Anyone else overwhelmed?

[HollyMagnani]

Hi, all,
I've read Tim's book twice now and find it very illuminating and exciting. I've also, over the years, have read several other "make money online" courses and books and I can say that Tim's book put a lot of the same information in a concise package at a fraction of the cost of the others.

Anyway, I've got several muses in my head. All of them sound great however when I go online to see if others are doing the same thing, the answer is "yes and better." One of my ideas seems to have zero competition of any quality which is good. However, I'm overwhelmed by this idea of "natural shelf life" and competitors copying and reselling at a lower fee. It seems like I/we will constantly be swimming upstream just to stay even. Its amazing to me how Tim's BrainQUICKEN product is able to be so sustaining for so long. Is he not subject to the same shelf life/copying as other products and why not?

Also, for my other ideas, I see these grand websites and I feel like I don't have the ability to compete with their range of product/choices, suave web design, etc. I'm a little wary of outsourcing to India right now. The prices are just as expensive as US most of the time and from what I'm hearing the lack of quality is disturbing. Makes me want to be a VA.

I broke through the learning curves on both Dreamweaver and Photoshop on my own because I'm a tenacious, refuse-to-give-up-when-stupider-people-than-me-are-doing-it, mentality person. I know I could design a site that would be visually pleasing and user interface friendly but I popped over to another thread and was reading what the self-proclaimed computer geeks were talking about and it was not much more than paragraphs of acronyms I didn't understand. Php, css, rss, mysql...what are these things and how critical are they for a beginning web designer to know? (Is that why college is important?)

My other concern is that I've been lucky. I started my first three businesses with zero capital investment, just with what I had laying around and they, sans for one, were/are successful. I currently have a one-person real estate title research business working out of my home. Reading Tim's book sounds like there could be an enormous (to me) capital investment in adwords purchasing, pay-per-click advertisement etc etc. Is anyone else concerned about this or am I being a cheapskate? I don't have a lot of disposable income these days and I was hoping to be able to recreate my previous successes.

I suppose that's enough for now. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Holly Magnani
(go ahead, google me....)

[TimW]

I used Adwords once, when I had no clue what I was doing when I started my business. Soon after exhausting my budget with no discernible returns, I concentrated on making my website as search engine friendly as I could. This has resulted in my webpage coming up in the top 2-3 sites listed in the organic (non-paid) search results. As a consumer, I can also tell you I've VERY rarely ever clicked on one of the paid ads, because I could usually find a vendor, that I knew, in the organic listings.

What I would be more interested in understanding, were I you, is why that one area has "no competition." One of the key questions I often asked when conducting competitive research for a former company was "if this is such a great idea, why is noone else doing it?"

The answer may truly be that you are the first with the idea. My guess, however, is that it might have been tried, and without success. This isn't bad, because you may be able to see what the competition did, and how they screwed up, and use THEIR mistakes to learn and improve YOUR chances of success. This is a theory I'd wished I had applied to myself and my online business...but instead, I had to go and re-make mistakes done by other competitors. :)

Php, CSS, mysql are very important if you plan to do all the webdesign and programming. I do not. The time and effort it would take me to learn all that stuff is better spent marketing and running my business. It's cheaper for me to hire someone to do any programming I might need. How much is your time worth...put an hourly amount to it. But you need to also factor in the opportunity cost of NOT earning the money you might.

Combined, this puts my "hourly" rate (self determined + hourly based on average daily order amount) at about $45-$55. The hourly rate for the woman who maintains the technical side of my site (I do all the product updates) is $65.00

From a strict money viewpoint, I SHOULD be doing the programming, etc. However, if I add in the non-tangible frustration factoer, plus the fact that the sheer number of hours it would take me to learn and then fix my screw-ups, versus the short amount of time she can accomplish what I want, it makes absolutely NO sense for me to do it myself. Think of it as the "per project" cost v. hourly cost that Ferriss talks about when discussing the idea of VA's.

There isn't really a way to keep competitors from getting into "price wars" on items. My industry, military and police equipment, is rife with folks willing to earn mere pennies on the dollar and rely on sheer volume for their profit. They have large extended families who basically work for free. No way for me to compete with them on that level...so I don't.

Their customer service sucks <insert body part here> and the ONLY reason ANYONE uses them is price. But there are reams of stories of people who've been charged twice for products never received, received the wrong item, their operators speak barely passable English, etc., ad nauseum.

When a customer contacts me, when a customer calls my company, they get me. Native English speaker capable of conducting business in Spanish too (which has gone a long way to getting South American customers). I ship internationally (for legal products), and translate nearly all emails into the customer's language via Babelfish if I have any doubt of the customers' English comprehension.

I do this because then I compete on service, not price. Sure, I will miss those customers who ONLY shop price, but I don't care. The customers who shop only price that I HAVE worked with have been more trouble than they earn. Thus, my pricing structure helps me attract customers who understand that running a business doesn't mean giving product away for nearly-free.

