I recently got an edition of SmallBusinessNewz in my inbox with an article by Chris Crum on “7 Steps to Earning Customer Trust Online”. The complete article can be found here. I thought it was worth mentioning here, as I’ve been striving to build credibility and trust in my own online store. At the risk of ruining your read of the actual article, I’ve re-summarized the 7 points here as well, though with my own notes.
Chris starts with a stat claiming that 81% of consumers don’t trust small online businesses. Shocking? Not really, if you think about it. Personally I’ve grown over-used to trusting things online, and I’ve slapped down my credit card for more offers than I care to think about. So it came as a small surprise to me the other day when my sister asked my advice on buying a study guide online. I had a look at the sales letter, and turns out it was hosted by ClickBank. To me, that was golden. I realized though, that for most people, at least that first initial ebook purchase can be quite intimidating. The same holds true for physical goods.
So what’s important?
1. Branding
You might ask what can a small company do in terms of branding? Well there’s lots. You don’t have to be Coca Cola with $58.2 billion of brand equity to be successful at branding. I’m working hard on this with my store, DigitalFrameGuy.com. Putting forward a consistent image, whether it be your logo, your signature, or your marketing claims, all helps to build your brand. People tend to trust the familiar more than the unknown, unless you’re one heck of a copywriter.
2. Make Yourself Appear Larger
Do you have a toll free 800 number? If not, go get one for $10 a month. I specifically chose an 800 number over cheaper 888 or 877 variants, simply for the psychological “big company” factor. If you hear 1-800, your brain has been trained to think corporation. Even though it is just me, there are ways to appear much larger.
Using your home address? Throw a “Suite 110″ in front of it and mail yourself a letter. I’m actually trying this as I write it, but I’ve read it works. Plus, chances are “Suite 110″ sounds more official than your street address. By law you need to include your address on emails (for instance if you use Aweber), so why not try to use that as a trust builder?
On your email and voicemail, you can create separate departments as well. Now, you don’t want to confuse people or cause unnecessary bureacracy, but separate lines for service and sales is usually pretty straightforward. You can do that all for free with Ring Central.
I’ve got more ideas, but perhaps that is a whole separate post
3. Design
Site design is crucial. Ever visited one of those websites that was clearly somebody’s 1990’s brainchild that never grew to maturity? The instant I see a site like that, red flags and alarm bells start up even as I’m clicking back to Google. People tend not to trust the digital donkeys that don’t have modern site designs or technology. Plus, the site needs to be straightforward and easy to use. Have you searched for your site in the search engines, and then followed the process all the way through to checkout? I did that the other day and found a glaring error that I fixed immediately. You might be surprised with what you find.
4. Reputation
I care quite a bit about my businesses’ online reputation. Once that gets dragged through the mud it would be very hard to recover. Because I want people to trust me, I’ve given my customers my 100% guarantee that I’ll take back their order for any reason within 30 days. If my supplier won’t take it back, then I’ll be on the hook for it. However, I’d prefer to sell it on Ebay for a bit of a loss than to take the PR hit in some forum or blog somewhere. I recently stumbled upon a blog where the owner had had a run in with one of my competitors (do you Google to see what your competition is up to?) and he had quite the horror story going on! I jumped into the comments, trying to console him while at the same time explaining how my store was different. There are emotional people online, and they won’t keep silent. Use it to your advantage. Provide much more than they anticipated and they’ll heap praises on you! Let the down, and you better look out!
5. Security and Privacy
SSL certificates. Privacy Policies. No, you cannot sell or rent your list. Pretty straightfoward, but some merchants still aren’t getting it.
6. Testimonials
People are far more likely to believe someone else who’s walked a mile in their shoes than they are to believe you. Get over it. Once you get over it, use it to your advantage. Don’t have any testimonials yet? Have you asked? Send out an email asking for testimonials to all your past clients. Offer them a discount or something if you want. But you must use testimonials - they are a very powerful marketing tool!
