1. Do You Offer Convenience?
Modern day living has room for everything except for “time”. Everyone is constantly complaining about the lack of time. If you can help people save time then you have a winning online business on hand.
Online shopping sites have succeeded based on this concept; they make it easy for people to shop without the need to leave the confines of their homes and offices.
One of the important questions that you need to ask yourself is, “Does my venture help people save time?”
If the answer to that question is yes then you are almost there as far as creating a successful business model goes. If you can help people save time spent in traveling, looking for products, services and information or even simply the entire process by helping them cut costs as far as time is concerned you have greater chances of succeeding.
Some great online business ventures that offer people convenience that you should check out are:
Librarywala.com (an online circulating library), ASAP (a web based customized gift store), Fashion and You (bringing you the biggest and best fashion brands at the click of a button), Make My Trip (an online travel planning and booking company).
2. Do You Offer Information?
At least 90% of people log on to the internet to look for information and why not? It is the most sought after resource or input.
Whether it is students looking for inputs for a project, a mother looking for parenting advice, a layman looking for advice on how to deal with a leaking pipe…people log on to the net to look for “information”.
This is precisely why building a business based on information is the best bet as far as an online business model goes. A great way to start generating ideas is by looking for information about something that you have good insight in to. I say this because that way when you do a search you will know whether the information that is already available is good or not.
If it is good and exhaustive, you just have to find what aspect of it is still not covered. That will be your niche.
Some great online business ventures that offer informative content of all sorts that you should check out for inspiration are:
Justlanded.com (the A-Z moving abroad), Expatangels.com (targeted at women expatriates), Iranvisitor.com, Qatarvisitor.com, Portugalvisitor.com and Japanvisitor.com (targeted at helping people with information about these countries).
3. Do You Want the First Mover Advantage?
Ideally your foray in to webpreneurship should be based on a strategy that is built on the first mover advantage. There is really no point in spending time and energy in an area which is already crowded.
Invest time and effort in carrying out some research before you take the plunge. If you want to succeed you really have to try and find uncharted territory and be the first one or at least one of the first few to make your foray in to a web venture.
I would say Purple Swarms, an online venture that works out of India used the first mover advantage to help people realize the importance of crowd power through discount deals and shopping in India.
Similarly, the Hijab Design Studio, the brainchild of Mifrah Abid and Anisa Khan spotted a niche in the Islamic clothing (for women) market in Pune city. The sheer dearth of well designed and trendy hijabs and jilababs gave these two ladies the first mover advantage. Today, they run a fairly successful venture built on a Facebook page and leveraged by Twitter.
My pick for the first mover advantage is Groupon.com. Why?
It revolutionized the business of crowd power and there are sites that help you to build a Groupon clone in minutes…Any better ideas for a first mover advantage?
Setting up an online business is easy and cost effective but finding a niche is the key to success. Begin by exploring these three leads and do let me know what you think…
Image: Ambro