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Pity Gary Vaynerchuk doesn’t voice his opinions more often. Of course he does every day on his wine channel. But his uptake on the world of business can be refreshing and illuminating. Business people should take note.

His latest one is about AOL’s business model. And it makes for excellent watching. The point Gary V makes is that AOL has been quietly generating a mass of small very focused niche sites. And funneling visitors to them via their mothership that is AOL itself.

Nothing new you might think. Well, it probably isn’t, but still deserves some discussion. The market has become specialised. The internet has allowed people and companies to offer products and services within minute fields and be successful at it.

Check out this leather briefcase site. One would imagine that an offline retail shop might not be able to sustain a business being so highly specialised. However, reaching the whole world via the internet, this business can. A speciality leather case site. Old fashioned design and quality. Expensive. Would have to be.

Imagine what this business would need to do to survive in the offline world. Would have to pay very expensive retail space in an exclusive shopping area because being in a local high street wouldn’t provide sufficient customers.

It would need to advertise in expensive magazines, promote their product at high profile and exclusive events such as horse shows and racing meets. The mind boggles as to how much they would have to pay on adspend.

Online they can do it. Grow the business slowly, get much feed-back and consumer endorsement and promote yourself via trusted social media voices who actually get to use your product and admire it genuinely.

Getting back to Gary V’s video. What he is offering is a solution to the media that is suffering from the onslaught of the free social media online blues. Become specialised. Find and promote the niches, offer more than the free media can provide and convert your business to a new revenue generating model.

For instance online newspapers may give their sports writers more space than the previously available four or six pages at the back of the paper. Really provide space for analysis, video footage, podcasts, expert opinion, statistics and more on any sport from popular football to lesser known sporting activities such as tossing the khyber.

But then the newspapers are online already and it’s not helping them. Of course. But view their online offering. It’s not much different to the printed version except that the content is kept available rather than lining the bird cage. But there is no difference to the actual offering.

Possibly what the media has lost sight of is that they are in the business of providing information and news. They have been focusing on eyeballs for so long, they have forgotten what they are about. Get back to basics. Provide tons of information and in ways that readers would like and you may be able to monetise this offering in ways it’s not working in print anymore.

What does that say for small businesses or any size business for that matter? It could mean you need to be a super specialist in your field and have immense value to offer.

Back to basics then, isn’t it.

Watch Gary’s video here.

Do the big boys make a meal of that! Huge expenditure on software applications to enable them to build customer relationships. Why one wonders. What went wrong that they need to resort to those expensive toys?

It’s something that I thought of a day ago when my friend who runs a self-catering accommodation business in Cape Town forwarded me an email conversation she is having with one of her overseas visitors.

She had spent quite a bit of time telling her visitors what changes had been made and how much nicer the accommodation would be if they came back for a repeat visit. It was like friends talking. And her visitors agreed that they would like to come back in February the following year.

That’s customer relationship marketing. No fancy software required. So what can a business learn from this?

Let’s get back to basics. What Cheryl from At Cheryl’s does is the following. And these are real easy steps to follow. She treats her customers with respect. Not exactly novel in concept but something the big companies have mostly forgotten how to do.

She genuinely cares for her customers. Also a foreign concept to the big boys. And she shows her caring in the most straightforward way by always putting her customer’s well being ahead of anything especially her own comfort.

Cheryl has her own way of building a relationship by being genuinely interested in her customer as a person. As much as it’s a business transaction, mostly anyway, she nevertheless will learn (without snooping) about her customer’s family, pets and background and will remember this information should they ever come back.

With the result that her people come back again and again because they know they will get treated well. They also know that the place will have been improved because Cheryl listens to customer feedback. They know they will be remembered fondly and will be made most welcome again.

Aren’t these the absolute basic business skills that are so easy to know and implement mainly because you yourself would like to be treated that way. So why shouldn’t you treat your customers the way you like to be dealt with yourself.

When did this easy to understand principle become so complicated that one needs to buy in special software to handle it? And why do big companies disregard this entirely and totally? It’s because the customer has become a cost centre not an asset.

For whatever reason they don’t do it it doesn’t matter, it’s surely bad business. Just as an aside I have just recently had horrific service from BT and Atlantic Gas & Electricity, so bad it was beyond understanding. I will never ever be a customer of either of these companies again once my current relationship has been severed. Never!

John Kador’s book called Effective Apology could be a book that should be prescribed reading to everybody working. In fact it seems suitable consumption for anybody living in present times.

Why restrict this to the now. It could be required Business School material in the future as long as company policies seem to determine that the customer is a number rather than a human being.

The principle of never apologising affects an organisation from bottom to top. It’s probably written into the procedure manual of most large companies. At no time are staff members allowed to admit that the company could have made a mistake. If you do you are fired or worse.

What Kador says an apology does is to show your ‘willingness to value the relationship rather than being right’. That is not entirely the whole story though, surely. Just looking after the business relationship puts the apology back into the we don’t care category. We apologise because we want to make more sales.

Maybe it’s the same thing, just looking at it from two different directions. Somehow it seems cold to consider an apology something to keep a relationship going rather than to acknowledge having made a mistake.

Would a company have an apology system purely to keep the customer happy, or should a company have a policy whereby staff admit that they, or the company, were wrong and the natural next step is to apologise.

One could imagine, especially in the litigious USA, that a company would be reluctant to admit to having done something wrong. Would this open them up to expensive law suits one would wonder.

On the other hand are US citizens so ready to sue because nobody ever admits to their mistakes. Look at medical mistakes. Even if they amputate the wrong limb, say an arm instead of a leg, you can rest assured that the US hospital and doctors involved in the procedure are not going to apologise and admit that they made a mistake.

The same applies when you are involved in a traffic accident. You get out of the car and blame the other driver even if you have just rear-ended somebody because you were talking on your mobile and not watching the traffic ahead of you. It’s to keep your insurance company happy you remind yourself.

What is truly surprising though is that John Kador presents some interesting facts and figures of what savings companies have if they are willing to apologise.

Yes, savings.

It costs less with respect to claims if employees are prepared to apologise if an error has been made. Kador provides an example of an organisation willing to apologise.

A Lexington VA hospital has an average malpractice settlement figure of $36 000 even though the States average for hospital malpractice settlement is around $413 000.00. And that remarkable difference is attributable to the hospitals policy of apologising.

It seems that people are after all not that ready to sue or if they do they will accept less money. They do this provided they are heard and their grievances taken seriously leading to the relevant people actually apologising.

Isn’t it strange that a common courtesy such as an apology is so rare that it had to be written about in a book and proclaimed by Tom Peters the Business Guru to be a ’strategic competence’. Whatever happened to just being a nice person, a ‘mensch’.

Apple Inc, the computer and gadgets company, is reporting exceptional sales. Again. What about the recession then?

So what that the sales are being driven by the cheaper 13″ harder body (yeah - because I managed to buckle my aluminum case with a gentle knock ) MacBook Pro. Or the new iPhone is whipping off the shelves and out of the warehouses serving the online store at the rate of many, very many.

The point here is that Apple is showing great growth in a recession. This is a period where the consumer supposedly has snapped his purse shut, where the credit card folks are turning off the tap, where the banks are not lending out money anymore.

For the rare person reading this who has not heard of Apple, their products are expensive. A 13″ little fella laptop sells at $1 199.00 for the entry level one. And a nice little $1 499 bill will be yours for the more powerful chappie.

And the iPhone, not exactly a give away price and you have to commit yourself to a fairly lengthy phone contract. Premium priced toy. No doubt about it.

And your point, I can hear you ask?

If it’s a recession with no money or credit available how does a company with an extensive library of premium priced products and toys get to show such strong sales?

Doesn’t that kind of put paid to the whole recession idea? Maybe what is really happening is that consumers are just tired of rubbish. Possibly last year’s turmoil in September made the consumer get some sense.

If we are going to spend hard earned money, we want to spend it on a cool design, a tool with great benefits and yes features as well, a computer that doesn’t break down all the time and runs a fabulous operating system, and a phone that does just about everything except boil water for your coffee. And they’re working on that. (You can order one on the way to the coffee shop - using a little app - and pick it up as it’s ready for you… Close enough?)

Possibly all the recession has done is make us rethink our spending. We now keep our wallet closed unless the product is outstanding. We have become discerning again.

It could just be good for us all in the long run. Excellence rather than rubbish. Wonderful design rather than blandness. Exciting new technology rather than all-so ran features. It’s almost too much to cope with!

Chris Anderson’s, he of Long Tail fame, new book Free is causing a stir. As it should do. The topic of free is a hugely complex one. It’s been brought on by the culture inhabiting the internet and is currently contributing to the part-demise of the print industry. More deaths will follow.

In particular the debate on this subject between Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell is interesting and worth a read. That is anybody wishing to participate in this economy as a marketer or business person should be following this discussion.

Chris Anderson says in his book that the ‘digital age is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas” further writing that ‘you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win”.

Seth Godin surmises that Free is what you need to have in an attention economy. As a marketer or business person you struggle for the attention of your customer or consumer. How do you get it? By giving away something. This is because the interruption process TV advertising used to use is no longer popular.

Malcolm Gladwell on the other hand has a great argument that says that it might appear that certain areas of our lives should be free because the cost has come down to such an extent.

He gives the internet as an example. Hardware is now unbelievably cheap. However, the amount of hardware that YouTube needs for it’s billions of videos might be next to nothing per unit, but still a huge amount for the billions of videos on their servers.

And the reason that YouTube can’t make money is because advertisers don’t want to be associated with the rubbish that Joe Blogs posts on YouTube. So YouTube has had to buy good quality video so that they can attract advertisers.

Gladwell also points out that although most people may want their information for free they will pay for the good stuff. This is impacting on newspapers where there seems to be little of value. However, the Wall Street Journal has over one million online subscribers for the good and relevant content on offer. Where’s the free in that.

As much as I agree with Seth Godin that it’s about grabbing attention, I also agree with Gradwell that the reason so much on the internet is free is because its rubbish or in the consumer’s mind not worth paying for. It’s also free because the consumer has no idea whether it’s worth paying for.

Facebook for instance isn’t worth any money, it’s purely offering convenience. You can share your information in other ways, maybe go back to old fashioned tools such as email. Facebook would not be able to introduce a subscription fee.

On the other hand Flikr has a small fee for a subscription service that extends your capacity to upload pics. Some people take that up, others don’t need to because they just don’t share that many photographs.

So what’s the answer to this question of free? Definitely there will be free. And definitely people will pay for what they see provides them with value. However, overall I don’t think we are heading into a Free only economy.

At some stage companies such as YouTube and Facebook will need to start making money. They will run out of venture capital donations. Secondly, the good stuff will rise to the top and people will be prepared to pay for it. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need to have some carrots dangling around such as bits of free goodies.

But I just can’t see there being a totally free economy. We’d all starve. People and companies will make their money in other ways. But however they do that, that won’t be free! And ideas as being free? Apple has charged a fair price, and for years, for their great design ideas….. Doesn’t it depend on what kind of ideas?

Whether you are wanting to start a business as an internet marketer or are working in the offline environment you will need to find your own small space. Most people have some idea when they start their business what they want to do. Not so it seems for the online entrepreneur.

In the ‘real’ world people start their business knowing that they will sell a product, or make one, grow one, trade ideas, create beautiful things and many more business ideas. Whether they are passionate about golf and end up making and selling golf shirts, or love gardening so end up propagating seedlings, most people know what they want to do.

