Opportunity Lives Here

Think of this as Volume 14, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

More than 15 years after the Web was spun it is still filled with opportunity.

What marks many of today's opportunities is that they're not about machine work. Machine work is the low-hanging fruit of the Web. Machine work has an immense profit margin, and incredibly low costs.

Google does machine work. Its success proved that, when machines face man online, machines are going to win. Yahoo was, originally, a directory, and invested heavily in sites like Geocities and Broadcast.com which required human work to fill them with stuff. Google, meanwhile, invested in machines, in software to parse the Web in various ways, and proved that's the way to the greatest profit.

This does not mean people have no place. It just means profit margins aren't quite as fat.

I have written many times here about the opportunities in my own field, journalism. Many of them still remain. The way to approach them, as always, is from the business side, defining an under-served market, place or lifestyle for which you have passion (and about which you have some knowledge), then organizing that market, and finally offering sellers the chance to meet buyers through entertaining editorial.

This is CNN's real problem. It has nothing to do with what the yahoos who argue about "journalism's failures" think. The channel never really defined its audience, its target market. Fox did. MSNBC (finally) did. So did dozens of other cable success stories. CNN never did — they said they were a news station, and above all that. Bullshit. No one is above all that.

Let their failure be your guide in your journalism endeavors. And now with no further ado, some new niches for you to profitably explore:

Trade Agents

There are lots of good b2b sites, like Alibaba, offering merchants a chance to profit on (usually Chinese) goods. The company is worth over $80 billion, and is based in Hong Kong.

But there is a lot more to foreign trade than China. Every country on the planet makes stuff, and looks for ways to sell it. There are also merchants in every major city who want to find something unique.

Plus (and this is the important bit) there are also individual buyers.

The way to approach this is to start by building a community of sellers, building a directory of import and expert rules by hand, and by encouraging those sellers to list the specific products they have regular access to.

Once you have the community started, your task becomes finding buyers who will make contact with these sellers and import not only the listed goods but communicate about unlisted goods. This communication is an important value-add, and your job is to facilitate it, securely, reliably, in increasing quantity.

You're trying to get deals done. You can make money with advertising until you start seeing money start to change hands. Then go about building the services these buyers and sellers need to increase the traffic.

Let me give you an example. There's a winery with my name on it, somewhere in Germany. (Look closely at the flag above — that's my last name!) I would love to get some of their stuff, but no one in my state has got the specific import licenses. Making that happen would be worth money to me, and others with my own last name around the world. There are lots of products that American tourists loved but couldn't find when they got back — even Amazon couldn't source them.

There are small merchants in every city who specialize in esoteric products from Third World countries. Agents based in those countries can help them get better stuff, maybe better prices. This builds more competitive stores here, better sales volumes there.

It also goes the other way. I guarantee you there are people in Japan and Europe who want to buy products made in America but don't know how to source them. You can build experts here to sell those goods.

It's hand-work, it's slow, but it's a serious opportunity that a big company like Alibaba has no interest in. Seize it. You can make yourself a hero, and make a lot of money.

Better Food

There is a growing locavore food movement in America. Urban yuppies are trying to make connections with area farmers. So are restaurants.

It is amazing how ad hoc and offline this stuff is. I visited my own local and chatted with one of the merchants. He's over the moon when just 200 people come by during their hours of 9-1 on Saturday. 

There are such markets all over my area, all during the week. They're not organized, they're not coordinated, and their publicity is limited to a very small area. It would take very little to improve these results.

This starts as an editorial effort, but as I said earlier with CNN you start such an effort by defining and organizing your market. You build lists, you send e-mails, and you create master directories and calendars that not only include the markets, but their sources. This is a great full-time job for an out-of-work or just-starting journalist. It's also real journalism, because over time you are defining, organizing and (only then) advocating for a marketplace, one that is in fact becoming a lifestyle.

Over time you can help build this business. You can find opportunities for people who want to become suburban farmers. You can build links to educational materials about producing and selling wholesome food. You can advocate for state and federal aid.

Get in on the ground floor of a story like this and you will not only build a business, but a market. And your community.

We may still have unemployment of nearly 10%, but that means we have immense opportunity and a ready supply of labor. As with every recession there are jobs and industries that won't be coming back as they were. Banking, construction, those people have to find new ways forward.

That's what entrepreneurs are for.