New ideas. I am always short of new and good ideas for my current projects or for launching new ones. Every day I assign 20-30 minutes searching for emerging trends and ideas that might help with my projects. Not always fruitful time, in fact 70-80% is wasted time. When you try to artificially get inspiration it seldom comes. But I think this sort of activity – researching new niches and trends on purpose – is helpful and is likely to pay in the future.

One of the sources to learn what is hot at this time with other website publishers – this forum

It is no doubt one of the most popular webmaster forums. It is a respected source of information for thousands and thousands of webmasters worldwide. I do not state that any adv on this page is worth your attention and is a sign of the global online business tendencies, but if you browse the section regularly for a couple of months you will notice those repeating ads that come from various forum members. And it is a sign. The task is to make use of your discoveries before they become mainstream.

Just a short analysis of the page shows that webmasters are particularly interested in:

Directory Sites and Half Finished Projects

YPN Account Wanted – Will Pay $XXXX

myspace resource script

Proxy Script

YPN Account

YPN Account

Looking to buy motorcycle & snowmobile sites

WTB: Webmaster Traffic

Seeking Formula 1 Racing Forum

WTB Text Links -PR9’s or PR8’s

Looking for a site that that makes about $500+ per month

Web Hosting Directory / Forum / Site – Budget: $3000

Want to buy adspace using Digitalpoint coop ad network

WTB: Links, Blog Posts, Signatures Budget: 500$

Proxy Browser Script Wanted !

Arcade Scripts Wanted !

WTB: Sites & Forums with Revenue (Budget: $6,000)

WTB: Youtube Type Script

WTB: Entrepreneur (maybe webmaster) forum

WTB MYSPACE TRAFFIC (Bullentin/Accounts/Banner Space)! (I’m Paying Top Dollar)

WTB: Small, Old and/or Neglected Sites

Buy websites producing over 2k/month( net) with good traffic

WTB: Established Proxy Websites

- Yahoo! Publisher Network accounts – no surprise as its payouts are much higher than Google’s;

- Proxy scripts and websites – these websites are extremely popular. As well as mentioned here arcade websites. How they survive with that level of competition? No idea;

- Established websites with good traffic in miscellaneous niches. Yes, it is hard to start new websites nowadays as you will get just a few visitors, so some webmasters hunt for established websites bargains;

- Text links from high PR websites are still in demand;

- MySpace traffic and other MySpace bulletin adv, etc – it looks like this type of marketing still works;

- Forums are in demand. Yes, it is not an easy task to monetize them, but if they have good traffic (the ones the advertisers search) it is quite easy to maintain them.

Summary: Yes, these are the conclusions you can easily draw after your first analysis of the page. Are they correct? Just visit the section on a weekly basis to make sure that these things are really hot with webmasters.

In addition to the mentioned forum section I am a regular user of this section. It is a good place to see what types of websites webmasters run, how they monetize them, how they advertise their websites, how profitable this or that niche might be (for instance, if I browsed this forum a year back I would have never started a music website – it looks like they all get tons of traffic that is next to impossible to monetize. And it takes much time to delete spam that is posted to the forum).

[tags]website publisher, trends, tendencies, ideas, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

I have been always curious about working schedule of web entrepreneurs. It is a way to learn from experienced search marketers and developers how they manage their working time, what activities take most efforts, etc.

It is always cool to hear than it takes 8-10 hours per week to work and generate full time income online, but I am doubtful that it works for most. I guess it works for those who started back in the 90’s. And did it properly all these years.

The idea about a four working day week sounds also appealing, but not acceptable at the moment. I agree – it is not possible to be through with all work – there are always tasks that you need to attend to. And it is possible to find ways to fight this feeling of regular desire to work. But it works in case when you feel secure and know that you are doing fine and you can afford making Friday as an extra day off.

I think it is the nature of online work itself that demands intensive work. We do not produce any goods, our information products are not so much demanded as other stuff – food, clothes, gas, etc. And remember the level of competition.

Another great point I share with the author is – if you have more spare time you have more time to think. This process results in new ideas and concepts that are not likely to come to your mind when you do monotonous work from 6 in the morning till 12 at night.

Other working schedules sound more familiar. And in general it looks like webmasters arrange their working time more or less in a similar way. The results are different in every individual case, but most work according to the same scenario:

- working in the morning
- working in the afternoon
- working in the evening
- working at night

All this is mixed with a few hours of some other sort of activities. It is a typical schedule from Monday through Friday. Weekends are slightly different, but Seth Godin, for instance, advice to blog on weekends as the competitors are likely to be less active. Many webmasters follow this advice.

Summary: My working schedule is:

- start at 5.30 in the morning
- a few hours to relax after 6 p.m.
- then 2-3 hours more at the computer
- weekends are not that busy – I tend to spend morning hours at my work, then do something about house or shopping with my wife.

Why people with nearly the identical working day schedules get different results? I guess it is a matter of experience, industries, luck and intellectual abilities.

[tags]working day, working schedule, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]

I agree it is next to impossible for a small business owner or independent web publisher to be a leader in a big niche. How can you compete with large media holdings? For instance, I can’t imagine myself as an owner of a photo website competing with Flickr.com that belongs to Yahoo!

But if you follow this logic it means there is no place for small business in the online and offline world, but it is (luckily) not the fact of our life. I guess our primary task is to search for niches that are small enough for large companies and big enough for us.

Our next step is to attempt to become a leader of that ’small big’ niche. I have greatly enjoyed the reading of How to be a leader in your field and I would like to draw some parallels with online business. Just pay attention to what a leader does:

Every profession has leaders. In a formal sense, the elected officers of a professional society are the leaders of that profession. Because a profession is fundamentally about knowledge, however, the true leaders of a profession are the thought leaders: the individuals who synthesize the thinking of the profession’s members and articulate directions for the future. Sometimes a profession will elect its thought leaders to official positions. But often the thought leaders prefer to lead through writing and speaking, cutting-edge projects, conference organizing, and dialogue.

Leadership means both talking and listening, both vision and consensus. A leader builds a web of relationships within the profession and articulates the themes that are emerging in the thinking of the profession as a whole.

Pick an issue, an issue to research – another good advice. My websites miss this very thing. For instance, dropshiparea.com is a website on online business from the point of view of an individual trying to build a profitable network of websites, but at this time I do not work on a fairly specific issue in this industry. What is understood under an issue (followed by a list of tips how to discover that issue):

You need an issue that the profession as a whole is not really thinking about, but which is going to be the center of attention in five years.

The issue could be technical, strategic, managerial, policy-related, or all of the above. It could be a problem or an opportunity or both. It could be a new method or a whole new area of practice. It should be fairly specific, though, and should directly address the day-to-day work of people in some segment of the profession.

Summary: You should have at least one issue you are developing in this way. The idea is to help your niche to discover problems and opportunities. In this way you will get new knowledge and skills and build your network.

With time, you can switch to another issue if the previous one is covered or you spot new directions that are of greater interest to you personally.

This approach should help you to be among your niche leaders. The deep knowledge of one or two ‘hot’ niche issues will help you to compete with bigger companies.

[tags]how to be a leader, leader, niches, seo, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, make money online, home based job, earn your living online[/tags]