Finding Value on the Cheap
Here at Feedback Secrets were all about starting businesses at minimal expense. A great way to do this is to look around your home in an attempt to salvage any value you can find. In one of our recent posts we discussed the concept of “MTQ Analysis”, which is about applying the assets you currently have, in such a way as to increase the equity of your online business.
With this concept in mind I’d like to encourage you to undertake an audit of all the physical and virtual assets lying around your own home which could be more efficiently applied toward growing your online business without extracting any cash from your pocket.
This might sound like crazy talk so let me start with what I think is a somewhat strait forward example. If you have a ton of books lying around your house on a particular subject, then you have a natural comparative advantage in doing research on that subject compared to anyone who does not own such a collection.
After books the next big area to check out are the electronics lying around your home. An unused personal recording device can be put in your car in order to record ideas that pop into your head during your daily commute. Digital cameras can be used to take pictures for your business that you might otherwise consider buying online. If you have a video camera purchased any time in the last 5 years then there is a good chance that there’s a way to render that video into a format compatible for creating online video, and in a pinch you could even consider using a digital camera to shoot online video.
After electronics I would switch your search to hobby items such as sporting equipment, musical instruments and board games. If you have tennis racquets, tennis balls, and any tennis instructional videos lying around the house then you have lots of value stored up that you could use toward creating photos, video, and articles for a content based site.
Don’t just stop at tangible items. Search out siblings, parents, children and other family members for information. Are they experts in a particular hobby? If so that’s great! You have just found an expert mentor in that niche… one that will probably work cheap. One of the things your searching for, is what the trends are, you want to try to pick their brain in an attempt to find out what’s going to be hot topics in their niche, three to six months down the line.
Once you discover where you think the trends are headed you want to positions yourself where the traffic is going to be before that traffic even exists! By the way, when it comes to your family members, don’t just stop at their hobbies, by all means, consider their profession as well.
Professionals in the fields of health care, legal, insurance and financial services have traditionally been big money fields in terms of non-sustainable online business models. These sites are usually both highly competitive and highly profitable. So you want to exercise your competitive advantage by using your connections to try to spot the trends before others do.
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