Instead of trying to dream up brand new products or topics to write about, try combining existing things or find ways to adapt or improve the stuff that you have already.

In the business world it’s often the innovators that get all the glory, but innovation can be expensive. It’s often easier and cheaper to make your existing stuff better.

Read on for some examples…

If you want to try this, make sure you’re creating something that didn’t exist before, or make sure the combination works better than the sum of the individual parts, or that the new thing makes your existing product better.

It’s a bit like finding holes in your current product list, rather than trying to dream up new stuff.

Here are some ideas for your vacation rental site:

1. Add a blog and write about your place, the area, local attractions
2. Provide an RSS feed from forums where you hang out, e.g. LayMyHat. A lot of caring owners spend time there crafting their offering and making it as good as possible for guests. I’d rent from many of these owners because I know they care about their guests
3. Create a guestbook on your site where existing customers can add comments, share tips and advice on making the most of your place, ideas for a rainy day, or suggestions for improvements
4. Write an ebook of your favorite tips for enjoying your vacation place, and sell it on your site. If you don’t trust ebooks, publish it on lulu and sell it there
5. Create a video of your property
6. Create an audio welcome greeting for visitors to your site
7. Add affliliate links for tickets to local attractions. Make sure you’ve tried them out first and that you truly recommend them

So long as you keep adding value for your customers you’ll end up providing a better overall offering and make yourself stand out from the competition. That might just get you the edge that you need to keep your place full for this season (and the next)

[P.S. I know there's no RSS feed from laymyhat. This is a post about new ideas though]

This is my final post. After today there will be no more updates to this blog.

How does this make you feel? A little bit sad, maybe? It probably makes you feel like checking some of my previous posts. You’d better take a look before it stops and you lose the chance to benefit from all the great wisdom…

The truth is this isn’t my last post, but this demonstrates a technique that is often used to raise interest in a product, or a website.

“Available for one week only”

“$10 now but the price will be $30 after 15th May”

…and so on. I’m sure you are familiar. If you use this technique on your website then remember that you need to be authentic. If you’re pulling the product then don’t put it back 2 weeks later. If you do your customers may get angry and they may tell other potential customers that you are a fake.

Also don’t forget that this works for the short term only. “Available for one more year” doesn’t really have the same pull, does it?

Now I’m here, it still looks great, it’s still $300…

How can you apply this kind of buzz to your website and make it desirable and worth showing to other people? What can you do to make your customers feel really special or clever or richer or #1 at something? It’s a hard thing to do, but if you don’t do it you’ll just be out there competing with all those other average websites.

So what happened? How did my story end? Why don’t you finish the story and leave me a comment?

Gordon Ramsay is a great example of a guy will only settle for the very best, and will (almost) stop at nothing to be at the top of his profession. Starting with a couple of restaurants serving wonderful food, he’s built an empire of three-star restaurants, books and TV shows. But it all comes back to a great product: the food.

Watching Hell’s Kitchen last night set me thinking about websites and online marketing and products. Is your product absolutely the best it can possibly be? Your product might be a website, or something that you sell on your website. Is it great enough that people look at it and say “wow, that’s really amazing”?

If it is, then they will come back to your website for more. And they will tell some friends about it. The friends will take a look and say “wow, that’s amazing”. And so it goes on. Just like a great restaurant.

This is the way to build a successful product and/or a website that goes with it.

Otherwise, you’re just serving up fast food to anyone that stops by…