Innovating for Profits: How to Discover New Website and Business Models
Creativity and a willingness to experiment are qualities of a successful online entrepreneur. If your website isn’t making you the money that you expect, try operating in a new niche or adopting a fresh business model and monetization strategy that works.
After all, your personal experience and skill sets are transferable. What you are already applying to a specific website or business can be easily implemented in another industry with great success.
So just how do you discover new websites and business models that are profitable?
The web is your answer. The internet is a marvelous place, teeming with interesting websites that can inspire any gutsy entrepreneur. Just today, PC Mag came up with a list of Top 100 Undiscovered websites:
You’ll see a large collection of Web applications and tech sites, excellent blogs, offbeat social networks, and, as always, a handful of addictive Flash games for those slow days at work.
Some of these sites are completely under the radar and get very little traffic. Others are hugely popular within a specific demographic.
I went through the list and found a few which were unknown to me. Not all on the list were really ‘undiscovered’ and PC Mag’s bait-y title is an exaggeration. The list did however allow me to take notes on various sites/ideas, especially when they were new to me or well executed.
How to Discover New Business Models and Websites
There is nothing original on the internet. Most of what can be done already exists in one form or another. Don’t look for original ideas. Look for what is unique to you and your niche market.
Your aim is not to browse websites for fun and leisure. You should seek to find ideas or schemes which may be new or interesting for your target audience. Apart from the use of search engines, here are some ways you can use to discover new websites.
- Use Ranking Lists. Alexa’s Top 500 gives a good indication of websites that tend to receive more web traffic. Technorati’s Top 100 gives examples of content that gets links. Do a search for ranking lists within your niche as well.
Ranking lists often display the same websites, so spend some time to go through them once. You won’t have to revisit the list in the near future because it’s not likely to change very much.
- Try StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is an excellent way to discover new websites. In fact, it’s entire business model is built on helping its users to do just that. Choose a topic to explore whenever you have time.
I like how SU doesn’t require any premeditation. Try it when you need a break from concentrated research and you will be surprised with what you can find.
- Visit Social Communities. Social news and bookmarking websites like Digg or Reddit allow you to discover fresh and interesting content on a daily basis. Using them gives you the additional advantage of knowing what ‘works’ with the social media crowd.
Include forums and networking sites within your list and you’ll have a good idea of what websites or business models appeal to what audience and why.
- Use Webmaster Forums. Webmaster forums are full of webmasters who are out to make some money with their website and often you will discover interesting sites through forum signatures and forum threads with questions or public case studies.
Focus especially on the site sales section and Site Point’s marketplace as these give you a good idea of how sites generate income. Most of these site models are repetitive so hit the forums once a week for a quick overview.
- Read News Aggregators. Social news aggregators and meme trackers offer access to content categorized under a specific topic. They not only allow you to discover relevant websites but also examine the relationships between each website. Who links to who and how or why do they link?
Information is current for aggregators so you can monitor them a daily basis, particularly if you are interested in breaking into a specific niche. Here is a list of news aggregators you can use.
- Do a Survey. Feedback from end-users is particularly valuable because it can be targeted towards any specific topic you want. Structure your questions to generate responses on parts of your existing business model. These will provide you with an indication of what to evolve towards when you plan to transpose your current site model across another niche.
Schedule a few hours for research every week and you’ll easily find new ways to innovate and improve your current website. This is essential for continual upwards growth and profit, especially if you run a content-oriented website or blog.
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“The internet is a marvelous place, teeming with interesting websites that can inspire any gutsy entrepreneur”
I can’t remember how many time I have to ask people to search the Internet because almost every answer can be found on the Internet if they just look hard enough.
The only way I discover cool website is by their alexa ranking and sites that keep control of populars site like Technorati.
I didn’t enjoy this post too much though
nice tips hear from you. Maybe you can add about video marketing strategy
Hi Doshi,
I found some goodies on that list. Many I had already heard off as well.
I see the Internet as big chest of pirates treasures. We just have to be game enough to be a pirate.;-)
Monika
Extremely informative post in fact it should be required reading for all new people to internet marketing.
I have gained a couple of sources and believe most people will be able to add at least 1 to their list.
Thanks for linking to our Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites story. It’s a common complaint every year that “some of those web sites aren’t really undiscovered,” but we do our best to highlight the good stuff on the web that not everyone knows about. Sports freaks might know the sports blogs we include, hard-core gamers could be familiar with some of the gaming blogs, but hopefully a vast majority of sites on the list will be unknown to each individual reader.
In any case, there’s a ton of great stuff on this year’s list, so thanks for pointing people to it!
I would also suggest to use two other tools:
- Google Trend: to verify that the niche generate queries in Google search (http://www.google.com/trends)
- Adwords: there is an interesting option in adwords which allows you to see if there is a lot of advertisers on selected keywords, so you may better understand your niche.