It all started with a class project. Mike Rigby was studying
computer science and was
given a class assignment to build a website to sell something. Building
the site was easy given
the amount of free software available on the web. Finding something to
sell was a more
difficult problem.
As a student, Rigby didn't have the funds to buy much of
anything he could sell. A friend jokingly told
him about a product that belonged on Jay Leno's comedy bit "Found it on
eBay" –
tumbleweeds. It seemed stupid at first given the nature of these well
known weeds. Tumbleweeds had been a huge nuisance
growing up on his father's farm. Now at college there were still plenty
to be found just a
couple miles away clogging up drains and piling up on fences.
The joke product soon became a perfect product as you consider
the cost of obtaining the tumbleweed is the price of gas to the spot.
There were no costs to store the tumbleweeds, as Mother Nature does
that for you. A little more research revealed that there were indeed
people searching for tumbleweeds, a small but
viable market with little competition. CuriousCountryCreations.com was
born and presented to his school class. It got an A for looks and
creativeness and was then forgotten for months. Then one day an email
came from the system. Someone had bought a
tumbleweed. It was sold at 100% profit. Shipping was charged separately
so it was impossible
not to make a profit. No one was more surprised than Rigby.
Not satisfied with a single product, Rigby searched for other
products that did not require
an expensive inventory. Soon, he was selling cattails and wheat stalks
which he collected
locally. As a native of Idaho, huge Idaho potatoes were a natural.
Desert mud (just add
the water) and dirtbags were also successful. He says "Selling snow to
an Eskimo is a lot like selling our Snowball kits and I've done that so
I'm looking for the next fun niche to sell too".
Rigby knew that just opening an online store doesn't mean you
will make any money, even if you
are selling a free product. "Build it and they will come" may have
worked for Kevin
Costner in "Field of Dreams" but it doesn't work on the internet.
Customers were few and far between so Rigby knew that more
marketing was required. He needed his
website to be found on the search engines. With search engine
optimization, his site
began to rise in rankings on the search engines. When one searched for
"tumbleweeds for
sale," his site rose to the top. And his sales rose too, with upwards
of two thousand dollars a week in sales of tumbleweeds and other
products.
When starting an internet business, Rigby suggests not
overlooking the obvious. Sellable
products are all around you. It's how you market them that is
important. Find an
interesting angle, whether it's Professional Skipping Rocks or a piece
of the old west (in a
dirtbag). Don't be afraid to constantly modify products and the way you
describe them.
Rigby says, "Using product and keyword research along with a
bit of trial and error, a
web-based business can expand and become more and more profitable. With
me it all
started out as a hobby and fun to sell anything. Now my business is
still a lot of fun and
it pays many of my bills every year. Find something you can do and do
it.
If you get yourself seen in a real market you can figure out the rest
as you go."
Biography: Mike Rigby, is the owner of
CuriousCountryCreations.com.
Entrepreneur of products like: Tumbleweeds,
Gag
Gifts,
Mini
Hay Bales, Snowball Kit, Skipping Rocks,
and Unique Christmas Gifts.