I received a marketing email telling me how GREAT a new video making product is, because it works in conjunction with a piece of software almost everyone already has.
Cool!
So I go to check it out, and guess what?
They NEVER show you what the videos you’ll be making will look like.
Not ONE single example!
Worse still, the video they use to sell the video maker is a regular talking head type of video, NOT the kind you’re supposed to be able to make with this software.
What thinking person will take this offer seriously?
It’s like someone trying to sell you their artwork without letting you SEE the artwork.
If you’re selling software, and especially video creation software, let people see what it can do, rather than just telling them.
Do you have a list? Or do you have access to a list? (Think JV with a list owner)… If so, you have the potential to make money fast.
Let’s explore some possibilities… I received an email the other day from a mate who is changing niches. Apparently he is moving from IM to the coaching niche. And as he’s transitioning over, he’s making one last offer to his IM list:
For six weeks, he will answer any questions you have about IM in the areas he knows best. Not only will he answer every question within 24 hours – he will also point you to a great resource that explains his answer in detail.
For this, he is charging about $300.
Think about it – he knows his niche. He knows how to do online marketing. So answering questions is pretty simple for him, I’m sure. But he’s also pointing to a resource for every answer he gives.
Frankly, as long as you are somewhat familiar with your niche and good at using Google, you can do this, too.
Receive the money, stay on top of your emails, spend 5 minutes (or less) researching a good article that answers each question in depth, and you’ve got it.
You might be thinking, “What if people ask stuff I don’t know?” Google it. “What if they bombard me with a million questions?” It won’t happen. Maybe the first day or two they will, but after a while they’re going to run out of questions. After the first two weeks, I bet you don’t even hear from some of your students.
I don’t see why anyone with a halfway decent knowledge of their niche can’t perform this service.
And who says you can only do it once? You can offer this service over and over again, as many times as you want.
Google is your research partner. And list owners are your JV partners.
One thing – make sure you really do send your people honest, accurate and useful info. After all, you want to help others as much as possible. That’s the way business works.
Take a look at your monthly subscriptions – software, autoresponders, membership sites – and then decide to make them pay for themselves.
Sign up as an affiliate for each one, post a review for each on your website along with your affiliate link, and then add a resources link on your main page.
No, you won’t make a fortune this way, but you will likely make enough to more than cover all of these monthly expenses.
And with some of the expensive upgrades available on subscriptions, you might also find yourself making some good money along the way, too.
In fact, your profits can be increased further if you optimize your reviews for Google, and point some good quality backlinks to them. Then you can start picking up free traffic to your reviews whenever people search for the product you’ve reviewed in Google and other search engines. Done well, you can have an entire side business built on reviewing products and services you are using yourself.
If you’re trying to contact people via email and they’re ignoring your messages, here’s what you do. Send them the “magic” email.
I didn’t name this. In fact, you can find several good articles about the magic email online.
And no, it’s not really magic. But in many cases it does indeed get a person to talk to you and even invite you for a meeting.
It works like this:
You’ve sent out one or more emails to your leads. Some have answered, some have not. Some of those who initially answered are now ignoring you.
For all those who are not communicating, send them this email:
“Since I have not heard from you on this, I have to assume your priorities have changed.”
You can add to this or send it as is. I’m told (I haven’t tried this myself) that your response rate will typically be 50% or more, which is really, really good.
Why does it work? Because you don’t sound needy. Heck, you don’t sound like you need them at all. You’re making it clear you are moving on. And when you take something away from someone, what happens? They suddenly WANT it. So they reply back – often immediately – to try to keep you from walking away.
Try it – you’ve got nothing to lose and plenty of sales to be gained.
So, you’ve decided to start a home based business. Congratulations, and welcome to the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship. While there is a lot to learn, your effort will be worth it. The thrill of growing your business, the freedom and flexibility to set your own hours, and the possibilities of ever-increasing financial rewards are all wonderful reasons to start a home based business.
