Ed talked about market research and I’m looking forward to Market Samurai anticipating a huge shortcut in time required to do market research. In talking with a challenge member named Eric (seo expert) he told me keyword research which was taking him 4-5 hours is now taking him 5 minutes.
He inputs the keyword, Market Samurai runs for 20 minutes which is time you can use to write content, and spits out a report. He can look at the report in 5 minutes and tell which keywords are worth going after.
It may take you a bit longer to look at the report since you’re new but the power of the tool is huge! It saves loads of time.
My niche ideas are listed below. You’re getting my real niche ideas Because my goal with this challenge is to apply the cutting edge training to my 2 current projects. I’m not starting any new ones but if I was these are what I’d go after. So be confident you’re getting the real deal and not something watered down.
Market Research
As Ed said you don’t have to be passionate about a market or your idea but you do have to be curious or at least interested.
He talked about using google news and subscribing to the feed and also google alerts. I suggest you hold off on setting those up until you use Market Samurai to determine which market you’re actually targeting.
This saves you lots of time by not setting up markets/ideas which you won’t be targeting. And you don’t have all the extra clutter in your google reader.
Quick tip: once you setup your blog or website you can copy & paste the web address into google alerts and it will send you daily updates on who’s linking to you (assuming you select the email me daily option). This is what I do for my sites.
Research Resources
http://pulse.ebay.com - great to see what physical products are hot sellers
http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm - great to see what digital products are hot sellers
http://www.mygazines.com – magazines site; as Ed said if there’s a magazine for it there will be ads in that magazine and those ads must be making sales in that market
http://www.technorati.com – up-to-the-minute info on your market because this site covers the entire blogosphere (almost the entire; like 100 million blogs); see what’s heating up in the blogosphere
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers - shows all their best selling products books, movies, etc. See what people are buying now. Also you can click on the category of interest to you from Amazon’s main page to search best sellers within a category once you have an idea what category you want to go after.
Recommended Resource
http://delicious.com – store all your bookmarks online so you can access them from anywhere. No longer do you have to worry about losing your bookmarks due to a hard drive crash. Also you can find the links you need even when you’re away from your home computer or laptop. I use this daily.
Niche Ideas
(I haven’t run any of these through Market Samurai so don’t know if they fit the 30dc mold. Just ideas which might work to give you a jumping off point based on my 30dc experience)
Politics – are hot right now due to upcoming election. You maybe able to target local areas and sell political paraphernalia like buttons, bumper stickers and the like of your favorite candidate. More of a quick profit potential because the buzz and interest will die down after the election.
Pets – pet owners are fanatical about their pets and spend gobs of money on them. You should target smaller phrases. For example: doggy pedicure or dog fur coloring kits. I saw on the news people are paying hundreds of dollars to dye their dogs hair. Maybe you could sell do-it-yourself home dog coloring kits.
Music – maybe you could sell sheet music for blind piano players. That’s the level of market specificity you need to achieve. Selling piano music is far too broad.
Hobbies – things like model toy trains, action figure collectors, stamp collectors, mountain climbing all maybe niches that could work.
Fishing – huge market. Perhaps you could have a guide on how to fish for pike in Minnesota or “the proper way to gear up for your fishing expedition”, or maybe a partner up with a travel service and offer your “Top 5 fishing destination adventures for 2008” and offer special pricing packages
Golf – huge market, rabid spenders. Maybe you could find a golf pro and do a guide for “How to End Your Slice for Lefties” because there are far fewer lefty golf players than those who hit right handed.
I hope this has sparked some ideas for you, saved you time with your bookmarks and refinding cool sites, as well as given you some new research avenues you didn’t previously know existed.
