By Rich Gorman 4 Comments

Necessity is the Mother Of All Invention – Plato

 

Human beings search for solutions.  When we get a headache, we take an aspirin.  When we get hungry but are out of time, we get fast food.  When we cut ourselves, we strap on a band-aid.   Bottom line:  difficult situations inspire ingenious solutions.

If a service doesn’t exist that you direly need, create one that fits your exact requirements.  So long as the service is the “solution” to your challenge, waves up people with similar challenge will sign up.

Ever since I adopted this technique, I’ve found myself creating services that I’m passionate about and that others are passionate about as well.  Dollars follow value.

Direct Response Agency was created because I wasn’t satisfied with the design/copywriting solutions that were out there. Turnaround time was too long, edits were expensive, and the quality just wasn’t as good as I wished it could be.   Hence we vertically integrated design/copywriting and shortly thereafter provided these solutions to others just like us.

At Cost Fulfillment was created because I couldn’t stand working with the overpriced, slow, and sloppy manufacturers/fulfillment providers in the Direct Marketing space.  Plus there weren’t any fulfillment solutions that could service US, Canada, Europe, and parts of South America through 1 convenient portal.

Reputation Changer was created because there weren’t any ORM providers that knew how to ward off hungry affiliates, unscrupulous competitors, and unreasonable consumers from covering page 1 of Google for our Direct Response brands.  We needed a solution that would decrease poached sales, refunds, and chargebacks from online SERP attacks.  Voila, RC was born!

Completed.com (under development)  is the world’s first business and employee marketplace.   As an entrepreneur that is always looking to acquire strategic web properties and recruit talent from other companies, I often wonder what the best approach is to asking someone if they’re interested in leaving their job or selling their business.  Will I offend them?   Are they going to get suspicious of the request even though they are interested in leaving/selling?

The concept behind Completed.com is to essentially empower people & businesses to share with the world all of their accomplishments.  Every time you complete something noteworthy in your career, you will mark it off on Completed.com.  This will increase your Completed.com score, which will improve your value.

In order to monetize these accomplishments, people/businesses will list their “number.”  This “number” represents what it would take for them to leave their current place of employment or sell their business.   In order to request access to this number, you will have to be an active member of Completed.com (paid subscription) and request access to the number through Completed.com.  Before the owner of the profile will release the number, they will have the opportunity to preview your Completed profile to determine if it is a good fit.  If it is, then they will release the number to you which will open up negotiations.  Challenge Solved!

Now I could really use a service like that.  It didn’t exist, so I just had to create it!!!!

The opportunities for monetization through ad revenue, subscribers, and eventually transaction brokerage is enormous :)

 

How Can I Create A Successful Niche Service?

Start by thinking of services/products that you wish you had access to.  How would it improve your life?  Could it improve the lives of others around you?

Then start a search to discover whether the service already exists.  Are there formidable competitors?  If so then the service is likely not worth getting into.  But if the competition is weak, there may be an opportunity for you to enter and dominate.

Make sure that before you start you invest in a premium domain name that is easy to remember :)  Good luck!!!