Now that you’ve decided to start your business, you might be wondering “How can I get it off to the strongest possible start?” These 7 tips will help:
Set up a separate working space in your home. It doesn’t matter if this is a small bedroom, one part of the garage, or a corner of the living room. I used to work out of my closet. The important thing is to have some space that you can designate as your working area. This will give you the space and room you need to craft your dream.
Stock your working space with materials. This sounds basic, perhaps, but one underlying element of success is that you have easy access to the tools, materials, and other resources you need. Gathering everything close by also keeps you from wasting time searching for it, so this step can be considered a time management strategy, too.
Speaking of time management, your third step is to define the parameters of your business. What days and hours will you work? When will you do your marketing? When will you provide services or products to clients? How will you keep all of this straight?
Balance action with planning. One of the most common pitfalls to successful entrepreneurship is getting too caught up in action without enough planning. Stated another way, this means that you confuse “being busy” with “working on important projects.” The best approach is to plan your next couple of goals and then work backwards to create step-by-step action plans to reach them. Once you have the plan, then it’s time to take action.
Network like crazy. One of the fastest ways to grow any business is to make connections with other people. Be sure to share your passion and enthusiasm with others at every opportunity. Let people know who you are and what you offer. Remember, people can’t buy if they don’t know you’re selling.
Present a professional image. If you want to be treated professionally, present a professional image. Set up a separate bank account for your business. Install a separate phone and fax line. Create professional marketing materials. Be courteous and pleasant in all your customer-facing interactions. Basically, be someone people want to do business with.
Automate your business as much as possible. Granted, you are just one person (right now) and might have a lot of extra time to take care of all the details. This might work for now, but won’t work into the future as you get busier and busier. It’s best to set up automatic systems and processes right from the start to free up your time to concentrate on the most profitable activities.
Working at home can be a dream come true for many people, and these days with computers and the internet, it’s more realistic than ever before. That said, building a business requires strong prioritizing skills and self discipline to take action toward your goals. If you have these qualities and are committed to doing whatever it takes to be successful, the dream of working from home can soon become your reality.
Don’t quit your day job just yet. If you are a baby boomer looking to start a home business, there are 5 essential things you must do first.
Leaving the security of a job with an established 401(k) plan, health insurance or other benefits can create a real tug of war for baby boomers who want to pursue their dreams of owning their own business.
Analyze Your Exit Strategy
At the time of this writing, the youngest of the baby boomers are turning 42 and the oldest are turning 60. No matter where you fall into this group, analyzing and preparing your exit strategy from your job will be crucial to your long-term success as a home business entrepreneur. Do you have adequate savings? If you’re married, will you be able to participate in your spouse’s health insurance?
Create a Financial Plan
How much is your salary now? What are your fixed, variable and frivolous expenses? Create a solid plan so that you and your family will know exactly what the financial picture will be until your business gets off the ground and starts generating revenue.
Choosing a Business Model and Legal Entity
There are several business models to choose from; home party plans, consulting, and affiliate marketing to name a few. You have to make the decision based on your personality and what you are best-suited for. Choosing a legal entity for your business should be discussed with a tax accountant or your attorney. Options are sole proprietor, LLC or Subchapter S- Corp.
Set Business Benchmarks
You wouldn’t travel across the country without a road map, your business is the same. Setting financial and business-building benchmarks will help you to create a focused plan that will help you to reach your success.
Get a Physical
What does getting a physical have to do with your business? Once you leave your job, most likely your health insurance will change and as unfair as it may be, trying to get new health insurance when in your 40’s, 50’s or 60’s can be difficult. While pursuing your dreams of a home business is something you are probably very passionate about, if you do not have good health to enjoy the rewards of your efforts, not much else is important.
The baby boomer generation is like no other before it or after it. Technically, we are considered middle-aged, but we are anything but middle-aged in mind, body and spirit. We know there is more meaning to life than a commute to an unrewarding 9-5 job, but there are also important steps we must take first. Planning and preparing for your home business now will reduce headaches later on, and increase opportunities for success.
One of the attractions of working at home is the vision of freedom it invokes — no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account to for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside — you are likely wasting a lot of time.
