Make More Money From Your Ideas

What's your market? If you're serving one market, stick to one blog - even if they are on different topics. If you're serving two or more distinct markets, then it might make sense to have a separate blog for each market.

Labels: blogs, niche marketing

Better to find a hungry niche with competition! If there's no competition, maybe it means that there's nobody interested in buying products in that niche.

There are various techniques to find a niche market, particularly one that draws a good response. One simple technique is to use the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool, which tells you how many people have been searching for certain words.

Labels: market research, niche marketing

"How do I find the best niche, according to what I know?"

The Overture search engine provides an excellent tool for researching various topics. Use this to type in words related to your topic, and it tells you how many people have searched for those words recently.

Find out more.

Labels: niche marketing

"At the NSAA convention you said the key to product is to understand your distribution before you produce the product. So, I still don't have a confident plan to sell ebooks."

Plan to sell them to your existing clients first. Here are some ways to do this:

• Send them an e-mail with a "pre-release offer" at a special price, or bundled with something else
• Write a number of e-books and put them on your Web site in a password-protected area for clients
• Write an e-book that's a follow-up to a training program, and make it available at a small additional fee
• When working with corporate clients, sell a "master licence" to the e-book for them to distribute throughout their organisation

Find out more.

Labels: niche marketing

"How do I get maximum return on the investment required to market the items? There's lots of options out there - and some free - but which of the many should I be doing?"

There's no definitive answer to this question, of course, because in many cases you will only know the return on investment after you test the market.

If possible, start by testing a small sample of the market before investing too much in a huge marketing push.

Also make sure that you're marketing to existing customers, not always looking to find new customers. Your existing customers are much more likely to buy again from you.

Finally, look at the many low cost promotion ideas available, both on and off the Internet.

Labels: market research, niche marketing, traffic generation

Market it to your existing customers first. They have already bought from you, so they know you and trust you. Many businesses make the mistake of looking for new customers before they know whether they've got anything to offer to existing customers.

Labels: loyalty, niche marketing

"How do I best leverage and increase awareness of my website when I am in an industry (agriculture) that is not technology adoptive?"

The first question to ask yourself is whether a Web site is the best way to promote yourself. If people in this industry don't regularly use the Web, then you might be wasting your time building a Web site.

But assuming that you've asked this and decided to go ahead, the way to increase awareness of your site is to use "off-line" strategies. That is, promote it in ways other than on the Internet itself. For example, if they have an industry magazine, write an article for it, and send them to your Web site for additional resources.

You'll probably have to give them strong incentives to visit your Web site. You might have to try harder than in other industries if they're not used to using the Web.

Labels: niche marketing, traffic generation

"I am setting up a website to market health products and information. This sector seems to be oversupplied. Is it still possible to set up a website for this industry and generate extremely good income from it?"

Yes, but "health" is too broad a topic. It's far too difficult to reach the right people cost-effectively.

I suggest you start by turning your thinking around. Rather than thinking of the products you will sell, find a market of people who are desperately looking for a solution to a problem. For example, in the health area, you might target:

• People recently diagnosed with diabetes
  
• Women bodybuilders
  
• Busy executives looking for more energy in their days
  

Make sure that you choose a market that's easy to reach - in other words, they all "hang out" at specific places.

When you know you've got a market seeking a solution to a problem, that's when you start giving them solutions.

Labels: market research, niche marketing

"I'm writing a book about [topic deleted] for women of all ages. What's the best way to market to this niche?"

"Women" isn't a niche! It's far too big. The only way to reach such a large market is to spend a lot of money on advertising, knowing that much of that advertising will be wasted because it will fall on deaf ears.

It's better to take a slice of that market and write your book for a more specific niche. That means you've got a smaller market, but your book will be more valuable to that market.

Here are some examples of narrower markets:

• Women re-entering the work force after raising a family
  
• Women recently appointed to managerial positions
  
• Single mothers with children younger than 5
  
• Female British Prime Ministers of the 20th century
  

OK, so the last option is probably too narrow! But gee, that would be a really relevant book for her, wouldn't it?

Labels: niche marketing

"How to quickly find a niche that people are really looking for?"

Start by searching inventory.overture.com for various words and phrases. This tells you how many people are searching Overture (a major search engine) for these words. The higher the number, the better.

Then I suggest you buy some Google advertising to find out whether there's any real interest in this topic. Perhaps you could write and give away an e-book to people who visit your Web site.

If there's enough interest, start charging for the e-book.

Labels: niche marketing

"Every idea I think of targeting a particular niche, it's already occupied by a lot of competitors. I doubt, should I start or not?"

If you're opening a new restaurant, is it better to open it in a busy area with lots of other restaurants or out in some remote area where you've got no competition? The answer is ... it depends! Sometimes it IS better to find a new untapped niche. However, in most cases it's good news if you have competitors, because it means that there is a demand for your product or service.

Just be sure that you do truly have a niche, not a broad area. It's much easier to market to a specific niche - in fact, the smaller the niche, the better.

Labels: niche marketing

"My business has two separate components to it. Is it better to have two separate Web sites, each with their own domain name, or to have one Web site with one domain name?"

This is a difficult question to answer without more information about your business and how it works. However, this is my general rule of thumb:

If the two parts of your business serve totally different markets (i.e. different people), then get two Web sites. If they serve one market, or two markets with a lot of overlap, then get one Web site.

In other words, make your decision based on the people who you would like to attract to the Web site(s). If there's very little overlap between the two markets, then it makes sense to have two Web sites; otherwise, everybody who comes to your site is going to be distracted and confused by the other part of your business. Equally, if there's a lot of overlap, then everybody who comes to your site might be interested in both parts of your business.