Sorry to ramble, but the point I am making is that you can get others to work for you sometimes cheaper than you can do it (total dollar cost v. dollars expended/paid out in cash) and you can compete with others on different levels.

Finally, a question for you: Why does Jenna Magnani have a man's voice...she a smoker? :)

[BrooklynBlue]

TimW is dead on. Try to think about both your target market segment while also considering how you are going to position yourself against current or potential future competitors.

There are three most common positioning strategies for products that TimW alludes to: cost leadership (commodity products), differentiation (high value-add), and niche marketing. I think what 4hww is espousing is a combination of the last two, in that you focus on a niche and have a differentiated high-value product in that segment. This is a lynchpin of business strategy. For more info see:
Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies) (wikipedia)

[webgal]

Holly- I have a resource file of templates. I'll send you a link and you can play with one on dreamweaver and see what the .css file does. You can do an html site on your own.

However, if you want to have a eCommerce site, you can buy a program and make it look like yours. But you'll need to manipulate the .css file to do that. I promise I'm not selling you anything. It'll just help you decide if you want to get someone to do it or maybe learn it yourself. I gotta find the link first.

[HollyMagnani]

Hey, TimW,
Thanks for all the great advice. I know the slant went more to web design rather than the whole overwhelming process that Tim talks about and that's cool.

As for the idea that I've had that doesn't appear to be any competition, I just don't think anyone thinks is viable but me. We'll see, I guess.

My true passion is filmmaking and its even harder than starting a business. As to why Jenna has a man's voice...well, it just worked out that way. My buddy, George Caleodis, was over for dinner one night and he was doing my dog's internal monologue while she was begging for chicken. It was hilarious so we re-did the dinner a week later and he did her voice. This movie has won a few awards for comedy favorite so I'm not going to mess with it. Its funny and that's all that matters. Jenna has passed on now so its her on-going memory in that film that makes me smile through my tears. (I've got new pups now, await more films.)

[HollyMagnani]

hey, WebGal,

Let me know when you find those templates. I'm not really well versed in using templates in Dreamweaver but I'm always interested in learning more. I still don't know what css is and why I need it.

Holly

[REOBULK]

There are three most common positioning strategies for products that TimW alludes to: cost leadership (commodity products), differentiation (high value-add), and niche marketing. I think what 4hww is espousing is a combination of the last two, in that you focus on a niche and have a differentiated high-value product in that segment. This is a lynchpin of business strategy. For more info see:
Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_generic_strategies) (wikipedia)

Nice reference blue, clear and easily definable to a particular business. Thanks for the link.

[Sven]

Great replies so far, one thing missing (I think):

Forget about design and programming for now, use open source and learn CMS website setup. I Almost had my main website up and running when I was introduced to 4hww and must have spent over 4000.-- euro's on the site only to find out I could have achieved just about EVERYTHING for free using Drupal CMS.

Making money is about knowing your customer and selling.

[jasonwingfield]

Hi, all,
I've read Tim's book twice now and find it very illuminating and exciting. I've also, over the years, have read several other "make money online" courses and books and I can say that Tim's book put a lot of the same information in a concise package at a fraction of the cost of the others.

Anyway, I've got several muses in my head. All of them sound great however when I go online to see if others are doing the same thing, the answer is "yes and better." One of my ideas seems to have zero competition of any quality which is good. However, I'm overwhelmed by this idea of "natural shelf life" and competitors copying and reselling at a lower fee. It seems like I/we will constantly be swimming upstream just to stay even. Its amazing to me how Tim's BrainQUICKEN product is able to be so sustaining for so long. Is he not subject to the same shelf life/copying as other products and why not?

Also, for my other ideas, I see these grand websites and I feel like I don't have the ability to compete with their range of product/choices, suave web design, etc. I'm a little wary of outsourcing to India right now. The prices are just as expensive as US most of the time and from what I'm hearing the lack of quality is disturbing. Makes me want to be a VA.

I broke through the learning curves on both Dreamweaver and Photoshop on my own because I'm a tenacious, refuse-to-give-up-when-stupider-people-than-me-are-doing-it, mentality person. I know I could design a site that would be visually pleasing and user interface friendly but I popped over to another thread and was reading what the self-proclaimed computer geeks were talking about and it was not much more than paragraphs of acronyms I didn't understand. Php, css, rss, mysql...what are these things and how critical are they for a beginning web designer to know? (Is that why college is important?)

My other concern is that I've been lucky. I started my first three businesses with zero capital investment, just with what I had laying around and they, sans for one, were/are successful. I currently have a one-person real estate title research business working out of my home. Reading Tim's book sounds like there could be an enormous (to me) capital investment in adwords purchasing, pay-per-click advertisement etc etc. Is anyone else concerned about this or am I being a cheapskate? I don't have a lot of disposable income these days and I was hoping to be able to recreate my previous successes.