I used to loathe making a daily schedule for my work and have always dismissed it as a waste of time — that is until my home business really took off and I realized there simply wasn’t enough hours in the day to accomplish all my goals if I didn’t have a solid daily plan.
I now have my own spreadsheet and agenda for the day and I have improved my productivity and reduced my stress immeasurably. If you don’t think you need a schedule for your home business then think again — and read on.
After a spate of relatively unproductive days when my “To Do” list seemed to grow exponentially every time I looked at it I knew something had to change.
Granted I was going through a rough patch. My home business was experiencing growing pains and taking up more than the usual time, my home life was putting a lot of extra demands on me, and my extended family was experiencing a number of crises that required my input as well. But I’m also old enough to know there is never a perfect time in life — you just live the one you’ve got. These are simply the problems I’m dealing with this year… Next year these problems will be traded in for new fresh ones.
After studying my time and chatting with some other work-at-home folks, I discovered five reasons to embrace a schedule:
It’s too easy to waste time doing non-priority tasks
It’s too easy to get sidetracked or distracted from your current task
Unscheduled work time can often overlap into your free time costing you freedom
Your free time can cross into your work time so you fall behind with important projects
Concentrating your time and effort on highest priority projects means more gets done
I’m not the only work at home business person using a daily schedule. I recently participated in an online forum discussion where men and women had moved to embrace a schedule in their own business — and found it more freeing than restrictive. After all, you are still the one setting the schedule so you are free to schedule yourself off for a 3-hour lunch, an afternoon, or a whole day whenever you choose.
If you find it difficult setting up your schedule and priorities for the day and week then perhaps your significant other or a friend can help you set your schedule. The important thing is to set one, and hold yourself accountable to it. As you do, your productivity will improve, and your business will grow faster.
Just because you work from home, doesn’t mean you can afford to be loose with your schedule. In fact, you probably need to be even more disciplined with your schedule than if you worked outside the home, because there will be many more distractions at home trying to pull you into non-work activity.
You may not be able to focus 100% on your target when you are planning on building a home business. There may be many reasons for this. Many other things constantly demand your attention and interrupt you repeatedly. That said, part of learning to focus is keeping your eye trained on the target no matter what else happens during the day.
You may have a stressful day job, a rough commute and family concerns which are all important and need to be dealt with first. You may really have to change some things so that you find time for your home business project and somehow squeeze this extra activity into your busy schedule.
It sounds like your home business will have the lowest priority, but as long as you at least see it as more important than watching TV or hanging out with friends, your business will have a chance to get off the ground. It doesn’t have to be today, but every day you wait is costing you valuable experience and progress toward the life you are truly dreaming of.
Take care of all your pressing priorities so that they will be out of the way and then you can better focus on what you need to do to develop your business. To begin with, there will be research and planning. The business you choose will be determined by your interests, but dependent on your skills and other resources you may have or need to acquire going forward.
It is always a good idea to analyze and then plan your actions. Start with why you want to start a business. Focus on this, because you will need to stay motivated throughout the process. Sometimes just a little self-talk will remind you there is something else to do before it is time to relax. Sometimes that is all it takes to trigger a nice jolt of energy to go the extra mile needed to make a business breakthrough, or just get the job done.
Take control of your future right now and push yourself to reach your target goal of financial independence today. Focus on your target of building a home business with every spare minute you have; and while it may not be your first priority, it has to be one of the top priorities if you want it to become successful. There is no better time than the present to get started, so roll up your sleeves, get to work and continue forward on your journey of building a successful business from home!
In today’s training I’m going to dig into the topic, the concern, the issue of trying to choose a niche if you’re just getting started. I think for most of you, it’s trying to choose an angle within your niche. We could call that a sub-niche, we could call that an angle, or a deeper angle within your niche. The reason that I’m doing this is … I frequently get the question “How do you choose a profitable niche?”, “How do you choose a profitable angle?”, “How do you choose a profitable part?” of the internet.
I’ve always avoided teaching on this because I don’t believe that there’s any one-size-fits-all answer. It varies per person. It varies depending on the type of niche that you’re going to go into. And, it varies over time. And, so, when I do a training like this, I like it to be evergreen. I want it to be something that folks can use. I don’t want to create something that’s good for three weeks. I like to create something that is long term. And, yet, I get these questions a lot.
