I live in a small town. When a chain store/convenience store opened up on the interstate, people moaned, "It was the end of downtown, the grocery store will close because of the competition." But, you know what, the convenience store brought more people into town to go to the bank, then gas up, and oh, wait, they need some groceries. 7 years later, the grocery store has a killer meat counter and people are coming in from the region just to buy their meat from the grocery store.
Then, when the Dollar General store bought a patch of land by the highway, some people moaned, "It was the end of downtown, the grocery store will close because of the competition." But three years later, the little town is seeing a lot more money flowing in from increased traffic as people stopped at the bank, ate some lunch at the diner, got some groceries, bought some gas and shopped for some household items at the dollar general store.
Now, we have a pizzaria opening up in a couple of weeks, and some people are moaning, "It was the end of the diner, the pizzaria will take their business away."
But, you know what, I have a feeling the pizzaria is going to bring a whole new group of visitors into town. Maybe the diner will hurt a bit, or maybe they will turn it up a notch, and we will have two terrific options for food, instead of having to eat at home or the diner all the time.
I have a couple hundred friends, local people that I interact with once or twice a year, or more. A very small percentage of them own their own domain. Vanity extensions will bring people into the market, and maybe they will choose the vanity extension, or maybe they will, in the end, feel more comfortable with the familiar .com.
The point is, imo, more competition, even if it is only at a perceptual level, is going to finally prompt me to do a better job at displaying my portfolio, focussing on end user sales, and generally being more organized about the process than I have been in the past. God knows, I need to be doing a much better job than I have been.
