But guess what?



Paypal cheated. What I mean is that they were never meant to become the powerhouse online brand they are today.

Now maybe I'm being a bit unfair but the truth is that Paypal used an online branding strategy like no other. And they pretty much killed off the competition.

How did they do this?

One word: contraction. Yes, Paypal's hugely successful brand strategy can be summarized with this one word.

So what is contraction?

It's basically narrowing the focus of your online business to just 1 service or 1 product. The golden rule is that the narrower the focus, the stronger the brand.

Just as the saying goes, you can't be everything to everyone. However, you can be something to everyone.

And this is exactly what Paypal did by focusing its resources to offer a high quality and highly secured payment service to everyone. That's all it still offers. And boy, has it become something to everyone.

Now, who's to say that your online business cannot become the next colossus online brand?

By just looking at the most well-known sites on the Internet, it can be seen that all of them successfully used contraction to become the powerhouse they are today. Facebook, MySpace, Google, eBay, Amazon, you name it, all used contraction.

Coincidence?

No, absolutely not. And the best news is that there are many niche categories out there yet to be exploited and it all starts with using the right online branding strategy.

The worst decision you could make is to pick a category where there are already well-known and established online brands such as Paypal.

It would be a waste of money, a waste of resources, and ultimately, a big waste of time.

And time is money, right?

The days when Paypal was established, the Internet was a very different world. People were crying out for an easy-to-use, highly secured and reliable online payment system.

And Paypal responded in emphatic fashion. They saw the gap and filled it like no other had done before.

The best decision you could make is to pick a niche category, or a category within a category.

This way, you will also be filling gaps whilst setting your online business on the road to becoming a colossus online brand.