You’ve done a little bit of initial research in your topic. You’ve had a look at your interests and skills and what makes you happy, what you want to do. But this is where it is really important to just start to look at what’s happening in the market online. I’ve seen too many people set up businesses because they’ve got a great idea, spend $10,000-$20,000 on a website only to find out that no one will buy what it is that they’ve got or no one wants another site. For example, you might be building a wedding directory and you think it’s fantastic because your wedding directory is different to every other wedding directory. But the fact of the matter is in the end it’s just another list of places where people can buy products and services for their wedding.
There’s no doubt, hundreds of wedding directories. Yes, you may be able to take over the market. Yes, you may look prettier than the other sites. Yes, you might think that you’re doing something different just because of the way you approach it. But you have to remember that your audience that doesn’t see it any different. In the end, it’s a place that contains a list of supplies that they can access. It’s not necessarily any better or any worst for them. Why should they be loyal?
This is where a lot of people come and stuck in the business. They just don’t dig into their markets and understand what’s really going on and know that they seek advice from someone who’s been doing it for a long time about how they’re approaching it. They think that because they’ve come up with this idea that they’re the first one to ever come up with the idea. There’s not too many ideas under the sun that are original. Let’s face it, in the end they’re just slight adjustments on another concept in many cases.
A leadership coach for example still coaches people in leadership. Just because they do it differently from how you or I might do it, it doesn’t make them any better anywhere. Any different as far as the open market is concerned, they’re still seen as a leadership coach. Once someone’s worked with that person, then they might see them as different. But on the web, they look the same as everyone else.
First thing you need to do is brainstorm a list of possible markets that you can reach through the web. If you will stick with leadership coach, if you’re a leadership coach then you need to look at what markets you can reach. Can you reach the corporate market through the internet? Well, yes. Do they buy a lot from websites? Some do, some don’t. It depends on the company. How do they normally buy? You need to understand each market. Look at what it is that people are buying. Look at the top ranking sites. They’re ranking there for a reason. Look at the type of courses people are buying. Look at different searches that people are using. You have to understand what the market is looking for.
The way we do this is we start by using the search engines. The search engines are very powerful. In this case I’m going to refer to Google because it is the most powerful and it has some interesting features that from my years of doing search engine marketing, I see it really useful for speakers and experts to find out what is that their market is after. First things first. When you go to google and you start typing into the search box, you’ll see that Google automatically appends what you’re typing with extra words. You might write leadership coach and then Google add words after that. Say leadership coach for baseball. If you’ll sit there for a minute, you’ll start to see 4-5 extra searches show up below. You’ll see leadership coach for baseball, leadership coach for hockey, leadership coach for business.
These are searches that people have been typing a lot of times. Google recognises them as being common searches. As you start to type, it’s trying to guess what you’re going to type. In doing so, it gives away information to you on what other people are searching for. As a leadership coach, if you see the top searches are baseball, hockey and business, if you’re to go out and build a site that’s leadership coaching for swimmers, there’s a lot less traffic there because there’s a lot less people searching for it. Therefore, it’s not a popular market. It doesn’t mean you can’t build a business there. It just means that there might not be a market for leadership coaches for swimmers. Start by going to the search engines and typing in some searches around the topic that you’re interested in.
Also when you get to Google, do your search, press enter, wait till the results come back and then scroll to the bottom of the page. Down the bottom of the page, you’ll find an article related searches. These are other searches that are related to the one that you searched for. Again, this is Google saying “Hey, these are popular. These are things that people are searching for regularly.” They want information about this. They’re saying to you, “There’s a market here for you to target.” Have a look at them. Sometimes you’ll find some really interesting ones and then when you type them in and go and look at them, you find out in fact there’s lots of people searching for that topic.
There’s not many people producing information or selling any products to that topic. There’s a huge potential market there for you. Once you’ve gone through the search engines and you’ve made a nice big list and you’ve dug around for a while, remember to keep all this information. Don’t just throw it out. Always store it in Evernote because it means I can access it online anytime I need to from anywhere.
Once you’ve finished doing the initial research, then start to dig through new sites and eZines and all those other areas of the internet. Social medias are good one too. Get on to Facebook and see you the big Facebook groups. Do a search for your topic. Go and look at the big groups. Go and see what people are talking about. Read through the questions. Work out what it is that they’re having problems with because you’ll often see it there in your own words, things that are repeated over and over again when you scroll through the information. OnTwitter you can go and search for the hashtag or you can just do a search for the general information.
