From my perspective, the “recovery” seems to be confined mostly to the large Corporations.  Companies like Cisco (CSCO), McDonalds (MCD) , Pfizer (PFE), etc. all are coming out with decent earnings.  Furthermore, even companies that have major issues ahead (in my opinion) such as Brunswick Corporation (BC) (boat manufacturer) and Simon Property Group (SPG) (commercial real estate) are able to stay afloat due to their ability to get financing.  You can also add a number of large U.S. banks to such a list.

Large Corporations are able to sell shares to the open market in return for much needed cash.  By manufacturing a large increase in the stock market through zero percent interest rates, the government essentially enabled many companies to raise money by selling equity.  I’m not arguing against this.  It is the purpose of the capital markets (at least when they really are markets).

The problem is on Main St. or small business, which is why we’ve seen the political rhetoric shift away from Wall St. and move towards Main St.  I work for a company with 5 employees.  While we’re moving forward and surviving, we’re by no means thriving, and are not moving towards hiring new people.  Instead, the owners are simply doing more and working harder instead of bringing on additional overhead.  I wonder how many small businesses are doing similar things?  I would guess a lot.

Small businesses are still very cautious.  Yes, some tax breaks for small businesses are great – even though they might be offset by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on individuals making over $250k (many small business owners).  But, the problem isn’t really taxation.  It’s the economy.  There just isn’t much business to go around.  It’s a shrinking pie with the same number of hands fighting for a slice.  How do you fix that?  Is there even a fix?

Popularity: 2% [?]

1697Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2010/02/09/its-good-to-be-big-bad-to-be-small/It%27s+Good+To+Be+Big%2C+Bad+To+Be+Small2010-02-09+17%3A12%3A45Kevin

I love marketing, especially the idea of powerful brands.  There are many brands that appeal to me, but there are a few with supernatural power over me!  What about you?

Starbucks Corporation (SBUX)

Man, I tell you what.  I love me some Starbucks.  Yes, I’m aware it’s a rip-off, but there are times when I need that $4 latte.  Yes, I know that it’s pretty much entirely emotional and therefore, controllable.  But, when I’m in the mood and I drive by and see the beautiful green circle with that weird lady in it, I have to stop and get my fix.  I know how absurd I sound.

Apple Inc (AAPL)

This one I’m less ashamed of since Apple’s products are just so darn awesome.  The perfect blend of quality and beauty.  I’m a huge Mac guy (I’ve owned a macbook and an iMac) and I use an iPhone.  I love following the company and the stock, as you know if you read this blog.

Chick-Fil-A

Similar to Starbucks, sometimes I am just craving Chick-Fil-A.  They have done an incredible job of creating a marketable, addictive food that you can want day after day (what a great business to be in).  Bar none the best chicken sandwich out there.  Excellent breakfast too, by the way.  I absolutely love the management focus of Chick-Fil-A.  There is a reason that the service level is so much higher here than in just about all other fast food chains.  How the heck do they get those $7/hour employees to be so nice!

Investing In These Companies

Since Chick-Fil-A is private, I’ll focus on Starbucks and Apple.  I love both companies and would love to be an owner of both companies.  Unfortuantely, both companies do not offer a dividend and tend to be very popular stocks (which can definitely mean overbought).  These are two companies that I will definitely be picking up shares in if there is a large broad market crash.  Great companies to own with excellent brand power and loyalty.  Just too expensive for me to buy today.  If I see a buying opportunity, I will be letting you know.

Popularity: 5% [?]

1463Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2010/01/21/three-brands-with-supernatural-power/Three+Brands+With+Supernatural+Power2010-01-21+11%3A58%3A47Kevin

The opportunities are huge when it comes to selling information based products. Since creating 10 copies or 10,000 copies of the information costs the same, the profitability is very high if you have a high selling information product. The cost of an information product is simply your time, the time required to create the information.

It’s worth noting that most information products do not sell. Your information product must be written with a level of expertise or a high level of knowledge or experience, or it must be a unique perspective. Most information is not “expert level” and is often something that is not unique.

Potential Formats

Hard Copy – book, magazine, etc.

Electronic Copy – Email, ebook, blog

I definitely would direct anyone attempting to sell information to move towards the electronic format since there are no publishing costs.

