Keep Your Radar On for Emerging Trends

The Internet is changing at a stunning pace. Every day you have new products being launched, new memes spreading, new technologies appearing and so on. For some people this scenario is scary. For others, it is a blessing, because every new and upcoming trend represents a business opportunity.

The strategy of spotting emerging trends early on and launching websites to leverage them is very effective because if your website is among the first to talk about a certain topic, Google will start  seeing it as an authority, and you will be able to attract a lot of search engine traffic.

Secondly, it will be relatively easy to build links with such a site, because when bloggers and site owners start talking about the new trend, there are good chances that they will link to sites that  already have some information on the topic (i.e., you).

Here is a real example that I came across some weeks ago. You probably heard about Google Wave, right? It is an application launched by Google that is promising to change the way we interact and collaborate on the web. Google launched it in closed beta, so you need an invite to get inside and test it. The buzz around the launch was so big that people started to lust after Wave invites.

Image via Wikipedia

Guess what? A guy name Jonathan spotted that trend and created a website about "Google Wave Invites." He coded a basic application that would let people exchange invites, and he also included a forum where people could discuss related matters.

Within a couple of days he started receiving mentions from bloggers, and then two high profile sites linked to him: Mashable and LifeHacker. After that his traffic skyrocketed, and he also went to the first position of Google for the term "Google Wave Invites."


In the following week he generated over 540,000 page views, and after that the traffic became stable at around 15,000 daily page views.


The guy never monetized the site, but I am guessing that a couple of AdSense units on the site would generated a good monthly revenue, which is not bad if you consider the website was created in one day...


This is just one example though. Trends like the Google Wave one appear on the web every single day. You just need to keep your radar on to spot them before other people. It is not easy, but certainly possible, so keep looking!

Adopted from DilyBlogTips