Getting rich, famous and popular. NOT!

I have a dream, OK, so that's not so original, but hey who cares. To be unique or original is hard in a world of mass communication, it seems everything we say has been said before by someone, somewhere, sometime. But I digress, I do have a dream.

I want to do something different, invent something, write something, be rich, famous, anything really, as long as I achieve something worthwhile and new. Don't you have that dream?

Yes, I think we all do in our own way, that secret desire to be a little different, to be noticed, admired, respected or whatever. Books such as "Blind Faith" by Ben Elton allude to this human craving for uniquity(is that a real word?).

Well, I'm also a realist, pragmatist and any other 'ist you can name that means basically 'average Joe'. I've come to learn over the years that maybe I'm not that special or unique, not the brightest spark or not that adventurous. I work for a living, have a beautiful wife, a nice house in a leafy suburb, not a bad achievement, but I could easily disappear in the crowd of everyone else that are just like me.

Seriously, there really are many layers of society, from down and out poor to insanely rich, I'm in there somewhere, just like you. Look around, see anyone special or different? Didn't think so. Its time to look harder, this time, look inside.

Wait! Before you stop reading and put me into the "not another The Secret" category, let me explain a little. When I say look inside, I mean look at yourself, your life, your skills, experience, knowledge, look where you are, who you are.

These are the very attributes that are not unique in themselves, but mashed together and wrapped up in your personality they form something very special indeed. This is me, I am unique, I am special. Say it to yourself, or say it out loud, no one will believe you, because they haven't worked it out yet. You are one step ahead already.

So now you know a little more about yourself(its the small things that count), you might begin to feel a little more confident but still humble in knowing that your a special person amongst a world full of special people. But this is how I plan to follow my dream.

In my dreams I am a successful Internet entrepreneur, raking in the money from the next big thing on the net, selling a chunk for millions and earning huge profits by having a massive client base paying cash for a valuable service/product. I'd have a nice car, the boat, castle in Europe and spare time to enjoy it.

Dreams are great aren't they, so cheap and so much fun. Well this dream of mine is a big achievement, and we already know I'm average, so pretty unlikely to hit on this big idea, let alone start up a multimillion dollar company.

I was stuck at this point for years, wanting to achieve but not up to the task, feeling desperate, getting more and more depressed each time I read about some web company making it big and selling for heaps by some uni grad(i have no degree) with a new idea and a big pair of balls!

So, like you and everyone else, I continued to work, make money, take holidays, struggle with the mortgage, you know how it goes. Well, one day, whilst on a business flight to Melbourne, I was reading the in-flight magazine 'Voyeur' and there amongst the reviews and stories about health spas was an article that contained one paragraph that changed my life!

The article was about a guy and a book and his secret to success. The book Is called "The four minute work week" and is probably one of your everyday self help make the author rich types of publications that abound(i still haven't read it).

That aside, the concept for this guy is instead of working for someone or working in your own company, he sets up autonomous companies that are self running and only require minimal administration.

This was the key paragraph in the article "don't try to be the market leader, biggest, making millions, aim for an established business model, deliver, make a regular profit. ", and the essence of that got me thinking. Could I do that? Yes. I was excited, at last I had a concept business that fits my average ideology, be average and be good and efficient and take a small share of an established or new market.

You see, the Internet is a big place, and getting bigger all the time. But you don't have to think big, in fact my scheme is to think small, and purposefully. In business there's a few schools of thought, either compete or innovate. I choose to compete through innovation and niching.

An example,

eBay is a great site, selling items by auction to the entire world, great if your after a bargain or something unique. What about the average guy wanting a second hand fridge for the outdoor barbie area? Is he going to look on eBay? No, more likely he will turn to the traditional bricks and mortar retail approach, something local if possible. OK, so imagine our eBay lists only products in his area, is advertised locally, has local content and offers supporting services like courier booking or email alerts. Suddenly our guy has a well known local "store" he can look at, someone is more likely to put their "old" fridge up there for sale than on eBay. The website charges a small listing fee, something very small and can ask for a donation if it sells. The donation would cancel the old listing and also give a free listing next time. This keeps the ads current and promotes our seller to come back. The buyer has more to find and keeps coming back and will eventually have his old fridge to sell again! So the business builds.

I can hear you now, the murmurs of disbelief, the sound of pencils hastily doing sums, calculating turnover and income vs costs. This won't make me rich, it won't even let me retire, what kind of nonsense is this? Stay tuned, theres more.

OK, so you read my example, can see some prospect but not enough future to quit your day job. That's the idea, don't quit your day job, use that money to keep alive. Use your spare time instead. Eventually your new online business will start to make some money, maybe even enough to cover one or more days off a month/week. Wouldn't that be great?

Here's how I'm doing it, I'm an IT engineer with skills in infrastructure and web development but nothing in graphics or marketing. I know my strengths and my weaknesses. I need to pay for somethings to be done and some I can do or learn to do.