7. Humanize Your Business
I started out right from the beginning with this one, calling the store “Digital Frame Guy” which has a personal feel to it. My logo has a guy in it, and I’ve tried to keep the site copy personal, especially the guarantees and such.
Looking for more ways to personalize your site? Put a picture of yourself the About Us page, or do some employee profiles. My next step is video - I’ll shortly be rolling out a series of videos for the site which I hope will both drive traffic and build a personal touch for the site. If you’re doing a video series, you’ve got a great opportunity for branding there as well. More on that in a different post, once the videos are out. We can’t give everything away all at once, can we? =)
Do you have any other suggestions or comments for building trust online?
These days it seems like there is no shortage of review sites out there, promoting this product or that. I recently had the opportunity to listen to Russell Brunson on a webinar and he was talking about a different spin on the old trick. It was new to me anyways, so I thought you might benefit.
The idea here is that you pick the affiliate product you’re going to market. I’m assuming you have an idea how to pick a decent product, if not let me know and I’ll post about that later on. So, assuming you’ve chosen a decent affiliate product to promote, the next step is to find out how it fits into the value ladder.
The Value Ladder
Russell talks a lot about his value ladder. In brief, the steps are as follows:
Some sort of freebie
Some sort of text based ebook. Could be free or cheap.
Audio based version of the same thing. Could be worth a bit more.
Video based version of the same thing. Again, worth more.
Home study course developing the niche a lot further.
Seminar, could be a webinar.
Workshop. At this point we’re talking about in-person events.
Live coaching.
Direct one on one coaching with yourself.
That’s the value ladder in a nutshell. I know, you’re sitting there thinking, how could I possibly get all that going for me? Well, it takes quite a lot of work, and the good news is, you don’t have to have it all working for you to take advantage of the concept.
So you’ve got your affiliate product, (note the affiate product - you don’t need your own product to make this work), the next step is to figure out where on the value ladder your chosen product sits.
Let’s pick a mid-level internet marketing how to product for our example here, just because there are so few of them out there ;-). Let’s call it Affiliate Cash Grabber. It is an in-depth guide to affiliate marketing, and it really has a ton of great ideas and content.It is a mixture of video and ebook.
The first step is to see if you can get a copy of it for free, from the author. Try the WHOIS information on the site the sales page is listed on. You should find a phone number there. Give it a try. Barring that, you can try the contact email.
If you’re utterly unsuccessful at getting a free copy of the product, but you really want to promote it, you might want to consider buying it yourself. Use your own affiliate link, so it doesn’t cost you much. If the product is on Clickbank, you can ethically use your own links as long as your account has processed sales from more than five different credit card numbers. Don’t do this on a brand new account, but rather from an established account you’re using for other sales.
Sit down and immerse yourself in their product. Chances are you will learn something you never knew before. Take notes. After you’re done, create your review product. This will be essentially a Cliff Notes version of the product. You can talk about what you learned, or how you think this could be applied, or how you know this is going to help your own business, or whatever. You get the idea.
Depending on where the product is on the value ladder, you want to create a product that is one step down on that same ladder. Now, because Affiliate Cash Grabber (I hope that isn’t a real product) is both video and ebook, you can pick what method you want to use. Video might be a good choice, because it is perceived as higher value, and it might take less effort to create a quick review on video than to produce a written report. Take your pick.
Once you’ve decided, you create your product and use that as your giveaway on the squeeze page. You then upsell from that free product to the real deal. It is a lot easier to sell to someone who has already “done business” with you, even free business, than to get someone completely cold to drop their MasterCard on the digital counter.
Alternatively, you can use a service like Traffic Geyser to upload your review video to a ton of different video sharing sites around the internet. If you do this, make sure you put a title in your video somewhere, showing people how to find your site.
So there you have it, the Value Ladder approach to selling an affiliate product in a nutshell. Once you’ve got everything set up, you’ll still need to promote your site in the usual fashion, however this method should give you a good edge over the competition.
