Business Trends

The Future of Personal Brands

Dru Riley of Trends.vc covers personal branding in the latest edition of the Trends Report. He outlines some predictions and opportunities for building your personal brand with more links for background information. I like the simple format of his newsletter. The free version has limited information but it is still a great read every week. Trends.vc is another good example of a paid newsletter business model. The free version offers a lot of great value, but you need to subscribe for the full reports.

Go to Link

Peak Competition in Online Retail

The NotBoring newsletter has a comprehensive analysis of online retail. It’s easier than ever to sell online, but more competitive to attract customers. While DTC (Direct to Consumer) companies battle it out online, companies like Shopify and Amazon are the big winners. “Now that nearly every piece of the value chain has become modularized, the battle has concentrated in one place: marketing, via paid acquisition and brand, the only moat for the vast majority of brands.”

Mattress company, Casper is losing $349 for every mattress they sell. They have no choice to spend money to acquire customers. “Ultimately, when everyone is armed with the same tools, differentiation, brand, and audience/community matter for DTC brands more than ever.”

Business Opportunity: In highly competitive, oversaturated markets, curation becomes more important. Chase Reeves bag reviews from yesterday’s newsletter is a great example.

Go to Link

Keep Up With Business Trends with Dru Riley

This is a great time to introduce Dru Riley of Trends.vc. On August 11, Dru’s Trends newsletter hit the #1 spot on product hunt. Since starting the newsletter six months ago, Dru is reporting more than 7k subscribers and 200 premium members. Dru was hinting that price of the newsletter will be increasing soon, so this is a great time to subscribe.

I love business ideas with a simple value proposition like the Trends newsletter. It’s a weekly email of key business trends. It is easy to understand and communicate. The best ideas are always simple.

At the same time, Dru has written about how he has gone 3 years without income and only recently starting earning money from the newsletter. Like most business success stories, a lot of hard work, sacrifice and trial and error went into getting to this stage.

Dru has covered topics like Paid Newsletters, Growth Tools, and Online Courses. Browse through those links to see what the free version of the newsletter is about.

The newsletters are a quick skim, yet there are many links to relevant companies and links for more information if necessary.

If you want to connect with a rising star in the IndieHacker space, follow Dru Riley on Twitter and IndieHackers. He is definitely an entrepreneur to watch.

Go to Link

Sweat Pants Forever – The Glut in the Fashion Industry

Here is a fascinating story from the New York Times about the problems of mass oversupply in the fashion industry. (Open in a new browser if you are past your limit.) Even before the pandemic, many clothing companies were having trouble. “We’ve done everything to such excess that there is no consumer for all of it,” For example, in 2018 Burberry burned $18m of unsold products. The pandemic and the resulting retail apocalypse are accelerating the crash.

Difficult times also bring opportunities. Last week, I wrote about a couple that built a 7 figure business reselling discount clothing on Amazon. There will be a lot of liquidations with so many retailers going out of business. I bet there are truckloads of Tokyo 2020 Olympic goods that are going to be collector’s items in the future. What opportunities do you see?

Go to Link

The Opportunity Buying and Growing Websites

Yesterday, I linked to an interview with Flippa CEO, Blake Hutchison, where they discussed the opportunities buying and growing existing websites on marketplaces like Flippa or EmpireFlippers.

Richard Patey in his newsletter yesterday wrote about DomainMagnates’s fund to purchase and grow sites like this. They had some setbacks, but overall the fund is up 130% for the year.

There are big opportunities for buying and improving sites like this. With some SEO, copywriting, and content marketing skills, these sites can be quickly grown because they are already established and have some traction. It is worth watching this space. At the very least, it might be worth your time to purchase a small site to get some experience buying and growing a website.

Go to Link

The Broken Business of Ecommerce and Why Your Startup Won’t Be The Next Casper

Good analysis of online retail with some predictions.

Go to Link

Can AI Direct Movies?

Here is another article on the GPT-3, the deep learning application that can produce human-like text. Computers are going to do a lot more work in the near future. Expect massive disruption. This is why I think UBI (Universal Basic Income) will be essential. If computers can drive our cars, write our blog posts, and cook our hamburgers, what do we need humans for?

Of course, there are also opportunities in every disruption. There will be services helping companies create content, build backlinks, etc. with AI.

Go to Link

The COVID Effect: Are Cities Dead?, The State of Digital Nomads

Good conversations on The Tropical MBA podcast this week. They talked about James Altucher’s NYC is Dead post, how digital nomads are fairing with COVID, and how work has become much more globally competitive.

There are difficult times ahead for many, but there are also opportunities.

Go to Link

How Good Is AI at Writing Content

There has been a lot of press written about GPT-3, deep learning that can “produce human-like text.” Contentyze is an early startup in this space. Their app is free to try now if you are interested.

I’ve experimented with it a little. While the content is readable, it’s not coherent for the topics I tried.

There is no question that AI is going to put a lot of people out of work in the future. However, we are not there yet.

There are big business opportunities in this space. Wait until the SEO agencies start figuring this out at scale.

The Future of Food Media Is in Your Inbox

“Indie newsletters are booming, and they’re home to some of the most exciting food writing today.”

Here is a look at the business of food newsletters. This can apply to any niche.

Business Opportunity: I think almost every business could benefit from a newsletter, even if it’s sent out once a month. Newsletters are easy to start and building an audience in your niche can open up all sorts of opportunities.

Go to Link

Subscribe to everything, own nothing

“A transient lifestyle could be well-suited to uncertain times.”

“Furniture subscriptions, in particular, have gone up in popularity recently due to a large swath of the population suddenly working from home.”

This article has some great examples on the shift away from ownership. We don’t need to own cars with services like Uber and Lyft. Short-term rentals can be found on AirBnB. We don’t need offices because of co-working spaces. We can now subscribe to software, monthly retail boxes, clothing, and even furniture. Most of these ideas would be impossible to imagine a decade ago.

Business Opportunities: Exploring the extremes of trends like this can help you discover new opportunities. With the rise of remote work and digital nomads, there will be home office equipment rentals, corporate retreat rentals, outsourced tech support, etc.

More homeschooling will lead to children’s toy subscriptions, learning materials, etc.

I have an idea for subscription websites. Outsource all the design, edits, and maintenance for a monthly fee. It would take away all the hassles of building, editing, and backing up your website.

Go to Link

Curators Are the New Creators

“The Business Model of Good Taste”

“With more creators, more content, and more choice than ever before, consumers are now being consumed by a state of analysis paralysis. The real scarcity isn’t content anymore. It’s attention. When it’s impossible to absorb everything from the flood of information, the best we can do is pick and choose what matters to us most — or, better yet, find the people who can do the curating for us.”

I’m biased, but I definitely agree that curation is going to play a much bigger role in our future. There will be big opportunities for those who build a sizable audience.