A Better Mousetrap

Conventional wisdom says find a niche. Don't go where the market is saturated. And that makes a lot of sense. But for every rule there are exceptions.

I remember when Google first came onto the scene. At the time Alta Vista was king. When you thought search engine you thought Alta Vista. And then, wham! Along came this search engine that was not only much easier to use but also gave much better results. You could type in anything and be confident you'd get the results you wanted each and everytime. And today Google is king. Why? Because they provided a much better product.

Back when I was growing up there was only one brand of yoghurt you could buy. And it was pretty awful. You'd be lucky if you got a small bit of strawberry in the strawberry yoghurt. Then this other brand of yoghurt came along. It was cheaper, delicious, and it was chock full of fruit. Let me tell you, it took off like a rocket.

So don't ignore a market just because it's not a niche. If you can make something that is a lot better than what's already out there then go for it. For example auction sites and dating sites are hot right now. But they're dominated by big boys like eBay and Date.com. Not only that, they all work in the same way. But if you can think of a much better way of doing a dating site or an auction site then go for it.

Kevin Davies is webmaster of kdaviesnz.com. Want a website that gets results? Then visit kdaviesnz.com.