I won’t be doing Snip updates anymore since I killed Snip, although I do still want to keep people updated on the progress of my entrepreneurial journey. I’ll call my new updates my “Entrepreneurship Journal”. I’ll shoot for making them weekly but it’ll probably end up being more random than that.

This time around I want to optimize for least frustration. What I’d like to do is find a certain niche where I can start off doing consulting, then over time shift over to selling a product in that area. For example, right now I’m doing a consulting engagement for a magazine where I’m replacing their Excel-based system with a web application. After this I could conceivably do the same thing for another magazine, then another. Over time I could collect the common parts of what I’ve done for each client, and instead of selling just a consulting engagement, I could sell a consulting engagement that’s built on top of a product. Then eventually I’d just sell the product.

So right now I’m researching niches. I want to avoid what happened with Snip where I spent almost 18 months between the time I started working on the business and the time I made my first dollar. I figure if I start off with consulting engagements in my niche, then the worst case is I will have done some consulting and made some money.

What I’m researching right now is solar. If anyone knows anyone in the solar industry, and intro would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, a lot of this niche thinking is thanks to a really good book I read recently called The Positioning Manual for Technical Firms by Philip Morgan. If you’re a freelancer I’d consider it a must-read.