I'm
sure that you've heard about how many start up companies
fail when they first begin, and the reason that most (if
not all) of their failures is because they don't create
a good fountain to build on.
If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time.
But if we start wrong, it's much harder to go back and
get it right. So please pay close attention, get out
your pen and pencil, and let's get to work.
When you first start, you need to decide which niche are
you going to conquer.
When I first started my online business, I made the same
mistake that 99.9% of people make. I read an ebook about
how to make money online, and I decided that I would...
can you guess...?
I wrote my own book about "how to make money."
I compiled all of the regurgitated information I could
find, put a twist on it, and started to sell it. After 2
weeks and a little over $30 in sales I started to think:
"Why am I selling a book about how to make money...
when I have NEVER in my life made any real
money!?!"
You may laugh, but it took me a few weeks before I
realized that there was a problem there. I decided to
stop selling my book, and started to look for other ways
to make money online. What I stumbled upon next really
gets exciting.
I was going to college at the time, and my degree is in
"Computer Information Systems." I knew some
things about programming, but not enough to create
anything real. What I did know is where programmers
spend their time online.
So I started visiting places where you could hire
programmers and got to know a few. I then started to
search for a market that needed something.
What I came upon was the "Resale Rights"
market. Basically this was people buying and selling
digital products (ebooks and software) that they could
then go and sell to other people. This concept really
excited me. I purchased a lot of these products, but
struggled to sell them because all of the products had
links back to the author's websites.
These authors were making money every time I sold these
products... on the backend. When I realized that, the
first thing I thought was,
"I wish that had a way to brand all of these files
with my own links."
And there the idea was born. I just needed to create a
product that would brand these "resale rights"
products. I wouldn't be competing directly with that
market, but make a complementary product that would
benefit them all.
I went back to the programmers that I had been building
relationships with, and gave them my idea. Within a
matter of weeks they created a product that is now known
as Zip Brander. (You can see the product at
www.ZipBrander.com)
I'm not going to go into how I marketed it in this
lesson (I'll save that for another day), but with the
one product I made over $1,000 my first month with it,
and it made us over $50,000 in 2004 alone.
Since then I've been able to branch out to a lot of
various niches and have had amazing success in most of
them. In other issues I will share exact case studies of
these that you will be able to model in your businesses.
How To Pick The Right Niche
I want to show you now how to choose your niche. Just
follow these 3 simple steps.
Step 1 - Do not choose the "how to make money"
niche. I'm not sure why, but I made this mistake along
with thousands of other people. This is the most
competitive niche in the world. If you want to fight
against the marketers, good luck. But there is a lot
more money (and it's made a lot easier) in the niches
I'll explain below.
Step 2 - Look at your personal talents, and start from
there. I have had this conversation more then once -
usually every time I discuss an online business with
someone.
I ask them what their hobbies are that we could market,
and they almost always they tell me that they don't have
anything they could sell. The problem is that people
usually look at their current job, and can't think of
ways they can market that skill.
Don't look at your current job, but look at what you do
on your free time. The thing that is your passion. This
is where you'll find your niche.
Here are examples of the last 3 conversations I've had:
Friend #1 - works construction, and couldn't think of a
marketable skill. After 3 1/2 minutes realized that he
has twin girls. Found there was a huge market for
informational product in this niche and him and his wife
are now working on their first product.
Friend #2 - works as a manager at Office Depot. One the
weekends loves to shot guns with his dad. They are
creating a software program that helps people to
increase their accuracy when shooting. They are also
creating video demonstrations on how to improve your
accuracy.
Friend #3 - came to me asking for help promoting a
"how to make money online" course. He had to
call me using a video relay because he's deaf. I told
him that he was going in the wrong direction with what
he was promoting. He had no experience making money
online. I asked him what his hobbies were, and surely
enough told me he didn't have any that he could sell.
Before I even asked that question I knew what his niche
was. He's been speaking through sign language his whole
life, and there are thousands of people searching every
month on how to learn sign language.
What do you do in your free time when no one else is
around? Are you good at video games? Are you a good
cook? Do you play any sports? Do you throw dinner
parties? Do you collect anything? Can you play an
instrument? What is your passion? When you can answer
this... then you know what your niche is.
Step 3 - Research your market. Don't worry - this part
isn't nearly as hard as you'd think. Within about 5
minutes I can usually tell if a niche is worth looking
at. There are 3 things you need to do, and you'll know
if it's the right niche.
First - Check out the search engines. There are a lot
more advanced tools then this, but this one is
completely free to use. Go to http://inventory.overture.com
and type in your niche. This will show you how many
times that word was searched for that month on their
search engine. If there are a lot of people searching
for it each money, the it's likely a good niche.
Second - Search for online communities related to your
niche. People with similar interests migrate to the same
places online. Wrestlers hang out at wrestling forums,
poets hang out in poetry message boards, etc... Go to
www.google.com and type in "________ forums"
or "_________ message board" or "_______
groups" (put your niche in the blank). Visit these
forums and see if they are active and how many members
they have. You can often find forums with 10,000+
members in it. If you find good communities focused
around your niche, then this is another good sign.
Third - Search for similar products. If you can find
others selling products in your niche, then it's usually
a good sign that there's some life there. Purchase their
products and get to know your competition (because they
are going to become your JV partners in another lesson).
After getting this far, you should have a good idea
about which niche you would like to conquer, as well as
some idea about if it is a profitable niche.
In the next lesson we are going to discuss how you can
turn those talents into a product. Product creation is
one of the most exciting parts of the game for me, so
look out for that lesson coming soon.
