TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Bold tech & web commentary

TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

4 Product Strategies for Success

I’m working on putting together one or more entrepreneurial ventures to keep me entertained in 2008. To both evaluate & generate ideas, I’ve put together a rough framework - below - of what I consider to be successful strategies. Any idea I’ve had needs to fit into one of these; if it doesn’t, there’s no business case to it. If I’m short on ideas on any given day, I can pick a strategy and apply it to any given product or market to kick start some thinking.

It certainly hasn’t made me wealthy yet (hooray for dayjobs!), but I’m still at it, and in the meantime you’re welcome to join me. YMMV!

Better Mousetrap: Modified product or proposition, same market (i.e.: price or feature competition)
Ex: Google: simpler search, better results in an already crowded market
Re-purpose: Existing product, sold to new market segment
Ex: Camelback hydration packs sold to the military for solidiers
Niche: New product aimed at a previously untargeted market segment
Ex: Pugspot identifies pug owners as a monetizeable segment
Need: Identify an un-addressed, or unrecognized consumer need
Ex: The banana guard (transporting a common, fragile food), or Overstock.com (liquidating old inventory)

EDIT: Note that I’m not including a definition of success here. Booth Google and the Banana Guard can be considered “successful” products - though the scales are obviously different.

business, design, marketing success

How To: Be a Successful Blogger

Jerry Bowles on the FASTForward Blog has the best post I’ve seen on “how to be a successful blogger” yet. His list includes the old standby’s like “be true to your self” and “be passionate about whatever you’re blogging about,” but also goes into some good specifics, like keeping posts at 500 words or less.

Has anyone built a word count widget for Wordpress yet? I see this one that does overall word count stats, but a javascript word counter that sits next to the text-editor box and counts as I write would be really neat.

bloggers, blogging, blogs success