The Art of the Very Small Start: Part 1

What is a mini-preneur? Our resident contributor, Design Translator has recently embarked on a small entrepreneurial project. To recount his story and make the dots connect, he will start with a small lesson with a web 2.0 marketing plan. Also check out the sidebar to see what his new mini-startup is about.

Updated: New links added and corrections made

A Web 2.0 marketing plan focusing on real tangible products, really only made possible for our discussion today because of the pipeline pathway opened by the Internet. The Internet is amazing in a sense that it is creating a whole new way of doing business.

My little (why little? more later) entrepreneurial project, The iPoor Product Range and The Firmwareproject are really a reflection of my long term interests and study in spotting consumer trends. A lot of the information presented here has been synthesized from one of my favorite design cum business websites Trendwatching. I highly recommend you to sign up for their newsletter as its a great primer for business ideas as I for one much prefer to generate business ideas from a bottom-up approach that is based on trends and satisfying needs.

There exists a phenomenon called:

Increasingly, consumers are participants instead of passive audience members, and this mega-trend manifests itself in a variety of ways. In fact, the more we hear about GENERATION C making money from its creations, and the more we focus on the financial rewards consumers are reaping from participating in CUSTOMER MADE projects, the more the myriad of other entrepreneurial undertakings by ordinary consumers makes sense.

We have dubbed this trend ‘MINIPRENEURS’: a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on.

Essentially micro, very niche business selling unique and very focused products to equally very specific customer base. Do click on the title for more in-depth information.

Minipreneurs are again made possible due to the Internet, as there exists on the web many pathways for the man on the street to create his own product. Business models like Cafepress, Threadless, and online prototyping portals are real avenues to production and manufacturing once only attainable to large corporations due to high costs.