Pricing / Profits

There are various ways you can charge for your information. If you think people will pay directly for your information then you can create a ecommerce solution to auto-deliver an ebook or something via email after receiving payment. I believe there are ways to set this up through PayPal to have it completely automated.

Most people sell information indirectly through a blog or website and generate revenue through advertising. This requires traffic or an audience since advertising requires eye balls.

Another option is to create some kind of membership or course, where people can pay to have access to a range of informational resources or course materials. Many people on the web make big bucks through membership offerings.

Gaining Customers

It’s near impossible to sell information without already having established trust with a group of people. Therefore, if you’re new to an industry, I’d recommend starting a blog and trying to build up an audience or readership. This will require effort and time, but once you have an audience to market an informational product to, your success/conversion rate will be much higher.

If you’re attempting to sell some sort of membership or educational course, maybe offer the first part of the course for free in order for readers to get a taste of what you have to offer. Either that or offer some sort of money back guarantee. These are very common and actually very effective marketing tools.

Bottom Line

Selling information products can be very lucrative; however, most fail to sell at all.  The key is to differentiate what you’re selling.  Be an expert on your topic and offer a unique angle or opinion on what you’re saying.  You must be different and of the utmost quality.

While developing your product, make sure you are building trust with a group of readers.  It is to this group that you will market your product.

Popularity: 8% [?]

1335Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2009/12/31/everything-you-want-to-know-about-selling-information-based-products/Everything+You+Want+to+Know+About+Selling+Information-Based+Products2009-12-31+09%3A27%3A52Kevin

A large segment of internet users today has bought into the goal of making money on the web. Because of the rise of blogging and technologies like Wordpress and Joomla, it is easier than ever for an individual to take a stab at earning money online.

The reality is that 99% of bloggers or other web entrepreneurs make no money at all. It’s very tough and very crowded. Understanding why it is so tough will help clarify the real opportunity for making money online.

Blogging and similar ventures can be categorized as content producing. It is extremely difficult to make money by producing content because there are so many content producers doing the exact same thing and there is already an incredible amount of content on the internet. I once read that the content on the internet is doubling every 12 or 18 months (either number proves the staggering growth rate of internet content).

Because of so much content, users can literally find anything about anything. This is a good thing, but the challenge is to continue to increase the effectiveness of search or filters to continue to find the best content from the ever growing amount of “crap” content being produced. The challenge is not solved by Google or other mechanisms, because the internet is continuing to change and grow. While Google has a dominant search engine and is the window for most users to find what they are looking for on the internet, Google must continue to innovate and redefine their services as the internet grows and matures on its own. Google does not control the internet and doesn’t have any potential to control the internet’s growth or lead its direction. While they arguably can lead the direction of the internet’s growth better than many other technology companies, it is still a futile effort. The internet is too big to be controlled by one entity.

Where The Opportunity Lies

Because of the incredibly difficult chance of standing out on the internet by producing content, no matter how unique or good that content is, it is better to focus in a different direction other than producing content. The opportunity is in filtering content or helping web surfers find the best content. Before you think that I’m recommending you compete with Google, I’m not trying to tell you to build a new search engine. There are many ways to filter content other than a search engine.

Review sites like epinions.com help users filter consumer products, yelp.com reviews help filter local businesses, tripadvisor.com helps filter travel data such as hotels or destinations, or even a popular blog on indie rock music helps filter the mediocre indie rock from the quality indie rock. Filtering content does not need to apply to the entire massive quantity of data on the internet; in fact, you’re wasting your time if this is your approach. Instead, focus on a niche, or a corner of the internet. How can you help users filter the content within that niche?

In order to explore this business opportunity completely, you must understand how some of the main filtering mechanisms work on the internet. Google utilizing backlinks to rank websites within a particular content category. Backlinks are defined as websites linking to a website. My blog, for example, 20smoney.com, goes up in various finance categories in Google’s index when more websites link to it. Are there flaws in this design? Is it perfect? It works excellent, but yes, there are some imperfections to it (Google works tirelessly to improve this algorithm constantly). Because even Google, the master of search, has flaws in its search algorithms, there are opportunities for innovative thinkers to launch a filtering service even on a very small scale. Such a service could be very profitable.

Getting Down To Business

In order to explore some actual examples of such a venture, you can begin by asking yourself some questions: What information is tougher to find on the internet? What could be easier to find? Who’s recommendations do I trust?

