Continuing with the blogging myth article series is the sixth myth: there is too much competiiton. I heard this way too often. When people try to establish a new business startup, especially those with lower resources like home business owners and solopreneurs, they faced with a typical dilemma.

All too sudden when they tried to start a blog, they found out there are many sites and blogs about the niche they were going to jump into. I admit it is pretty discouraging to see how large your competitions have been. It would be a great pain to compete head to head with them, not to mention the amount of time and other resources to build the site or blog, at least to the same degree of what currently exist.

The good news is, that statement is a myth. A good one. If you don’t know how to setup a business online, it is easy to get caught into this school of thought.

Let me prove this otherwise, starting with a question.

How many shoe store are there available world wide? What do I get here? A blank stare? Or a laugh? The answer is probably in the range of seven to eight figures, isn’t it?

The Internet is a world wide channel. You can reach and target an international market just by tapping into it. There is no single business who can reach all of their target market online.

Think about it. Let’s take eBay as an example.

eBay has an affiliate program where they will pay the referrer a certain amount of fee for every referral they introduce. A lot of affiliates make a very healthy income through eBay’s affiliate program alone.

Self development, as antoher example, is a $8.5 billion industry. There certainly are some big players out there but I also personally know people who make five to six figure income by providing coaching or selling self-help books and other related products.

The list goes on and on. What I think when people say that competitions are stiff, most of the time they don’t have a solid business and marketing plan. If you can create a product or complement a service that benefits both youself and your competition in a way your prospective customers can’t refuse, there is simply no reason why they will refuse the offer or your competition promote it as a complement to its own product. At the same time your competition provides great service to their customers while reaping the profits.

“My customer who buy a car from me last week is probably your car cleaning service client, or also the same person who collects antique European cars.” The possibilities are endless.

When starting a new blog around your business, you don’t have to worry about competition if you can discover the right angle and know how to market and promote well. This is not to say that you can take over your competition and being the first place in a few months, but more likely you will have your own readership and customers who simply choose you because of what you have to offer. Probably it is because of the personality or close relationship you have built over time.

This is also the reason behind why niche marketing is very popular on the Net. Instead of offering small busines services, try with a bookkeeping service. If that sounds too broad of a niche, a bookkeeping service for small IT consulting firms may make more sense. If you have a solid experience in a particular industry, people will run to you because you speak the same language as theirs.

To summarize: first come up with a great angle. Some would call it Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The next step is to come up with a good business plan. Starting a blog to test a business venture is too easy and inexpensive. This is also the problem that cause bloggers quit before seeing success after a while in their blogs. Afterall, both are like two sides of a blade, of which you have to intelligently reap the sweetness or you will get otherwise. Learn how to identify an opportunity and stick to it until you succeed. But that’s another blog post.