Where to Begin in this Vast World of Information

IMO you're thinking too hard.

Take off your thinking cap and stop looking for the totally unique solution.

I'll bet you've got skills and more importantly experience nearly everybody here wishes they had. Now get to work with it. You saw and worked on what other people thought was important. Surely you did the same things over and over again. What did they have you do? Write that down.

Now do those things for yourself.

Do them as if you were doing them for a client...but now you're doing them for your own business.

And take heed...you may need to hear this a thousand times from a thousand different people before it sinks in:

"You Are NOT Your Customer!!"

Hi,

you should check out Warriorplus.

Once you are there, you can click "Marketplace" and search for FREE WSO's/free products.

At Warriorplus you can find loads of products that teach various things online such as traffic generation and more! Usually, the FREE products have FREE written in there titles.

I'd just recommend you to read a bunch and you will start learning loads!

BTW it is super useful to have your skills! They are very handy!

Anyways, if you have any question just ask me and I hope I could help you a little.

Ferdinand

I don't know you apart from what you said in that posts but I could make a guess
that you are in your mid-30's. That's the time that most people make a career
change. I would say that you shouldn't give up your day job just because you are
tired of it and want a change. There are also people doing the same thing you
aspire to and also want a change--guess what? They are also in their mid-30's
early 40's. It's the REAL midlife crisis.

Just one factor to consider.

-Ray Edwards

Don't listen to what anyone says.

Just build your own business plan, and then hustle to see if it's feasible.

If it's feasible, then you know what to do.

If it's not, then revert to the drawing board.

SuccessWillCome,

Problems of B2B (business to business) markets, or B2C (business to consumer) markets?

Different sets of general problems for each of those markets. Here are just some of them:

B2B = Profit generation, sales and marketing, traffic generation, advertising, brand positioning, product development, customer support, sales processing, cut down overheads through automation or outsourcing or offshore banking, offshore incorporation, etc.

B2C = Wealth generation, health and fitness improvement, looking and feeling good, dating and relationships, pet care, gaming, gambling, addiction, hobbies, etc.

Which market do you think has buyers that would spend more money, more frequently so as to solve their problems?

Which problem area/s of that market do you think would buyers in that market focus on so as to stop wasting their time, money and other resources and finally get what they want, consistently?

Which market and which problem area/s would be more risky, more costly, more resource-extensive and more time-sensitive for a business to serve?

You'll weed out competitors without proper risk management systems, without enough money, with insufficient resources, those that need to earn quickly so as to pay their overheads and continue with what they're doing or milk whatever they can get from a fad, or a combination of these ...

For example -- A business that serves [insert name of country here]-based merchants, contractors and freelancers with a quicker, easier, more inexpensive and simpler way to process, send and receive payments online from local and overseas sources using different platforms, particularly one that's much better and more reasonable than the few others doing this, would PROBABLY be something that solves urgent problems, is in a buyer's market and has reasonable competition? And, could something like this possibly provide you with significant recurring income, promising direct and lateral scalability, and less things to worry about? Probably not the last one ...

Hey, SuccessWillCome.

My suggestions, if I were in your current situation:

* Keep your current job, for now. But start squirreling away some of the money you're now spending on "a pretty good life", sacrificing a bit now, to develop a financial cushion to help safeguard you through possible leaner times later on, as you embark on your new venture.

* You don't have to quit your job cold turkey; it's usually best if you don't cut out reliable income from a steady job, until you have other income from your new venture(s). I started my online business part time while still "working for the man", and gradually went part time at the same job, before quitting the rat race to run my own online business from home.

* Ignore the onslaught of information-overload that bombards us each day, and stay focused on the fundamentals of online (or offline) business success, which in a nutshell are:

1. A product, service, or other resource people really want (enough to pay for)
2. Targeted traffic to your web site.
3. A sales process (web site) that converts enough visitors into leads or sales, to make it profitable for you.

Test track, and measure your way to success, in all 3 of the above areas.

What do I mean by that?

1. Finding winning products / services: For longest term success, it's better to have your own winning products or services that you control. A line of related ones is best to help get maximum leverage from the long-term value of your customer list.

Far better to creatively imitate and improve on what's already working for others, than to try to "invent" something out of the blue that is untested and unproven.

Consider learning and applying "growth hacking" and "lean startup" concepts, to test and track your way to profitable products and services.

2. You're going to need to effectively drive targeted prospects and customers, i.e., "traffic" of some sort, to your web site or offline brick and mortar business. Here again, you should test, track, and measure to find what works better out of the many free and paid marketing and advertising options available to you.

3. To develop a sales process (web site) that converts prospects into customers at a healthy rate, you should test, track, and optimize the site or other process.

If you do business through a web site, you should fanatically A/B or multivariate test it, to maximize lead- and sales-conversion rates. It's smart to also set up web analytics on it, (with conversion goals, with monetary values assigned to the most important ones, even on non-transactional sites). This will let you see clearly which traffic sources are paying off, among other powerful advantages.

These ideas along with some others in this thread can help you join the ranks of self-employed entrepreneurs.

~ Marty Foley

First, I want to commend you heavily!!!!! What a great endeavor you are considering.

I was just sharing in another thread that there is another way to think about this...

Instead of just finding a problem ask yourself; "what problems are you passionate about solving?"

This will frame it in your mind differently and help you start down the road of clarity... which you will need sooner than later as you're already discovering

I have one more piece of advice...

Don't look at the last ten years as negative. They are anything but. You have had an incredible opportunity to learn a skill and how to focus on just doing one thing well. There is a lot of value in that!

I just created a video today that I think may be really helpful to you. There is no sales pitch or anything to download, buy, etc... just straight up helpful information.

Entrepreneurship is a journey, not a destination. In the video, I'm going to share where I was stuck in the first 8 years (of 11 years) of my journey and the mistakes I made that cost me dearly.

What is the process? It's transitioning through each of the following stages:

-> Employed -> Self-Employed -> Business Owner / Entrepreneur -> Investor

Check out the video here:
Best wishes to you! You can do this!!!!

~ Don Purdum

Thanks for all of the replies guys. I really do appreciate the feedback.
Due to the number of replies instead of addressing each of you individually I'm just going to sum up the key points.

Let's start with what I am NOT going to do or what I do NOT want to do.
- I do not want to quit my current job and dive into IM. I want to build an IM based business on the side until it can fully support me and then quit my job.
- I do not want to offer or provide services to anyone. This includes all sites such as fiverr, elance, etc.
- I do not want to do anything that I will not be able to continuously grow.

What I do want to do is to better understand the process of figuring out what to sell or what to promote or what to develop. Like I said, I'm fairly knowledgeable in all other departments. I understand sales funnels, traffic sources, email marketing, etc. It's literally just that very first step that has me stuck. Deciding what to pursue. A few of you have given me suggestions and tips regarding that aspect which has definitely given me something to think about.

Being a simple kind of guy, I highly recommend focusing only on B, and ignoring everything else. IMO, these are all mutually exclusive.

Solving problems (A) generally has limited scope and continuity, and "low competition" (C) is a strong indicator of low profits.