Firstly, think-tank with your buddies or wife, talk about all the websites you think are interesting and the normal businesses you like. Think about some websites you like the idea of but wouldn't use for some reason or another. This is the fertiliser for your idea, remember we aren't trying to create an amazon, google or Facebook here, just a little website that can trickle over a few bucks here and there.

Secondly, work out a very simple business plan, I normally have a paragraph per section and include the following headings; Title, business summary, features, target turn over, costs, marketing.

Try to be realistic with your turnover estimates, do a little research on your target market, get an idea of the current turnover in the market and aim for a few percent. With costs, go through the normal costs a business would have such as accounting, business name, plus web hosting, plus marketing, plus development.

How does it look? Does the annual income exceed annual expenses? If yes, you could have your first eBusiness idea about to become reality.

I did this simple exercise above on dozens of ideas before hitting on a winner, normally an idea will sound like a winner from the start, these are usually the ones that are interesting, useful and timely. Sometimes though you may not see how it could make money, this happens, with experience and research I'm sure almost every idea could generate some income by having the right business model, at this point theres no need to waste time doing this. If you really like the idea, come back to it in the future or keep it in mind and keep your eyes and mind open to new charging tactics.

With your think-tank for ideas, think about industries, hobbies, serviceş or fields that you wouldn't normally deal in, chances are that most people wouldn't either and you may have a fresh new online market place. Remember we only want a small income, 100% of a small market is like 1% of a very big market. Force yourself small and set a target of some financing some small reward per week, how about that really nice wine or pamper massage. I'm not saying you won't get big, but remember my average Joe strategy of being average and taking small bites.

You will find it much less stressful, much more achievable and far more rewarding when you tell people that your an Internet entrepreneur. Also, at this point a lot of people will be telling you its stupid, you won't get rich, its chicken feed, don't waste your time blah blah, they are right, but you will be the one who has achieved something and making a few extra bucks at the end, while they stay average and uninspired.

How are your ideas coming along? Do you have a few good ones, something that you are excited about creating and something that has the potential to earn a few bucks? This is important, they say business decisions should not be based on emotion, but if your going to be spending a heap of time and effort on this project it has to be something that will keep you motivated. By learning something new and having a genuine interest in the concept will be a definite help when your doing the legwork setting it up.

If you have an idea, have written the mini business case and are keen to proceed then read on. If not, don't give up, either the ideas will come, or you are even more average than you think, in which case, based on my theory, you will succeed at being quite normal and live a normal life.

To proceed from here, in the Internet software world, you would now begin to write out all the features and services you want to offer. This will form the basis of your detailed requirements. The detailed requirements document will cover all interactions with your clients, the process flow and data storage. The more detailed the better, but, at this stage, try not to specify the design too much. This will come later, once the requirements are done, you can decide on a development technology or company that will be within your skills or budget and then make a design that suits.

This may go against some schools of thought where the design is made and a technology chosen that can provide the specified design features you are after. The reason I go this way is because the technology used does tend to affect the look and feel of a website, the way it works and navigates etc.

Having those requirements detailed out is a very good idea, if you can do the development yourself it will keep you focused and progressing toward the solution. If you will be outsourcing(paying someone else to do it) then it will be necessary to have this scope and detail in order for them to quote and deliver your website. Remember the goal is to achieve this all on very minimal outlay. So don't be tempted to waste time on graphics and marketing at this stage. There will be plenty of time for that later, because you don't have to sit at reception taking all your customers calls and doing the day to day running of your business(its a automated website remember) you can devote yourself to marketing and promotions.

Now, here's a tip, because I'm an IT guy with development experience I decided to do the main development myself, my starting point was to see if there was any source code available to kick start the process. Lo and behold, there is a whole world of samples, starter kits, open source, templates and turnkey solutions out there! You can potentially just download, rename the title and away you go. Check the small print and give credit where its due, but these ready-made pieces can save you thousands.

For example, just say you want to make our classifieds site we talked about before. You can download the whole thing, add your banner, change some settings and upload to a host, total cost $100 and 5 hours work. Next, get some people using your site, grab a Pay-Pal account, add the billing link code to your sign-up or ad posting pages, wait for the money to trickle in.

So the above example was a very simplified version of events, but that's about all you need to do, getting the details right and testing everything thoroughly will take you some time. A tip on testing, error pages and functionality that doesn't work properly will turn your users away faster than bad graphics or few features. Anything that a client doesn't understand or has trouble with is your websites problem, fix it.

Remember we want to make money from all this right? To do this you need three things, people(with money), something to charge for and something to charge them with. Lets work backwards because theres no use getting customers if you can't charge them.

Billing; this is a really important part of the process, it makes the dream come true, parting a customers money from their bank account and uniting it with your bank account. Once upon a time this would have been quite difficult and costly to set up. Now days there are quite a few providers in this area, services and pricing differ but worth shopping around.

