The Thinking Behind The Adventures in Internet Marketing
I asked my subscribers for their feedback recently. I simply posed the question: ‘What do you want to learn?’
One of the many replies I recieved was from a guy called Ian who asked a couple of very good questions. I thought that rather than just answering him via e-mail, I would share the questions and my answers to them.
So here goes:
Do you look for the niche first then create a product around it or do you have an idea for a product then research it’s viability?
This is an interesting one. The truth is, I’ve done it both ways but from my experience, there’s only one way that is very likely to work:
- Find a niche that you have some interest in – The interest isn’t vital but helps to determine where you start looking.
- Find out if there are people selling to that market – Run a search for all the terms you can think of relating to that niche and see if there are Google ads for it. Also look to see if there are people on the first page with things to sell on their site.
- Find out if there are people buying in that market (this is vital) – Forums within your niche are a good place for this. Also, look on Clickbank and Amazon to see if there are products out there. On Clickbank you can see if the product is actually selling.
- Find out what they want to buy – Note that I didn’t say ‘need’ to buy. Again, best way is to ask them. Go to forums and see what they’re discussing and what problems aren’t being solved well enough by others.
- Then create a product around that and place it on Clickbank.
When I first started, I created a product that I thought the market needed. It was a lot harder to sell than subsequent products because I was attempting to sell them something I thought they needed. In fact, I should have looked into what they wanted to buy. I also needed a market full of rabid buyers – ideally people who are obsessed by their field of interest. The classic example are golfers, but there are hundreds out there.
One advanced strategy that my mentor shared with me is
to actually set up a sales page for a product before the product’s created. Send traffic to it using Google Adwords and actually take the money for the product. Then refund them saying that you’ve sold out but that you will send them a free copy when you have more available. If you get loads of buyers, you can go and create the product. If not, you’ve only spent a short amount of time finding out that it won’t work. If you have the money to spend on a campaign on Google Adwords, you could try this. I haven’t given it a go but I know it’s a method that works for him.
Better still, find an affiliate marketing system that works and use that to see what the demand for existing products is like. That way you’ll be doing your market research while still earning.
When researching, what tools do you use and what criteria do you use to evaluate the worthiness of the venture?
Ok, here’s the stages of research and the tools I use, more or less in the order I use them:
Niche Research
- Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- Keyword Spy (I use the plugin so that when I’m searching, I can see what the competition is like): http://labs.keywordspy.com/plugin/
Firstly, I’ll use the keyword tool to see if there are keywords I can rank for with relative ease. If they have high competition, then I tend to ignore them. If they have relatively low competition and a good number of searches (over 1000 per month) then I know I can combine all the smaller search keywords to make a lot of traffic (assuming I can rank well for most of them). I also ensure that the keywords are very specific, such as specific names of products, or better still ‘buy KEYWORD’. As much as possible I ensure I have only the type of words that people use when they’re actively looking to buy.
I look to see how many links my competitors have using the Keyword Spy tool. If they have over about 5,000 I tend to not bother and look at another keyword. There are easier ones to rank for than that.
- Google Search: http://www.google.com
Once I’m at Google, I can run searches on the keywords I’ve found to see if there are people advertising. Between 2 and 4 advertisers is a perfect number as there’s not masses of competition, but enough to show there’s a market in that keyword.
Market Research
Now that I’ve identified a market, I need to find out what it wants. People tend not to want what they need, so don’t associate the two. Find out what they ‘want’ as that desire is far stronger. If people only bought what they needed, there would be no fat people in the world!
Firstly, I check that others are already selling successfully to that market. If a product or book has made it to Amazon, there’s a strong chance that there’s a market for it. I also check a number of other sites to see if they have products for that market.
The sites I look through are:
- eBay – http://www.eBay.com
- Amazon – http://www.Amazon.com
- Clickbank – http://www.Clickbank.com
- eBay Pulse – http://pulse.ebay.com/
- Google Trends – This is good for showing me what is hot on Google Search right now. http://www.google.com/trends
- Twitter Search – Very up-to-date feedback on what’s being discussed. http://search.twitter.com
- PayDotCom – http://paydotcom.com/
- Magazines.com – If there’s a magazine about my specific niche then I’m good to go as those things cost a lot to get on the shelves. http://www.magazines.com
Assuming I find some products on at least some of those sites, then I know that there’s a market who wants to buy stuff.
I then find forums in that niche. Best thing to do is to simply type ‘YOUR KEYWORDS forum’ into Google and look through the first couple of pages for forums in the niche. For example: ‘Labrador Puppy Training forum.’
If there are forums, join them and become part of the community to see what people like and want. For example, in the internet marketing/make money online market, The Warrior Forum is a good resource and also somewhere you can sell products.
Hope that’s proven useful to you. It’s best to find the sites above that work for your niche and then explore that niche to find what people buy and what they want to buy before creating a product.
Leave a comment below and let me know if you have any other queries, questions or quizzes!
Matt
Related posts:
Hi Matt (and readers),
Loving this post because it makes me think of the classic mistake I made of thinking of a problem which marketers are likely to have and making a product to meet that perceived need. For me, it turned out pretty difficult to even give it away.