I suppose that's enough for now. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Holly Magnani
(go ahead, google me....)

Great replies so far, one thing missing (I think):

Forget about design and programming for now, use open source and learn CMS website setup. I Almost had my main website up and running when I was introduced to 4hww and must have spent over 4000.-- euro's on the site only to find out I could have achieved just about EVERYTHING for free using Drupal CMS.

Making money is about knowing your customer and selling.

More to this point @Sven, you can quickly and easily set up your own website using a popular blog engine such as I have done using Wordpress hosted on Godaddy. Eventually I will have a VA to maintain the site etc, but I really did not have to much to get the styling except browse through different themes and click download when I found one I really liked.

However, notice the URL to my site does not indicate it is a blog. For this you need to buy a domain name from Godaddy or other provider, then ask their technical support how to get your blog to use it.

Cheers,

Jason

[Ruben A]

I concur with all the comments on not wasting time learning html/css/php. Leave that to the programmers and instead learn Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress as content management system and find an professsional and inexpensive theme for the particular CMS framework. I am way partial for WordPress, especially after 3.0 was released, as it was the most intuitive for me as a non-techie. I had the shortest learning curve with WordPress, and there are a gazillion themes out there, both free and premium (go for premium).

From 2005 until about the end of 2009 I messed with trying to learn html coding with dreamweaver (now I use NotePadd++ for tweaking) and Photoshop. BIG MISTAKE. When it comes to making money, learn

marketing (if no one know about you, you can't sell),
sales (without a unique selling proposition and presentation, you're just another replaceable tadpole in the pond), and
systems (so you can get someone else to come in and work on your business not in your business

I too spent thousands of dollars messing around with all this other stuff. I don't regret it because it was an educational experience for me, one which I never learned in school after spending tens of thousands of dollars and 4 years of my life.

[Fabion]

good advice ........I get a idea from it.Thanks to share information .

[officer_dibble]

I agree with the others. Don't worry about the coding stuff - unless you are going to write a web app as your muse (even then you might be able to outsource it).

I can't recommend the 30 day challenge highly enough if you are starting out:

http://challenge.co/


and it is pretty much free to get going with (all based on natural search rather than paid advertising). As for PPC - you can dip your toes with a free Google adwords voucher. Many internet mags have them for free or search twitter for a working code. If you are careful - you should be able to stretch a $50 voucher out enough to see if it's worth investing more.

[Loc]

I struggle w/ this constantly - learning something myself or "hiring" someone to do it...

When it comes to online though - I've discovered it's so easy to learn enough of the basics. The only 3 acronyms you really need to know are HTML (pages), PHP (databases) and CSS (design). Throw in some Photoshop (or even MS Powerpoint) and you can do some aesthetic wonders. I'd start w/ PHP and use this book (http://www.amazon.com/Learning-MySQL-JavaScript-Step---Step/dp/0596157134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291267798&sr=8-1). Now I not only feel comfortable throwing up an easy squeeze page - but can critique work I hired out better too.

There are tons of easy website building services too..like Snappages.com but you'll waste just as much time trying to make those services create great sales pages.

[americanoracle]

Anyway, I've got several muses in my head. All of them sound great however when I go online to see if others are doing the same thing, the answer is "yes and better." One of my ideas seems to have zero competition of any quality which is good. However, I'm overwhelmed by this idea of "natural shelf life" and competitors copying and reselling at a lower fee. It seems like I/we will constantly be swimming upstream just to stay even. Its amazing to me how Tim's BrainQUICKEN product is able to be so sustaining for so long. Is he not subject to the same shelf life/copying as other products and why not?

For some reason I was reminded of the hushpuppies story. The shoes, which had been around since the 1950's and sold 30,000 pairs in 1994 and then one day somebody woke up and made them ubercool again and in 1996 they sold over 1 million pairs. Malcolm Gladwell talks about it in the tipping point.

My point being the masses are unpredictable. If you are in untested waters, you have to be ok with failing a lot. But if failing a lot were a reason to avoid something, Hollywood surely wouldn't exist. Lots of things wouldn't. People wouldn't try because the odds suck. If people operated solely out of avoiding failure the world would be a terminally boring, stale place.

More specific to your question/concern. How many websites do you visit every day? When you have these muse ideas, you have to go look for them to discover all the people who are already doing it, right? They are invisible until you think about it, then there's somebody right there doing it.

I think the reality is internet penetration is incredibly shallow. 5-10 websites a day for most people. So anybody selling anything can advertise to millions of people and still have hundreds of millions who have never heard of them.

Somebody else already doing it is usually a bad reason to let stop you. Unless you are trying to be amazon or ebay or somebody with 99% marketshare and huge startup, but that's not the concept here anyway. How much market share do you need to be satisfied, and where can you market yourself that others can't or haven't?

best of luck...

ps- Tim sold BrainQuicken off, and by my math he wasn't making much money with it at the point of sale (300k is what it looks like he got for it).