I’ve been getting Dan Kennedy’s newsletter for several months now. Each month it is packed full of unique sales and business advice, with great testimonials and case studies. Anyways, I recently went over to Amazon and picked up enough of Dan’s books to get free shipping. Today I received my package, so I dug right into “No B.S. Sales Success. The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners & Make Tons of Money Guide.”
That’s a bit of a mouthful right there, but once you get into it he really does have a lot of insight into sales. In my previous job, I worked closely with our sales force. I wasn’t selling myself, but I worked with those who did. This book is therefore very interesting to me. I often wondered how I would do in sales, but ultimately chose to work for myself rather than pursue sales. I think the experience would have been beneficial, but I can make as much or more money from home doing far less work, so I guess laziness won that round.
Anyways, here’s a tidbit from the book.
Keep It Simple, Salesman (or Stupid, if you’re down on yourself)
Dan talks about “complexity creep” and how that tends to sneak up on us unawares. I know I love having systems in place for different things, and that can actually be a detriment to the sales process. I’m not selling directly, but I am selling on the internet. So how does this relate? Well, we need to make sure that the website is geared towards the sale. Everything on the site needs to be pointing the customer towards handing over their credit card. Articles can be extolling the benefits of your product, helping the prospect to imagine what life will be like once they have it. Testimonials should be there, telling people what a great experience it was dealing with you. Basically, don’t miss anything you can have in the mix to point people towards that sale - but don’t let those very things get in the way of the sale! Make sure that the sale is always easy to get to, technically easy to complete, and overall as efficient a process as possible.
P.T. Barnum once said “No man ever went broke overestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
Even if you think your prospect is highly trained, intelligent, and attentive, don’t take that for granted! Boil everything down to the simplest common denominator. Dan mentions that salespeople often overestimate how smart and sophisticated their customers are, because it feeds their own egos. People like to think they serve the best out there. That may be true, but there are a lot more people that aren’t the smartest of the smartest out there, and their dollars are just as green as the next person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put down the customer, I’m just saying you need to present things in a way that everyone is going to understand intuitively.
A few weeks ago many Canadians were happy to hear that the iPhone was finally coming to Canada. I even wrote a post about the fact that I was thinking of getting one. Getting an iPhone would require me to drop my current carrier, Bell, and go to Rogers.
Well, since this blog is about marketing, I thought the recent updates were blog-worthy. First, some background, courtesy of BCTV and YouTube:
The essence of the above clip is that Rogers is overcharging for the iPhone plan, and people are TICKED OFF!
Now, I realize that the purpose of every business is to make money. But there is more than one way to do that, in every business. In fact, there are three ways to do that.
1. You sell to more people.
2. You sell more products to the same people.
3. You sell more expensive products to the same people.
Clearly, Rogers is subscribing to #3. Now, in many businesses it makes a lot of sense to raise the price of your product. I’ve heard a lot of good internet marketers saying that by and large people should be charging more for the info products they sell online, and I think they’re right. There is a degree to which the market is elastic enough to accept the increase, and still respond positively.
However, in the case of Rogers, they are clearly going about this the wrong way. They have over judged the elasticity of the market, and they’re squeezing it for every bleeding red cent they can get.
Now, consider what we know:
1. Rogers knows that they have a monopoly on the iPhone. They happen to be the only carrier in Canada that is technologically capable of running it on their network, so for the foreseeable future, nobody can compete.
2. The iPhone is being hailed (whether you agree or not) as the phone that is revolutionizing the marketplace. It is changing the way people interact with their phones, their computers, yadda yadda yadda. Basically it is tremendously anticipated.
3. Did I mention no one can compete?
Okay, so Rogers can go about their marketing strategy a couple of ways. They can jack the price up really high, banking on the fact that a ton of people REALLY REALLY REALLY want this phone and they’ll pay anything to have it. Assuming people didn’t mind the prices, they would hopefully gain new customers coming over for the iPhone.
Unfortunately, some marketing bonehead totally over estimated the market’s price elasticity on this one, and they’ve crossed the line. Way crossed it. So much to the point that you saw in the video clip, where long time customers are now talking of buying out of their contracts just to get away from Rogers!!! WOW! Party foul!
