A couple of days ago I sold an obscure French Chronograph watch with a Swiss movement to a man in New Zealand. In the internet age we take transactions like this for granted, and yet just a few years ago it almost certainly wouldn’t have happened.

I wouldn’t have been able to put detailed macro photographs of the watch online together with a description,  and Ed in New Zealand  wouldn’t have found it, or been in a position to  ask questions, assess exactly what he was buying or if it was worth the asking price. Even if he’d done all that, how would he have paid for it? As it was, I gave him my bank account details and the money was there within a couple of hours. If I’d been at all worried about who I was dealing with, we could have used an intermediary like Paypal. Easy.

We take all this stuff for granted, but we really shouldn’t. Why? Because if we do, we surely underestimate and under-appreciate,  the breadth and range of business opportunities which we all have, literally at our fingertips – opportunities which didn’t previously exist.

Take razors for example…

Now I thought I was a bit strange collecting old wristwatches, but I discovered recently that there is a whole sub-culture of people who collect razors. I’m not talking about the plastic multi-blade things now you can buy in Boots, (I think they’re up to 5 blades now…where will it stop?) but rather the double-edged models that preceded them in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s . You probably thought they were just outdated tools to do a job – that they were all the same – but you’d be wrong. The experts can date then precisely and  talk about the model numbers and features in the same way that other people talk about classic cars.

Where did the people who are passionate about razors go before the internet? Where could they possibly have found like-minded individuals or vendors who would be only too happy to part them with their cash? I’m not sure how many ‘razor-nuts’ there are out there, but I do know one thing – there aren’t enough in any one place to make a bricks and mortar shop a viable proposition. But round all those people up on the internet and you can have a lucrative business. It doesn’t matter where they are in the world, they can walk through your virtual  door, have a chat and maybe buy something.

Isn’t that exciting?

I don’t mean the razors…not much to get excited about there for most of us…but  rather the fact that anyone with an internet connection has the tools at his or her disposal to flag down all the people in the developed world who might be interested in something, and then sell it to them. A simple website created in WordPress can be your shop window and provided you’re offering genuine and useful information alongside the opportunity to buy, Google will do the rest. And because the world is your market, even the most ‘niche’ of interests can be turned into an opportunity to make money.

If we go back to the vintage wristwatch market for a moment, yes there are websites dedicated to information about vintage watches in general, but it doesn’t stop there. There are sites dedicated to types of vintage watch, individual manufacturers of vintage watches, and even individual models of vintage watch. If you look at how many watch types there are, how many watch  brands there are, and then how many individual models there are, it will give you an idea of how many possibilities there are within a market that seems fairly ‘niche’ in the first place.

Now I know you’re  probably not interested in vintage wristwatches, but I’m sure you’re interested in something. And if you break that interest down further into its various constituent parts, I’m certain you will discover a number of opportunities to become  the ‘go-to’ source for information, discussion and trade on that particular thing. Not just a local source, a regional source or even a national source. No, you can become the worldwide source, and ultimately, that will lead to an opportunity to make some money.

And let me re-emphasise the critical thing – all the resources and tools you need to make this a reality are right at your fingertips…literally right at your fingertips.

This is one of the reasons I get a bit irritated when I hear people saying that there aren’t the opportunities to make money that there used to be. Go back to when I started out, over 25 years ago now, and you had to really make an effort to find opportunities and act on them. If you’re sitting reading this in front of a PC or laptop, you have everything you need between your ears and in front of you to start making some money for yourself, serving customers across the planet.  Your backside need never leave the chair.

Just how simple and easy do you want it to be?