Lots Of Competition Is A Good Indicator
There are a great many people who would like to give up their job and work for themselves. This has always been the case I suspect, but the recent economic crisis has made many aware of just how tenuous their financial wellbeing can be if they are relying solely on a job. Simply put, there is very little corporate loyalty these days. There is certainly no such thing, if indeed there ever was, as a job for life.
The advent of the web has made the work from home dream much more obtainable for many. It permits you to market goods or services online, accessing the whole world as a potential marketplace. The costs associated with doing business online are, when compared with an old fashioned bricks and mortar business, very minimal indeed. Instead of having to pay rent on a store, along with electricity bills, staff salaries and, of course, the cost of physical stock, you can just set up a website and promote someone else’s goods as an affiliate without needing to handle any stock, pay any rent, or employ any staff. You should budget for the cost of your web connection (which you might have anyway), the cost of purchasing a domain and the cost of web hosting. Over the course of a year that’s going to be less than $100.
That is certainly a slightly simplified model, but not overly so. You will need to pick up some skills along the way – but there are plenty of free information sources where this can be done.
All the same, it can be a daunting prospect. It’s easy to find excuses as to why you won’t be able to do it – but the majority of these can be readily overcome.
For example, one of the most common reasons why fledgling internet marketers either don’t start or give up in the early stages of their business life is because they are worried that someone is already doing what they intend to do. They are concerned that someone else has cornered the market. In fact, if you consider marketing a particular item online and learn that there is a high level of competition then this is a good sign that you have found a profitable market. It may be that the marketplace is saturated – but this is rarely the case. There are very few instances where you need to be the first business into the market in order to profit – and there are many real life business examples which we could use to illustrate this point.
One such case would be the Amazon Kindle ebook reader – no doubt one of today’s hottest products. You might be forgiven for believing, looking at Amazon’s current dominant position, that they have innovated and developed ebook devices from an early stage. And there’s little doubt, Amazon have brought the Kindle to market using some very inventive techniques, but they are, if anything, more than a little late to the party.
Amazon released their first Kindle in November of 2007 some 8 years behind the Franklin ebook reader, widely considered to be the first commercial scale ebook reader, was released in 1999. Today of course the Franklin device is history and the Kindle, not the only ebook reader available by any means, is dominant. Amazon’s marketing and delivery has been superior to their competitors and that’s why they are setting the standard.
So, if you find a market with a lot of competition, don’t despair. Plenty competition just tells you that the market is probably profitable. It certainly doesn’t matter that you’re not first on the scene. You get rewarded for being better – and cleverer – than the competition, not for being early.
Leave a Reply