Should You Start Another MOM Website?
by Alyice Edrich
June 25, 2005
Revised, June 26, 2005
All materials copyrighted 2005
Warning: Taking A Controversial Stand
I've seen too many women start parenting websites hoping to make
enough money to stay home to find they're barely breaking even or get
so frustrated they give up on their dreams. It breaks my heart to see
so many women get turned off from doing business on the Internet, so
I wrote an article in hopes of steering them in the right direction…I
hope to not step on too many toes…
Whenever a mom decides to stay home with her child, the first thing
she does is research the possibility of working from home as an
employee or entrepreneur. She visits many websites and forums but
finds herself very disappointed in the quality of the websites she
encounters. While the forums prove to be great assets in building
online alliances, they make it difficult to sort through all the scum
and scams. Soon, she finds herself asking: Who's telling me the
truth? Who's referring me to buy a product she never actually tried
simply because she's going to get a commission from the sale? Who's
making the money she says she's making? Who can I trust?
Over time, this mom decides the Internet is missing a vital resource
and instead of fine-tuning her research skills (to discover the
information really does exist), she decides to start, yet, another
parenting website geared towards helping parents find more time in
their day, cook healthier meals, pick child-friendly products, and
discover, true work at home opportunities. After awhile, the web host
costs and time involved start sucking this mom dry, and she can't
figure out why she isn't earning any real money.
The more she sweats over her website, the more confused she becomes.
She simply can't figure out why such a valuable website isn't reaping
the rewards she thought it would. Frustrated, but not willing to
rethink her strategy, she incorporates affiliate links, paid
advertisers, contribution buttons, and other products and/or services
into her existing website.
But when her new ideas don't generate enough income to compensate her
time and expenses, she feels like a failure. She feels like the
Internet is one big joke, and her dreams of earning a living from
home are over. The stress carries over into her family life, and in
time, she feels she has to choose: family or her business.
But it doesn't have to be that way. She doesn't have to choose…You
don't have to choose.
Years ago, when I started my publication, it was hard to find good
quality parenting publications online that actually had substance.
Most of the websites offered scant useful information because they
were designed to be doorway pages that brought in visitors in hopes
of making a purchase. In one way or another, they were nothing more
than glorified ad spaces. But over time, things changed. The Internet
now consists of several hundred—if not thousand—parenting
publications that are worth their weight in gold.
Which leads me back to the title of this article, "Should you start
another mom (or parenting) website?" The answer is a loud and
resounding, "NO, not if you want to make any real money on the web".
This area has been done to death...seriously. And by the way, so
have websites that generalize on topics such as work at home
opportunities, affiliate marketing, Internet marketing, freelance
writing, book reviews, parties, and recipes. (Please note I said
generalize, as in "the target audience is every ___ on the face of
the earth," not a specific group.)
Step Outside The Obvious
If you want to make a good living from home, using the Internet, you
need to step outside the obvious. You need to stop trying to be
everything to everyone, stop advertising to the masses, and find an
area of specialty for your product or service.
Define Your Niche
Ask those making real money on the Internet how they do it and
they'll tell you that they found a target market and capitalized on
it. They took an idea with a broad and general scope and narrowed it
down. Then they redefined their idea, found a niche to call their
own, and began marketing to a select group of individuals.
If you currently don't have a field of expertise, don't fret. You can
develop one with research, experience, and time. Just remember to
keep the central theme of your website catered around one main idea— not a broad idea, but a narrow, target-specific idea. That idea
should then be carried over into the products and services offered on
your website.
Build Your Business
While it's true that you need to develop a business concept that
caters to what people are already searching for, as well as develop a
product or service people need, you need to narrow your idea down and
develop a niche market that screams, "I want this." When you build a
product or service that your target audience wants, you'll have an
easier time persuading them to purchase from you—through your list of
benefits and call to action (i.e. buy link).
Example Niches
Let's assume you have a passion for helping moms work from home. You
could become another website that is nothing more than a smorgasbord
of recycled information, or you could carve out a niche that targets
a very specific area within that broad topic and become the expert
others seek. In other words, you take an idea that may have been done
to death and you find an area within that broad idea and you
capitalize on it.
For instance, you know work at home opportunities are everywhere, and
you know there's a lot of competition, but you've run a successful
virtual assistance business for the past five years, and you really
want to help other moms work from home. What do you do? Do you throw
away all those years of experience because home business websites are
everywhere? No, absolutely not.
You carve out a niche as the expert on helping women become virtual
assistants instead of starting a website geared towards the general
principles of running a home business. You look at other websites
dealing with virtual assistants and you determine what's lacking.
Then you see what's working. You take that research and you design a
website that targets a specific group of women, who in your
experience, would make the best virtual assistants.
Your website could include surveys, articles, books, and audio tapes
geared towards helping women start virtual assistant businesses. It
could also include a product line geared specifically for virtual
assistants, with products such as: recorders, transcribers, brief
cases, answering machines, notepads, computers, office furniture,
office supplies, and so forth. As your business grows, you could
expand to include in-person workshops and training seminars.
Or let's assume you have a passion for helping parents feed their
children healthier foods. You know from experience that parents don't
have the time to spend hours in the kitchen cooking fresh hot meals.
And you also know they won't take the time to cook a month's worth of
meals in one single day—nor do they have the freezer space. So you
decide to start a recipe website geared towards helping busy parents
cook healthy meals using crock pots. Your thinking is simple: if they
can throw everything together in the morning and then come home to a
freshly cooked meal everyone in the family will be happy.
But after careful research, you realize that recipe websites are
truly a dime a dozen and your competition would be fierce. You need
to come up with a new concept, so you think about writing frugal
cookbooks. But, a trip to the local bookstore tells you that has been
done to death as well. Frustrated, you decide your idea is already
saturated and you think about looking for a new idea.
But you love cooking, you love helping parents understand the value
of nutritious meals, and you love the hands-on atmosphere of teaching
parents to cook. After careful research and several surveys later,
you determine that parents would actually cook more if they
understood the basic principles of cooking. You hold several cooking
seminars at your local college and after perfecting your technique,
you come up with the perfect class. You consider increasing your
seminars, but realize you don't' have enough time in the day to meet
your income goal and you'd really like to capitalize on the benefits
of doing business on the Internet.
After weighing your options carefully, you decide to produce your own
training courses and offer them for sale on your website. To bring in
even more residual income, you decide to write a few cookbooks—all
geared towards your target audience—and sell them on your website.
After awhile, your customers begin asking which appliances you'd
recommend to help them save space in their kitchens, while giving the
best run for their money. Deciding you've just stumbled across
another goldmine, you add a cooking store to your website.
By taking the time to understand your competition and develop your
niche, you've just taken your passion for cooking beyond the obvious
and developed a profitable business.
The Final Goal
The goal of any business structure is to find out what people want
and give it to them while making a profit. If you only stick to
broad, general ideas, you're going to have one heck of a time
reaching your goals. But if you take the time to narrow your idea
down and target a smaller, more specific group, you're going to find
it easier.
** Yes, The Dabbling Mum is a publication with a more broad and
general theme. It's a publication that has been around for years and
has been blessed with the ability to reach out and help others. But
if we were starting this publication today, we would take our own
advice. We would narrow our theme and find a niche. In fact, we are
currently building other websites, following our own advice.
About The Author:
Alyice Edrich is a freelance writer specializing in helping
small businesses
succeed—on the web. Visit her online for free business articles
and information on how she can help you succeed, today.
http://thedabblingmum.com/business
