Opportunity Abounds!

I am continually impressed by how the Internet allows small businesses to compete effectively with much larger companies. That characteristic is one of the things that draws me to this field.

I ran across an interesting sentence in a recent edition of The Economist that said, "Only 5% of European Union companies born since 1980 have made it into the list of the 1,000 biggest in the EU by market capitalisation (sic). In America, the figure is 22%."

Most of us in small businesses will never make it to this list, but I am impressed by the large number of companies started in the United States that have made the list. Most businesses don't have the reach to even aspire to this kind of growth, but I am inspired by the thought of the possibility.

One of my posts earlier this year referred to the ease of starting a business on the internet, and that ease certainly contributes something to the startling number of really successful companies compared to the experience in the European Union. Clearly, the environment in the United States is more favorable to start-ups than the environment in the EU, but the internet is definitely a part of that environment.

Never forget, while you are working away on improving the performance of your web site, that the potential rewards for learning to be effective on the web are huge!

Making Money by Giving Things Away?

Sounds crazy, but the Internet has introduced some new ideas, and you need to understand the concept even if it is not for you.

The post at the other end of the title link outlines the principles of such a business model. Since this was posted (some years ago now) the concept has evolved and acquired a name. The term now being applied to the concept is "Freemium". In very simple terms, the concept is that you give something away (we are talking about services here, but the film industry used to give cameras away so that they could sell more film to the users, and they gave film away so they could earn the processing fees!), and then offer more elaborate or extended services at a cost to the consumer.

The author advises that you never make this into a "bait and switch" operation, where you provide something free and then later ask people to pay for it. The idea is, once free, always free, but as the free service becomes more valuable to you through use, you will be willing to pay for more features, or more capacity. In my personal experience, I have seem this work on me in regard to Picasaweb. I put all my vacation pictures up there so my family and friends can follow me on my travels. I find it so compelling that I have finally succumbed and bought more storage so I can keep adding pictures without having to manage the storage so tightly. With storage costs so low, I can get a lot for my money, and it doesn't bother me at all.

The NY Times recently did an article about another example of this business model being put into practice. In this story, the product is called Evernote, and it is an on-line database that one can use for storing all kinds of information of personal or business interest. I have not tried it (yet) so cannot provide any more reaction than what I read in the article, but it looks very interesting, and I will be there soon! You can read more about it on the Evernote website.

The entrepreneur who started the business describes the application as, “... a universal memory drawer”. He expects only a small number of users to ever pay for the enhanced service, but his metric that he is relying on is, "... the revenue from Evernote’s 500,000 active users is growing faster than the growth in the customer base." This means he is making money from the growth in the percentage of users who are paying.

This sounds to me like a real "cloud" application, where all your information and the application itself is part of the cloud, which you can get to from anywhere that you can get an Internet connection. This has a lot more appeal to me than having to remember to move material to the briefcase on my laptop before a trip, or making sure that I have material I might need or want while away up on the web somewhere that I can get to. I can see this being addictive, which is another feature of a good business model!

Not everyone will be in a field where this business model will work for them in the same way as described in these articles, but there are principles here that we can all benefit from if we can figure out a way to apply them to our own business model.

The New Internet Start-Up Boom: Get Rich Slow

"At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company."

If you are thinking about starting a business, here is an article that might give you some good ideas and some inspiration.

Don't get the idea that we are talking about easy money. This is not "easy" for most people. It is hard work and can be lots of work. What you can learn here is that there is lots of opportunity if you can find it, and you can do it for very little money if you are capable of putting everything together.

The article describes the startup of a web site that would summarize car reviews from other sources and rank every model of new car. The creator put it together himself by contracting for development help through various sites on the web. He is not a developer himself. The article provides links to many sites where you can find contract help.

One of the investors quoted in the article says, '"The biggest problem facing any website is distribution." In a world where it's so easy to start a company, how will anyone find yours?' For participants in our free Internet Marketing Clinics, this sounds like an invitation! That is exactly where the skills and techniques we teach can become a competitive advantage to help make your business one of the successful ones.

One other point made in the article is that the cost of failure is low, and that is important because it means you can try lots of ideas in order to find one that works for you. In other words, you might expect that your effort will not succeed, but that does not mean that it was not worth trying. With a low cost of failure, you can go on to try other ideas which might become successful.

My grandfather always told me, "There's more than one way to skin a cat!" (apologies in advance to cat lovers, I never actually skinned a cat, nor intended to!!) So keep that in mind as you start out on your business venture and be prepared to regroup and start over if it doesn't work out. Successful entrepreneurs often have multiple failures before they hit a success. Keep swinging until you connect with the long ball!

Work from Home Opportunities?

Lots of ads and lots of unsolicited email messages offer opportunities to make big incomes while working from home. Most of these are pure junk, but their sheer volume testifies to the interest in the topic. This article describes what appears to be a real opportunity to work from home in a flexible environment where one can make real money.

As you might expect, it does not offer you a chance to become a millionaire, and it involves real work that is monitored and measured. You can't "put something up on the web and watch the money roll in!", as so many ads seem to offer.

On the other hand, you can get a real opportunity to free yourself from a daily commute, work flexible hours at your own discretion, provide a real service, and collect real pay. The better you are, the more you can work and the more you will make. And, you can review your own performance statistics by which you are evaluated!

If this is of interest to you, read the story behind the link in the title of this posting and look in the article for the name "Dawn Linseman". Her story will give you an example of a real opportunity. Keep in mind the statistic cited in the article, "...the company accepts only about 2 percent of all applicants..." This is a competitive situation, but that reflects the real world, not the imaginary one featured in the compelling ads!

The article describes other sites that feature freelance programmers and other contract services that may be of interest to you, either as an applicant or a consumer. You can list yourself as a resource there, or you can look for the kind of support you may need to start your own business.

I am seeing a lot of articles about how people are starting up their own businesses today specifically because of the downturn and the current job market, and I will b eposting more information about some of these in the future. Keep your eyes on this space for more information!