I like to watch other people. Do you?
I am, of course, referring to other people’s projects on the likes of ScriptLance, RentACoder and Elance (who I see have revamped the website, ditched most of the right-angles and are embracing Web 2.0).
Not only do you get to see what people are asking for, but also an indication of what the markets that they’re satisfying actually want. Of course, there are plenty of the late adopters jumping onto passing bandwagons by asking for MySpace or YouTube clones. Occasionally, you might come across an interesting project and think, “Hey, I could get into that”.
Let’s say you see lots of people asking for a server-side script or a desktop application that carried out a particular function. If you’re a developer, you could try bidding against people willing to work for peanuts or you could develop the product and take it to market yourself. Even if you’re not a developer, there’s nothing to stop you outsourcing the development and then doing the selling yourself.
There will be many others doing exactly this, but with some creative thinking you can add something unique to your offer to help differentiate it from everyone else.
These types of websites really can act as a source of inspiration for many types of Internet entrepreneur, not just programmers and article authors. And then there’s the information that can be gathered just by browsing the open projects…
Technorati Tags: ScriptLance, RentACoder, Elance
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