The greater the need, the bigger the opportunity.

Finding that demand is the trick. It’s not always easy to spot.

Here are three of the best places to look for opportunities:

Fix It (Something Broken)

If something important is broken, creating a solution is a great way to create a business opportunity for yourself.

The small business lending ecosystem through traditional banks is broken.

Crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo (founded by two former colleagues of mine) found a way to solve the broken funding model for small businesses and creative projects.

As Chris Guillebeau tells it (from his new $100 Startup book):

Shannon Oakey told me about going to her community bank to ask for a loan. She had all her finances in order and had supported the bank for many years, but they still turned her down. Shannon decided to do it herself through a Kickstarter campaign. She got more money than she needed and mailed a printout of the result, with a lollipop wrapped up inside, to the loan officer who turned her down.

Opportunity: find something severely broken and fix it.

Revive It (Something Forgotten)

Sometimes something isn’t badly broken, but it’s forgotten. If you can revive something old and overlooked, you might spark renewed interest and unearth demand.

What could be more boring and utilitarian than a thermostat?

As the people at Nest describe it:

We didn’t think thermostats mattered either. Until we found out they control half of your energy bill.

They took something forgotten and made it incredibly sexy. By re-imagining the thermostat as a gorgeously designed, intelligent and easy-to-use device, they’ve revived interest, restarted an industry and created a hit product for themselves.

Opportunity: look for everyday items around you that could be revived with modern thinking.

Ride It (Something Hot)

If you can’t find something broken or forgotten to restore, there’s always the old standby in opportunities: jump on a hot trend and ride it.

Brett Kelly turned his love for and experience with Evernote into Evernote Essentials, an eBook that has sold over 12,000 copies. Evernote was a hot new application and there was unmet demand for a detailed guide.

Brett rode the wave of interest in Evernote, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue, and even landed a position with the hot startup.

With technology changing so quickly, these opportunities are coming about more and more frequently. Just in the past several years we’ve seen social media, mobile device app development and online / social games each become massive opportunities.

The trick is spotting these trends at just the right time. Too early and demand isn’t great enough. Too late and you’ll have far too much competition.

Opportunity: find a hot trend you can ride to the top.

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Where do you think is the best place to look for business opportunities? Share in the comments below.

P.S. You might notice there’s a new design here (if you’re reading this via email or in a feed reader, click here to see the new design). I hope you like it. I like to freshen things up from time to time. Thanks for reading.

Your work is going to suck in the beginning.

And it’s going to hurt, because you’ll know deep down that you’re capable of doing much better.

This is the main thing that stands between you and your potential.

Failure isn’t fun, but it’s an absolute requirement to growth. In order to grow and become what we’re capable of, we have to fail over and over until we learn and become skillful.

You have to look at making mistakes not as something to be ashamed of, but as a growth opportunity. The sooner you get over the fear of making mistakes, the faster you can grow.

So put aside the ego and start making mistakes.

Invite feedback, and don’t take it personally. Look at your work as an outsider. Use the feedback to make it better, day by day, until it’s as good as you knew you were capable of.

The next time you see someone doing something poorly, try not to feel a sense of superiority. Maybe that person has come to terms with the need to fail in order to grow. Instead, try congratulating her on trying, and on not being afraid.

What’s something you’ve been too afraid of failure to try lately? Admit it in the comments below, then get out there and start trying.

Update: this contest is now closed. Thanks everyone who entered.

I’ll choose and announce the winner today (Monday, April 16th) at 9pm Pacific, and I’ll update this post with the announcement below.

To win, all you have to do is leave a comment below and tell me why you want to attract an audience online (or grow the one you’ve already started building).

There is no right answer. Just tell me what you’re up to online and why you need an audience.

If you’re not familiar with Traffic School, it’s a comprehensive course on building thriving online audiences. The course will teach you how to build a much bigger audience for your website or blog. We’ve opened the doors only twice so far, and each time the course has sold out in 48 hours or less.

The course is taught by me and 16 very special guest instructors. Get the full details on the course (including special bonuses for this class) and our enrollment window this week over at the Traffic School site.

Again, I’m giving away one spot in Traffic School to a reader of CorbettBarr.com today. All you have to do is leave a comment below telling me why you want to build an audience for your website, blog or other online project. Bonus points for telling me why you think Traffic School specifically will help you.

Update – 4/16 at 5pm Pacific: OK, we’re at 100 comments now. Thanks so much everyone who left an entry. I’m going to close the contest to new entries so I can read through everything. I’ll be announcing a winner later this evening.

Update – 4/16 at 8:26pm Pacific: And… we have a winner! Two winners, actually. Thanks to everyone who entered. There were so many incredible stories, so many great ideas, so much passion, it is nearly impossible to pick just one out of a hundred.

Each of you has so much potential, so please keep pushing, keep fighting.

Since I couldn’t pick just one, I decided to choose two winners. First: Jade Craven (JadeCraven.com) / read Jade’s comment here. Second: Shannyn (Frugal Beautiful) / read Shannyn’s comment here. (Jade and Shannyn, I’ll be emailing each of you to claim your spot)

If you didn’t win but are still considering Traffic School, the doors are open now and it’s filling up fast.

Never before could you work from anywhere on earth, with people you’ve never met, on projects that can reach the entire world.

Never before could you raise money from hundreds of complete strangers based on a video shot on your cellphone and edited in an afternoon.

Never before could you contribute $25 to the prosperity of a hopeful business owner in an impoverished country halfway around the globe, instantly, from your desk, just because you felt like it.

Never before could you access any knowledge within seconds, start learning something within minutes and find community on any topic, anytime.

Never before was it so easy to fulfill the promise of “you can do anything you put your mind to.”

NEVER before.

There are so many reasons this is one of the greatest times in history.

How are you going to take advantage of this incredible time?

There are people who look at someone else’s success and find inspiration. They use successful examples as a road map, and edit out the parts that don’t apply to their particular situations.

On the other hand, there are people who look for unfair advantages when they hear about someone’s success story. They like to point out connections, money, special talents and other reasons why the success was possible.

More importantly, they point out these advantages to invalidate the success story or serve as excuse why they couldn’t do the same thing.

Do you know the kind of people I’m talking about?

I guess you might call them naysayers.

I call bullshit.

Here’s the deal: every specific success story is different, and you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

Yes, successful people often have advantages. You too probably have certain advantages if you read the story the right way.

Looking for “gotcha” advantages in other people’s stories misses the point. When naysayers point to advantages in an attempt to invalidate someone else’s success, they conveniently ignore the real story.

Naysayers ignore the perseverance and incredible effort the hero in question had to bring to the table. They ignore the obstacles overcome on the journey. The naysayers ignore the self doubt and fear of failure the hero had to go through, just as you or I would have to.

There is so much to learn from every success story, just as there is so much to learn from every failure.

Whether you habitually attempt to discredit others’ successes might tell you something about your own chances of success.

Why should someone else’s advantages be your limitations?

Try focusing on what you do have instead of what you don’t. Look for the similarities in success stories instead of the unfair advantages.

The world has plenty of naysayers. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you like hearing success stories. Thanks for being here.