Put them in front of a computer and the vast real estate of the internet and they haven’t a clue. But it is the very same principle whether the business is situated in the high street or whether it is on a blog or site in cyberland. The same business theory needs to be adhered to.

As a small trader or new business entrepreneur you are not going to sell fifty different cameras. You wouldn’t have the capital for the stock, in all likelihood. So why would you go with a broad topic online? Sure you don’t need stock, but you certainly need the knowledge and expertise to be able to run this shop effectively.

Wouldn’t it be more sensible to start off with a very small part of photographic equipment for instance, but become the total expert on this? Select a niche, a small area of expertise for your business.

Gathering a lot of information on a niche rather than trying to be an expert in a broad context makes a lot more sense. In other words knowing a lot about dating for seniors living in Outer Mongolia is a manageable niche rather than the vast topic of dating.

For internet marketers the saying ‘find your niche and grow rich’ is most appropriate. The same principle does apply in real life too of course. As an example, if you find there isn’t a specialist deli shop in your town or village you might consider opening up one.

What does it mean for the internet marketer though? It means that you have to dig down and find a very specialised topic. More than even the deli shop example, you will need to be even more specific. Maybe you only offer miniature Italian sausages from a particular district. That’s how specific you need to get in order to find a niche for your online business.

Of course the more specialised your niche is the fewer people will be interested in your topic. However, it also means you are up against less competitors. This is where your targeted marketing will then be the most effective.

It is also good at this point to remember that the vastness of the internet and the huge numbers of visitors ensure that even a small niche will have many thousand interested people. If someone is looking for exactly what you are offering you will find that your visitors will become loyal followers.

As a kick off point you might want to see if there is a topic you might be interested in already. If you are interested in sheet music for instance which is already a niche on it’s own, you might want to go even more specialised and consider just sheet music for wind instruments.

Regardless of your interest you do need to underpin your niche selection with extensive research. You might be interested in sheet music for wind instruments. But if there are only five other people interested in the same market you will starve rather than make a living.

At the other end of the spectrum you might be interested in smart phones and set up a site talking about iPhones. This is such a huge topic that you will never be able to compete with the big competitors. It will not be worth your while to establish a business in this field.

Take time and make an effort to find your niches. The time and money spent on selecting the right niche for you will be well spent. That applies whether you are setting up an online or offline business. Become an expert. It makes sense.

Wimbledon is quite something. It is such an English thing. For months leading up to the competition, the speculations are rife as to whether a Brit could possibly win it this time and just for a change. And the pressure on the poor English players is horrific.

Today is the first day of the competition and already there are all sorts of strange and wonderful things popping up. Some tabloid magazine has sent reporters to measure the grunt factor. They want to expose the tennis player with the loudest grunt. Have you ever?

Besides the obligatory tabloid ’scandals’, it’s wonderful to see how Wimbledon is so much more than just a tennis tournament. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve managed to attend a day. My daughter took me as a birthday treat three years ago. It was amazing. Prices quite high, food dreadful - really awful, including the strawberries and cream. And expensive. All in all it was a fabulous day.

From the first moment when you stand at the top of the hill, miles away or so it seems from the entrance and inch your way slowly towards the styles it’s one big experience. The whole queuing thing is part of the Wimbledon day. We didn’t send in our application to get pre-sale tickets! Those have to be in December the year before. So the line it was.

We got certificates to say that we had queued! Whoever does the marketing knows a thing or two about how to hook your people in by creating experiences even when it’s standing in a queue. But nobody minded, well I suppose being in England, who would! Still, lots of chatting and sharing of the experience helped to make the walk a pleasure.

Inside the grounds it seemed like total pandemonium. But it wasn’t actually. Everything was well organised. Everywhere queues. Everywhere loads of volunteers making sure that the show ran smoothly. And does it just. Like clockwork. And the discipline of the young ball boys and girls, the volunteer lines people and umpires. It’s incredible, the way everything is marshaled.