So instead of gaining new customers, Rogers is LOSING customers! On top of that, they’re losing them by the thousands. If you checkout www.ruinediphone.com you will see that the petition is up to 43,910 (July 6 9pm) and growing steadily. That is 10,000 more than yesterday. So even if they had calculated on losing some customers by hiking the price, I don’t think anyone considered the incredible bad press they’re attracting right now!
Now, consider a second way they could have gone about this. Knowing they had an upcoming monopoly on an incredibly highly anticipated product, they could have come out with some killer rate plan, geared towards JUST the iPhone, and released this with a huge media splash. The media would have been overwhelmingly in favour of it, and they likely would have picked up thousands of NEW customers. We’re talking a lot of three year contracts here. Out of every thousand, I’m sure at least some would hang around beyond their contracts for round two.
A few weeks ago I wrote a post on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mturk.com) and some of the potential I saw in it to get stuff done on the cheap. Well, since that day I’ve been running multiple HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) on the Turk and I’ve been getting some great results.
If you’ve got a blog or any kind of website, chances are you’d like for people to be looking at it, right? Well, one great way to do that currently is to promote it on social media websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Facebook; the list is seemingly endless. You could spend entire days creating accounts at each of these sites, write a small review of your site and post the link, and in the end you would probably see a small gain in traffic. However, what if you could accomplish all that for 50 cents? Without spending any time on it yourself? Would you do it? I sure would. In fact, I did.
As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m currently in the process of launching a new webstore selling digital picture frames and as such I’ve been trying my best to find ways to promote it. So I created a HIT on Amazon’s web services (Mechanical Turk) asking people to bookmark my site on their favorite social network. My HIT looked something like the following:
Bookmark the URL http://www.digitalframeguy.com
Using one of the following sites:
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.propeller.com/
http://spurl.net/
http://diigo.com/
http://myjeeves.ask.com/
http://www.connectedy.com/index.php
http://www.myvmarks.com/
http://www.bookmarktracker.com/bt/home
http://www.oyax.com/
http://www.jumptags.com/
http://www.mylinkvault.com/
http://buddymarks.com/
http://linkagogo.com/
http://bibsonomy.org/
http://backflip.com/
http://www.mister-wong.com/
http://blinklist.com/
http://furl.net/
Include in the title or description one of the following terms:
digital picture frame(s)
digital photo frame(s)
digital frame(s)
wireless photo frame(s)
You may use either the singular or plural version of the keyword.
Please provide the URL of the bookmark in comments to receive payment for the HIT.
You can complete this HIT up to 5 times if you use a different bookmarking site each time.
So you can see I tried to make things as easy as possible for the turker to complete. Most of these people already have accounts at one or another of the social networks, so all they have to do is login and link to you. I offered 10 cents for these, only because I wanted a bunch in a hurry. 10 cents is actually a decent price for a HIT such as this. For another site, where I was more patient, I only offered 1 cent per bookmark, and I still got good results, though slower. As such, it is important to decide on your budget. It is worth taking the time to figure out if you only want to spend 25 cents promoting your site, or if you can actually afford a full $2.00. The choice is yours.
So I’ve basically given you a blueprint here for one way to get as many hiqh quality backlinks to your site as you want from the social media sites. If you want, you can specify only Digg links, or whatever you value. The great thing about this is the search engines love social media right now, most of the sites have high PR, and you get a link to your site that typically includes the keyword phrase of your choice. All for a few cents.
What’s not to love about that?
EDIT: I just got some article HITs back from Mechanical Turk and two of them were so good that I wanted to award a bonus to the authors. FYI - here’s how to do it. In the Manage HIT interface, where you see their unique ID number, beside the HIT results, click on that number (it is a hyperlink) and a pop down menu will appear. You can then award a bonus of any amount you wish through that link. I just felt bad paying 50 cents for these two great articles, so I doubled it for them.
