New Web Business Ideas

I get this a lot. Either people ask me outright for an idea for thier new website, copy one I’ve already done, or ask me for an opinion on a site they’ve started. I’m always reluctant to tell someone an idea, not because I’m miserly with my ideas, but because if the idea doesn’t pan out, then I’m to blame. Well, of course it’s not my fault, but I get blamed nonetheless. I’ve accepted that people are going to copy my ideas, and it’s my responsibility to outdo them at every step. The ones who have their great new idea are the ones that crack me up. I can’t count how many times I’ve had an idea pitched to me that you can find any day of the week for sale by the dozen on Ebay’s website selling section. Ohhh, another freelance website? You want to go into ecommerce, and your site will be ready as soon as you find a drop shipper? And, just what the world’s been waiting for, another do-it-all hosting company.

So, how do you come up with an original idea? Don’t ask, me, when did I get appointed as the creative idea guy on websites? Seriously, though, I think I come up with at least twenty good ideas a day. Far too many for my little company to handle. What do I like? I like niche websites. So, most of my ideas are niche ideas. Throughout your day, keep in the back of your mind that you’re looking for inspiration for a new website. You’re sitting with your kid watching television? How about a website that has articles discussing children’s tv shows from the point of view of a concerned parent?

How do you know if your idea is one that will make a good website? Well, the first thing I do is try to find out if people are looking for information like that. One of my favorite tools for that is the keyword suggestion tool at Digital Point If you search around with that tool, using variations of words you think people might use when searching for the type of content you’d put on your site, you’ll get a clearer picture whether you’d get traffic, and you will come up with more specific ideas on articles to write.

Forget the notion that it has to be something you love, or even know well. You can always hire someone to write content, pick up free content, or something like that. You want to go for something that’s going to attract traffic firstly, but secondly, something that will be attractive to advertisers. It’s more difficult to measure this, but one quick rule of thumb is to go to Google and search the keyword. If a lot of ads show up on the right column, it’s a good guess that there are advertisers for that type of content (including using Google’s own Adsense). If nothing show up on the right, you may as well shelf that idea.