Tuesday, October 17, 2006

A question of competition

I've noticed an interesting phenomenon with CashDuck - I have a screen name (thecashduck) by which people can contact me with questions about the site, and so far I've gotten several people who just want to talk to me about starting up their own CashDuck-like site. (At least two of the larger sites have ShiftCode's site and lists of affiliate networks, so it's not like there's no place to start.)

I asked a couple of the site admins for advice before I started, and they told me to find new niches, sign up with NET15-paying sites, and run as many offers as possible. Well, I don't know how well I've done on the third, since I'm pretty picky, but it did give me some ideas. I don't think that new sites will directly compete with me, since most people are on several sites, and each new site will bring at least a few new people into the fold, but I hate to see yet another boring and stupid site come online and sputter along. There's been a real explosion of GPT sites, and I am certainly part of that boom, but too many of the sites have no actual direction they want to go, other than in the direction of piles of cash. Every business needs a philosophy.

So I do talk to these prospective business owners, and outline what I think helps to be successful (such as scattered time throughout the day, instead of working solidly two hours late at night) but I wonder what it is that they want to get out of the business. For my part, I desperately needed SOMETHING TO DO - as I've written before, my job is horribly dull, so I'd probably keep doing this even if I made only enough to cover my costs. It's certainly not going to induce me to leave my real job (since I'm neurotic enough to implode without a steady paycheck) but I just like organizing stuff, you know?

No comments: