Friday, June 24, 2011

3 Steps to Online Market Research – Uncover Hidden Cash Cows Online

One of the most important aspects of running a profitable online business is in selling something that people want, in masses.

Whilst selling a few copies of your obscure niche eBook may appeal at first, the truth is that unless you can release a product or service that hundreds, if not thousands of people will clamber to your site to buy each day, then there’s little chance of you reaching your financial goals online.

After all, who wants to work long hours at their computer only to find out that their efforts have gone to waste because nobody wants to buy?

That’s why market research is crucial to running any kind of business, yet strangely very few people talk about it…

Before you consider starting a business, you can take these steps to determine whether you’re sitting on a goldmine or whether you’re going to be wasting time and money:

1.    Check out your competitors' web sites and stores.

Compare their pricing, products and customer service to yours. What sort of PPC advertising (pay per click) are they running on Google? Are they always advertising? If you see a company advertising day after day, week after week, month after month, there’s a huge giveaway that what they are doing is profitable…you simply need to model their approach with your own services to be in business!

2.    Get involved with your potential audience.

Just like a traditional marketing company would conduct focus group sessions to find out what their potential customers like and dislike about their products (and ultimately whether they would buy them), you can do the same thing online. Visit forums and ask people their opinions on similar products and services that you are thinking of offering. Their responses should give you an idea of what’s hot or not in your potential customer’s eyes…and what can be left out or improved upon to really get their attention.

3.    Look at what is already selling.

This is easy online; you just need to look at websites that sell stuff and see what’s selling in your market. Ebay, Amazon, Niche websites, current advertisers, magazine portals (that sell subscriptions)…the list is endless. Using these sites, you will have more than enough information to know what the best sellers are, so that you can get an idea of what to sell in your business.

As you can see, the internet provides a great vehicle for market research and it really doesn’t take long to get an idea of what will sell for you in your market.

However, the last hurdle is where many people trip up…

They have an idea of what to sell but don’t know how to create the products. So they go back to the drawing board and rethink their approach.

If you’d like to save time having to do all the manual research, and not have to worry about what to sell (or even how to create it), then you might want to check out SureFireWealth.com. Not only do you get handed proven markets to sell to, but also the complete range of products that they are already buying (and there’s no shipping, handling costs either!). Plus, you’ll get all the marketing materials you need to make sure your business gets notices amongst the fierce competition online…

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