It is the goal of anyone seeking to make money on the Internet to find a good market. Some markets are better than others. Some markets have people who are more willing to buy things than others. Some markets have more demand than others.

The goal is to find a market which has enough demand and enough of a space for you to make a niche of your own and make an offer that would be of interest to that market.

I would say that there are 4 markets that are pretty much proven to be good performers on the Internet. Those markets are:

1. Health
   There is a huge market for people looking to solutions to health problems, looking to lose weight, look better, etc.
2. Relationships
   Another huge market is teaching people how to have successful relationships, find a mate, get dates, etc.
3. Making Money
   A really huge market is that of the information product designed to show you how to make money. You see a lot of products on making money with real estate or, yes, making money online.
4. Hobbies
   Another huge market is to find a hobby that has a perhaps small, but very enthusiastic audience and offer products specifically for people with that hobby.

If you’re just getting started, and you need direction, start with one of these categories. Choose one where you have the most personal knowledge. A product where you are not really an expert will be noticed from a mile away.

We touched on this subject back on Day 8 of this series. No matter what business you are in or how you want to pursue profits from the Internet, everything hinges on finding a good market to cater to.

You can, of course, cater to multiple markets at the same time using different parts of your business, but you have to find a group of people with a particular need and want, then provide them what they ask for in exchange for money.

The rules are the same online as they are offline when it comes to these basics.

So, how do you go about finding a market niche? Here are some potential ideas for you, starting out with the ones I listed on Day 8:

• Keyword research. Using a site like WordTracker, research what keywords people are searching for on the major search engines.
• Google Trends. Google provides graphical trends on keywords so you can see if activity if increasing or decreasing over time. A great way to see what areas are getting hotter and have buzz.
• Looking For Goals. 43Things is a social network focused on goals. See what people are trying to accomplish in their lives. It can be great idea fodder for an information product to help them accomplish their goals.
• Use Forums. Yes, you need to participate in forums. See what kinds of questions are being asked.
• Run Surveys
• Investigate Other Sites. There are, many times, hidden data on other sites that can provide valuable insight. Well, it isn’t really hidden, but it might be data that you never thought of using as market research. For example, go do Download.com and look at the types of software being most often downloaded. That will give you markets where there is strong demand.
• Participate in Social Media. Building up a network on sites like Facebook and Twitter can be very valuable in market research. You obviously don’t want to spam these sites (they will revolt like crazy), but asking people questions is a great way to do informal surveying.

When looking for a niche, there are two schools of thought on how to choose:

1. Find a niche where there will be little competition.
2. Find a niche with high demand (and probably lots of competition).

Your choice is up to you. It surely is a lot easier to compete in some hidden niche with very little contenders. You can more or less write your own rules. The tradeoff, of course, is that the potential audience is typically a whole lot smaller.

On the flip side, choosing a popular niche might mean you have a lot of competition, but it also means you have proven high demand for what you’re selling. So, at that point, it isn’t about finding something that will sell. It is about out-marketing and providing better value than your competition.

Obviously, you can always sell products on the Internet. But, what about selling a service?

A lot of people maintain websites in order to be a public face to services which they offer, whether offline or online. This is always great because the web can put your offering in front of the eyes of many people easily. More and more, people are turning to the Internet even to find local, offline business services. The yellow pages are so yesterday!

When you offer a service via your website, the most important advice I could provide would be to NOT have your website be little but a digital brochure. I see so many business websites out there that do nothing but say what they do and have a link to contact them. Boring! And it is even worse when they use some of the classic mistakes of marketing, like calling themselves #1 or using “they” when they are only a one-man show.

As I said earlier in this series, the era of doing business with big corporations is nearing an end. People do business with PEOPLE. They want real people.

Not only that, but you need to give people a reason to come to your website. Why would anybody come to it? The classic mistake of brochure style business sites is that people would only happen upon the site if they were looking specifically for that business. But, nobody is searching for your business name on Google!

