I've been asked a lot about how to keep bringing in sales through a recession and slow periods. I've been hesitant to share what worked for me because I felt it was overly simple, but I've come to realize that even something simple takes a lot of hard work to execute.

Pick a Niche And Stick With It

That's it.

No magic formula or 34 Steps to Niche Riches. Just pick something you can be the best in the world at and do it.

Oh, and make sure everyone knows that you're the best in the world at it.

How? Okay, here is a few tips:

1. If you don't have a niche, look around for people complaining about a service or the lack of a service.
2. If you have a niche but don't know how to use it, define the perfect client for that niche and then start talking to them.
3. If you don't know what a perfect client looks like, talk to everyone and pick the ones you like the most.
4. Find out where the community for your niche hangs out at. All niches have a community, but it might be fragmented. (bonus points if you can bring the community together)
5. Help people in the community, even if it's for free.
6. Be approachable, you want people to know they can contact you. A simple contact form from Wufoo is all you need.

There are countless niches and many of them very profitable. The key is to stick with one for several months and to get creative about how you can generate revenue.

Eric Davis

Welcome to the great unveiling of Little Stream Software's company blog. I'll be writing about running a one person Ruby on Rails consultancy and the mistakes I've made while doing it (and boy, are there a lot of mistakes). I'm going to cover common topics like customers, pricing, and contractors as well as topics specific to technical consultancies like how to find time to write code, intellectual property, and building products. My goal is to help new business owners wade through all of the information online and see what worked and didn't work for me.