How To Start A Successful Blog : Step #1 – Market Analysis

[MadMax]

In the Basic Principles Business lesson, I am going to tell you about the simple three-step formula that all successful businesses followed and explain each in details:

Step 1.  Find a problem that needs to be solved.

Step 2.  Find or create a solution to the problem.

Step 3.  Offer the solution to the people with the problem.

 

That lesson was just an overview, though.  In this lesson, we’ll go into more detail about how to perform each one of those three vital steps.  But before we get into that, there are a few important points I want to make.
First, I want to strongly encourage you to pursue your passion, if at all possible.  It can be very tempting to chase after what appears to be the most lucrative niche just because there’s a lot of money in it.  But if you have no interest in that subject, you’re much more likely to fail.

 
Why?  Because building your business, especially at first, takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice.  You’re likely to encounter setbacks and failures to the three steps I mentioned, and how to implement them become second nature to you.
If you’re not passionate about what you’re doing, your motivation will likely fall off and you’re much more likely to just give up.  But if you love what you’re doing; if it fascinates you and sparks a fire in you, then sitting down to “work,” isn’t really work at all.  It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, you’re driven to do it.  That kind of passion will help push you through the more difficult times and get you to that holy grail moment when it all comes together and starts to work.

 
Of course, sometimes your passion just doesn’t have enough of a market to be worth pursuing as a business.  In that case, you’ll have to compromise at least a little, on the market you go into.  But try to choose a niche that you at least have a measure of interest in.  It will help you, I promise.  It has certainly helped me.
So how do you know if your passion has a market worth building a business around?  Well that’s simple; we’ll ask Google.

 
How do we ask Google?  By going to the AdWords Keyword Planner, and since I’m here at Google, I will search for the AdWords Keyword Planner, and open it up.
Let’s explore a passion of mine to see if it would be worth starting a business around.  Now I love old time radio, which is what people used to listen to as entertainment before television came onto the scene.  We’ll see if there’s a worthwhile market for that by entering the keywords “old time radio,” into the box here.  Have the market set to “United States,” and click “Get Ideas.”
Once the ideas come up, we’ll go to the “Keyword Ideas,” tab.  Notice that “old time radio,” get 22,200 average searches each month, in the USA market of Google.  That’s not bad at all.  That is certainly large enough to be a market.

 
But look at the competition level, “Low.”  And the suggested bid is pretty low too, only 75 cents a click.  It’s not looking good for this market.
To be sure, let’s to go Google and we’ll do a search for “old time radio.”  There are a few ads, but not many, and they’re not specific to old time radio, all of them anyway.  You’ve got an Amazon mixed in there.  They don’t have ads at the top or the bottom of the page and they’re not all along the side.
Not a lot of advertisers in this market.  That’s a very bad sign.  If nobody else is putting ads up for it that indicates that there’s not a lot of money to be made in the market.  You want to find markets that have ads on the top, ads on the side, and ads on the bottom, if at all possible.

 
Now that’s not to say that this market would be impossible to make some money from, but it’s definitely going to be a lot more difficult, and you’re likely to have lower profit margins with it.  So I’m going to pass on “old time radio,” as my market.
Let’s go back to the keyword planner and look up a market that we all know is wildly, wildly successful and valuable.  We’ll use the keywords “weight loss,” “Get Ideas.”  Notice the difference between weight loss and old time radio.  First of all, it’s got a lot more searches, but old time radio had a solid number of searches.  Twenty-two thousand searches  a month; that’s a good market, but weight loss has 4+ times more in the USA alone.  The competition is high and the suggested bid is almost five bucks a click.

 
What that means is that there’s a huge, high-paying market for weight loss.  But the competition is high and that means there’s a lot of other businesses out there competing for the general weight loss market.
Another thing to look at is all of the submarkets, all of the related keywords, all of their high suggested bids, and all of their high monthly searches.
So clearly, what we already know to be true is true; weight loss has a lot of market that you can get into. But remember, we’re looking to solve a specific problem inside of the market, so we’re not going to target weight loss, in general, if that was the market we were going to get into.  We’re going to go and find a very specific problem that we can solve that also has a good market.
How can we do that?  Well, that gets us into the first step of our three-step formula.

Step 1.  Find A Problem That Needs to Be Solved

In my experience, the best way to discover the problems people are having in any particular market is to go to forums and discussion groups created for that market.  Let’s stick with the weight loss market and see if we can figure out the problems that people are having there.
Once again, we go to Google to help us out.  We’ll search for “weight loss forums,” and see what we get.  As expected, there’s lots of forums in this market.  So let’s go to the first one at http://www.fitness.com  We’ll let it load up and see what we can find.
Okay, right away we start to see a variety of smaller markets inside the very large weight loss market.  Just look at some of the names of these discussion boards.

