiries, and Jones sold some ad spots for $100 a month, quickly recouping his investment. He also used Adbrite.com, which sells space for many websites, to place ads.
Traffic steadily improved. Jones further boosted his ad revenue by signing up with Yahoo's Publisher Network and CasaleMedia.com, an ad network that works with publishers whose sites have no more than 10,000 monthly unique visitors. When he sold the site, it was earning $900 to $1,000 a month. Best of all, for Jones, nurturing the site was a blast. "The key is to be into the topic," advises Jones, who is now at work on an e-commerce site and will start college in the fall. "Then it's easy to figure out what your audience might want."
Jermaine Jones Story
http://411hype.com/
The 20-year-old aspiring producer is a hip-hop fanatic. Yet even though his locale is far more about Tennessee twang than beats and bling, Jones has found a way to pursue his rap passion and earn some easy cash without having to leave home--thanks to his clever exploitation of yet another method of making money on the Web.
Last August, Jones paid $1,000 to buy 411Hype.com, a website about all things hip-hop. He beefed it up--added some forums about fitness and health, for example--and managed to boost traffic by a couple thousand unique visitors, to 7,000 a month. Then, in late March, Jones put the site up for sale on a marketplace called SitePoint. He was bombarded with offers, quickly closing a deal for about $13,500. "I spent less than an hour a day on the site," Jones says.
For obvious reasons, the big acquisitions by News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, the Yahoo brain trust, and the boys at Google get most of the media attention. But every day, scores of small-scale Internet entrepreneurs are buying and selling simple-to-make, simple-to-run sites for thousands, even tens of thousands, of dollars. These aren't just domain-name plays. The strategy involves spotting the potential of an existing website and then rehabbing it for your own portfolio or flipping it to someone else--and it's taking off, thanks to the froth created by high-priced deals like News Corp.'s $580 million acquisition of MySpace. "The feeling is there's massive growth to come," says SitePoint CEO Mark Harbottle, "that it's all just starting to explode."
While several places exist online to buy and sell already-built websites--eBay has a section, for example--SitePoint, a tech-focused publishing company, is the favorite of Web-savvy entrepreneurs. A year ago SitePoint added a market-place where, for a minimum of $10, people can list their sites for sale or auction them off. Demand has soared: In April, SitePoint added about 400 new listings, a figure that's growing by about 25 percent per month.
All sorts of sites are available--blogs, game sites, dating sites, entertainment sites--requiring varying degrees of expertise to run. You can build a site from scratch and flip it, or take Jones's route: Buy an existing site you think you can improve and resell. The key is to understand what you're buying. Start with the basics: See where the site pops up on a Google search. Amazon's Alexa.com ranks traffic. The seller will provide revenue stats, and you can scan message boards at SitePoint to assess a seller's credibility. And, of course, you need a plan.
411Hype.com, for instance, was a basic message board with various topics related to hip-hop when Jones bought it from a college kid who had never bothered to seek advertisers. At the time, the site was getting about 1,000 unique hits a day. To broaden its scope, Jones added topics he thought would appeal to his demographic, mainly guys in their teens and 20s. He spent time on the forums at SitePoint and DNForum, another popular site for small Web entrepreneurs, and posted threads saying he was looking for advertisers. That generated inquiries, and Jones sold some ad spots for $100 a month, quickly recouping his investment. He also used Adbrite.com, which sells space for many websites, to place ads.
Traffic steadily improved. Jones further boosted his ad revenue by signing up with Yahoo's Publisher Network and CasaleMedia.com, an ad network that works with publishers whose sites have no more than 10,000 monthly unique visitors. When he sold the site, it was earning $900 to $1,000 a month. Best of all, for Jones, nurturing the site was a blast. "The key is to be into the topic," advises Jones, who is now at work on an e-commerce site and will start college in the fall. "Then it's easy to figure out what your audience might want."
Friday, October 27, 2006
Niches in E-Commerce
The heavyweights of the online business community have served as building blocks of this bustling community. We have here the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Good Guys, Best Buy. However, they are not the only ones who can play the e-commerce game. It is just as much everyone’s playing field. Even without the clout of a Fortune 500 corporation, relatively smaller businesses can still make their mark – and their profits – in this world. You just need to find your niche among these giants and adapt yourself to thrive there.
niche: 1) a recess in the wall; 2) a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person is best fitted; 3) a specialized market.
“Niche” comes from a French word that means “to nest” – which is exactly what small companies should do: fill the small voids left by the big birds. Instead of going head on head with them, turn instead to the niches.
So what exactly are these niches? We have the Unfilled niches, Poorly filled niches, Partly filled niches, and the Niches that have yet to be created.
Unfilled Niches
Statistically speaking, the chances of finding a niche that nobody is filling are low – however it still is possible. This is best statement to sum this up would be: Find a need and fill it. Know your customers, and pick out a particular group that you know best. The following questions could help gain some key insights in your chosen field:
Who are your customers?
What are they asking for?