Lately I’ve seen a couple different product launches, all geared towards taking advantage of eBay. It’s like a whole bunch of people suddenly found a jar of eBay pixie dust and started throwing it around the marketplace. The two I’ve come across are the Four Tier Annihilation method and the eBay Code. Four Tier is your standard $77 ebook with a video upsell. The eBay Code is more like $1497, not sure if there’s an upsell (I didn’t get this one, my pockets aren’t that deep!).
So anyways, being the eternal sucker that I am for a good sales letter, I picked up a copy of Four Tier Annihilation, and read through most of it today. Here’s the basic plot. Guy is broke, living in a friend’s basement, etc. Buys every internet marketing product out there and fails miserably until he stumbles upon eBay by accident one day. One thing leads to another until now he makes tens of thousands per month, and has trained many others to do the same, not to mention you! Strange how many of these stories all sound so familiar… yet I digress.
So cut to the chase, right? Ok, so he advocates a few different ways of selling on eBay. The first that is dealt with is dropshipping. Probably most people have heard about that. Dropshipping is this sweet setup (which I’m trying to get going with my digital frame store) whereby you secure a supplier to ship small quantities of product on demand, directly to your customer. So you make the sale, then the dropshipper fills the order. You never carry inventory. It really is a terrific setup, allowing the seller to automate his business as much as possible. Anyways, probably the best part of the dropshipping segment is where he talks about how he goes about doing his research into which eBay niches to enter. Using the advanced search feature in eBay you can checkout all the closed sales in each category. Find an item that looks decent, and has closed for a good price consistently, then lookup the seller in a tool such as Goofbay. From here you can see how much they’re selling, and judge whether there is profit potential in the niche. Quite fun to find sellers that are doing $10,000 a month in eBay sales. Then he goes into finding suppliers who will dropship for you. This is the part that I’ve personally had the least success with so far. Mind you, at the time the product I was looking for was a bit harder to find. I’m quite interested in taking another stab at it with a more common product.
So moving on from dropshipping to info products. You’ve probably seen the $1 ebook craze on eBay. Well apparently that is going to be changing, as eBay has brought in new terms and conditions disallowing download-able products. Of course this means you just have to outsource CD creation to a company like Kunaki.com and charge more for your product. Still, it will keep a lot of people out. So he talks about how to get ebooks you can legitimately sell as your own, without spending a whole lot, and how to find the good niches. There’s a lot of good information there.
One little nugget mentioned is worth gold, in my opinion. He talked about how after successfully selling a bunch of cellphones like crazy on eBay he created a short ebook on how to sell phones like crazy on eBay, including the contact info of some of his suppliers (note: withhold your best supplier for yourself!). Then he would advertise this ebook right beside his cellphone listings, and sell it for $47 or so. Basically, look at me - I’ve got a successful cellphone store on eBay, and I’ll tell you exactly how to do it to! Cool concept. Of course, only 3% of people who buy info products actually act on the information that they contain (according to him - not sure where the stat comes from or the validity of it). So because only 3% will act on it, you’re not even really exposing yourself to much increased competition, plus you’re already established in the marketplace. Sounds like he ended up making more cash off the ebook sales than off the cellphones!
He goes on to talk about flipping websites on eBay, outsourcing the creation of simple turn-key web businesses, etc. Basically there is lots of good content in ebook. I’m not really concerned about giving away all the Four Tier Annihilation secrets in this short post, as the ebook is 175 pages or so. Nothing terribly mind-breaking in there, but definitely more than enough information to make a healthy living on.
I was talking to a friend of mine today about his computer. A few weeks ago, he mentioned to me that his computer was really slow. I recommded he un-install Norton, because it takes up lots of resources, and go with a free antivirus that I was using (AVG). Anyways, today he told me he had done that, and we got to talking about Norton. He assumed that it was one of the best, but I was quick to point out that when I had looked into it by reading reviews and stuff online, Norton rarely even hit the top 5. And yet he, along with millions of others, happily thinks Norton is one of the best out there!
