New Internet projects and ideas capture entrepreneurs imagination all the time. If you’re one of these people who dream up the next big thing for the web, then start it but never get it off the ground, you’re missing your shot.
This is because, regardless of the uniqueness of the idea, there will always be a place for it. That’s what happens when billions upon billions of people all use the internet for all different reasons.
Original or Not, There’s Room for You
Of course, project originality helps, and it helps a lot. The first to create a web based application that helps do something no other application has yet to do (and if its executed right) will always dominate over copycats. But still, copycats have their place.
Take a look at Basecamp. The original project management web application spawned the creation of many similar applications, with many of the same features and few of their own. Some were even the same thing, but with just a refocused main purpose.
The same can be seen for just about every web service. These days, it hard to find an original idea – and even when an original idea sprouts up, someone takes it and puts it into their own version, making it harder to figure out “just who was the first to come up with this anyways?“.
With it apparent that there is room for any project – no matter how many of the same there are out there – it seems there’s always room for yours.
Marketing Can Help Anything
In the end, the success a project will or wont have comes down to the execution. Take a look at our buddy Shaun Andrews’ latest venture, XHTMLGenius. Upon a visit, you’ll notice that the entire site is two pages – an index, and a submission page. The purpose? Getting psd’s turned into validated xhtml & css quickly and easily for $250 bucks a pop. As designer and developer myself, when I first came across this site I found myself asking, will someone really pay $250 to have their site coded? I soon found out the answer, as Shaun reported on Mintpages that in two days he had two customers. I consider that pretty good myself, seeing how two customers is about 6 days work and a quick $500.
So how is it successful? I can tell you what, it’s all about marketing. I could see myself launching the same site, and receiving complaint after complaint about the price being way too high – but yet, Shaun can pull it off?
For starters, reading the index takes about 5 minutes, and explains to you in plain English (no technical mumbo-jumbo, because the target audience doesn’t understand it – which is why they need coding in the first place) exactly what the purpose of Xhtmlgenius is about. By having a strong portfolio to back him up, it becomes evident fairly quickly that you’re getting what you pay for – and it works.
Now we could have used many different sites as examples of marketing helping projects and startups get the ball rolling, but we decided to use Xhtmlgenius because it demonstrates how, even in a few days, if you do something right, it will work.
Be Original in Your Ideas & Let Them Flourish
Following these few tactics listed above can help an otherwise useless project find its own in an internet where there’s always a need for something, regardless of what it may be. Who would have known that starting a site for people to buy 1 pixel worth of advertising for $1 would have actually sold all 1 million spots. There is always a need out there, it’s just up to you to find one and put your ideas to work for you.