What would they like?
What keeps them from filling this need on their own and gaining success?
Your interest along with any background or training should give you the vision and the muscle to see and realize these opportunities. You could go ahead and develop a new or improved product, service or even business process. This, with the Internet’s power harnessed can certainly help you make your mark.
Poorly Filled/Realized/Utilized Niches
In contrast to unfilled niches, poorly filled niches are exceedingly common. With so much that you can expect from the Internet, it is extremely frustrating to actually find something not available online – when you know that people out there are aware that the need exists. There may be sites out there that attempt to address this need – but the customer enters the website with a lot of questions, and leaves with still a lot, if not more unanswered questions. Or it could be populated by sites that make it easy to avail of peripheral products, or that do not provide expert opinion or customer feedback, etc. In short, poorly filled niches are those that don’t have a single ‘best’ or ‘greatest’ place online to provide for the customers’ needs. The solution? Build one yourself.
Partly Filled Niches
There may be many eggs in the basket – but don’t count your chicks till they’re all hatched. In the same way, a particular area for a particular need may already have several hundreds or even thousands of websites attempting to answer to it – but not all of them would be able to do so. Thus, there is still the tremendous need for sites and solutions that could fill the demand more completely.
Niches to be Created
Create a need, and thus a niche, where there wasn’t one before. That does not only put you as a pioneer in your field - that would also make you the foremost provider of the demand. Besides, who else would know about filling that need than the one who created it?
Brick and Mortar vs. Internet Niches
It need not be a choice of staying in a physical store or migrating towards the Web. If you already have an existing brick and mortar store putting your business online is an option you could consider. You gain an advantage in the stability of your traditional business as this leaves you with enough time and energy to feel your way around the online business world. However, in your excitement to make that jump, do not put your entire business offerings online. Concentrate instead on those that are unique and especially adaptable to the Internet. Find out which aspects of your business is best suited for online marketing and put that online. Do not diffuse the focus by filling your website with generic products and services.
The heavyweights of the online business community have served as building blocks of this bustling community. We have here the likes of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Good Guys, Best Buy. However, they are not the only ones who can play the e-commerce game. It is just as much everyone’s playing field. Even without the clout of a Fortune 500 corporation, relatively smaller businesses can still make their mark – and their profits – in this world. You just need to find your niche among these giants and adapt yourself to thrive there.
niche: 1) a recess in the wall; 2) a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person is best fitted; 3) a specialized market.
“Niche” comes from a French word that means “to nest” – which is exactly what small companies should do: fill the small voids left by the big birds. Instead of going head on head with them, turn instead to the niches.
So what exactly are these niches? We have the Unfilled niches, Poorly filled niches, Partly filled niches, and the Niches that have yet to be created.
Unfilled Niches
Statistically speaking, the chances of finding a niche that nobody is filling are low – however it still is possible. This is best statement to sum this up would be: Find a need and fill it. Know your customers, and pick out a particular group that you know best. The following questions could help gain some key insights in your chosen field:
Who are your customers?
What are they asking for?
What would they like?
What keeps them from filling this need on their own and gaining success?
Your interest along with any background or training should give you the vision and the muscle to see and realize these opportunities. You could go ahead and develop a new or improved product, service or even business process. This, with the Internet’s power harnessed can certainly help you make your mark.
Poorly Filled/Realized/Utilized Niches
In contrast to unfilled niches, poorly filled niches are exceedingly common. With so much that you can expect from the Internet, it is extremely frustrating to actually find something not available online – when you know that people out there are aware that the need exists. There may be sites out there that attempt to address this need – but the customer enters the website with a lot of questions, and leaves with still a lot, if not more unanswered questions. Or it could be populated by sites that make it easy to avail of peripheral products, or that do not provide expert opinion or customer feedback, etc. In short, poorly filled niches are those that don’t have a single ‘best’ or ‘greatest’ place online to provide for the customers’ needs. The solution? Build one yourself.
Partly Filled Niches
There may be many eggs in the basket – but don’t count your chicks till they’re all hatched. In the same way, a particular area for a particular need may already have several hundreds or even thousands of websites attempting to answer to it – but not all of them would be able to do so. Thus, there is still the tremendous need for sites and solutions that could fill the demand more completely.
Niches to be Created
Create a need, and thus a niche, where there wasn’t one before. That does not only put you as a pioneer in your field - that would also make you the foremost provider of the demand. Besides, who else would know about filling that need than the one who created it?
Brick and Mortar vs. Internet Niches
It need not be a choice of staying in a physical store or migrating towards the Web. If you already have an existing brick and mortar store putting your business online is an option you could consider. You gain an advantage in the stability of your traditional business as this leaves you with enough time and energy to feel your way around the online business world. However, in your excitement to make that jump, do not put your entire business offerings online. Concentrate instead on those that are unique and especially adaptable to the Internet. Find out which aspects of your business is best suited for online marketing and put that online. Do not diffuse the focus by filling your website with generic products and services.
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