Online Communities Offer Myriad Opportunities for Marketers

The rapid rise of online communities such as MySpace and YouTube, both of which were recently sold for tremendous profit, hasn’t gone unnoticed by young entrepreneurs, looking to cash in while the market is hot.

“The coming three-year period, which I call ‘the age of communities,’ is the perfect time to start a business,” according to David Silver, an entrepreneur and author of the new book “Smart Start-Ups: How Entrepreneurs and Corporations Can Profit by Starting Online Communities” (Wiley, 2007, ISBN:978-0-470-10742-3, $24.95). “By using online communities you can create a profitable and unique business using very little capital ... and you can do it without having much business experience,” Silver says. Here are a few tips excerpted from Silver’s book on what you need to know to create a profitable online community.