You're sitting at work staring out the window, trying to think up a website that can make you extra money or even allow you to someday quit your job. But how do you find something that you can really do online? How can you provide a product or a service that someone else might find useful?

Everybody is an Expert at SOMETHING

 

Start with your job:

What do you do? If you were to give 'notice' at your job, and you had to train a new person for this job (which you are an expert at), what would they have to learn? Here's a good start. Write down everything you know about your job (be careful that you're not violating any company secrets or non-compete agreements or clauses) and be as detailed as possible. Start with what you do when you arrive in the morning and jot down everything you do throughout the day, every Tuesday, every 2nd week of the month, or monthly. You will be surprised at how much knowledge you already possess!

What about your favorite Hobby?

Whether  you like Ken Ken Puzzles or you enjoy knitting or antique cars, to some level you are an expert. So you're not an advanced Photoshop user, but maybe your skills would be considered 'Expert' by a true novice.What about something you use so regularly (like your camera?) that you can be considered an 'Expert' by someone who would like to know as much as you do about that same camera?

Clubs or Groups?

If you are a member of a specialized club or group, you now have access to a huge bounty of knowledge that is sure to be meaningful to someone. A water skiing club, a group of stamp collectors, a religious group all represent huge bodies of knowledge that can be culled down to be useful to someone who wants to get up to speed quickly.

How to form a useful website from all this knowledge?

Here's the fun part! You can now create a website that dispenses knowledge about your special piece of knowledge. Or a website that becomes a dispensory of all kinds of pieces of knowledge. People can now come to your site when they do a Search on "Ken Ken Puzzles" or "Stamp Collecting" or "Underwater Basket Weaving". 

How to Make Money on the Internet?

Now that you have positioned yourself as an expert on 'something', you can expand your site by selling the little 'goodies' that people might be looking for: Specialized Water Skis, Camera Filters & unusual tripods, or Waterproof hemp for basketmaking. You can set up little online communities  or neighborhoods of people from around the glove who all enjoy Antique Cars; a place where they can share their knowledge with each other, and learn the ins & outs of that special interest from each other. You could offer online classes, organize meetings & events and on and on and on.

You Stuck to What you Knew

You can see that the internet is a great place to expand your world to fulfill your dreams. The ideas can go in many directions. Some day, you'll look back at that day when you sat in your office and dreamed of a way to start an online business, and smile at your very own revenue-producing online business. And all because you stuck to what you already knew!

Websites with Bragging Rights

Here are a few of the websites that we have created over the past 15 years. Take a look and see if any of them help to spark an idea for you and your future direction. Click here to have a look...