Find your niche online

You cannot sell the world. But you can sell some parts of it. That’s how it goes and that’s how it will be. Welcome to what marketers call “niche”. Yeah, yeah…any Tom, Dick or Harry knows what it is. So what’s really the point? The point is, there is no point in selling online if you treat the internet like a sari-sari store. While it’s true that you can sell anything you want in the internet, but you do not need to sell every single thing that you can think of in order to scrounge for cash. Being good with what you do or with what you have is easier to sell than selling a shoe that you don’t even wear. 

For those of you who are a fan of Multiply.com like me, I am saddened by the fact that it needed to let go of its social networking services by the end of the year as Multiply finds it hard to pull back the already-divided attention of their subscribers because of Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress, Blogger, Picasa, Flickr, and etc. The chance, too, of getting them back to its heydays is like next to impossible if they rest their hopes on forcing those services to their loyal members.

Thus, it was not only the right thing to do but good thinking on their part. That’s why I did not support the online petition begging Multiply to reconsider its decision to save those services from extinction. The extinction of those services was the best thing to do given the neck-and-neck situation in the social media services. 

Multiply cannot be anything. It needs to be known for something. That’s why it’s repositioning itself as “social shopping destination” than just a “me too” social networking site. And I believe that people who are selling online or are planning to have one, can learn from the Multiply experience that one must not only learn to adapt but must also get to know where to find one’s strength where he or she is most effective.

Another promising website that’s worth checking out is Rent.ph. It’s another example of a niche site for people in the look for a place to rent. From a flat to a genteel house to a warehouse, Rent.ph is the way to go. The site may appear unsuspectingly similar to some of the more popular listing sites in real estate like Myproperty.ph, Roomorama.com, and etc. But it is surprisingly superior in many ways.

Say if you just found a property that suits your fancy and you want to move real fast, you can just send a text message to the lister using the site’s SMS service without using your celphone credit. The chat feature also gets you straight to the lister if he or she happens to be logged on to the site. I have not seen any site with such features in the real estate domain. Not even in Rent.com or Trulia.com which are the world’s leading sites when it comes to property rentals.

And the best part of it all is that Rent.ph is developed by Cebuano programmers and one of them I know is the team of Wilmer Olano, from iDesign, who did the initial development from scratch. Allan Chan, who is the head of web engineering of the site was also an erstwhile senior programmer for a firm in Silicon Valley, Mike Ponce formerly an instructor at Informatics and his student, Arvin Antigua are just some of the people behind its construction. But the site’s originator is Anthony “Tonton” Leuterio who, together with some visionaries and investors, put up the site to what it is now – robust, highly targeted and powerful than its competitors. 

No wonder, Rent.ph easily became the darling of many property developers because the site helps persuades buyers to invest in condos and residential houses so they can rent them out immediately once they are done and turned over by the developers. According to Tonton, he foresees Cebu as the next Singapore, highlighting property rentals as the driving force of the real estate markets in the next five years. And it is for this reason that Rent.ph was built in preparation for that economic wave. And I will not be surprised if Rent.ph will be the next craigslist on rentals in the country for its highly focused markets.

So if you’re in for a selling spree online, sell those wares that you very well know or are an expert of and get into a more narrowed foray of people who are passionate about them. The market may be a little smaller in a niche market but it is far surer and easier to capture.

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