Why do I say this? On a blog that is supposedly focused on marketing? Well, because although I previously knew this truth on an intellectual level, today it just sunk a little deeper:
“He who markets best is best”
Read it a couple times and let it sink in. Marketing and sales is often all about perceptions. He who markets best, builds the best impression in the minds of his customers. Who decides who buys a particular product? That’s right, the customer does. We can’t force their hand. Therefore, regardless of any empirical product testing, if you have captured first place in the consumer’s minds, you’ve won. Forget the product reviews and everything else, that is all secondary. If the customer believes you’re the best, just don’t give them a reason to think otherwise. Give them a half-decent product and they’ll love you for it. Look at Microsoft. Although it is starting to change, millions of people believe that they are still the best out there (for their application) and continue to buy Windows every time. As long as Microsoft keeps producing a half-reasonable product, that trend will continue, because they have the minds of the masses. (Side note: In my opinion, Vista is now lowering the bar a little bit too far… see previous post).
Anyways, this little epidsode had a fair bit of meaning for me because I’m currently working on developing an info-product in a niche where there is lots of competition (for sale, and for free!!). One of the products is currently selling like hotcakes, and has been for several years (still has a ClickBank gravity of 70 (down from several hundred in the heyday). I bought this product to check it out, and in my frank opinion, it really sucks at what it is trying to accomplish. Do you think the creator cares? He’s making a killing, and it’s all because he has the best sales letter out there (I’ve checked over 15 competitors).
Anyways, it was encouraging to remember that as an internet marketer, even if I don’t end up with the best product out there I can still have a good measure of success, because at the end of the day, it’s all about marketing.
I recently read a post talking about how recession is going to be great for affiliate marketing. Although a bit shy on details, he did make a couple good points. The general idea is that merchandisers tighten up their marketing budgets going into the recession. So far so good. The traditional forms of advertising are becoming more expensive anyway, (print, TV, radio etc) so those dollars will naturally gravitate to he most efficient marketing method - the internet. This means a huge influx of marketing dollars all over the internet.
I would add though that supply and demand economics dictates a stabilization over time - there will always be tremendous marketing value in TV ads for example, and if they temporarily become over-priced, more dollars will flow to the internet, but eventually this will cause TV prices to come back to a sustainable level. As long as there is value in any marketing channel it will never cease to exist, even though there may be large fluctuations in price or use.
I’ve been thinking about this topic a bit lately. One of my best affiliate offers is a loan product, and people sometimes ask me if business is slowing down. Fact is, I don’t really know, because I keep looking for new ways to promote it and it keeps growing. If it keeps growing, people are still getting loans in droves (personal loans).
I think a smart affiliate marketer will take advantage of whatever current market / economic trends are happening. Recession appears to be on the menu for the near future, so we might as well start evaluating to see how we can take advantage of it. People make money in market ups and downs - just a lot less people make money on the downs! If we’re smart we can be among the few!
Have you ever dressed your website up as a giant carrot? Probably not. If you have, please let me know ASAP because I’d love to hear that story!
Occasionally you hear about unique marketing methods that work really well. Someone comes up with a brilliant idea, and implements it. Often these ideas are quite cheap, but just require you to be unusual, which a lot of people aren’t comfortable with.
A good example is a story I recently read where a guy dressed up as a giant carrot, and started going to events around Saint Paul, Minnesota. His business, the Crazy Carrot Juice Bar, got a huge amount of free advertising in the newspapers, radio and even on TV. He quickly grew the company to 5 stores with 65 employees, and then sold it to Jamba Juice, presumably making a bucketful in the process.
Here’s the best part: the suit cost him $73 to make.
Examples of this kind of marketing are all over the place - the question is, how can you, in your business, make an impact? Chances are there is a way you haven’t thought of to really get your business the public attention it needs to become profitable. As affiliate marketers, we’re typically confined to the internet (not always though - that’s a different topic), but how can we use these concepts to promote our products? Viral videos can make a big splash, and blog contest giveaways can be huge as well. There are lots of ideas out there - which one will you use?