Definitely easier to research market desires, then either CREATE a product using your own creativity to make your own product, or simply LOCATE an affiliate product that you believe will help your people (otherwise don’t bother). You don’t want to make just a quick buck – you want to build a long term business.
A couple of ideas to add more value to the incredible amount of value in this post already:
1) Another research tool is openbook.org which can be used to reveal keywords or phrases in Facebook statuses where people have chosen ‘everyone’ within their security settings.
MONEY MAKING TIP FOR MATT’S READERS
There is some luck required with the timing of searches but to show you possibilities…
Go to openbook.org
Type in a service which people need. For example: need a website
The results you get back are recent status updates in Facebook with “need a website” (or similar) returned from people who may have a timely need for that service. Being as though the website is based upon people that have everyone as their security settings, you can assume these people will accept friend requests and contact since they’re liberal with their privacy.
From this point, judge if they are in the market to buy a website now. If they are, make friends with them and offer them the service.
Capture the details of the site they want, take it away and get a quote. Then go to Odesk.com (or other outsourcing provider) and get a quote for the work.
Give yourself a big markup on top for effectively being “Project Manager”. Remember that the website will be built cheap and the people in the Phillipines will be being paid a relative fortune for their economy and the buyer will save a fortune from buying from their contacts, so it really is a win-win-win situation.
You can use this same strategy in Twitter…
Type into the Twitter search: “need a website” -http -www
and see what comes up. Likely there are some tweets about people looking for a website but not providing a link (like sellers would). Links do not appear as you SUBTRACTED them from your results by using the minus operator, so http and www are subtracted from results. You can then direct message them with your offer. Have a separate account for this activity and don’t build too many followers, otherwise your Direct Messages inbox will be too bust to manage and receive the messages you need to get.
Another tip… Ask your prospects (your list, social networks and blog) Ask them what they want using a tool like Survey Monkey. From this point, if you’re really organised, you can segment your list into categories for Aweber, Facebook and Twitter. Offer them something really cool for participating in the survey – perhaps a low priced (but high value) paid product you own for free will get you the best response rates.
This is definitely what I’ll be doing when I get my BUYERS list to a decent figure.
Thanks for the great high quality post again Matt. I think the tendency (and I’ve been guilty) is for new internet marketers to skip the research and get straight onto the fun stuff like building the list, product creation, creating the blog, etc.
As an interesting sidenote, some might not know that Tim Ferris used Google AdWords to test the book title “4 Hour Work Week” which got the most clickthroughs, so he was confident the book would sell the most copies since the book title is the main thing that sells the book.
Speak soon,
Wayne
Hey brother,
You and me both! I think we both made similar mistakes at the beginning – creating a product we thought the market needed, instead of finding out if they did…
Wow, thanks for sharing some great material. I’d never heard of OpenBook.org. It’s a great idea and a very good place to research stuff. I’ve done the same thing using Twitter Search as you suggest.
I’ve been using a strategy not unlike the one you mention for Survey Monkey on the Warrior Forum to build my buyers list. Ben Hulme showed me it (it’s his new course that I reviewed recently).
Cool stuff about Tim Ferris too… Where do you find all this stuff out?!
Talk to you soon.
Matt
Hi Matt…it’s Ian here…the question setter !!
Thanks for the response to the question. It’s always interesting to hear about the mindset of a Marketer because eveyone has a different personality and therefore a different approach to things. I guess for me, what sums it up was when you said “…i’ve tried both approaches”.
I’ve spent many a year in mainly offline marketing but my current company straddles both on and offline and the one thing that i definately endorse is research, research, research before you do anything !
It’s easy to get carried away thinking you’ve stumbled across the ‘next big thing’ spend months creating an offering only to find out no-one wants the damn thing.
The one other thing that i’ve discovered that runs true whether it’s on or offline is when it comes to driving traffic to your product.
I’ve found that there’s NEVER a silver bullet to success. It’s ALWAYS ‘a bit from here and a bit from there’ (ie a bit of Twitter, a bit of Facebook, a bit of PR, a bit of Forums, a bit of Articles, a bit of print etc etc)….sure, some work better than others but don’t simply ignore the ones that don’t seem to be working at this time because they may ‘kick off’ in the near future.
Anyway, thanks again for the response.
Ian
Hey Ian,
Thanks for dropping by!
I think you’re absolutely right in your endorsement of research. It’s one of those things that makes or breaks the business. Even if it’s just basic keyword research and checking out the competition/market, it already puts you in a much stronger position. It’s interesting that most of the same principles can be applied to the offline part of your business as well as the online part.
The problem with IM is exactly what you mentioned – The Next Big Thing or what I call Magpie Syndrome (I wrote about it here: http://www.adventuresininternetmarketing.net/learning-from-mistakes-in-internet-marketing-magpie-syndrome-maintaining-focus/ ).
Your point about traffic is also true. Some of my best traffic sources are the ones I’ve worked at and where I provide a lot of good value. That said, I’m also expanding into more paid traffic sources too, which are faster in terms of results.
Thanks for joining the adventure!
Matt