Remember that this is only a rule of thumb, and your mileage might vary!

You can always find exceptions to the rule. For example, many top Internet marketers believe that you should have one Web site for each product you sell, even if you're selling them to the same market. And other Web site owners prefer to have a single Web site for everything they do, with clear pointers on the home page to direct different people to different parts of the site.

(See, I told you this was a difficult question!)

Labels: niche marketing

"How do I include my various aspects of interest (and potential sale) on one site?"

The best answer: Don't. Use a different site for each and every product. Focus on getting exactly the right customer for that product to that site, and write a compelling sales letter that persuades them to buy.

However, I realise that this might be impractical, especially if you're not planning to spend much time working on your site. If that's the case, it's OK to combine different products on the one site. The way to decide whether to split into multiple sites is to consider whether the products are all serving the same market. If not, then you really do require different sites.

Labels: niche marketing, Web strategy

"In order to direct interest to my noise prevention products, how can I most easily obtain the email addresses of my potential clients who specify noise pollution prevention products, specified by architects, landscape engineers, land development planners, and Government Departments such as Main roads, Public works, Environmental etc."

This is a great question, because it demonstrates that you've thought about whom to target.

The first question to ask is: Where do these people hang out? For architects, I'm sure that they have a professional association. Ditto for engineers and planners. For Government departments, I'm not sure.

Then ask yourself how you can get in front of those people. For members of associations, one possibility is to approach the association and find out how you can reach their members. It might involve putting a flyer in a mail-out, or e-mailing your ad to the members, or becoming an official sponsor.

Ideally, you would like to get the members' e-mail addresses yourself, but for privacy reasons it's unlikely that the association will give them to you directly. So make sure that your flyer or ad directs them to something that asks them for their e-mail address. For example, you could write a special report for this industry and offer it free, in exchange for their e-mail address.

Labels: e-mail newsletter, niche marketing, traffic generation

"Can I combine three different products without having three different businesses?"

Yes, but there are a number of things to consider.

If the products are very different from each other - and particularly if they are serving three types of customer - then it's best to have separate Web sites for them. You can still run them under the same business name, though.

If the products are very closely related, then you might consider promoting them on the same Web site, because somebody who buys one might buy one of the others as well.

However, even in the case of related products, there is some value from having a separate Web site - or at least, a separate page - for each product. It means that you can focus on selling them just that product, by writing a compelling sales letter for that product.

Labels: niche marketing, sales letter, Web strategy

"Do mini sites to sell specific products work better than a larger site with a broad range of services and information?"

This is a very broad question, and the answer depends on your particular market and products.

In general, if you're selling to complete strangers, and you have a range of products, then yes - it's better to have a separate Web site for each product. When somebody comes to a particular product page, you lead them through your sales letter, and they are not distracted by other products or other buttons.

Alternatively, you can have all your products listed on one site, but without any links between them. Again, you direct your Google advertising to the individual product pages on the main site.

Labels: niche marketing, sales letter

"Hello I am in the process of setting up a website. I am a facilitator / speaker / trainer in Ireland and wish to know whether to use my own name as a domain name or to come up with a catchy name for one of the products I provide."

First, whatever else you do, because you're a speaker, I strongly recommend that you do get the domain name matching your own name. It's becoming a standard practice now for speakers.

If your Web site is mostly about your speaking business, that might be enough. However, if you plan to do some serious work promoting your products, it's worth getting a separate domain name for each product. But only do this if you're really serious about promoting these products actively (for example, through Google advertising); otherwise, don't bother with the other domain names.

Labels: niche marketing

"how do I promote my services on my website to the right market? for example i get a lot of weird inquiries from people that are clearly not my market or on the other side of the world so it wastes a lot of my time and they are not genuine buyers."

There are two parts to your question.

I guess you would first like to know how to eliminate the people who are not genuine buyers. My guess is that your Web site doesn't offer enough information for them to eliminate themselves. Is that the case? For example, if you don't work with international buyers, say so. If you're getting lots of enquiries from people who can't afford you, list your prices. If you're answering too many e-mail queries, ask for a phone number.

The second part is then how do you find the right market? There are some simple market research tools to narrow down your market, and exactly what they are looking for. Do that first, and then buy some cheap Google advertising to reach that market.

Labels: niche marketing

"How do I create a website that mimics the big companies offering the same types of services at affordable prices since I am doing my business out of pocket without traditional sources of financing?"

First, I recommend that you do not try to match the big companies. They have big advertising budgets, deep pockets, and frankly sometimes they really don't care whether their Web site is profitable. So do the things that the big companies are not doing.

For starters, whatever your market, can you find a niche market within it? It's easy to go broke trying to reach everybody on the Net! It's far better to find a smaller market and create products for that niche.

Next, don't spend big bucks on a Web site. Instead, start small and then do small things to improve it.

Also invest $100 or so in highly targeted Google ads. Do a simple survey, asking people what they would like to learn, and collect their e-mail addresses.

Only then should you start creating a product for that market.

Finally, start small and build on your success. In other words, if you can make $100, invest $50 of that in more Google ads. When you make $1,000, invest $500 in an affiliate program. And so on.

Labels: Google advertising, niche marketing

"What are the hottest sellers on websites?"

There are a number of tools for finding out what topics are current "hot sellers". For example, one such tool is inventory.overture.com, which allows you to type in some words and see how many times they have been searched in the last 30 days.

This tool is just one of the ways to do Internet market research. Other ways include checking the Amazon.com bestseller lists, checking PayPal merchant lists, and using Google advertising to find popular topics. Find out more here about finding hot topics and responsive customers.

Labels: niche marketing