© 2002 Elena Fawkner
You might be forgiven for thinking that competition is fierce if you run an online business. After all, every day - day in, day out - you, me and everyone else is constantly bombarded by offers from every man and his dog for various programs that promise us the means to earn an income from home.
After a while, of course, you begin to recognize that these programs are not worth the paper they're written on and the people pushing them are little more than con artists (or worse).
A common theme in all of these offers is the lack of effort required to begin making a significant income. Witness all the "Make money while you sleep!", "We do all the work!", "$3,000 per week for two hours work!", "Big money, no experience required!" subject lines in your inbox this morning.
The reason these types of offers are so prevalent, of course, is that the notion of something for nothing is seductive. Who on earth in their right mind would actually choose to spend 40 hours per week working for $80,000 per year when they can earn the same amount working only 2 hours each week? No one. The only problem is, working 2 hours a week and making $80K isn't going to happen unless that two hours is spent managing your multi-million dollar portfolio. And even then you'd most likely be spending more than a lousy couple of hours a week.
Common sense tells us that this must be so. But common sense is a rare commodity in the real world and even rarer when it comes to anything to do with the Internet, an unreal world if ever there was one.
There are a LOT of people running so-called "Internet businesses". A goodly proportion of these people are the ones touting the aforementioned "bizopp" pipedreams. This is good news for you, believe it or not. Why? Because, despite how it may sometimes seem, your REAL competition
is relatively small in number. After all, if 98% of those doing business online are unsuccessful (and promoting get rich quick schemes is the best way I know to make it into that elite group of 98 percenters), that leaves the field wide open for the 2% who are actually prepared to do some real work.
So don't for a minute think that the Internet playing field is all sown up. It isn't. All that buzzing in the background is the little kids down the other end of the field playing make-believe. There's still plenty of room to run on the field with the real players.
So, accept the fact that there's no such thing as something for nothing and you really are going to have to work for a living after all. Then create something original which meets the needs of one or more target markets and get to work.
There's plenty of room for you on the field and plenty of trophies to go around. You just have to keep your eye on the ball.
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Elena Fawkner is editor of A Home-Based Business Online ... practical ideas, resources and strategies for your home-based or online business. http://www.ahbbo.com
