subject: Niche Marketing -- Why You Shouldn't Start With A Product [print this page] Niche Marketing -- Why You Shouldn't Start With A Product
Suppose you decided to start your own business on the Internet. You already know a great product that you could sell, so you go right ahead and build a website around it. Add an opt-in list and a blog, and you should be on the way to making money from home, right? Wrong!
Actually, doing things this way can put you in the league of the 95% of online entrepreneurs who never encounter any success in business. The mistake that these over-eager entrepreneurs make is that they start with the product -- even before they check to see if there's a market to begin with!
Market research is very important. In fact, it should be the very first thing you should do when starting a business on the Internet. Are there people on the 'Net who are looking for your product? Are there lots of them? These should clue you in on which markets will be large enough to tackle.
But markets don't only have to be large enough -- they also have to be willing to do things for you. Before they buy from you, see if you can pique their interest enough by asking them to sign up to a newsletter or a free report. One of the easiest ways to do this is by opening a blog that focuses on your chosen niche and updating it regularly enough to generate traffic.
If you get enough traffic, and if you're getting good "opt-in" rates, then it means your target audience is responsive enough -- and they basically like the content and information you're giving them. Now you can find out exactly what sorts of products they're looking for.
As you can see, finding the product to sell is actually the last step in the process. Unless you establish a responsive following out of a market, you'll never really know what people are looking for. In Internet businesses, just like in brick-and-mortar ones, you'll have to look before you leap!