 

“Weight loss with health conditions,”  “New moms,” “Weight loss through exercise,” “Surgical weight loss,” and so on.  There’s lots of great submarkets here to get into.
Now let’s say that we’re interested in “Weight loss for new moms.”  We’ll click on that forum and see what’s inside.  Right away, you start to see some of the problems that new moms are having.  The very first topic, “Losing baby belly,” something that new moms are definitely interested in.  But we want to know what the most common problems are, and to know that, we’ll sort the topics based on how many people have read them.

 
Now most forums will let you do this.  If you click on the views and then let it reload, it will show us the most read topics first.  Now look at these popular topics.
Loose skin after pregnancy – a very popular topic, 91,000 views.  Losing weight when breastfeeding; After a c-section; lack of motivation, and so on.
Is it me or does this list of topics sound like a Table of Contents for a great e-book on the subject of Losing Weight for New Moms?
So there are definitely  a lot of people interested in this subject.  It’s a big market, but is it a market worth getting into?  To know that, we go back to the AdWords Keyword Planner.  Now I’ve already done the research here.  I’ve put in three separate sets of keywords related to this:  “Weight loss after pregnancy, losing weight after pregnancy,” and “How to lose weight after pregnancy.”

 
Now the average monthly searches are not bad at all.  They total about 5,300 when we limit it to just the United States market.  Now we’ll get to that in just a minute, because you may not have to limit it to that market.  But if you were just offering it in the United States, you have about 5,300 people a month searching for these keywords.
The competition for each set of keywords is low, which can be a bad thing.  But in this case, the suggested bid is also very high for each set of keywords and that makes competition a very good thing.

 
These three sets of things indicate that there’s a good number of people in this market, but not a lot of competition for those potential customers.  But for those that are selling in the market, it’s very valuable to them and we know this because their suggested bids are really high.
But like I mentioned, we don’t have to limit ourselves to the United States market.  In this case, if we were selling an informational product like an e-book, videos, fitness, or something to that effect; we can take away the United States limit on the targeting and show the searches for all English speaking countries.  And that almost doubles the number of searches from 5,300 a month to 10,200 searches a month, for just these three sets of keywords. If you scroll down through the other possible keywords, there are a lot more that make that market even bigger.

 
So it definitely looks like we’ve got a winner here.  A solid number of searches per month, low to medium competition, and a high suggested bid.  Those are the three aspects that you are looking for, anytime you research a problem within your market.
Find a problem that fits those three criteria, and you’ve got a market worth getting into. The next step is to figure out if there is already an existing solution for this problem that we can sell, or if we want to create our own solution to this problem.

Step 2.  Find Or Create A Solution to The Problem

When developing a solution for the problem you’ve discovered, you need to decide whether you want to produce the solution yourself or if you just want to sell somebody else’s solution.  I’ve covered the pros and cons of both types of solutions in the Basic Principles Business Lesson, but let’s recap the benefits of each.
Creating your own product solution has the following benefits:
High profit margins.
Full control of the customer’s path, up sells, offers, etc.
And being the creator of the solution earns you a higher level of trust from both visitors and customers.
On the other hand, selling somebody else’s solution has these benefits:
There’s no upfront investment necessary.
You don’t need to manage the product delivery.
And you don’t have to do any customer support.

 
Creating your own product certainly involves more work, but it also pays out a lot better in the long run.  If you decide to create your own solution, the next step is to determine what kind of product you will offer.  Not all problems are created equal, and not all solutions to those problems should be the same.
There are a number of ways to offer the solution to the problem you’ve discussed.  You can create a physical product that you ship to customers, an informational product be it an e-book, audio records, or video series; something like that.  Or you can have face-to-face solutions; personal coaching, physical meetings, and that sort of thing.

 
There are pros and cons to each of these, and a good deal of advice to be given on product creation, in general.  But that’s outside the scope of this particular segment.  We’ll have another lesson devoted just to that subject.
The reality is that most people starting out will want to sell an existing solution.  The biggest reason for that is investment.  It doesn’t require much at all, at least not in terms of dollars.  It does require a good bit of your time.
You’re probably familiar with the big affiliate outlets already.  There are lots of those these days:  ClickBank, Commission Junction, ShareASale, PayDotCom, Zaxaa, JVZoo, you name it.  That’s just a few of them.  So you definitely want to go through those to see if there’s any solutions that fit the problem you’ve discovered.  But that’s not the only way to find affiliate programs for your market; you can also go straight to Google.

 
Using our example of “Weight loss after pregnancy,” let’s do a Google search for a related affiliate program to see what we can find.  Here we’re at Google, and we just enter in our product market keywords along with the phrase “affiliate program,” at the end.
Not you want to do a + sign “affiliate program.”  That way, Google will absolutely show you results that include an affiliate program.
Now it just so happens that the first result you get in this case, is the best product that I’ve found for weight loss after pregnancy.  I did the research in advance so I could get through this portion quickly with you to give you an overview of how it works.

