Russ Henneberry discusses that by using knowledge and hustle on your blog, you can overcome commonly faced challenges of creating a business from your blog. Want to write for us too?
I have good news and I have bad news. I’ll get on with the good news first.
The barriers to entry in business have shifted. Fifty years ago (heck, even 15 years ago) if you were planning to start a business you were probably researching some or all of the following:
- Cost to rent a building
- Cost to purchase or lease equipment
- Amount of salary you can expect to pay employees
- Cost of health insurance for employees
- Cost of utilities, licenses and taxes on your building
This is no longer the case. You can certainly choose to start a business that will require a building, expensive equipment and employees. Or you could choose to do business virtually from your home and work for yourself.
In business school, we learned that you must consider the “barriers to entry” that will make it difficult (or impossible) for competitors to enter a market. Most of these barriers to entry are tied back to a lack of capital. In other words, your competitors don’t have enough money to enter the market and compete.
The most significant change in business over the last 10 years has been that we have all been given the ability to start an enterprise — the monetary barriers to entry have been removed.
You have to spend money to make money.
Certainly you have to be very careful with your most precious resource – money. But many business owners rely on the old mantra, You have to spend money to make money.
Armed with this mantra, these business owners secure loans or tap into their savings accounts and spend money frivolously with the expectation that simply spending this money will translate into revenue for their business.
Is money still a barrier to entry into your market?
It Is Necessary To Spend Money
But how much money?
The short answer — not much.
Let’s look at the vital components of an online marketing strategy and the expenses they carry:
- Domain Name – Cost ~$8 per year
- Hosting – Cost ~$100 per year
That’s about it. There are certainly some other expenses that will be incurred along the way — you may need a new computer, a piece of critical software or perhaps you may need to pay a web designer.
But, for the most part, new business owners are not staring at a huge barrier to entry from a money perspective.
This is the good news.
The New Barriers To Entry
There are two new barriers to entry. These barriers do not require begging for money from family and friends or squeezing a loan out of an economically devastated banking system.
These two new barriers of entry to your market are: knowledge and hustle.
Knowledge
Although knowledge has been a barrier to entry for centuries, it has never been more critical than it is today. Today’s business owner must learn skills that aren’t taught in today’s universities. They must be able to identify, learn and then apply the marketing tactics that will work for their business and ignore the rest.
Today’s business owners must be able to determine what they will do themselves and what they will outsource. Outsourcing is costly, despite the availability of our friends overseas.
But the information needed to gain these critical skills are available without cost on the Internet. It resides in places like blogs, forums and video sharing sites. For the most part, the mastery of these skills costs nothing.
Nothing, that is, except hustle.
Hustle
Time is money. Never before has this statement been so true. Although the Internet is full of “Get Rich Working 10 Hours A Week” scams, those that are making a solid living online have put in the long hours that are necessary to make their living.
If one of your barriers to entry into your market is a lack of knowledge, you can overcome this. It will take hustle.
If you have the knowledge, you know that it will take hustle to apply that knowledge and reap the benefits. You know that you will have to hustle to maintain your level of knowledge in this rapidly changing environment. If you fail, it will most likely NOT be because of money — but because of a lack of hustle.
It’s Not All Good News
Time for the bad news. When you remove money from the barriers to entry, you are left with a very level playing field. Your economic status will not keep you from becoming a successful business owner.
The problem is that money won’t keep anyone else from entering the market either.
Whether your business strategy deals with running the most streamlined PPC campaigns, dominating the search engines for a “money keyword” or building a massive email list from your blog — we are all competing for the attention of our market.
With the right knowledge and enough hustle, that attention can be translated into dollars.
So, the competition is coming.
What will you do to start and maintain a successful online enterprise? How high will you build the barriers to entry that protect your business?
Photo by Matteo Parrini
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Internet has pulled down many barriers (I believe there are some left such as language, cultural barriers) and we can take advantage on it to leverage our efforts on blogging. However every business needs investment, for blogging, it’s blogging skill, social marketing skill, writing skill etc. but I believe we can learn them easier than in school and that’s all good news
Phaoloo´s last blog ..19 One Click Applications For Common Tasks
Hey Phaoloo,
Let’s face it. The Internet is a cool place to play, work and learn.
Gordie Rogers´s last blog ..10 Things You Can Learn From Hitler About Success.
I have been thinking a lot about this recently in my own adventures of trying to create something. It really is amazing how accessible things have become with technology. I’ve been in IT for 16 years and it still amazes me how much it’s evolving.