So, what I’ve done is I’ve put some thought into exactly how I can position this so that it’s something that everyone can use, and that offers you the various options. Almost like branches on a tree. Gives you different options. If this won’t necessarily work, you can do this. I’ll present it to you in such a way that you’ll be able to see the thought behind it. Because the truth of the matter is, even though it’s very, very difficult, I’m going to try and do that today.
It’s very, very difficult to give you, it’s certainly not a one-size-fits-all, but even a tree solution, where there’s 3 or 4 solutions, but there may still be a 5th or 6th solution. The truth of the matter is, if someone comes to me, and I do a private call with them, and I dig in, and I ask them a few questions, I can almost always, no matter what the niche is, I can almost always direct someone to a profitable corner of their niche.
Really, just by asking a handful of questions and digging in. They’re going to be different for each person. But, really being able to dig in, I’m able to come up with that.
And, so the more I think about it, I say well, if I can come up with it, and if I give you enough information, then you should have a starting point to be able to come up with it for yourself.
Without further ado, let’s kind of dig into it.
There are two different starting points when you choose a niche. You may be looking for a niche or a sub-niche, or an angle in your niche, because you already have an interest in something. You have an interest, you know that that interest is something, well, it interests you. But, you don’t know what part of the business might be profitable. You don’t know what part of the business people are looking for information. One of the things it’s important for us to remember in this industry is, we can have the best information in the whole world, but if nobody is looking for that information, you’ll never sell any of it.
I want you to just imagine that you’ve created a brand new recipe, for a new salad. But, it’s absolutely disgusting, and nobody would ever want to eat it, nobody would want to serve it. You could make that recipe, and you could put it online. You could make pictures of it. You could put a price on it. It may be a phenomenal recipe. But, nobody wants it. Because it tastes bad. Nobody is going to be looking for it online. So, you won’t have any buyers.
When you’re in a position where you say, I have a particular interest. I want to be able to help people. I know there’s people out there who need help, but I don’t know exactly what they need help with. That’s what we’re kind of talking about right here. You have an interest, and you want to dig deeper.
There’s another branch here. That is, you may be in this boat as you’re listening, you’ve got this idea that you want to get involved online, and all you want to do is make money. You don’t care what niche that you get involved in. All you want to do is make money.
I would submit to you, that until you develop an interest. You’ll probably never make money.
Here’s the thing, we hear a success story. You hear them on the radio, or the TV, an infomercial success story, every so often. Somebody will say, “Oh, all I wanted to do was to make money. And, I found a friend who was making money in a particular niche. And I just copied what he did, and oh, I’m making money too.”
The problem is, that’s a rare occurrence. Like, maybe one in a million, or one in two million.
The question is, you’re building your business right now. Do you want to take a one in a million shot? That you MIGHT be able to do something that will make you a full-time income. That might do really, really well. Or, do you want to be a part of a one in two shot, or one in three shot that you can build something solid?
The thing is, if you’re going into the business just for the sake and the purpose of making money. With NO outside interest at all. That’s exactly what I believe you have. You’ve got a one in a million, or one in two million shot.
Unless you’re willing to stake your family’s future, the other 999,999 slots on FAILURE. I think a lot of times when people hear odds like that, they’re like “Hey, one person did it! So, I can do it”. Hey, you’re right, you can do it.
But, if 999,999 other people failed, in order for that ONE person to succeed. What we’re really talking about is a 99.9999% failure rate.
Is that what you want?
My guess is, it’s not.
In order for you to choose a niche where you’re going to make money … I believe … you’ve got to start with some interests.
Throw the money aside … forget about the money … find places online where people have needs, real needs. Then work on filling those needs. As you’re filling those needs, you can then look for pockets of needs where people are willing to pay money.
Because if people are willing to pay money, and there’s a lot of people that have that need, then you can make good money selling in that particular arena.
But, if you just start from a position of making money, the odds are very, very slim.
