Thank You Dein, Michael & Boyd

Hi Nasrat,

I don't mean to "rain on your parade" but how will your site stand out from the millions of other sites which also offer these things?

Also, are you going to write these yourself? If so, I would get some experience in marketing online before teaching others....

Part of the idea of a niche is to distinguish yourself from others. If you are doing something, and there are a thousand people doing the exact same thing, it makes it just that much harder for you to succeed, because you are competing with a thousand other people to get the same customers. However, if you're satisfying a particular niche "target market" which nobody else (or very few others) are competing for, then it's easier to succeed, since you have little competition!

What a lot of people do is they see what everybody else is doing, then they copy that. However, it's not the best approach, because it ensures you are NOT unique. I think a good approach is to take ideas from one area, and apply it in a totally different area.

As you may know, my background is as a physicist. Back in 1995, when I was a post-grad student, I started an online "quantum optics directory" for people in my research field. The goal of this was to get my name known - and it worked! I'd go to conferences, and people would see my name tag, and recognize it!

However, with the online "quantum optics directory," I just did what I said earlier.... I noticed Yahoo, and the success it was having. (Yahoo was less than a year old then - they started in 1994.) I took their idea (of a directory), and applied it to my specific field, to create my quantum optics directory. Take a good idea from one field, and apply it in another area, and you'd be surprised how successful it can sometimes be. :)

- Dien Rice