Thanks to Mike Mindell for the following post (no need for me to rewrite a perfect write-up).
-Danie
More Market Research
We’re still in the noticing phase. We’ll go to judgment soon.
It’s so easy to get traffic in the web 2.0 era which is great - can’t complain. But if you do your market research properly you won’t have a problem with traffic or a problem coming up with a product. Traffic has been so hard for so many people and we will make it so easy for you.
However there is a caveat. That is, you have to do your market research properly. A lot of you ask for checklists but it won’t help you. You just go after more checklists. I wan’t you to be smart about this.
You can use a notepad, Google notebook (which travels with you wherever you log in), Google spreadsheet to capture your information.
You must notice, not judge. It’s not your fault. We are taught to judge! It’s a genetic impulse.
From an education perspective we are either being judged or constantly judging. Which is a sham because the best writers don’t judge, people who create content, professionals never judge.
Once you understand this it will change your life.
You learn so much more if you just notice. Judging stops a part of your brain from being activated. You start filtering, you throw things out, you miss things.
In noticing things your brain is really good at picking up little trends, little factoids and bits and pieces.
The money is in those little bits and pieces.
Speed Reading Affiliate
Go to Google and type in ‘Speed Reading Affiliate’:
Now notice what has come up.
First on the left hand side notice the number of affiliate programs:
- Speed Reading Software Best Reader. Become an affiliate.
- RocketReader Affiliate Program - Banners and Text Links
This is a mature program as there are dozens of programs. Often you’ll go to a market and there will be no programs.
Now, experts amongst you, don’t go running off to the Warrior Forum and complaining that The Thirty Day Challenge is an affiliate program. It’s not. So sit down, button your mouth & focus.
What Does Lots Of Affiliate Programs Tell You?
It tells you that ’speed reading’ has been a good market. A mature market. People make money selling these products. That’s important stuff to notice.
Look At The Paid Ads
Look on the right hand side and see who is advertising on the paid Google adwords:
There are a couple of speed reading ones, general affiliate program people too.
Time For Your Seven Niches
So your task is to note specific affiliate programs for your niche e.g. ’sausage making affiliate’.
Notice and write down your results!
Google Trends
Type in Speed Reading into Google Trends:
and here are the results:
Note: you can actually compare two topics but we’re not doing this yet.
The blue line is speed reading but you can’t tell what the numbers are. However you do have plenty of information.
Notice how Speed Reading is pretty consistent. It spikes in the new year and then slows down towards christmas. This is a typical self improvementy (is that word?) type of topic so you would expect January to show a peak.
What is most important is that it is not a seasonal topic.
See the A, B, C, D? They correspond to news articles:
And also see the bottom section:
which shows the news volume. You can see where the spikes occur in news sites.
You can also see the regions
but this is relative as almost always we are targeting the United States. That is where we have the highest disposable income.
You can see cities and languages which is interesting. But we are predominately looking at US English.
In one niche a couple of years ago there was such a difference between the US and a South American country that it made sense to do a whole campaign targeted to a particular country (outside scope of 30 DC).
So look at our time of the year now:
As you can see the traffic looks pretty good. We want to know there’s some traffic there.
Tool Examples
Lets have a look at ‘trout fishing’:
Look at this. See the peaks and troughs and how they repeat year after year after year.
You don’t want to be launching here:
That would be most bad. You’d get no sales until May the following year. In the Northern Hemisphere trout fishing has a season.
So some of your niches might have seasonality. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing - you just need to be aware of it.
You’ll have big sales in one part of the year and low sales in the later part. It’s just the nature of it.
Compare Trout Fishing to Bass Fishing
It’s amazing how you can compare the two side by side. In the US you’d probably want to spend your time with bass fishing as it gets more search volume than trout fishing.
The peaks are higher than trout fishing and the dips are higher than trout fishing too. But you see the same seasonality effect applies in both.
What About The News Volume?
Also a seasonal sport - the spring season in the US - in the run up to summer. It’s an ok market and good for the thirty day challenge as its out of season.
Notice the news volume. It spikes.
If you’d entered the market at that point without knowing the seasonality this would not have worked out well.
See how Google tells you why that news spike was there:
The Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested was huge in the US but not necessarily so in UK or Belgium.
This is not marketable traffic. It’s just a lot of people interested in the news story about ‘Duke Lacrosse Players Arrested’.
If you look through to the resolution of the story in 2007 when the charges were dropped:
you’ll see it spike again.
So Google trends saves a huge amount of time because of the information presented. The best part is that it’s totally free!
Action Points
Pop your niches in to Google trends (perhaps add a couple of comparison points). No judging yet!