In either case, whether you’re looking for a niche, or a sub-niche. Looking for that best angle. Or, if, unfortunately, you’re in the place where, hey, I just want to make money, I’ve got 1 or 2 ideas of things I might be interested in. What I’m getting ready to share with you will give you kind of the road map to making that happen.
The first thing that we have to do. We have to find out what are interests and needs that need to be met. We can brainstorm this, and by the way, rather than just giving you four different ways that you can do this. I want you to understand the why behind it. Because if you happen to be in a niche, or an interest, where the 3 or 4 ways I give you won’t work. If I give you the background for WHY you would use these, then you can find something that will work for you.
The bottom line is, what you’ve got to do is find out 2 things. Number 1, are there people in your interest area that have needs that are being unmet? And then 2, are the people who have needs that are unmet, are they willing to invest money with you?
You’ve got to find out both of those things.
Folks have talked about in the past, and it’s a fallacy, that you can just go online, do some quick research, find out how many people have needs, find out how much money they’re willing to spend, and well, voila, you have your answer. I don’t know that it EVER worked, but, if it ever worked, it doesn’t work anymore.
One of the old methods, and I think at one point I even taught an iteration of this, one of the old methods, when the internet was young. You would go online, and you would look for something that had lots of searches online, and it didn’t have too many advertisers. But, it had some. The theory was, if there were some advertisers, well some people must be making money. People don’t pay for advertising if it’s not working in the long run. You might start out advertising, but after a few weeks, or a few months of not making money, they tend to quit. It just works that way.
We could look at some old formulas, and we could say, hey, if people are advertising, and lots of people are asking the question, well then, somebody is making some money, so maybe there’s room for one more entrant.
Let’s look at the root issue here.
The root issue is, we need people that have needs, and we need people who are willing to spend money. The easiest way for us to look at this. In fact, I want to give you an offline example:
I want you to imagine that you’re thinking about opening up a restaurant in your town. The first place that you would go to find out if maybe you needed a new restaurant in your town is to look and see what’s happening with the restaurant scene. Are people filling up the seats in at least some of the restaurants downtown? Now, if some of the restaurants are empty, and some of them are full, that doesn’t tell you that there’s no more hungry people. If some of the restaurants are full, it tells you the food’s probably bad in those empty restaurants. But, if there’s a number of restaurants that are full, it probably indicates that there’s a demand for good food in your town.
That’s the first step.
Okay, some restaurants are full, so there must be a demand. There are hungry people. You sit outside with the binoculars and you watch how many people are coming around. You sit outside, you’re downtown, you set up 100 yards away, 50 yards away, you set up your binoculars, or telescope, and you watch in 10 restaurants, and you just count how many people go into each restaurant. At the end of an hour you know 970 people have gone into those combined 10 restaurants. There are 970 hungry people on Friday night between 6 and 7. This is a fact! We know this now. We know that there’s that many hungry people, and there’s 10 restaurants.
If you open a restaurant, and yours is as good as everybody else’s, you’ve got a shot at generating 1/11th of all of that business. You know this.
Next you go granular. You say, ok, we know we’ve got 10 restaurants. 970 people. What if we sit somebody outside the door of every one of these restaurants. We hire 10 people to work maybe an hour. We just tick it off, how many people entered this door, how many people entered that door. And if you find that there’s a 97 person average on Friday night, some restaurants have maybe 300 people, some restaurants have only 5. What does this allow you to do?
It allows you to realize those restaurants have better food, or food that people like. Maybe there’s a Chinese restaurant, and Indian restaurant, American restaurant, French restaurant, Italian restaurant. You may say, well, the Italian restaurant is getting more customers. The Chinese restaurant is not getting as many customers. Then maybe you have to go sample the food. Is it good food, or is it bad food?
Do you see where I’m going with this?
The only way that you’re going to be able to get information about whether or not your niche is going to be profitable, and whether there’s needs, without actually selling in the niche is to do some research – some searching. In your niche. I gave you this illustration because offline is the illustration that we can all really relate to – this idea of how we determine if there’s room for one more restaurant. You realize, offline, that you need to do the work. It’s the same online.
