Follow Your Passion or Follow Your Research
When you look to advice from the experts about how to start an online business, you get two distinct philosophies. One says follow your passion and build your business on what you really care about. The other says do your research to find a niche that you can market to.
These two outlooks can be combined, of course. You can drill down in your passion to find a niche. You can associate your passion with something else you like to create a niche.
You can tweak your research towards a hobby or some personal skill or experience, coming up with an under served niche that has personal appeal to you.
The first starting point, let’s call it the passion track, starts from the premise that you are a uniquely gifted individual, unlike anyone else on the planet. That’s why you start from you. You are going to create a unique strategic position in the marketplace and attract people who feel an affinity with what you are and what you are doing.
The second launching point, let’s call this one the savvy marketer track, assumes that there certainly are niches that are under served. If a savvy marketer finds this niche and creates the right approach, money will flow easily and in great abundance.
This second way implies that all marketers are in the same position to take advantage of a situation. It’s just a matter of skill and action.
Now look at your own situation. Are you really a fresh beginner to the world of online business? Or, are you a savvy marketer, transferring off line skill to this new arena?
My guess is, you are what is called a newbie, or a noob. Even though noob rhymes with boob, you are not held in contempt. You are simply a beginner. Sometimes beginners have a certain advantage. The learner’s mind can accept truths more quickly than the mind cluttered with preconceptions.
Sometimes we think, “they do it this way in the world I come from.” That shuts down our thinking immediately. Maybe we need to play the zero b ase line game.
What if we were starting over and nothing was in place? What would be our plan? What would be our first action step?
In other words, we’re not predicating ignorance, just lack of assets, except for knowledge. And we’re a little skeptical about the knowledge.
My confession: I lean towards the passion track. It hasn’t brought me riches, but it has kept me going. Persistence is valuable, too. If you really care about what you are doing, it’s easier to persist when the going gets rough, as it surely does.
Seth Godin wrote a short little book about “the Dip.”
After you start some enterprise, you get into an area of slogging along against resistance. This is “the Dip” you have to endure. The only caution is, make certain it is not a dead end.
The Dip will get you if you lack passion.
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