How To Create A Monopoly Online

I was inspired to write this post because of something I read from Maki at Dosh Dosh. Maki wrote about monopolies, Bill Gates, and Carlos Slim. You’ve probably heard of Bill Gates, but you may not know about Carlos Slim. Slim is the Mexican business man that recently toppled Bill Gates as the richest man in the world. According to Forbes magazine, Slim’s fortune is currently around $60 billion while Bill Gates sits at $56 billion.

Maki pointed out that both Gates and Slim grew their net worth by building monopolies. While it’s very difficult to earn as much as Gates or Slim, we can learn from them by focusing on monopolies. Here are some ways online business people can create monopolies and dominate their markets.

Find a low-competition market.
Don’t start a blog about blogging and except to create a monopoly. The competition is too high, both in quantity and quality. Many people are blogging about blogging. Two of the blogs, Problogger and Copyblogger, have over 20,000 RSS subscribers.

Research markets that you’re interested in and find one that’s untapped and underdeveloped. If you have a hard time finding one, try narrowing the market. For example, instead of creating a blog about making money through blogs, create one about affiliate marketing through blogs.

Here’s another example. If you have a passion for personal finance, don’t build a site about personal finance. Instead, build a personal finance site targeting a more specific market like college students, moms, or young professionals.

Pick a profitable market.
You want to make money, right? :) Most industries should have statistics about their market. Find out if the market has grown over the last couple of years. Find out how much money is spent in the market.

Create a lot of bookmark-worthy content before you launch your site.
The reason for this is that you want to spend much of your time marketing your site instead of creating content. Create content that people will want to link to and bookmark.

Launch big.
Send out press releases. Email bloggers. Visit forums. Contact webmasters with related sites. Submit your best stuff to social media sites. Interview the major players in your industry. Your goal is to launch so big that possible competitors will be intimidated and not want to compete with you. You want to create the perception that your site is an authority and reference point in your niche.

If you did your market research well, you should get a lot of links and traffic because you’re targeting an untapped market.

Keep learning about your market as it matures and grows.
Build and strengthen relationships with the important people in your niche. If you have a blog, offer to blog about their companies for free. In return, you should be able to get insider news from them. This allows to break important news before other webmasters, further establishing your site as an authority. Also, keep up with the latest trends and developments of your market.

Continue publishing quality content.
Take what you’ve learned and use it to publish more quality content.

Don’t tell other online business people about your site.
Oftentimes the biggest advantage is the knowledge of an profitable, low-competition niche. I know of wealthy internet marketers that will not give away their niches. Learn more by reading Aaron Wall’s short post, The Importance of Hiding Success on a Competitive Network.