This is a continuation of the article, You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed the Barriers to Entry and You Don’t Have to Run From the Online Competition, Part 2 where I discussed Learning from Industry Leaders and Networking with the Competition.

Develop Your Own Style, Be Unique

As noted above, you should be a unique entry into that niche market. In case you haven’t noticed, there is already a ProBlogger, a Technorati, and an eBay, so why try to copy, or even emulate them closely? Sometimes there is a great need for improving a known business or product. Ask Overstock how that whole eBay competition thing is going? (Of course it doesn’t help for the CEO to be nominated and receive honorable mention in the “Worst executive of the year award” either.)

You don’t need to be an exact copy of something that already exists. There may be room for one more, but there might not be room for one more exact copy. Develop your own business style and don’t worry about being an exact copy, that will make things worse. You should know who the competition is, you should know generally how they operate, and then you should do your own thing and not worry about what they do.

Over the past 10-15 years I have developed a few new products and brought them from a thought in my head to a manufactured item that our company could sell. Part of product development is working to brand that product. What is the name going to be, the packaging, a logo and so on.

Because this particular product was going to be sold at conventions all across the country, it would be seen by attendees walking by a vendor’s booth in a crowded hall of sometimes 500-600 different vendors. So the packaging had to stand out. I took some squares of Astrobright paper (the neon colored papers) in all different colors and with my eyes shut, threw them on the floor.

When I opened my eyes I picked the very first color that I saw, a very bright neon yellow, and this became the trademark color buyers looked for when they walked the crowded floor. It stood out among a sea of browns and earth tones and even if a buyer didn’t know what the product was, it caught his or her eye and drew them into the booth.

Learn to develop your own style and you will be rewarded by standing out among a crowded field of earth tones.

Stay Focused and Be Positive

It can be very easy to get discouraged when entering a new field or niche market. The competition has been doing this a much longer time, they have developed relationships you don’t have, traffic you can’t generate, and revenue you only wish to achieve. Set some short term and long term goals and try to stick by them. Don’t worry about the fact that you can’t directly compete yet, that takes time.

Try to stay as positive as you can and focus on the job at hand. For those of us who are never satisfied with meritocracy, it can be a challenge to stay focused. Whatever short term goal we reach should have been higher and whenever we do reach that goal, we have already looked at why we didn’t reach the one above instead.

Do you watch any of those semi-crazy people in May climbing Mount Everest? They can not go immediately from base camp to the summit. They start at Base Camp, and there are several camps along the way to the top where they have to stop and acclimate, sometimes for weeks, before moving on to the next camp. Focus on that next camp and don’t worry about the top until it is time.

Even Google didn’t become the monster they are overnight. They couldn’t even spell Googol (a math term for 1 followed by 100 zeros) and ended up spelling it with a “gle” instead. They were looking at branding not how do we take over the world and beat Microsoft and Yahoo (at least not the first day).

Be Your Own “Main” Competition

This may be the easiest step to accomplish, at least it usually is for me. Be your own worst enemy competition. Now that you know who the competition is, what they do, and how they operate. Forget about them and get better than yourself. I can always seem to shoot myself in the foot given enough time and space, but I also compete harder internally than I do when looking at others.

Review what you are doing from time to time and grade yourself. Where can you improve and where did you screw up. Some of us, at least I do, learn more when we screw up than when we succeed. Don’t make a mistake and not learn from it. The worst thing is repeated a known mistake over and over again.

In a recent interview with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger titled, Rare Interview With Darren Rowse Of Problogger, Darren was asked about who he considers his main competition. His answer was no one, because he learns from everyone.

Who do you consider your main competitor(s)?

This might sound like a cop out of an answer - but I don’t really consider any blog to be a competitor - not because they are not good but because I consider them all to be blogs that I’m a fan of, learn from, partner with and be inspired by. There are so many blogs about blogging that I follow - too many to mention here - but you can see many of them listed at http://www.45n5.com/top100/

You can often be your best and worst competition. I try to remind myself that the only person I need to get better than is myself, and most of the time that is hard enough.

Some Concluding Thoughts

There are times when you can look at a new niche market and decide it really isn’t a good match for your company, but don’t automatically make the decision to not enter a market just because the competition is strong. You may get discouraged at first, but with some good planning and perseverance your business can become a success in a crowded niche market along with many other long time players.

Learn what you can from the leaders in the marketplace, develop your own brand and unique business style and stay focused on the goal at hand. Just because a particular field is competitive doesn’t mean you have to turn tail and run.

What are the biggest challenges your company faces with online competition? Does it effect how you run your business? Leave a comment and let us know.

[ Scott Fillmer, a guest author for Allinanchor.com, is an online business owner and author of five blogs and you can find his site at scottfillmer.com ]

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