Niche Marketing : First Find Your Market
There's nothing worse than spending time, money and effort
developing a niche product, only to find that it just doesn't
sell.
How do you avoid this happening to you?
By researching your chosen niche first.
The great thing about the Internet is that you can carry out
niche research fairly quickly and easily without it costing you
anything more than a little time and effort.
Here's a quick and dirty way to check out if you have chosen a
viable niche. (I would suggest you open a spreadsheet to record
your research information) :
Free Search Engines and Directories - Google and Yahoo
should be sufficient for this. Enter your search term(s) Check
out the first ten results from each search and list in your
spreadsheet the number of search results, the products being
offered and the pricing.
This should give you a pretty good indication of whether or not
there's a market for your proposed product, the size of the
market and the sort of pricing you need to aim for.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engines - Go to :
http://www.content.overture.com/d/, enter your search term. When
you arrive at the results page click on "View Advertisers' Max
Bids". This will list search results with the amount the
advertiser is paying for his clicks - check out the first ten
results and make a note of the products being sold their price
and the cost per click the advertiser is paying - the higher the
cost per click the more lucrative that particlar niche is likely
to be.
This will tell you if peolpe are buying and whether the niche is
likely to be profitable - savvy marketers "don't" spend money on
advertising that doesn't show a profit - you will also get an
indication of how much your marketing costs are likely to be if
you go the PPC route.
Niche Related Forums - Go to Google and enter your search
term with +forums added to it to find forums and discussion
groups on your niche subject. Run through the recent posts and
on several of these forums and make a note of what subjects are
being discussed.
This will give you a pretty good idea of the sorts of products
consumers in the niche are looking for and you can tailor yours
accordingly.
As I said earlier this is a quick and dirty way to check out if
a niche market looks viable - it's not infallible, but it will
give you a pretty good indication.
Niche research really isn't that hard and will save you a bundle
of wasted money, time and effort.
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