I use and recommend Pay-Pal, they charge a small per transaction fee, no setup cost and offer simple instructions and code to put on your site to make it work. They pay direct to your bank or send a cheque. Using Pay-Pal allows you to charge very small amounts which makes your products or services look very attractive.

Product or Service

So now we can charge people, what are we charging for and how much? If you've already read through the previous pages you would by now have a business plan and a very good idea about what your product is. It could be that your reselling a product or producing a physical object, or you may be offering a service of some kind. I prefer the latter, I'm not talking about making your website into a booking system and you spending all your time working, no, I'm referring to the service that your website can offer. This is where simplicity and automation can really free your time and make you money.

Theres a lot of people in your area, probably more than you think, those people all have needs and these needs can probably be met by someone in the same area, they just don't know it. A web site and some suitable marketing can bring these two groups together, benefiting them both if each party has met their need. This mutual satisfaction will be your selling point and product. Charging for this service is the next challenge.

Price setting and billing strategy is very important to how you do business, market, and how much money you will make. Theres a few theories about pricing, go cheap and compete on price, match price and compete on quality of service, or charge high and focus on the niche.

Guess what our strategy will be? Go cheap and focus on the niche! If you've done your home work and you have a target market your focusing on then no doubt you already have a good idea what the sales might be, if it was a busy niche market then there will be enough turnover to support a low pricing structure.

A low price overcomes doubt about placing an order or paying for a subscription, the customer will not feel like they have a lot to lose if something goes wrong. Besides, do you remember our initial goal of just making a few bucks, not to earn a living, so let just earn a few bucks and see how it goes. Sometimes, the major market will get jealous of your price and service and will want to get on board as well, consider carefully before you open up to all this money. Remember the rule, less work not more, we are average and not trying to be amazon or eBay. A little extra is all we want. Its your choice, but do go over the pros and cons.

Whatever pricing model you choose, make sure you differentiate yourself from your competitors(if there are any, niche remember) with either price, services, service, location, specialising or product.

Marketing;

this is the fun part, once you have something to offer and can bill people, everything you do now will either attract customers or drive them away, preferably the former. First thing to do they say is get with Google, that may be, but I would say first thing to do is understand the thought process behind a person with a need that your site can fulfill.

Why? Well without this knowledge you won't know how to reach your needy users, won't know what they do when they have a need, where they start to fill the need, do they know they have a need? Some markets are new and you have to sell the concept, some you have to compete, and some you just have to say I'm here' and you get customers.

So how do you find out about your target market and your future customers? Research, talking to people and more research. Theres been lots written, books, online, everywhere. But how do you find out what will work without spending ages researching, or thousands on misplaced marketing?

One thing that I find works is to market close to home, by this I mean your own demographic. People you know, can talk to, yourself, family, friends, colleagues. The reason this works in one way is because you first thought of the idea, possibly filling your own need, or you had a friend who had this need. If your own demographic is a good starting target then you will have a head-start in marketing.

One way this won't work for you is if your targeting a demographic that you know nothing about, such as a product or service that you never use, want or need. Of course, starting in your own demographic will build that initial momentum that can flow to other areas later.

So now you have an some ideas about the demographic, think about what your features and selling points are, where you customers currently go to fill their needs and then how you can get their attention.

Options include the local paper, try the free section, or place an ad under the for sale or services section for the niche you service. Write an article for your niches journal or monthly and make a mention of your site. Use your local notice boards, search for local club websites that have a bulletin board or forum.

These are all cheap or free options, you can take the plunge and spend on some big ads, radio, TV or billboards. Other promotion ideas include online ads with the likes of NineMSN, Google, Yahoo...

When you do start to get customers, use their details to follow up, regular newsletter and referral schemes can help.

Support & Maintenance

Any site is inevitably going to either have problems or give problems. You should plan for this by having well thought out Q&A's or a fast email response system. Every question you are asked should be added to the FAQ or the cause eliminated. You don't want to be constantly asked the same thing over and over.

Maintenance of your site is another point, there two types of this, one is busines related and one is system related. The business related maintenance consists of account, product, settings - adding, deleting, changing, refunds, returns, page updates etc. The system related maintenance will be tasks like domain administration, renewals, disk quota, corruptions and updating configuration.

These maintenance tasks are generally unavoidable, but do think of automation where possible. Auto-pay bills, set archive and auto activation options. Save your time wherever you can.

Final word

Writing this has been fun, I've written each part right after I actually did the work, so it was fresh in my mind and actually worked.

Its not for everyone, there may actually be some skill required that I didn't think up front, but I still think its do-able. Thinking small while you buildup a business does work, but likewise, don't limit your dream if you have the courage, means and enthusiasm.

Good luck.

'I have a dream, consider it, done.'