Came across this great article today. Worth the read if you’re a small business owner.

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Well isn’t this blog a model of neglect. I happened upon the link and noticed that the last post was exactly 364 days ago. Time sure does fly. A lot has changed for me both personally and professionally, and it’s interesting to look back on the posts that we had written around this time last year.

I have some extra time so I thought I’d quickly post a quick tip that I think has worked for me, and might work for you too. I noticed we were getting a lot of traffic to WhyDoWork.com for the search term “cool google tricks”. It was all going to one thread, getting a ton of views, but not a ton of comments.

In about an hour, I bought a domain name, set up a wordpress blog, and had some content on the new site, cleverly titled cool google tricks . Once the site was set up, I did a 301 redirect on the content (see how to do that here) and had traffic flowing to the new site. It now makes a few dollars a day, and has over 1,000 views/day across a number of different posts and categories.

Not rocket science, but not something I’d usually think about doing. Think about your own sites, if you do have something that might be getting some traffic outside of your main content theme, consider spinning it off into something new. It just might work

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How many of us have made the following type of comments: ‘Why didn’t I buy a great domain name back in 1996?’,  ’Why didn’t I start a money making website in 1999?’ , ‘This sucks! All the good ideas are already taken!!’ Sure, the people who did those things are wealthy now, but while some people complained about missing the boat, others have built a new one and the smart people got on board. For example, in 2004 Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook and then in 2007 another gentelman created Zynga (owner of popular Facebook apps such as Farmville). Trust me there will always be room for new innovations.

With the Internet rapidly evolving, it is so important to stay current, read about trends, and proactively think of where the next opportunities exist. I have personally run businesses that were very successful at the time but are now totally abandoned. At one point I’ve sold pop under ads, bought expired domains, ranked tops in the Yahoo Directory, and others, all completely irrelevant in today’s Internet world. In the meantime I’ve shifted my efforts to stay current. Last year I created a Daily Deals website (a niche that has exploded since) and am working on some totally customized Facebook Connect integrations.

One thing that I will admit is that the opportunities are not as easy as it once was. In the early 2000s I created all my own websites (simple HTML and php).  Now I outsource all my development and focus my efforts on design and marketing. The technologies used to compete today have gotten quite a bit more advanced, however the ease of outsourcing has gotten substantially easier and cheaper so don’t be intimidated by it.

So where do I think the next big ideas will come from? Here is my list of the hottest places to focus your efforts in 2011:

1. Google TV (Apps) – I really believe this is going to be huge in a few years and now is the time to start coming up with some creating applications to creatively merge together the TV and Internet.
2. Social Media Promotion – This one is really on fire right now and it may be only a temporary market but there is a huge desire for people to grow their social exposure. I’ve seen a lot of sites emerging that allow you to buy facebook fans and twitter followers, and guess what. They are raking it in.
3. Facebook Connect – It’s time to take your current site and figure out how to integrate with Facebook and Twitter. I’m not talking about setting up the obligatory pages but building in real value added integration that allows people to seamlessly share content on your site with their facebook friends.
4. Blackberry / Android Tablet (Apps) – While there is still opporunties with the Apple iPad, that niche is becoming saturated. The Blackberry and Android tablets might be a better place to look.

Have any ideas to add to the list?

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