Great post.
Chad´s last blog ..Two Free Alternatives To Microsoft Office
In my opinion, what you will ever need to start any business is character and will, the rest, will follow.
Learn Creative Visualization´s last blog ..Ask for the Best
I am blogging since last one year, I come to blogging for making money. But now I am enjoying lot with my blogging life, My thinking is that if our blog is running successfully then making money from blog is not so tough.
chandan´s last blog ..How to submit article to article directories
Advance technology and internet has solved many barriers. We can take improvement on it to control our hard work on blogging or other tips. Is it true that spending money is necessary, it depend on us how much we are going to spend.
You’re right, anyone with a pulse can start a business these days with very low start-up costs. Heck, a domain name and a hosting account and you’re in there. The key is what you do once you’re in ‘the game’. You really have to improve your hustle…your gamesmanship and quit falling for the overnight millionaire -no work and get paid money-making scams many of us (including me) have fallen for. As a beginner who is also a technologically-challenged baby boomer, it takes me a while to ‘get it’ but for me, it’s enjoyable hard work.
The “Get Rich Quick” stuff really aggravates me — not so much that there are people doing it — there will be people running these scams as long as there are people buying them.
It’s the people that are buying into them that aggravate me — here is a question — what are the attributes of a person that buys into dozens of the Get Rich Quick scams?
Russ Henneberry´s last blog ..Happy Thanksgiving And A Great Use Of Video
Great post,, Goes well with a post I wrote last week on the REAL secret to succeed with a blog or online biz.
The better your hustle the less money you will have to spend on your online biz.
Look at it this way free ways to nuild your biz will cosr zero but take up your time.
Paid ways to build your biz will cost alot, but wont take up as much of your time.
I like it. It’s like coding. Credentials are irrelevant. Nobody cares how many letters you have after your name. Only whether you can deliver the goods or not.
Dave Doolin | Website In A Weekend´s last blog ..WordPress Case Study: Bad Deacon Design launches Woodblock 101
Russ,
I’m an “opportunities not obstacles” guy. The more barriers you put into place the more effort you must expend to break through them.
The web has provided unlimited opportunities to make a fortune which an investment of virtually nothing. As you said, hustle is where it’s at.
Thanks for sharing your insight.
Ryan´s last blog ..My Quotes: 11/25/09
Well, you give me some business knowledge. All though the point is not unknown but you describe it briefly and effectively which help me to plan my future project. Thanks Russ Henneberry.
Arafat Hossain Piyada´s last blog ..Track Your Competitors Right From Your Wordpress Dashboard
If one person is well determined and he believed on himself, “Barrier” will just be a word to him, plus the fact that blogging business has way less barrier than traditional business
Blog Tips´s last blog ..Blogging Tips and Techniques
Hey Russ! You’re absolutely right. My biggest complaint with “business schools” is that they don’t teach anything about the Internet. Schools claim that Internet marketing changes too quickly to design a course about it. Frankly, it’s an excuse.
Hustle is also huge. I bet the most productive people in the world can get stuff done 5 times faster than the average person.
Nice article.
Nick Tart | JuniorBiz´s last blog ..Don’t Buy a Book Without Finding Where It’s Cheapest
I’m not sure it would be possible for a university to have a course in Internet Marketing that was effective. The space changes so quickly.
You have give one nice business knowledge here, well I am just working for my blog, thinking for success one day, Really blogging business is better than any other off line business.
chandan´s last blog ..New from google work at home affiliate network-November 25, 2009
Really nice tips you’ve got here, and I love the site’s design here. Keep up the sweet posts, I’ll definitely be back to check on your updates
I love the Internet and all it can do for us!
Excellent article! I’m planning to launch an online business in the next six months, and the remarkable lack of need to raise massive amounts of capital is striking. I will say, though, that popularity can be a curse. The code behind sites like Digg, Facebook, and Amazon can probably run on an average home computer. The need to serve and provide bandwidth for all of the users who visit those sites is where massive costs can be incurred. However, most web based businesses would consider this a good problem to have since high traffic attracts investors.
Internet business is in a near perfect market situation. Only through branding (niche), can a business stands out.
scheng1´s last blog ..Questions to ask before you buy a franchise
Totally agree, the monetary barriers to entry are pretty much gone for a lot of businesses thanks to the internet. However, without knowing your game and hustling, nothing’s going to happen, which has been and will always be the case.