A good friend of mine recently quit his day job and began selling baseball cards on Ebay to pay the bills. He did a lot more than just paying the bills, even if, as has become his own boss and now works about 70% less than he did when he was "busy". And income? Oh, maybe quadrupled.
Although it is only in it for about four months now, it's really improved his quality of life significantly - this is the kind of success that makes you half-jealous, but also inspires you to go out and do something similar for yourself.
But despite its initial success, my friend realizes that he can accomplish more. The problem is that it is not clear how.
Earlier this week, I was over at his house, and he wanted to know if I thought his company could benefit from baseball cards in any way to have a website. For example, he could build an online store that would help them reach customers outside of eBay?
In theory, having a website provides a platform to Nice from which to build an audience and visibility of your business.
In practice, however, most Web sites eventually become useless pieces of digital real estate, worth just the price tag that accompanied the original domain.
As I was formulating a response to the question of my friend, I began to realize that most people there do not understand how to handle business on the web. Of course, this is precisely why so many sites become "useless pieces of real estate."
It is not technology - it's equity
So where most people go wrong?
Innovation is so fast on the Web it's easy to become blinded by technology and feature-rich software. We are constantly hit with messages of "the next big thing" and so we naturally assign a value to what we perceive as disruptive innovations.
Accordingly, we begin to think that in order to conduct a successful online business, we must include all these new features and excellent that became available through new technologies.
May God help you if someone thinks you're so 2005, right?
The problem here is that our perception of fairness on the Web has been artificially distorted.
It's true that there is value in new technologies. For a company like YouTube, there was incredible action in their product.
But here's the real mind blower:
The real equity on the Web is the content, not technology that helps us to produce it.
Think about one second here. Do you really think how this Weird Al video was delivered to you on YouTube, or do you only care about the video itself?
Equity is in your content that is not how it got there.
So what does this mean for the website of my boyfriend and his company of baseball cards?
This means that a bunch of fancy pants driving a technological state of the art, online store would be a terrible investment.
Thank you to the incredible speed of innovation, even your everyday Joe can go out and get an online storefront remarkably functional. This alone potential readers of the fairness of a Web-based store in the bathroom.
Look at it in real terms everyone can understand. If you want to buy 500 acres in the bush, you might expect to see a cost of about $ 3,000 per acre. However, if you want to buy 500 acres in the metropolitan area of a major city in the United States, you could expect to pay $ 150 000 per acre, if not more!
The bottom line is that there is not a lot of things that equity in:
are not uncommon
are not unique
It is true that some companies and developers really need to focus on technology because that is where the equity is.
But your equity is in your content, because it's the only thing you can bring to the competition both rare and unique.
It all starts with 10 single items.
So how can 10 simple items change your life?
These articles will form the foundation for your website - let alone the future of your business. Informed traders certainly know the value of 10 articles on a niche topic, and I truly believe that there is absolutely nothing better you can do for your business.
10 by writing simple articles on a subject you love, you will be effective:
Create equity in your site.
Add the equity of your business.
Let's say that you stand to write about this subject for a year, and by the end of this period, you have accumulated 100 articles. When all is said and done, you have a website that is full of detailed articles, current and relevant information on the subject, and you'll probably have a very targeted (and interest) of the audience, who have all opted to come along the ride.
And if you do not believe everything I say, make damn sure you believe:
Google loves sites like this.
In the case of my friend, if all he had was an online storefront and an attractive interface AJAX, anyone could enter the market and compete against it with their own windows. In essence, there would be no equity in his site, because anyone can duplicate what he had with their own products ...
But they have a hell of a time trying to compete with its contents.
If he had 100 articles and they did not, it would be a joke. The key is that in any other subject, who controls the flow of information around this topic has all the power.
Writing articles on baseball cards, my boyfriend could emerge as the preeminent source of information on this subject. He could build a website and a useful target, the public interest at almost no cost. In as little as 9 or 10 months, it could create as many channels through which to make money that it would be ridiculous.
At that time, his only problem is figuring out how to further capitalize on every opportunity he had created for himself.
And all would have started with 10 single items.
