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Porters Five Forces Explains Why you should become an Indy Publisher

According to Porter's Five Forces Model, you can successfully start your writing, consulting, publishing or other niche business on the internet. You can enter your hobby, interest or business into the market place with opportunities to earn great amounts of money with little risk and cost. Porter’s Five Forces are Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Threat of Substitute Products, Threat of New Entrants and Competitive Rivalry within your industry. These are the elephants in the room. Successfully identify them and your business plan will begin to mature.
Buyer power is higher when buyers have more choices. Businesses are forced to add value to their products and services to get loyalty. Many loyalty programs include excellent services that customers demand on-line. Customers want to solve their problems and many times they are more successful on-line than on-phone. Also, we see internet savvy businesses springing up offering more valuable goods and services at lower costs.
Supplier power is higher when buyers have fewer choices from whom to buy. The internet offers more choice with the increasing amount of websites. Additionally, associates programs promulgate the offerings. They don’t increase the supply, they increase the awareness of the supply, which also affects supplier power.
Threat of substitute products or services is high when there are many product alternatives. Websites allow more exchange. Want to be a coach, consultant, author, supplier or teacher? Market yourself as an expert and start a webpage. As long as you can develop trust and deliver, you’ll be successful. If you gain market share over your competitors, you have now become a substitute product.
Threat of new entrants is high when it is easy for new competition to enter the market. My company was easy to set up and books are easier to put into publications. This is great news for Indie Publishers. In Red Bike Publishing’s case, I bought my business license for less than 50 bucks, opened an account with Lightning Source for less than an $100 and put out new titles for around $100 each. That’s only for print books. I put out eBook titles at no cost. The internet opens competition, now we have to deliver.
Competitive Rivalry within an industry benefits the customer. Certainly if you open a new publishing, author, consulting or other niche business your competition will be working to beat you. With the internet, your strategy is building trust, getting good reviews and selling products. Earning customer trust, having them return and purchase multiple times and viral marketing are keys to beating your competitors. With the internet, your customers can remain anonymous while you are more vulnerable. Customers are able to leave reviews in any one of a million places without revealing themselves. Obscurity sometimes leads to brutal reviews without repercussions.
My advice; take advantage of the wonderful opportunities for engaging your entrepreneurial interests. Turn your interests into successful avenues of income with business startups. You can enter your business online with few barriers to entry. Use the Five Forces model to identify competition, make a plan, and implement the process.
Jeffrey W. Bennett, ISP is the owner of Red Bike Publishing http://www.redbikepublishing.com.
Jeff is an accomplished writer of non-fiction books, novels and periodicals. Published books include: "Get Riche in a Niche-An Insider's Guide to Self-Publishing in a Specialized Industry"-Red Bike Publishing
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