So, some general advice (since this series is all about just hitting highpoints) for offering a service through your site is:

1. Provide real VALUE on your business website. Start a blog and offer freely available content having to do with the area of your business. Offer free value to your potential clientele. Much of your clientele is going to discover you because they’re searching for an answer. So, give them the answer and then say “Oh, by the way, you can hire me for more personalized service.”. This is a much better way to market your service online then a brochure-style website.
2. Don’t hesitate to hire somebody who knows what they’re doing to create your website for you if you don’t have the expertise. An amateur-looking website can have the exact opposite effect that you are looking for. If you look amateur, people will write you off as such. Remember, you have only a few seconds online to make a first impression once somebody arrives at your site.
3. Use local search. A very high percentage of people who search locally for something are actively looking to hire somebody! For example, if I search for “tampa bay mechanics”, am I just looking for general info about my car? No, very likely I am looking for a mechanic to fix my car! So, make sure your site is geographically centric if your business is. Use the name of your city in your website and in your site’s title. And if you do any internet advertising, make sure  you geo-target visitors specifically in your city.

Bonus Tip: Even if your business can cater to many cities, you can take advantage of local search. Create multiple landing pages to your site, all targeting different cities. Then let the search engines index these. Anybody searching for your product in those cities can then find you, even if you’re based elsewhere.

On Day 10, I said that the information product is one of the best ways to make money online for multiple reasons. But, this inevitably means that you have to create an information product to sell. Next thoughts might include:

• What do I know that somebody would pay me for?
• Am I expected to create an entire info product? I don’t have time! I can’t write!

Common thoughts, let me tell you. But, one thing you have to realize at the outset is that you do not have to do everything yourself.

Creating the product yourself may be ideal, especially if you really are an expert. Also, you may feel obligated to personally create any product which is going to bear your name. However, be aware of your other option: outsourcing.

There are people out there who will perform writing for you as a ghost writer. A ghost writer is a person who writes but does not take the credit for it. It is actually very commonly done. For example, Hillary Clinton’s book It Takes a Village was not written by Hillary. It was written by Barbara Feinman. The only reason we know this is because a controversy erupted over it (hey, its politics). But, in the real world, this is done all the time.

A ghost writer does not have to be expensive. In fact, many times they are not. You can hire writing talent overseas for a small amount of money (varying depending on their skill, of course). Places  you can look for a ghost writer would include:

• Elance
• Guru.com
• Arbor Books

When you hire a ghost writer, you need to be specific about what you want. Remember, this is not their product. It is YOUR’S. You need to plan out the product, outline it, etc. You may even write parts of it on your own. Your ghost writer can fill in the gaps or even create entire sections for you. You can also pay people on these services to do the legwork to research things you need for the creation of your product.

So, don’t stop yourself from pursuing this because you think you can’t pull it off. Sometimes the power of others can help you get the job done quite nicely.

As of a few months ago, I have gone from working exclusively at the office to working from home at least one day a week. So far my transition has been extremely smooth with relatively no speed bumps. Of course, this was prefaced on my part with making my two working environments functional for me. As a service to others out there who have considered working from home, I’m going to share some of the preparations I made as well as outline some benefits (some obvious and some not so obvious) and concerns regarding working from home.

Continued

One thing this 30 day series will make clear by the time it is complete is that there are many ways to generate an income online. However, there is no better way (in my opinion) than selling information.

People go online in the first place to gain information. They want to learn about something. They have an immediate problem to solve. They go online for how-to.

Today, there is SO MUCH information available online that it is extremely hard to digest. Said simply, there is probably very few information products available online which contain information that you cannot find for free somewhere on the Internet. However, that information is probably spread out across tons of websites, is hard to find or is not in a format which makes it usable. So, even if your information product contains things which are available elsewhere, it can still be valuable as long as it provides real, measurable value to the customer.

The major benefits to information products over selling physical items is:

1. Low cost of distribution. Many info products can simply be downloaded. This means no shipping costs for you or the customer. It also means immediate satisfaction for the customer. Of course, some of the higher end information products are shipped as a package (DVDs, videos, course materials), but that choice depends on your market and what they want.
2. Easier to create. If you find a market with a need, you can create your own information product specifically to that need. You do not need to shop around for a seller to buy it from. As long as you have the know-how in our market, you can just create the product from home.
3. 100% profit margin. In most cases, your only investment is the time it takes to make the product. If the product is digital in nature (such as a PDF e-book) then you have a 100% profit margin.

So, now that you know an info product is a good way to go, now what? Stay tuned for Day 11.

In Day 8, I talked about the basics of finding a product to sell. If you are going this route, you are getting into the world of ecommerce. To people new to the Internet, this might seem very complicated. Ecommerce, however, is not complicated to get started with and you could do it from your home.

