Welcome to the second entry in the soon to be world famous ‘Cho’s Corner’ Blog, where I uncover all my secrets to developing an idea into a successful online business.  Today I’m going to start the long journey of taking an idea through the challenging process of analyzing, developing, promoting it and making it successful.

First of all you are going to actually need an idea to start with.  Well http://www.whydowork.com/ is a great place to start!  See what is making people money and what has been causing a stir.  The Internet is full of trends, and a work at home discussion board is a great place to stay in tune with these swings.  Outside of that, take something that interests you and see what is out there to serve that market.  Identify any gaps that you can offer the demographic.  The mainstay of new Internet ideas today involves filling niches.  With millions of potential eyes there are many untapped little corners of the Internet waiting to be served.

Once you have a couple of ideas bouncing around its time to see if they stack up in the quest for your online business.  Before you get all excited about your new idea and want to start coding and promoting it there is a lot more work to do.  The process of taking an idea and committing to it is the most difficult step in the entire process and one that will ultimately determine whether your initiative will succeed or not.  I personally have only launched a few different websites, but they all have been successful.  The reason being is the exhaustive screening procedure I put every idea through before I say it’s a go.  You need to measure every brainstorm that you have against a plethora of potential success factors, weigh the pros and cons, and determine your potential passion in turning this idea into a working, breathing machine.

When I come up with, or someone approaches me with a new idea the thing I do is to think of every reason in the world why this idea sucks!  Playing the devils advocate is extremely important.  The last thing you want to do is to let your emotions, and excitement allow you to get carried away.  On the other hand, every idea will have its negatives, and you can’t live life nay saying everything.  Eventually you have to commit to something; it’s just a matter of ensuring you pick the best idea for you.  Here is a list of criteria that will help you question the viability of your new initiative:

Competition – Where will this site fit into the competitive landscape that already exists?  Are there sites out there that already fill this niche?  What can I offer that will differentiate and allow me to sell this idea?  If your plan is to copycat an existing idea you are headed gravely down the wrong path.  However, leveraging an existing product and tweaking into your own specialized niche is a great way to achieve success.

Ethics – Is this something you are going to feel comfortable promoting?  In the end offering a service that exploits people, and serves only to line your pocket books won’t make you happy.  As attractive as the return some of the shadier areas of the Internet can bring, a bag full of money isn’t worth much without any real sense of achievement.

Feasibility – How exhaustive of a project is this?  Do you have the time, money, resources, and knowledge to make this happen in a reasonable amount of time?  If the project is beyond your resource capabilities it will end up being a frustrating endeavor.

Interest – Is this idea something you are interested in?  Are you going to be compelled to build and maintain this idea on a daily basis or is it going to be a chore?  If your motivations are purely financial your site will suffer, you need at least a rudimentary level of product knowledge with a desire to learn more.

Earnings Potential – Are you going to be making money promoting this idea?  While this criterion seems obvious, I assure you it’s not.  You can have a thousand people a day visiting your website but if there isn’t a quality product to sell and your target market cannot be successfully marketed to then you may have little success.  How to design your site around revenue channels will be something I will fully devote a Blog to in the future.

Now that you’ve taken your idea through the ringer, are you still excited about it?  If not, then you should consider passing on it and looking for something else.  If you are excited then its time to count the days till my next Blog to find out what to do next!

Joe Ross

WhyDoWork.com

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