A new start, online

If Web 2.0 has venture capitalists excited about potential new tech-company payoffs, there’s another tech hunt going on — this time among thousands of Americans eager to try their luck with an online business.

A lot of those men and women are baby boomers, but the movement goes beyond that, said Tom Harpointer, a business consultant in Atlanta who works with startups, coaching people on the dos and don’ts of online ventures.

People might be tired of working in large businesses, bored with jobs requiring travel and convinced they have the acumen to make money online, said Harpointer.

“Sometimes, you also see baby boomers whose children have moved home and who now want another business to generate extra income,” he said.

Michelle Garcia wasn’t bored, but closing an office-furniture store she owned with her husband, Jon, gave the 38-year-old mother of two the freedom to launch her online career. Both she and her husband had real estate investments in California, where they lived until moving to Coeur d’Alene in 2003. They now see an opportunity to merge their interest with social networking. The site she’s about to launch is www.RealestateInvestingRound table.com.

“It’s going to be a place where investors can come and connect with one another, like MySpace. They can talk to each other about projects and good ideas,” she said.

Many real estate investors benefit from attending workshops and seminars, she said. “Afterwards, people want to stay connected but they didn’t know how,” said Garcia.

Already the Web is dotted with examples of similar sites; some are still around, such as www.activerain.com, one early entrant to the same networking plan the Garcias have in mind. There are dozens of sites that have gone dark: Two are myhalfhouse.com and MyREI.com (still online but inactive).

Paul Wham, who has started a number of small businesses and calls himself a Spokane-based “serial entrepreneur,” warns would-be online business owners that creating a Web site and buying ads on Yahoo or Google is hardly a sure thing.

He and a partner, a band teacher who lives in Western Washington, hatched a plan to launch an online company called www.beginningband101.com.

The company used a basic idea, developed by Wham’s partner: Start a site where band instructors can order and download music from the Web. Wham, who had a background in marketing and, he thought, an instinct for what works on the Web, invested in the idea.

It failed, Wham said.

“Band instructors don’t change behavior easily. We had a good idea, we were priced competitively and we knew exactly where our audience was. But that wasn’t enough to change their behavior,” he said.

He’s still a strong believer in the Web as a marketplace. One advantage is its cost; anyone with $5,000 to $10,000 can get a site going and test their market, said Wham.

The risks, however, are large. “There are an awful lot of Web sites out there. How do your customers find you? It sounds like an easy business, but it isn’t,” he said.

Wham said the keys to online business success are: Find a niche market; distinguish your business from the rest in that niche; and provide a unique value with your product or service.

That’s the same advice for any business, Wham said. “Basically, it’s all just Marketing 101.”