Okay, here are a few articles on how you can do that work online, now that you understand how important it is!
One of the lies online is how easy it is to build a new business. People believe that. They read sales letters and even watch late-night infomercials about how many new niches, new opportunities there are.
That data is made up for the purpose of the infomercials and the sales pages. This “data” is everywhere and says you can figure all of this out, with no “boots on the ground”, in other words, with no work and without fully understanding what’s going on.
I say this because so often when someone reads something about choosing a niche, or how to find out what your marketplace needs, you are looking for an easy formula.
The truth of the matter is: there… is… no… easy… formula!
Building a Business in Real Life
Think about this example: there is no easy formula to figure out if you need a new restaurant in town. Let’s say you want to open up an Indonesian restaurant. And there are no Indonesian restaurants in your town. The only way that you’ll actually know if that restaurant will work would be to open one.
Yes, it will cost you money.
Yes, it will cost you time commitment.
But, the only way! That you’ll ever know, is if you physically open up shop.
The only way is if you invest whatever it is. $100k for kitchen equipment, you hire a chef, you paint the front door, and you open the doors. Once the doors are open, you can start counting heads. You can look at all the business that everybody else is doing, but you’ll never know what your brand new Indonesian restaurant is going to do, until you open it.
One more idea here: could you open up a road-side stand, with some Indonesian food, and park it in front of the empty building where you want to put your Indonesian restaurant, and try it out for a week or two? Just see how much interest there is.
Yes.
It’s still not going to prove your idea, even if you sell 1k plates from that roadside stand. It’s still not going to prove that the restaurant will do well. Hey, maybe people like eating Indonesian food out of road-side carts, but they don’t want to sit down and eat it. I don’t know.
You Have to Get Out There and Do It
The key here is, you won’t know until you actually do it.
Same thing online.
You’ll never know exactly how much need there is, and how many sales you’ll make, until you actually open up shop.
But – here’s the beautiful thing about opening up shop online. All you really need is a domain name, a website – you don’t even need to create a product initially, but in order to sell, you’ll create a product, put a merchant payment button on it, and start inviting people in that particular niche, and you’re able to see what happens.
It’s very, very low entry price to get started online, to test something.
Theoretically, you could test something every month, for the next 24 months, until you found the one that worked.
Offline, you can’t do that. You can’t go be a plumber for a month and then decide if you want to do it. You can’t then go be an electrician for a month, and then be a chef for a month, then be a mechanic for a month. Takes you a couple of years to learn how to be a plumber. Takes you a couple of years to learn how to be an electrician. You’ve got to put that time, energy and effort into it.
Same thing with opening a restaurant, there’s an investment in opening that restaurant. The beautiful thing about online is, you really could try a new niche every single month for 24 months. Until you found one that works. The 7 month period of time. The 7th month, you tried the 7th idea, and it simply worked for you.
But, we don’t want to leave you in the dark here. We’ve talked about the fact that we don’t have any fully accurate information that’s just going to point you in the right direction and say, this will work for you. Just like you can look at the 10 restaurants in your downtown area, and see that some are making money, and some are not, you can do the same thing online.
You can get clues and signals. You can do research. But in the end, you need to buy the domain name, create the products, and start testing. That’s how you’ll find the winners. That’s how you’ll build a business that makes real money.
What are some ways to determine what areas online people are interested in?
One way would be to simply go online and go somewhere that there’s a lot of advertising. So, maybe, any of the news websites. A lot of the news websites have classified ads on them. You look at those classified ads, and you look at the topics of those classified ads. You could even take a screenshot of the classified ads today and then a month from now, take another screenshot and see if the same people are advertising.
Watch for Consistent Ads
In the advertising world many people advertise once. But, if it fails, they don’t advertise again. The only way to know if advertising works is to buy the advertising. I’ve done it before. I’ve bought advertising before that didn’t work. I only bought it one time. But if I buy it again, and again, and again, and again, you can assume I’m doing one of two things. I’m either trying to throw the competition off, and just trying to get them to all buy the same advertising, so they’ll fall off the cliff. Or, I’m genuinely making money.