So on the first day of Wimbledon that’s all about competitive spirit and will a Brit finally win it again I read a fascinating story in the Independent online. It was about Mumsnet and its message board and what the modern mum in England has to say.

One of the conversation streams was about the lack of competition allowed at schools! When the kids play a team sport such as hockey they are not allowed to cheer if their team scores or boo if somebody makes a mistake. They are not even told the score at the end of the game.

There are no more sports days, just ‘outdoor pursuits days’ and there are such bizarre events as relay teams running on their own, so there is no competition, heaven forbid, with another team.

Sounds all nice and cuddly doesn’t it. Kids don’t have to worry about coming second because there is no more second place. We are all winners.

So how do you get a winner at Wimbledon then? I watched Federer play in his first game today. He came on court and his total intention within the first few minutes was to absolutely intimidate his much weaker opponent. Needless to say he had a fairly easy win.

Not competitive? So where between their school’s non competitive outdoor activities and adult games such as Wimbledon, do kids in England suddenly find that competitive spirit that they would need to win this tournament? Bit of a quandary I would imagine.

The media might have to wait a very long time before they can celebrate an English Wimbledon champion again. In desperation they’ve had to attach their hopes to a Scotsman who refuses to be considered English by wearing a wristband with the Scottish flag on it. Well that was last year anyway. Let’s see what Murray does this year. Let the games begin!

No matter what business you are in, what service you offer, what skills you have there is one underlying skill you have to have. You have to know how to sell. All business is about selling. In fact all life is one big selling campaign.

The point of business is to trade. I offer one thing and you buy it. It can be a skill, it can be knowledge or it can be a widget. It doesn’t matter. There is always a trade happening. One person offers something that another person accepts or rejects.

Everybody needs to be able to sell.

Sometimes the selling process is hidden and you don’t recognise it to be that. Let me give you a few examples.

The artist, and this applies to the bulk of the creative people making a living through their art, is not able to sell his art. He is shy, he doesn’t think his art is worth it, he can’t deal with people and many more reasons.

So he appoints an agent or gallery to handle the sale of his work. The bottom line is that all the artist has done is sell only to the gallery owner, rather than sell to individual buyers. It’s still a sale.

If the artist is unable to sell himself to a gallery then he can’t make a living.

You are a salaried employee. You push paper all day. You don’t have to sell. Yes you do. You sell every day. The first time you sell is when you sell yourself for the job. Then you sell yourself every day by pushing that paper efficiently. You are selling yourself to a boss every day to reassure him that you are a worthy member of staff.

You come in late to work every morning? You are losing a sale. Yourself as a staff member. Guess on whose desk that pink slip will land.

So every thing you do is a sales situation. You build a good relationship with a coworker, you are selling yourself as a good team member. You are friendly to a customer even though you are not in the sales department, maybe the receptionist, you are selling the company to the customer.

What about that Facebook entry? You set up a page about yourself. You are presenting yourself to the world. You are selling yourself as a product. It could be just to keep your friends. Whatever the reason, you are exhibiting yourself.

If your entire life is one big sales presentation then wouldn’t it be good to learn how to do it effectively? One would think so.

The current statistics of unemployed University graduates are quite alarming. Of course this is not necessarily a totally unique event. Forty odd years ago, my then fiancé was trying to find a clerkship with a firm of solicitors/lawyers. It took many months and the pulling of strings by family members before he managed to get into a law practice.

It seems to work in cycles and every few years there are a rash of graduates who find it particularly difficult to find employment. Of course the fact that the Universities on the whole don’t educate the young people for the work environment is another issue entirely. Don’t get me started on that topic. I could end up writing a book.

The point of this article though is to speculate what these young people could do while they wait for the economy to open up more jobs for them.

For me the biggest skill the youth and in fact all ages lack are business skills and basic financial management knowledge. How many people out there can actually balance a cheque book. How many people are able to keep their outgoings inline with incoming revenue? Few it seems.