Expert recommendations

One area that could be expanded is using experts in various categories or topics to help users find the best websites or content in that area. Google uses backlinks to rank a website. These backlinks can come from anywhere and might be average recommendations at best. While Google’s algorithm attempts to factor in the quality of even the recommendation, there are still opportunities to improve or focus entirely on the expert recommendation. Review websites leverage this strategy, but they are recommending products as opposed to content.

Blog Search

The ability to find quality blogs is actually pretty tough on the internet. Sure, you can find quality posts by searching for a topic on Google or other search engines. The quality posts from blogs will be listed in the search results most likely. But what if the writer of that blog wrote one good post out of a thousand? That search did not help you find a quality blog, merely a quality post? Some ranking service for actual blogs / writers could be beneficial.

Can’t you use technorati’s authority ranking to find the best blogs? Well yes, but too often it seems bloggers that got in early in the game (johnchow.com comes to mind) are high ranked simply because they may have been among the first bloggers in a specific category, not necessarily the highest quality. Furthermore, the technorati categorization is extremely limited. The categories are incredibly broad. The beauty of the internet’s ever expanding content base is that even the smallest of niches can be explored. A quick example, what if I want to find the best blog on SEO for Ruby on Rails web applications? Do I browse the “Internet” category on technorati?

The modern world wide web is about unlimited content; therefore, we need unlimited flexibility in the categorization of that content.

Exploring This Further

If any of this discussion sparks an interest in you, do some brainstorming. I’m definitely open to partner with someone on a venture, specifically someone who can program web applications. I’m too busy to write another web application at this point, but would definitely be open to making one of these ideas happen. Contact me via email if you’re interested.

Popularity: 22% [?]

468Comments (0)http://20smoney.com/2009/08/31/the-real-money-making-opportunity-on-the-web/The+Real+Money+Making+Opportunity+On+The+Web2009-08-31+09%3A11%3A01Kevin

Today, businesses are struggling to keep revenues going. Businesses across most, if not all, industries are experiencing declining revenues. In order to compensate, businesses have been cutting costs, mostly in the form of getting rid of employees. Such action has been effective, even delivering “earnings beats” in many areas driving a huge run in the stock market. But, the question remains, in a weak economic environment, where does the increase in revenue come from? Is “waiting for the economy to bounce back” a good enough strategy?

During the boom years, the “pie” of business was growing which easily supported the businesses going after pieces of the pie. Companies with similar products or services were able to get their piece and make money, support employees, earn a living. Now, that the pie has been shrinking, the game is completely different.

The Ugly Business Environment Today

Because of the shrinking pie, and an excess number of business all pursuing the same shrinking volume of business, a number of new developments are taking place. Some companies decide to slash pricing in an attempt to win more business. Customers, in an attempt to save money, encourage the slashing of prices. Unfortunately, winning business on lower margins necessitates an increase in volume; but this is not happening today. Many companies are winning less business and the business that they are winning is on lower margins.

So, what is the strategy for a business trying to compete in this tough economy? The answer is to innovate. Companies must find new ways to do business, new ways to deliver value, new ways to service their customers in an attempt to both differentiate from competitors but also offer a product or service that is nonexistent in the rest of the marketplace.

Where / What / How Do We Innovate?

Only you know your business, but there are some key questions to ask. Is there a technology that could render your service useless (think about the way Expedia and other online travel sites put out of business travel agencies)? Is there a software solution that could change the way your business operates? Could you sell that software to other companies like yours?

A good way to view the future of business is a platform-focused view. Don’t try and be another player in the field of many; instead, come up with a platform that will enable the players to compete better. Be the platform, not the manufacturer. Be the platform, not the retailer. For example, Google provides an advertising platform with their Adsense product which facilitates advertisers and publishers at the same time. Can you extend this concept to your niche industry? Think outside the box a little bit and see what you can come up with. You might surprise yourself.

To grow your business, you must innovate. To get more of the pie whether its a shrinking pie or growing pie, you must innovate. If you’re not making progress, you’re probably losing ground because your competitors are innovating. Don’t just sit by and pray that our politicians will fix our economy. Improve your business and make it happen yourself!

Popularity: 13% [?]

455Comments (1)http://20smoney.com/2009/08/19/innovate-or-die/Innovate+Or+Die2009-08-19+09%3A03%3A58Kevin