Online Market Research

Before you begin selling online, be a smart marketer and do your online market research beforehand.  This is a critical step in the marketing process because

#1 It will help you find a niche topic and know whether or not it will
actually make money

#2 Your online market research will be a good indicator as to whether your chosen niche will be a profitable one. 

Once you have an idea of what your niche is, you're going to have to do some industry research through market analysis. Don't worry, market analysis isn't hard and it won't take a huge amount of time, but it's an important step in knowing whether or not your idea has the potential to make money, so it's important that you take the time to do this research.

Let's get started....

Finding Niches

Whether you will be in the wholesale dropshipping business, doing affiliate marketing or selling your own products, whatever it is you need to develop a strong niche.

Let's begin by first taking a look at how to find a possible niche. We'll start with some very general ideas and then drill down to possible niches, then we'll take a quick glance at the competition, which, by the way, is a good thing and we'll be discussing that later on.

If you already have an idea for a niche, perfect, however if you're still searching for ideas here's how we'll get the creative juices flowing...

Start by looking around your house, go outside and look around, pick up your newspaper and have a look at the ads, watch a little TV and look at the home shopping network, then make a list of some of the things that grab your attention.

For example, when I look around my house this is what I came up with:

chairs
tv
picture frame
birds
guitar
flowers
clocks
wine
shoes
lamps
knives
dog
computer
candles
movies
books
...

Once you make a list, narrow it down to 3 - 5 things that interest you the most. Of course these topics are all way too general, but that’s ok, we're only getting ideas at this point so be as general as you want.

Next, we're going to want to start our keyword research on our topics. This is going to require using a keyword research tool. Since I subscribe to Wordtracker, that's what I'll be using but you can follow along with the Wordtracker free trial if you like.

Open Wordtracker and click on 'Keyword Universe'. In the 'keyword popularity' window, type in one of the keywords on your list. I like candles so if I type in 'candles' into Wordtracker I see that there are 1157 searches a day for 'candles' and 431 a day for 'candle', that's over 57,000 searches for candles in a month. That's a lot, but it also tells us there's interest and lots of it, so 'candles' has good potential.

Next, we want to look at our candle competition by looking at how many competing web pages there are.

Open up a Google window and type in 'candles' (no quotes) into Google Search box. Next we can see by looking across to the right of the top blue bar that there are over 58 million web pages (these are pages, not websites) that's a lot of competing pages but keep in mind that those 58 million web pages include every type of candle page there is.

What this is telling me is that if I want a candle website I probably don't want a site that sells every kind of candle there is, that won't be practical because you would be competing with huge retail sites, instead you will want to narrow your candle topic down to a 'niche' topic.

Narrowing down your topic to a tightly focused niche is where you will find a focused and targeted market. This is how surfers looking for specific types of candles will find YOU.

To help you better understand this concept, let's look at how surfers typically surf.

Let's say someone is looking for 'scented soy votive candles'. The average surfer might know that this is what they want but they don't typically start their search by using such a long tail keyword phrase; instead they will simply type in 'candles' or possibly 'votive candles'.

So what happens when they simply type in ‘candles’?

The results will most likely result in a listing of sites like 'candlesrus', 'candles.com' or other candle warehouse type sites. A surfer may click on one of these sites but finding such a 'specific' item like 'scented soy votive candles' won't be easy because the site is so large and encompasses so many candles.

Keep in mind surfers get very impatient if they can't easily and quickly find what they are looking for. So in this case they will probably leave the site.

So now they'll start their search over, this time they get smarter and use the keyword phrase 'votive candles' or maybe 'soy votive candles'. They get closer but again they may not find exactly what they are searching for, so they try it once more, this time getting even smarter they type in 'scented soy votive candles'.

If your page happens to specifically focus 'scented soy votive candles' and the page is optimized for that longtail keyword phrase, you will attract the more qualified visitor increasing your chances for a sale. Your page will be targeted for that specific phrase and your viewer won't have to thumb through hundreds of other pages trying to find 'scented soy votive candles'.

Now that you understand how surfers typically search, let's continue on...

So going back to Wordtracker and searching for 'candles' we see several niche topics that come up:

scented candles 794
yankee candle 368
soy candles 354
pillar candles 252
votive candles 238
jar candles 217
candle making 208
aromatherapy candles 192
soy jar candles 187
natural candles 186
unity candles 164
soy chunk candles 163
candle making supplies 151
flameless candles 127
gold canyon candles 127
coffee mug candles 124
coffee mug soy candles 121
floating candles 117
handmade candles 109
soy votive candles 106
handmade soy candles 101
ear candle 95 116
hand poured candles 94 115
candles & candle equipment & supplies 93
soy aromatherapy candles 92
wedding candles 90
birthday candles 89
candle wax 86
how to make candles 80
beeswax candles 79
hand made soy candles 77
candle lanterns 75
decorative candles 74
coffee scented candles 73
candle supplies 69
battery operated candles 59
candle molds 53
citronella candles 52
cemetery candles 37
gel candle supplies 36
taper candles 36
all natural soy candles 35
...

The number to the right is the number of searches for that key phrase gets a day.

The little shovel indicates you can dig deeper for that specific key phrase you are looking at.

As we can see, each one of these key phrases leaves room for digging further. For example if we dig on the key phrase 'soy candles' there are several more additional keywords:

soy candles 354
scented soy candles 235
soy wax candles 198
soy jar candles 187
scented soy chunk candles 184
discount soy wax candles 178
discount soy jar candles 175
aromatherapy soy candles 174
discount soy candles 174
natural soy candles 171
natural soy jar candles 170
soy chunk candles 163
soy coffee mug candles 137
soy pillar candles 129
coffee mug soy candles 121
soy votive candles 106
handmade soy candles 101
soy aromatherapy candles 92
how to make soy candles 90
scented soy pillar candles 87
discount soy pillar candles 84
hand poured soy candles 84
hand made soy candles 77
coffee scented soy candles 70
wholesale soy candles 51
all natural soy candles 35
how to make soy candles 26
botanical soy candles 24

....

You can see that there's lots of potential here for a 'soy candles' site and you could have several tightly focused niche 'soy candle' pages.

Also notice the key phrases 'how to make candles' and 'how to make soy candles'. Looks like there's additional interest in candle making. This tells me that I could create an e-book or guide on how to make candles that would serve the candle making market quite nicely which has about 80 searches a day.

Did you also notice the key phrases 'buy candles' and 'buy candle making supply' ...that's a 'money phrase' if I ever saw one! These are people with money in hand just itching to buy. Those are the topics you want to look for and get in on.

Just for kicks, let's try another topic...

I like guitars, so looking at Wordtracker it tells me there are over 5000 searches a day for guitars. This is a pretty good topic but I can also see that most of the guitar searches are for specific brands and types of guitars.

This could actually be a great topic for an affiliate marketing site. I could have several pages each one focused to a specific guitar brand. But I also see that there's an interest in guitar tabs and guitar chords, in fact I see over 500 searches a day for 'how to read guitar tabs'. If I could offer some free information on 'how to read guitar tabs', I could attract lots of potential buyers that would appreciate the free information.

I think you're probably getting the idea on how to conduct your industry research and what kinds of things you should be looking for so I'll stop here and let you get started doing your own research.

If you find that you have additional questions or need some specific help, please visit our internet marketing forum. I log into the forum every day so I'll do my best to get your questions answered as quickly as possible.

===> For more detailed help on how to find niche products and their profit potential, download this free niche finder PDF report with my compliments.