If you can’t find a job, then get yourself upskilled in this area. Invaluable. There are books available, tons of online resources which are mostly free, there are reasonably priced courses available at night school and community colleges.

There are many other skills that young graduates can accumulate that regrettably have been missing in their formal education. Amongst these are learning a relevant language for instance. Learn Chinese. It’s the biggest nation on this earth. They will be the future economic power. English could just end up losing its shine.

Besides the above seriously important skills, create a relevant online presence and start publishing within your field of interest and expertise, take part in forums and make a name for yourself, speak at conferences, offer to teach courses at the community college. With other words get famous.

Best advice for graduates milling around in the unemployment halls, create yourself a public persona that people will get to know and associate with as having credible knowledge and information.

Worst thing to do during this time? Watch TV, feel sorry for yourself and get depressed. You never know, taking a pro-active step like this could open up business opportunity or even get you that job you had hoped for.

Oh right. Using an Article Writing Service is going to do that for you? Couple of thousand dollars or even pounds? Never! More like Zimbabwean Dollars. Oh wait, you can’t get those anymore they ran out of paper trying to print mega Zim dollar bills!

However, it’s not really an over-hyped statement. You can really save yourself thousands. Let’s see how that works. And let me know if I’m wrong. I’m always happy to learn something new.

Let’s have a look how much it costs you to write your own articles. Do you know how much it costs you to write your own content?

You probably haven’t worked that out. And you wouldn’t be alone. Hardly anybody I’ve ever talked to has worked out what their time costs. It’s one of those things you take for granted you will invest in your online business. It’s called your time.

Let’s look at a very basic calculation here. Don’t want to confuse the issue and make it too difficult. Besides which if I get too fancy in all of this you will work out that I’m not an accountant and that could mean you won’t be interested in what I have to say. Can’t have that.

What do you think your time is worth? I’ve pegged it at $30 an hour. Nice round number to work with and I think pretty close to what is the true value of your time. Of course if you are an accountant then we are talking mega money per hour.

But no, you are but a lowly internet marketer writing for a living - like me. No mega fees in that - I know. Although of course writing is a creative process and is definitely worth far more than your basic living wage is.

Let’s use $30 an hour. You can argue with me by leaving a comment. To keep your internet marketing business going you need to write at least five articles per week and if it’s a decent one it should take you on average about one and a half hours. At $30 per hour you are in effect spending $45.00 per day on your article writing service.

How am I doing so far? All good?

How much is that per year at 52 weeks per year? That’s a cool $11 700.00. There are your thousands. Quite mind blowing isn’t it.

Of course you can tell me that this is your investment in your business and that every business person spends long hours building their business without getting paid for it. I’m going to take your point as a very valuable one. Because it also give me the opportunity to point out another factor here.

By spending that many hours writing content for your blog, how many hours do you have left for the real stuff such as making money? As much as good content on your money making blog is a must, what is even more critical is working on ways on how to bring in actual dollars.

Using an Article Writing Service would allow you to get on with a whole bunch of other stuff, such as create your own eBook that you can sell. Do some consulting. Make training videos. Or maybe sell somebody else’s product. What the bottom line is that you are not only spending thousands of dollars on your article writing in terms of the time you are using, you are also wasting opportunity costs.

That’s right. That’s what the eBook is called if you never get around to writing it. That’s what the affiliate program is called that you never have time to sign up to. It’s the value you place on the opportunity you lost because you did not have time.

So what is your time truly worth? A lot more than $30 per hour. And as a final dagger in the heart, let’s just remember that once you have used up that time, it ain’t ever coming back. Phew. That’s a low blow if ever there was one.

At what stage would you consider using an Article Writing Service? If it’s a ridiculously low cost or if they are amazing articles that you just have to have? What if it’s both. How would you know? Trying it out might be a route to go!

So here’s your link. Try it out now. Five articles for free in a niche of your choice. Can’t get much better than that. Go on. Get thee there!