| | Choosing an online marketing business opportunity is a common area of confusion among new internet entrepreneurs. I coach people all day long in building online business and finding their marketing opportunities and this is a very common area for many people to get stuck or make a mistake. Here is a top 10 list of reasons people get stuck or make a mistake in choosing an online marketing business opportunity.
- They simply glance over the internet and decide that every online opportunity has been done and there is nothing left for them to do. (opportunity abounds for you. How about selling new belly button lint? lol)
- They have decided that all of the "good" areas are already taken (saturated) and they couldn't possibly compete.(Your selling yourself short. online marketing opportunity is a matter of finding the right keyword phrase).
- They run into a brain freeze when thinking what they may want to do and suddenly they realize (they think) that they know nothing and their lives are boring. (I don't buy it)
- They know what they want to sell but cannot find a source for the product or find it at a price that makes it so they can't compete. (Product sourcing is never easy :) It may be helpful to search for products in several online business opportunities at the same time)
- They want me or someone else to tell them what they should sell (This makes no sense because I am not them and it is not my business. I cannot tell you what you online marketing business opportunity might be because I am not you)
- They have plenty of ideas, but can't make a decision on which one to do. (again, this is their online business, not mine.)
- They make a choice on a niche because they are in a hurry to make money and just need to do something. (This is a lot like playing russian roulette, I wouldn't bet the farm on it)
- They do not want to be confined by selling just 1 type of thing. They want to build a walmart. (good luck :)
- They attempt to compare what sells in ebay to possibilty to sell on their own website. (There is not always a correlation. Sometimes it is doing horribly in ebay, but you could make a strong online website business of that same item)
- They've "thoroughly" researched everything and none of it will work. (so where does the billions of dollars in sales on the internet come from?)
Okay, so now that we know the mistakes of others how do we not repeat them. Knowledge of how to choose an online marketing business opportunity is the key. Take the time to slow down and really learn this. Get this right, and you will find your online marketing business opportunity. An online marketing opportunity is found through keyword research. Without that, who knows where your online business will end up. (oh yeah, I do. In the .com dump, left as trash)
To start that process, you must first brainstorm some possibilities for you to find the online marketing business opportunities that you can take advantage of. This includes things that you have some passion for or interest in or simply enjoy doing. It also includes some things that you either have a fair amount of knowledge about or that you are willing or want to learn about. When you do that brainstorming, be sure to do that at face value. Do not consider whether you feel it is a saturated market or that it cannot be done on the internet. That will only put you in a place of eliminating possibilties based on your own assumptions, rather than facts.
Second, spend some time researching for websites that may be your potential competitors by typing in searches into a major search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN) that reflects what you may want to do as an online business. For example, if you enjoy camping or scrapbooking you may type in searches such as "camping gear" or "scrapbooking supplies". The more you research the more you will see what is out there in those fields and if anybody near the top of the searches is a really good sight, or is there plenty of room for improvement. You may also come up with some additional ideas as you research simply because of what you see others doing. The point is, again, don't assume, do the reserarch.
Next, comes reality. It is true that you cannot simply determine an online marketing business opportunity around your own interest. If there is no demand or simply too much competition, then you will be setting your online business up for failure. However, in online business demand and competition are based on keyword phrases, not the number of people selling a particular item. There may be 3 billion people selling the same items that you want to sell and you can still do it and make money if you can find some keyword phrases that people are searching for, yet there is not too much competition on that phrase. You may stand at the bottom of the empire state building and jump as high as you can and you will never make it to the top. You could climb the face of it if you are a good rock climber, but that would also be very risky and making things more difficult than it needs to be, but if you simply walk inside and start climbing the stairs, you will eventually be at the top. It is no short trip, but it is the safe, reliable way to get there. The same is true of building an online business. Start at the bottom step by finding out if there is enough demand and also not too much competition. Down below are some suggestions on how to do that. You will find some links that you will find useful in that pursuit.
Demand
Overture
Use this link to go to the Keyword Selector Tool @ Overture, (Now Yahoo Search Marketing). Type in keyword phrases that describe what your online business idea is or the product that you would sell. You can also search for information type phrases that your targetted client may type into a search. (ie- If you want to sell baby clothing you could see what the demand is for say, "When to start feeding my baby cereal".(The phrase that you find that works ultimately will likely be 3-4 words long, but sometimes using a 1 word general phrase can get you a lot of suggestions out of this tool that will give you some direction or other ideas that you may not of thought about)
After you type in the phrase and do a search, it will come up with results, on the left side. Those numbers represent how many times that phrase was *searched on Yahoo*(see note below) in the month that it states at the top of the report (generally the previous month)
Ideally you would like to see phrases that bring back at least 600 or more. That is simple to do with broad 1-2 word phrases, but you will also find that 1-2 word phrases generally will have too much competition.
There are always exceptions to the rules and the same is true here. If the phrase that you search brings in under 600, but then when doing the "supply"(or competition) (see competition below) search you find that by using quotes around the phrase the results in google come in under 1,000, then that is a marketable term.
*Note: The numbers you will see are the total number of searches conducted on Yahoo!'s network of search sites, including Yahoo! and MSN. The numbers that you find at overture are inflatted because it includes bot (not human) searches along with human searches*
Competition
Google
To Determine the competition, go to google. There, type in the same keyword phrase that you were looking at in the keyword selector tool. Be sure to put the entire phrase inside of quotation marks. This will tell you who the real competition is. You will then get a bunch of results for your search. Up to the top right of the page, you will see where it will say, "results 1-10 of about "__________". The number that you will see there needs to be under 10 thousand to be an area that there is not too much competition. Over time, you will gradually be competing for phrases with more competition, but this is where to start as a new business and choosing an online marketing business opportunity.
If that doesn't work, but you look at the top 10 results for that phrase and those websites look pretty poor, then it still a "doable" thing. This, of course, is a lot more subjective. If there is any question in your mind, then it likely is not a good idea.
Both demand & competition and even more!
The industry leader in a keyword research tool (which also translates to online marketing bussiness opportunity for you) has to be wordtracker.com. It is an efficient way and more reliable way to do your research. It is a subscription based tool, but they have it available in as little as 1 day subscriptions for only $7.90. They do have a free trial that you can use over and over, but you are pretty limited with the trial version. I would recommend using the trial version a couple of times to get an idea of what the tool can do and then if you desire, get an appropriate subscription. Learn more about keyword research and the most effective use of wordtrackers tools in finding an online marketing business opportunity by getting wordtracker magic .
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