The importance of researching your niche

When you finally decide to take the plunge and enter the world of the internet entrepreneur, you need to decide on a product or service you wish to offer. It is best to start with something you are knowledgeable about as this will make it a lot easier for you. Once you have decided on a product or service you need to determine whether there is any demand in that particular niche or whether it will be a waste of time.

This is one of the most common mistakes newcomers make – they decide on a product that would be of interest to them but do not conduct any market research and then become disillusioned if there is little interest.

It is vital to determine the demand in your particular niche before you start, and, if there is little opportunity, to change course and try something else. There are numerous ways to research your potential niche.

Surveys and polls

This is one of the best ways to conduct your research. Ask your potential customers what THEY want, what influences their buying decisions, and what they may like and/or dislike about the current market options. This way you can tailor your product or service to meet their needs. Two way dialogue is critical with potential customers.

You can post questions and polls on your blog or website or send to your email list. This also encourages customer interaction and will gain their trust so they will be more likely to consider purchasing your product.

Use tools like Survey Monkey or Poll Daddy to conduct your own surveys and polls and act on the results to maximise the earning potential of your niche.

Keyword research

Search engine data can help you determine the demand for specific keywords or phrases pertinent to your niche.  Do a search for your product as a potential customer and if that search is very popular it means that there is a healthy market worth pursuing. But it also means that their may be a lot of competition for that particular phrase as competitors optimise their own websites to capture these customers.

Is there any way you can drill down further into a sub-niche which may be more profitable? If so try doing a search for this and if it is still popular but less so than the original search then this means that there is still a healthy market but there is likely to be less competition.

Use Google AdWords.  It is a great free keyword research tool specific to Google which is by far the most popular search engine used. Type in your keyword and evaluate the results to target your niche appropriately.

Another great tool is Google Trends. This allows you to investigate keywords and you get a graphical representation of historical data which will show you its popularity over the last several years. It also allows you to see demographic data which shows you the places that are most likely to search for that keyword/phrase.

You could also use Google Insight to investigate search trends by category, seasonality, geographical distribution or properties.

Check out the competition

Take time to investigate the competition and to develop your unique selling proposition to make you stand out from the rest. You can use this information to target your strengths against their weaknesses. The internet has made it very easy to investigate your potential competitors. Look at the product or service they supply, their pricing strategy, and customer service. You could even sign up to any newsletter they supply and use their own strategies against them. Be bold and this could give you the edge that persuades a customer to spend their money with you rather than them.

I hope this has given you a few ideas about researching your niche and how important it is to do this before you produce your product or service. Conduct it thoroughly, target a great niche and milk it dry! Good hunting…

Three simple rules to virtually guarantee business success

Having your own online business is a very enticing idea for the would-be entrepreneur. The common belief is that these are easy to set up and are a fast track to untold wealth.

However online businesses need to be approached the same way as any other business or it will fall flat. Yes, it may be easy to set up a free blog, or very cheap website, but you must develop good content and drive traffic to your site and this takes work!

I think that everybody is guilty of this misconception to some degree and it is how you deal with it that will inevitably determine your success or failure.

Sometimes it isn’t what you are doing but rather what you aren’t doing that affects your success. When you realise that you aren’t doing something that perhaps you should, it can have a great impact on your results.

There are three rules that I follow in my business and these apply to both on and offline business opportunities.

The first rule is to acquire knowledge. You MUST learn about your business and any product or service you are developing. You must become the expert that people will turn to in order to help them. The acquisition of knowledge is life-long and should be exciting for you. You learn about the business, product development, marketing and customer service. As your knowledge grows so does your confidence. And remember you need to learn before you earn.

The second rule is to determine your capital investment. This is important as you do not want to make life too uncomfortable (especially in the early days) or you will be more likely to quit. Try to use money that you won’t miss – difficult I know at the moment!! Look at low-cost or free ways to start your business. Blogs and a forum in your niche are a great way to start building your online presence and developing your reputation as a subject expert, and they are free. You may not be investing money, but you are investing time. It is also a good way to test the water to see if there is a market for your particular product or service before you commit.