The truth of the matter is, 99% of the time, when you see advertisers advertising month after month after month. They’re doing it, not because they want to drive their competitors off the cliff, but because they’re making money.
Look at the ads on the big websites (like big news sites) If you take a screenshot today, take a screenshot a month from now, and they’re the same advertisers. You can probably guess, those people are making money.
Does that tell us there’s a big demand?
No.
It doesn’t tell us anything about demand.
What it does tell us is, there are some people making money.
Is There Room for More Competition in Your Niche?
There’s 2 ways to look at other people making money.
One way is, to look at it and say other people are making money, is there room for another entrant? My belief is, there’s always room for another entrant. If! You’re willing to optimize so that you can do things as well as (or better than) somebody else.
Some people like to enter markets where there’s very little competition. There’s only 2 or 3 people making money. Because then you can be a big fish in a small pond. The problem with that in today’s marketplace is if there’s only a couple of competitors, there’s probably not a whole lot of demand. That’s not across the board, but it’s a general rule of thumb.
There are a few ways to know if your competition is profitable, but many ways to imagine that they might be profitable.
For them to actually be profitable is one thing, and for you to figure it out is another.
Imagine going into your local pizza shop, and walking up to the proprietor and saying. “Hey, I’m thinking about opening a pizza shop across the street, how many pies are you selling on Friday night?” The guy might call the police and have you arrested for trespassing! He’s not going to give you that information! Well, it’s the same thing online.
If someone is genuinely making money in your area of interest they don’t want you, or anybody else, to know. Sometimes folks will do things that make it look like they’re not generating as much revenue as they really are. They don’t want the competition to know.
How to Win Even if You Have Strong Competition
Let’s say a particular company appears to have a market totally locked up, and they’ve got everything figured out. If that’s the case, there are probably unmet needs in that marketplace that the company (or that individual) is not meeting. And, if you can find out what those holes and unmet needs are, you can create a brand new niche all by itself.
How do you do that? A great first step is to collect subscribers in your niche – you can run advertising to attract interested prospects in that niche and collect their contact information. Then send an email out asking for their 2-3 biggest problems/questions in the niche.
You’ll get a lot of responses and see some overlap. People will also respond with a lot of detail and you can go back and forth with those people.
Use these ideas to create products and break into a niche, even a niche where the competition has a tight hold on things. Your market research can help you pinpoint where your market is hanging out online, so you know exactly where to find them and get them onto your list. Then you’re off and running!
You could take ALL of the things that I’m sharing with you, or another coach shares with you, and set up your own shop online, and find it doesn’t work. You could do none of this, and setup your own shop online, and find that whatever it is that you’re trying to sell works. I’m a big believer in just getting out there and doing it to find out what works for you!
If you have an interest in a topic, don’t spend the next 12 months trying to figure out if this is the best topic for you. Some people take 2 to 5 years trying to figure out their topic, and by the time they do they find that all the competition has beat them to the market.
Instead, get out there today, put up a website, start finding targeted visitors, and just see what happens. You’ll either be successful, or you won’t, and you’ll learn a lot in the process that will be useful in advancing your current business or starting a new one. Fail faster, and fail forward and you will steadily climb the mountain of online success!
You read a book and a week later you hardly remember a thing.
You watch a video and a day later it’s lost from your memory…
The fix? Always write down your three biggest takeaways from anything nonfiction that you read or watch.
Keep a notebook or file just for this purpose. Review it often. And put those three things to work in your life as soon as you possibly can.
The world’s wisdom and secrets is at your fingertips inside books old and new. Many of the world’s greatest teachers and successful people share their secrets and strategies inside the pages of a book.
When you read for learning, you are only moments away from discovering some new information that can change the course of your life in new and better directions.
But you must take action.
And you must REMEMBER the insights that really matter.
Read to learn and grow, and remember to write down your three biggest takeaways from each session, and then take action on what you are learning so that it becomes internalized wisdom.
Start doing this, and every day can be a better day as you absorb the knowledge of the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest people in the world, and incorporate it into your life so that you can be one of them too! Then write your own book for other people to remember! 🙂
