Online Business Viability – Will it make money?
I decided to write the ultimate guide to making money online.
Yes, everyone else has written about that, and they’ve already
told you that your pockets will explode, but only if you buy their
product RIGHT NOW!!!
First, this is free, and second this is to everyone else out there who
realizes that there are no quick money methods online that actually
work.
BUT… I kid you not, this may be the most valuable article you EVER
read online. For real.
Demand
Before you even consider any hair brained online business
Idea, anyone will tell you that you must ensure that there
are people out there who want it.
In the old days, you would either conduct a survey, or
a focus group or even perhaps make a demo of the product
and see if it sells. Any of those options cost good money.
In the online world you can find out how many people are
actively looking for something by using "Keyword Research".
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Quite simply it’s the art of finding out what keywords people
are searching for and how often (how many times per day/
month people look.) and thare are plenty of Good tools for
this.
My favorite is Google’s Keyword Tool. It’s free, and if you
know what your doing it can produce HUGE lists you can
massage in Excel and create amazing basic research.
Combine Google’s keyword research tool with a synonym
finder and you can produce every search your industry
produces.
I find that e-synonym.info produces the most amount of
synonyms even tho their site is laden with ads and poorly
designed. There’s also the english synonym dictionary ,
and synonym.com if you want to shop around.
Remember to group your keywords by the intention of
the searcher so you can decide how many people want
different things. Ensure to gather as many "long tail" words
as possible, ie: more than 4 words in the phrase.
Supply
The foundation of any business is supply and demand.
If your talking about physical products, then supply is how much
of the given product you have on hand. In the electronic
product world (IE: ebooks) there is no concern of volume
available. One could also argue that supply is the amount
of OTHER companies in the market space that also sell a
similar product/service/item.
To do a great job, you must gather as many sites as possible
that offer a similar answer to your proposed answer or
product/solution.
You can obviously get deeper into the competition analysis
by looking at how much their spending in PPC with these
tools here:
Keyword Spy – Shows your competitors keyword lists
SpyFu – Shows the average spend & cost of competitors
SEMrush – Which shows the search volume & comp info.
Also with the trending over time ability of these tools
you can see how much and on which words a competitor
may have increased their budget. This indicates keywords
and topics that are probably more profitable for them.
Going into a market where their are competitors is stupid!
You want an area with no competition, right? NO!
Competition means the market is producing a profit and
people are making money, especially if those competitors
have been there a while. That’s a good thing! Especially
if you can find a way of offering what they do better.
There’s more "guarantees" of profitability in an existing
market than there are in a less competitive market. Remember that.
You might want to look into their Organic competition too
for that I’d recommend Aaron Wall’s Firefox Extension
priority 1. Secondarily, I’d also suggest sites like site yogi and
link diagnosis .
If you have the keywords and there *IS* demand.
And you know what your competitors are spending (roughly).
Can you afford to do a market test?
500 people is a market test.
1000 people is a scientific test.
After 1000 people have visited your page you can THEN start
to discuss your conversion rate and your sales rate. NOT before.
If you haven’t had 1000 visit your site, you do not have enough
statistically relavent data. Not enough of a market sample.
Some markets are competitive $2.00 ~ $5.00 per click or more.
That means a market test could be as high as $5,000. Some are
cheaper like $0.05 ~ $0.15 per click. A market test could cost
$150 to find out if you’re site sells.
CAN YOU AFFORD TO TEST?
Ok, Dan 1000 people hit my site. Now what?
If you sold some… you may need to tweak your
sales copy or survey your audience to see what their true
desires are. There’s a chance that your site didn’t answer
some challenges.
Ok.. .No sales? You might want to tweak and adjust,
run another test on a landing page with a survey to
get the answers, or consider a different market.
After several tests, you may find the market isn’t viable.
You may also find that it’s too expensive to get customers
even with a 1-2% conversion rate (industry average)
and that’s tough to beat.
You may knock it out of the park and become a success.
However, before doing that, you’ll have found that you
will have learned the blood sweat & tears that go into:
- extensive keyword research
- market analysis & competition spying
- basic web development & editing
- copywriting & excitement
- writing/shipping of a electronic/physicial product.
Without these steps, your doomed.
Lacking keyword research will make it HARD
to successfully execute a PPC campaign, or an
SEO campaign and that’s where the bulk of online
traffic comes from.
Looking at existing profitable sits will help you
realize what kind of copy it takes to excite buyers.
Looking at forums, groups, chats, questions being
asked online will give you a better idea of what type
of audience you could be working with.
Above all else, go into a market you have a passion for
or you’ll end up working yourself into yet ANOTHER
9 to 5 job that you don’t like. Working for yourself
STILL sucks if you don’t like the topic.
until next time
Daniel J Deyette