 
This particular solution is called Pregnancy Without Pounds, and it happens to be a ClickBank product.  The nice thing about ClickBank and the other big outlets is that they product statistics about each of the products available for affiliates to sell.
Now let me show you were that is.  Here’s the Pregnancy Without Pounds product at ClickBank.  It tells you how much you’re going to earn on average per sale, $23.97.  It tells you the average commission rate, 55%.  In this case, there is no re-billable product, so they’re only going to get charged once.  And it tells you the gravity or the popularity of the product.

 
So right away you can see that this product as a good per sale earnings and is the most popular product of its kind at ClickBank.  It’s not really popular compared to other products in ClickBank, but that’s to be expected because remember, we’re serving a much smaller segment of a very large market.
Well the next thing to do, once you find a product, is to look at the website of that product.  So let’s click-thru and take a look.  Does this site convince me that it’s worth buying?  If I had the problem, would I buy this solution?  Is it convincing?

 
Now in the case of Pregnancy Without Pounds, it does a very good job or convincing the visitor, in my opinion.  It’s got a great headline.  I mean look at that – FIT INTO YOUR SKINNY JEANS IN 30 DAYS AFTER PREGNANCY.
Now is that does not appeal to pretty much every woman after pregnancy, I don’t know what does.
And it’s followed up by another appealing headline – DON’T WAIT NINE MONTHS FOR YOUR BIKINI BODY.
Again, something that women who have just had a baby, are very much interested in getting back into.
As you scroll down through the site, you see images of people who’ve lost weight using the methods and their testimonials.  Also, very important, read them.  Are they convincing?  Do they sound real?  Do they sound fake?  In this case, they’re very good.
A little further down, you see that they have an opt-in box for a newsletter, which is also a good thing.

 
Even if somebody decides not to buy right now, if they get on the e-mail list and buy later, you still get a commission, because that ClickBank cookie will last a long time and you’ll still get money and that’s a good thing.  You want to merchant to follow up with those potential customers for you, to try to sell them later on.  That gives a higher conversion rate and will earn you more money in the long run.
Now it would’ve been better, if this pop up box came up immediately, and was right in the face of the visitor when they came on the site.  Those are the best kind.  That is the kind of opt-in box that’s going to build an e-mail list even better, and that’s what you want.  You want your vendors that you’re selling for to get a hold of those customers, get them on that e-mail list, and if they don’t buy right now to sell to them later on.

 
On top of all that, this product is backed by professionals, they’re introduced, they’re accredited, they have degrees, it talks about their background, and so on.  In the end, of course, there’s always a 100% money back guarantee and that’s a must.  It takes away all the risk to the potential customer.
Now as an affiliate, the best thing you can do is test the product you find to see if it converts as well as you think it will.  If it does, then you’ve got a keeper.  If it doesn’t, then you go back and research another product to sell.  That’s one of the great things about being an affiliate instead of having your own product; there’s no upfront investment.  If this product doesn’t work very well, you find another one.  You’re not out much and it doesn’t cost you that much.  Certainly not the thousands or tens of thousands it may have cost to create a product like this.

 
But wherever you find the product that you decide to offer, whether it’s through Google or through one of the big affiliate outlets, it’s always a good idea to write to the owners of the product and ask questions.  Ask them what their conversation rate is.  And by conversation rate I mean, out of every 100 visitors, how many people buy that product?  Ask them about their up sells and whether or not you’re going to get a commission on those?  Ask them about commissions on future sales of other products that they might buy when they’re recommended by this particular product owner.

 
You want that customer that you refer to earn you as much commission as possible, for as long as possible.  The responses to your questions and how fast and well the company responds to your questions will tell you a lot about whether or not you want to build your business on that product.
So that’s market research, in a nutshell.  Let’s recap what we’ve already discussed.

1.    Try if at all possible to get into a market that you have a passion for.  It will help you stick it out until you make it.
2.   Use the AdWords Keyword Planner to determine if your passion is a market that would make a good business.
3.   Use forms and discussion groups in your market to determine the problems that people are having.
4.   Use the AdWords Keyword Planner again, to see if that problem is worth selling a solution for.
5.   If it is, determine whether or not you’re going to create your own solution or offer somebody else’s.  Remember those pros and cons.
6.   If you’re going to be an affiliate, research the available solutions and get in contact with the owners to get more details that are important to you as an affiliate.

 

Step 3.  Offer The Solution to The People with The Problem

The third step in our business formula is how to put your business in front of the problem who have the problem.  But that won’t start happening until after your website is built and you’re ready to accept visitors.
We’ll get into how to drive traffic to your website after the lessons that teach you how to get that site up and running.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by MadMax.

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