Were you a little too slow to get your idea out there? Perhaps you thought of something great but someone else thought of it too and executed it just that little bit better than you did. Whatever the reason if at first you don’t succeed try and use another person’s success to make your own!
I may sound like a broken record, but again I mention ‘the perfect store‘ by Adam Cohen, the story of ebay. In the book there were a lot of little side stories about events not directly part of eBay but influenced by the online auction site. These little side stories provided some of the most interesting content of the book and help to illustrate my point for this blog entry.
What do ShippingSupply.com, AuctionWatch and the Online Traders Web Alliance (OTWA) have in common? They are all enterprises that were created as a result of eBay.
ShippingSupply.com was started by your normal everyday eBay trader after realising that auctioning shipping supplies was highly profitable. How did they find out – they did an auction for shipping supplies after buying too much for their other auctions. They sold a stupid amount of supplies and decided to focus on that area instead. They opened a warehouse and eventually the whole family got involved. If you take a look at the website too you will notice that in this case, simplicity seems to be working!
The other two sites I mentioned are auction sub-communities that developed as a result of needing third-party locations to discuss online auctions, in particular eBay, without eBay being able to control the conversation like they can in their own community. Eventually these community sites grew real big and hey presto you have enough people for a web business (and to crash your servers too!). You can read more about the story behind these projects in the book.
Alternatively if your idea happens to have already been implemented by multiple online businesses, perhaps consider creating a piece of aggregating software. CheapFlights is a website that allows you to search many websites at once for discount travel. Rather than compete and offer the flights they simply collect all the data and present it to surfers in once place. People can then find the cheapest flights without having to visit multiple websites. CheapFlights makes revenue on a commission or per visitor basis that they send to the travel agents and airline sites.
There is no reason you can’t apply this principle to many other niche industries that may presently have a lot of competitors. Electronics? Beauty supplies? Hotel Accommodation? Used Cars? You can also go for a niche to suit your own marketplace or interests. Again, if you don’t have the skills to build the technology there are plenty of freelancers out there that can build it for you – think Elance.
So the moral of the story is – if there is a community you belong to or a service or product you use or you know of a very successful business and you can’t niche your market to compete then perhaps consider working to take advantage of their success. Think about what their customers purchase and try and establish a support service or product to meet their needs.
Yaro Starak