Get into Facebook. Get into Twitter and into the new sites and any other areas that you can find information. Keep recording any information you think is interesting and any links that you may want to come back to later. Store them in a text file as well in Evernote so that you can come back to them. Once you’ve done that, then I want you to go back based on what you’ve discovered this time and look for the other businesses that are selling in your niche.
Go and have a look at their sites. Look at what they’re doing. Are they running a membership site? Are they running a shopping cart? Is it just information? Are they selling a book? Are they speaking on the topic? What is it that the other people in your area are doing on their websites? Take notes. Take some screenshots if you see some stuff you like. Don’t throw it away. Often it’s hard to find the site because Google reindexes and changes the site listings. You may never find the site again. Often I will take a screenshot of anything I like. I use a little program called SnapNDrag. That’s for Mac but there’s dozens of other programs around that you can use. Use that and keep a copy of it. Record the URL in case you ever need to back to the website.
Find out where the people who are interested in that topic hang out. As I earlier mentioned, social media is a big one these days but there’s often forums and groups where people hang out who have a passion. A lot of forums have been closed and made into Facebook groups but there are still some really old powerful forums where people go on and they type up their information, ask questions and reply to each other and support each other in their interests.
Go and find out what was their reason. Make a list of the best ones because you’ve got to come back to them time and time again not just because they’re talking about the same topic issue but because they’re going to help with market research. They’re going to help with questions to answers all sorts of different things. Find out where your people, your market, hangs out.
There’s a range of different tools that you can use to help with your research. Google is obviously the easiest one because it does give so much information. But another one that I use to find keywords to plug in to Google is a free program called keyword researcher. That’s completely free. It will give you up to 200 returns. You can pay for an upgrade but the free one is free forever. Keyword researcher will help you find keywords that you can then plug in to the search engines and do your research with.
You need to spend your time. Go through and research your markets. Research the keywords of people you’re looking at. Dig into the content that’s already available online. Get to know the people that are involved. Obviously you think you know them because you have an interest in that area, you have a passion in that area. Do these for each of the top five topics that you wrote when you did your skills and interests of things that make you happy. Why do I say that? Because doing one is great but you’re making assumptions that that one is the best place to build your business. It might not be topic one. It might be topic 3 that is in fact the best place for you to build a business. You’re still very interested in it. You’re still passionate about it and you still got skills. It might not be in number one place but there’s a market there.
Let’s face it. In the end, there is no point in building an online business if there’s no business to be had. Business is about money. If there’s no business there, if there’s no way to turn it into money and no one else is selling any products, then you’re wasting your time. That’s a hobby. If you want to build and do a hobby, that’s fine. Go ahead. Continue reading on because this book will help you with that. But if you’re looking to build a business, it’s important you find the niche that’s willing to spend money.
One of the things I’ve seen multiple times is people put a lot of effort into building a website and the product only to find that that market doesn’t have any cash. For example, an extreme one, you might say “Okay I’m going to produce a book on this topic for early teens because they need to learn about a specific topic.” That’s fantastic except early teens don’t have credit cards because it’s not legal for them to own a credit card so how are they supposed to buy it online? Yes, I know some kids have access to a credit card. But realistically, most early teens do not have access to a way to pay online. How are you going to sale to them? You need to sell to the parents, don’t you?
But if the parents aren’t interested in that topic, why would they be looking for it? How do you target the early teens when they don’t have a way of paying? You can’t target the parents because they’re not interested. It becomes quite difficult. Selling over the internet might not be the best way to target that market. You might need to go and arrange to speak in schools and then sell the books for cash to the schools. Your market might actually be the education market, not for teens themselves.
This is why we have to do our research. It’s so important to understand that just because we think that it’s a great idea and just because we’re passionate about it doesn’t mean there’s a business there. The worst part is sometimes you don’t discover this till after you’ve done all the work. Sometimes, you’ve got to learn the hard way. That’s not true. Any fault of your own, it’s just that it looks like there’s a market there.
Either way, do your research. Find a niche. Think about the fact that you want them to give up money because if you think you’re going to make all your money from advertising which is what a lot of people used to do. You’re sadly mistaken. Unless you have lots and lots of traffic, you’re not going to make a lot of money. I can tell you based on experience that even with a couple of thousand visitors a day to a website, you’re still only talking about making $100-$200 a day if you’re really, really lucky. Most times, it’s less than $50 a day from the advertising.
Be aware. If you’re going to make money from advertising, you need large numbers of people to make it worthwhile. You still need a product that you can sell or a service.