After building web sites for 14 years and seeing that everyone can build their own web sites today, I felt that it was time to re-position my company, Hot Web Ideas, this year, especially with the economy.

Competition is a necessary evil of doing business and it seems that there are more people than there are careers. It makes total sense that we overlap in what we offer to our clientele. You know the horrible feeling of losing out on a job or product sale to a competitor. It happens to everyone in every field. Especially with all the business networking events that we attend where each person stands up and tells the group what they do for a living and you hear someone else at the same event that does exactly what you do, it gives us this “oh no, I have to compete with THAT guy for clients” feeling.

In March 2009, I figured that competition was not as bad as the economy, but I wanted to work with my competition in some way where neither of us would be threatened by the other. In the web design field, there are at least 5 specializations. In EVERY profession, there is specialization. I wanted to see if there was a way that I can expand my business to work with my competition as well as my clients. If you can apply this concept to your own business, you may just eliminate the competition in a sense. I know you cannot totally eliminate it, but you can surely make it work for you in a more positive way. We all talk about specialization. Although specialization is not the point of this blog article, that is one way to go about it. If you do specialize and find your niche, you may find that your competition does not offer this service and you could easily work under the hood to offer it to their clients. This is a win-win situation, because now your competition can make money with a service that they don’t even offer. Your competitors will thank you for the opportunity. You also would have converted your competitor to an ally. That’s awesome if you can pull it off. It is easier than you think!

In my own business, I was performing web design, but by now, almost everyone has a web site. Most web design firms have not figured that out yet. So, I wanted to fix the one hole that is apparent on most web sites, lack of traffic and sales. I can get the traffic and the 9 web design firms that I have been working with for the last 6 months know it. Likewise, I leverage their web design services for my clients and we are actually happy.

In my own local business networking scene in Long Island, New York, I see this issue prevalent with insurance brokers, financial planners, marketing consultants, graphic designers, printers, and even networking event organizers.

Think about how this will work for your business and field. In this economy, you can either complain about the competition or work with it.

Ask these questions:
1. What can I offer to my target audience that my competition is not?
2. Will my competition work with my company to offer my services to my clients or will they adopt it into their own business model and shut me out completely (pick my brain) ?
3. Is there some way that I can market a particular service as my own (I am not talking about trademarking, patents, or copyrights) in such a way where my competition perceives it as a service where they cannot offer it themselves?

The answers to these questions are not easy, but if you can answer them intelligently, you have just expanded your business and have found a way to make the competition work for you and not against you.