To succeed in business on the internet, you need to pick a niche and specialize. There simply isn’t a lot of room for more eBays and Amazons out there. There will always be a few of these uber-players in the game; ingowever the vast majority of successful businesses on the internet are specializing in a niche.
I’m going to assume that I don’t need to convince you of the merits of choosing a niche; it is one of the most talked about things in internet marketing. Instead, I wanted to focus on some concrete ways that you can go about identifying a market niche that is going to work for you. This process is well suited to those who are looking to develop a product of their own, though it will work equally well if you’re planning on building a site promoting affiliate products.
Researching a Market Niche
1. Brainstorm. Take a piece of paper and start writing any market idea that comes to mind. The conventional brainstorming wisdom applies - don’t discard any idea - just write it down! Even if you don’t think it is any good, write it down!
Think of your own hobbies or those of your friends. Think of a common problem in people’s lives - is there information out there, or a product, that can solve it? If you absolutely can’t think of anything, go to the public library or a good sized bookstore and have a look at their magazine section. Magazines represent topics people are interested in; topics that people are willing to pay money for more information on. Once you’ve got 25-30 topic ideas on paper you can move on to the next step.
2. Research Keywords. You don’t have to come up with an exhaustive and comprehensive list at this point of every keyword you’ll ever use in the niche. Rather, use this step to get a feel for the highest traffic keywords in your niche. Try to pick around 5. Go to SEOBook.com and use their free keyword tool. Type in what you think is the main keyword for the niche, and see what you can find out. There are likely other common variations or sub-niches you haven’t thought about.
3. Assess the Niche Potential. Ultimately, you want to be able to deeply penetrate your chosen niche. Go through your list and consider whether each niche has the potential for additional products. Would it be possible to create a home study course around it? A membership site? Something you could upsell your customers on after the initial product? How about a monthly newsletter? Is there sufficient depth that people are likely to pay for additional products? Is there a good selection of affiliate products available for that niche? Checkout the usual culprits for this: Clickbank, PayDotCom, CJ, LinkShare, etc. You might need to search around in your niche market to find some good products, then google those products + “affiliate” to see if there are affiliate programs available.
4. Understand the Niche. Now that you’ve hopefully narrowed down your list somewhat, take it to the library and see what kinds of magazines and books exist on your subject. What topics are they writing about? Are there sub-topics that have product potential? Keep your eyes open for complementary niches as well. Once you’ve developed a list of customers, people who have purchased your main product, you’ll want to be able to continue to use that list to sell your customers other related products in the future.
Another idea is to go to Amazon.com and type in your top 5 niche keywords from step 2. See what products come up. Amazon can show you a ton of useful information about your target niche. You can see what people thought of competing products (ie what they liked and disliked), as well as additional products that they purchased. Try to get a feel for the price points as well.
5. Check for a Community of Interest. Go to Google and type in your niche keywords and the word “forum” and see what comes up. Click on a bunch of the results. Are people talking about your niche market, or is it dead? If forums exist on the topic, check them out and see how many active users there are on the relevant threads. Try to get a feel for the topics they are discussing, and the level of participation. Take note of the best forums, as you’ll want to come back to these later on to participate and promote your own product.
Another idea is to go to blogsearch.google.com and search for your niche in there. See if blogs come up on the topic, if so, check them out for content and try to get a feel for their traffic volumes. Are people actively commenting on the posts? Identify the best forums and blogs, as you’ll want to come back to these later to participate and promote your own product. You can also look for article directories.
6. Check out the Competition. Run searches on the main keywords for your niche and see what paid ads come up on Google and Yahoo. What products are being promoted? What are they doing well that you can emulate, and what are they doing poorly that you can do better? Checkout the organic listings as well. Read their squeeze pages and sales letters. Do they have newsletters available? Sign up for them; see what they’re talking about. Keep your eyes open for products you could partner with in the future.
7. Don’t Slack Off! This might seem like a lot of work, and it is. Choosing a niche market is possibly the hardest part of the whole process, and arguably the most important. Put your head down and slog through it. Once you’re established later on you’ll be happy you did.
