What can we all learn from the success of mint.com? Although the company seems like a simple idea in and of itself, it is fairly complex. However, the cost that went into producing the site is definitely offset by not having to advertise.

Mint.com has created a site that allows its customers a free service and makes money. When people find better deals on banks etc mint.com makes the money when people switch. For example if you change your insurance mint.com may make a fifty dollar commission. Now since the service is free multiply that by millions of users! This is why mint.com sold for 170 million. They also partnered with montley fool @ fool.com for free advertising and it spread like wild fire. Mint.com took a task that was hard and changed it into something fun and easy and this is important. When you can make something fun that normally isn’t for example taxes, then you can find success.

Mint also allows its customers to see how much they are spending on certain items and find ways to cut down on their spending. Sounds simple ahhh?! Well in a recession just think how useful this is for the customers. They can see that maybe they can save 1,500 a year on food.

I think analyzing the situation and understanding the market has allowed mint.com to find great success.

Storeenvy is the new kid on the block of amazing new sites being created. The new trend is user generated content and marketing. This is done by creating stores for free and having sellers or affiliates advertise there products for you. Probably the most successful site like this thus far is threadless.com. StoreEnvy brings a new level to the strategy creating separate stores for each user with custom designs, sounds great and the prices are even better.

Inkd is another amazing site from the creator of a few companies that sold to amazon and cafepress I believe. So these people obviously know what they are doing. The site is the worlds first market for original prints if you don’t count etsy in on this. However, the site seems to be generating more users and content as the months progress. Inkd.com has an amazingly simple yet elegant site design with easy functionality that just makes it a blast to use and navigate.

If you are looking at starting an ecommerce user generated site look no further!

Obviously our economic times our tough so as an entrepreneur how can we make things EASIER on people. Here are three companies that aim at doing just that.

1. Foodzie
2. Ideapaint
3. Hey Josh

Foodzie is a Wholefoods marketplace of sorts which resembles sites such as inkd.com and etsy.com. It is amazing the marketplace that have spawned off of amazon and ebay. There are definitely many other market segments in this area that can be taken advantage of.

Ideapaint is in and of itself amazing. It is something that should have been thought of long ago. It will be interesting to see how well it catches on since 50 sq ft is about 200 bucks. However, with a 10 year warranty this might be a good price.

Hey Josh is just a fun site to look at it is a self promotion blog of sorts. It really is amazing that someone can create a site like this that will generate 500k in revenue. WOW!

SO HOW CAN YOU FIND YOUR OWN SUCCESS BASED OFF THESE IDEAS?
1. inspiration and creative motivation
– these are simple ideas that were followed through, they are easily marketable.
2. niche market
– foodzie knew who they were aiming for and it was easy for them to hit that market segment almost the same as mint.com – recently sold for 170 million!
3. Improve on these products
- they are great but how can they be better, what markets are they missing

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