“Build it and they will come”! You think so? Well think again. The number one reason why most Internet businesses fail is because NOT enough research was done.
You would be surprised how many budding Internet marketers spend the early stages of building their business by focusing on the product. BIG mistake! You could have the best product in the world but if you don’t have a market that is hungry for it, you will WASTE a lot of TIME, MONEY and ENERGY.
The key to building a successful Internet business is to do your homework up front in the form of research. Internet research involves the researching of keywords across several places on the net to determine the level of interest for a related product. Once you have identified that there is indeed a desire or need for this type of product, then and only then can you move forward and create, or find, a product to fit the need. It’s all about giving people what they WANT!
Here is a typical example of how you would go about conducting research for a particular niche. Let’s say that you want to find out about “Fishing” so that you could maybe create an Ebook to sell on the subject. For researching keywords and niche popularity you will likely need to narrow your target niche, for instance fishing may be too broad, so maybe narrow the search to “Fly-Fishing”. You need to be specific, not broad. There is too much competition in a broad market.
There is a great service that Google provides to begin the research process called Google Suggest. If you type in a general niche or keyword like “FlyFishing” not only will Google Suggest tell you how many times it has been searched for but it also suggests keywords, which will take you from a general niche to a more targeted niche. It is a great tool and saves a lot of time and effort.
Make sure you write down or print out the data for your records and further analysis. Once you have the answers you need from Google Suggest, you should to move on to continue the research. You should visit several sites researching your topic. Only when you have enough data from various sites to analyze, will you be able to make a wise decision about the potential profitability of that niche.
As I said in the beginning, thorough research must be done. You should never rush this step. It can mean the difference between success and disaster down the road. Take as much time as you need to do justice to your research efforts.
Here are some sites you should visit to gather data on your niche topic.Google Suggest http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Google Zeitgeist http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
Amazon – see how many books are on the market for this topic already. You want less than 100.http://www.amazon.com
Yahoo Buzz Index http://buzz.yahoo.com/
Lycos 50 daily report http://50.lycos.com/
Ebay hot categories report
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html
Shopping.com - Consumer demand index.http://www.shopping.com
Google – Look at the ads in the right column to see how many are related to information products, not stores selling equipment. You need to see if people are spending money on this topic.http://www.google.com
ClickBank - Research how many affiliate products on your topic are being sold. http://www.clickbank.comAll of the above will give you a good indication of what people want. One last note, you can find relevant keywords at:www.nichebotclassic.com