Being a netsetting entrepreneur is very much about motivating oneself. Unlike traditional employment there is no boss-figure watching over you, making sure you’ve done your job and giving you new tasks to do. That’s an extremely liberating feeling, but it also presents its own challenges. How do you stay on track? How do you keep yourself moving when you’re feeling lazy? And when things are going well, how do you push yourself to grow, to take risks and to be better?

Motivation is a rather complex subject so in this post I’m going to talk about just one motivation tool that I use, namely other people. Heroes, role models and rivals are three types of people that keep me focused.

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One of the neat things about business online is that you can keep a close eye on your competition. You get to inspect their sites and sample their service in a totally anonymous environment. There are also an abundance of tools for analysing and tracking competitors, allowing you to quantify their traffic, see how their site has changed, find out details about their domain, be alerted when they are in the press and lots of other things. (more…)

A common refrain for people thinking up business ideas is that all the good ideas have already been done. This of course isn’t true, but it sure can feel that way!

On numerous occasions I’ve had what I thought was a lightening bolt idea only to find that someone has not only thought of it before but has even gone out and built a really great business out of it. While it is rather vindicating to see that your idea really did have merit, it is also a bit disappointing. But should you give up? And if you don’t, then how do you go about taking on such a challenge?

Finding an established competitor is not necessarily cause to quit on the spot. It is however reason to think very carefully, and assess whether you have the resources, energy and ingenuity to go for it. Make no mistake, having an established and successful competitor will make things much harder. On the other hand, they prove that a market exists, and for larger competitors, even the left-overs can be very worthwhile. In one of the biggest markets – internet search – even a measly 1% of the market is apparently worth $1 billion dollars in market cap – sort of explains why companies like Ask keep at it when Google seems to have won the market hands down. (more…)