Many times I have the opportunity to share my take on different aspects of virtual IT as part of articles in tech magazines, both online and in print.  A couple years ago, I was able to talk about the interesting digital home market opportunities for VARs and virtual IT professionals as part of a Channel Web piece.

The discussion revolved around whether or not the digital home market was a good place for VARs, who face some challenges when entering this virtual IT world, including entrenched competitors, hard-to-locate customers, new, sometimes unknown technologies and products and a lot of time and capital investment.  This type of environment is particularly difficult for those currently focused on the small business market, where budgets are tight.

What is the digital home market?  It refers to product sales beyond PCs such as plasma televisions, high-fidelity speaker systems, security cameras, sensors and device controllers, etc.  According to Phillip Mohammed, who joined me in the discussion and is president of Tacoma, Washington-based company Universal Computer, a job setting up a home entertainment or security system would cost between $50,000 and $75,000.

My take on this situation was, “"This is a pretty affluent consumer.  It’s a fair statement that this probably wouldn’t be affordable for households with under $100,000 annual income, and maybe more. That’s an extremely small market."

Those working in virtual IT and as VARs are typically used to marketing through trade shows, niche publications, targeted mailings, etc. (as we so often discuss as part of the Computer Consulting Kit!), and thus identifying home customers (non-business customers, often) that would be willing and able to invest in complex entertainment and home automation systems would be extremely challenging and lead to increased marketing costs in both time and money.

To hear more of this conversation about virtual IT and my take on this market for small business computer consultants, visit the attached link.

Added By:  Joshua Feinberg