The third rule is to develop your marketing plan. You must be systematic with product promotion or you will not target a large enough audience and this will mean low sales. This is probably the most important aspect of your online business, hence why so many people call themselves internet marketing experts and try to capitalise on this status. Devise a plan to capture people’s email addresses, and to push more traffic to your website. More traffic equals more sales, simple. If you use a methodical approach you are much more likely to successfully promote your product or service. And keep learning as there are always new techniques developing in this field and you don’t want to be left behind. 

Follow these three simple rules and you are much more likely to succeed in any business adventure. Now it’s up to you…

Writing your ebook part 2

Following on from my previous post:

B       Research and gather information for your ebook. 

Top tips to help research your ebook

• The amount of research that you will need to do is dependent on your level of expertise in your chosen subject.
• If you are already knowledgeable, write down everything you know. Write this under each chapter heading, then do extra research if you need to fill in any gaps in your knowledge. Also, it is important to ensure that your information is current.
• If you don’t know much about your chosen subject, you will have a lot of work to do in terms of research in order to provide value for prospective customers. Organise your research. Take methodical steps. Use files and folders and begin collecting and organising your information. Always try to keep hard copies as well as digital copies. You could use Squidoo lenses to help organise your research. Squidoo lenses provide modules which you can use in the same way you would use index cards. Use a different idea for each module and link to the source of the information for easy reference.
• Keep a record of your sources of information. You never know when you’ll want to go back to a specific resource so make sure that this is easy to find. Also give credit to others if you are using their ideas.
• Don’t just limit your research to online search engines. Make sure you make good use of books and magazines too. If you know, or have access to subject experts, talk to them; you could then use these interviews as an audiobook option.
• Look at all the points in your outline/mind map and research them all thoroughly to ensure that you’ve covered everything that is needed to convey the information that your readers need. Be clear and concise. Don’t be tempted to waffle.
• Whilst researching your topic, if it looks like your book is going to be 500 pages long, your topic is too broad. See if you can narrow it down into sub niches. If you are lucky, your broad topic could provide you with subject matter for several products. You could then sell them separately, as a bundle or give some of them away as a free gift.

Next time we will look at writing the ebook…

Is there a market for your ebook?

The importance of market research 

It is very important to determine whether there is a market for your ebook and whether it is overly saturated.

If you want to write and publish an ebook to make money you need to find a market where people are willing to pay for your knowledge in your chosen niche. So before you start writing, you should conduct market research in order to determine the following two things:

1. Is there adequate demand for your chosen subject?
2. Is there too much competition?

You want to find a subject that is in high demand, but that doesn’t have too much competition. This is NOT easy! The last thing you want to do is to waste your time writing, publishing and marketing an ebook, only to discover that there’s very little demand for your chosen topic or that the market is already too competitive.

Tips to use when assessing your competition

Your objective is not to find a niche where there’s no competition as this usually means that there is little demand for your information and thus poor profit potential. And even if it could become a profitable niche, you’ll to have to work overtime to educate the market as to why they need your information.
When looking at your competition ask yourself questions such as :

• Do the ebooks and guides currently available cover your subject matter well or are there any gaps in these ebooks that you can exploit?
• Are the ebooks directed at the same target market?

You must have a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that makes your ebook stand out from the ebooks already available. You need to give a potential buyer a reason to prefer your ebook over the competition. Read the reviews of the books in your niche that sell well on Amazon. These reviews can be a great source of  information and ideas to make your own ebook better, and may also give you ideas about how to cover an aspect of the topic that others have neglected.

Conduct Market Research on Your Readers

If you have a blog write a few posts on the topic you’re planning to write your ebook about and see how your readers respond.
Is the response lukewarm? Did your readers appear to be  interested in learning more about the topic? Did you get lots of questions in the comments section?
You can also ask your readers to let you know if they would be interested in buying an ebook on your chosen subject.

Set up a poll or survey on your blog and monitor the results closely.

This is important. DO NOT try to sell your ebook to everyone. Consider this fact: “approximately 58% of US adults never read another book after high school.” Then, bear in mind that among potential customers, your ebook is just a needle in a very big haystack. But don’t despair! I am not saying this to deter you, far from it. But for this reason it is far better to concentrate on a small subset of the market – that subset that you have permission to talk to, where you have credibility, and most importantly, where people just can’t live without your ebook.” If you can identify this subset and target them you will reap the rewards.

“A book is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading . . . You should write one.”