An online business for an offline world:
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ignorance of so many offline businesses on the web. It’s a bit of a generalization, I have to admit, but when you take a closer look at how so many companies are trying to scale their business to the net, it’s kinda scary. Granted, most businesses have a website, but often times they’re so bad that I want to cry, and it’s not just design errors I’m talking about, its factors that directly affect how the business is going to do business. online marketing, that is, marketing.
So this got me thinking about a way to directly make money online by providing services to these “lost” businesses. It’s true that there are a million and one people doing web design these days, but how many companies have actually been promoting and marketing? I’ve always thought there was money in small business marketing for two main reasons:
They usually compete in a smaller market, so it shouldn’t be technically difficult to deliver results. Consider making them # 1 for ‘Mechanic in Birmingham’, how hard is that going to be?
Everyone neglects these small businesses in the race to land the big fish. Imagine if you had a load of those small businesses paying a monthly fee (£ 50) to promote their site online, it can really add up.
Guess what I’m saying is that as much as I love affiliate marketing, SEO and all that, you can often take your skills to real world business, the key has always been to interpret and adapt to what’s going on, that’s all. great entrepreneurs do it.
But it all comes down to acquiring the skills demanded by the market, whether it’s graphic design, SEO or programming, it is only possible to take advantage of what people need and what you do. This is a common factor that they don’t talk about in get-rich-quick ebooks, if you want to make money on the web you have to bring value to the table one way or another.
One very important point that I can’t miss is the amount of time your business-to-business provider spends on average dealing with people. I can tell you firsthand from the web design industry that sometimes you can spend more time dealing with a client and all of their “problems” than building the site. The problem is, you often don’t know you have a difficult customer until it’s too late. On the other end of the scale, it is possible to have clients that are fun to work with and it’s even better when they have a regular job, it’s a bit like going to the lottery when that. occurs (for them and for you).
Having said that, I’m sure the mix between offline and online activities is going to appeal to some people for the reasons listed above. I like to list all these different ideas I have to admit, when it comes to making money online there are a million methods and a million variations for each one. Everyone always puts their own spin on any idea of making money (they have to). Until next time…