First, it is necessary that you understand a few of the inner workings. Below, I will include information from an article I wrote some time ago:

The Basics – How Funds are Collected

Ecommerce simply refers to the practice of shopping online. From the site owner’s perspective, it entails collecting funds from sales transactions on their website and depositing that money into the bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway (discussed below). Basically, when a person enters their credit card number on a website, the card number and buyer information is sent to a payment gateway. This is done securely. The payment gateway will interface with a payment processor to check availability of funds as well as any other criteria set for accepting transactions. If the funds are available, the payment processor will then deduct the funds. The payment gateway will then report back a successful transaction to the merchant, at which point the merchant’s shopping cart system will respond by displaying a “Thank You” type message to the buyer. Funds will sit until the transaction is settled, which means the funds are collected and deposited to your bank account. Until a transaction is settled, the transaction will not post to your bank account and the corresponding debit will not post to the buyer’s credit card account.

Merchant Accounts

A Merchant Account is a special type of account specifically for online retailers. They are designed to allow non-POS (point of sale) transactions using credit cards, or transactions where you don’t have the person’s credit card in hand. In other words, you don’t have a card swiper. A merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a go-between between your payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank.

A merchant account is a relationship based on trust between you and the issuing bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer’s account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased. In case where this does not occur, the buyer can dispute the transaction. This puts the issuing bank on the line because they are then obligated to return the funds to the buyer’s card (a chargeback). Therefore, merchant providers are taking a risk in allowing a merchant to take credit cards under their name.

The organization providing your merchant account will do underwriting on the account when you apply to check your credit. If you have a history of too many chargebacks, you may be denied. In fact, too many chargebacks can result in you, as a merchant, being put on the Terminated Merchant File (also called The Match File). This is a blacklist which will effectively prevent you from ever receiving a merchant account again.

Payment Gateways

A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to manage funds, transactions, and the like. It also serves as a connection between your website and your merchant account. It takes data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves or declines the transaction and sends its response back to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then turns around and provides this data back to the merchant for appropriate handling of the transaction. A payment gateway, then, does not offer services such as merchant accounts or shopping carts, although some of the larger-known gateways do provide such options as value-added services.

Some of the better known payment gateway services are Authorize.Net, Verisign, 2CheckOut.com, Linkpoint, Paysystems.com, Worldpay.com, and MerchantCommerce. Some of the things to look for in a payment gateway are compliance with CISP, SDP and DISC (security initiatives put out by the major credit card companies), virtual terminal (to be able to accept transactions over the phone by typing in their data rather than only relying on your website), fraud prevention, recurring billing, methods of integration, cost and whether they can accept e-checks or not.

Fraud prevention is a big one because, as stated above, too many fraudulent transactions will result in chargebacks which could end up putting you on the Match List and your merchant account closed. Some of the common fraud detection mechanisms are Address Verification (AVS) which compares the customer’s address with that on file with the issuing bank, CVV2 which makes use of the 3-digit security code on the credit card (4-digit on American Express cards).

Most gateways will provide instructions on how to interface with their servers from your web store. Most gateways offer two methods of integration.

One method is to have your site POST a form to the gateway’s server which is pre-populated with your customer’s information. At that point, the customer will provide the customer with the payment form which allows them to type in their credit card number in a secure environment. After processing occurs, the customer is then routed back to your website along with the results of the transaction. Your site again takes over the process. This method is usually easier to set up for site owners and it also means the site owner does not need to purchase their own SSL certificate (allowing secure transactions on the site itself). The tradeoff is that you do need to send your customers off of your website for payment collection. Many gateways offer ways to make the payment form look like your website using customized headers and footers, but the fact remains that the visitors are leaving your website.

The second method is totally invisible to the customer. If the site owner has an SSL certificate, they can set up security on their own site. This means they can host the payment form themselves, totally customizing it to their website. When the customer submits payment, your site will securely and invisibly submit the information to the payment gateway. The payment gateway will do the usual processing and then invisibly send the response back to the merchant’s website, allowing it to respond properly. From the customer’s perspective, they never left your website. And they never did. This type of setup requires an SSL certificate as well as access to the CURL library.

Many gateway providers can get you set up with a merchant account at the same time as the gateway. So, in most cases, you do not need to sign up for them separately.

Conclusion

Technical? Perhaps. It honestly sounds more complicated than it really is. But, more details will be explained in our Silver and Gold membership plans here on PCMech.

Buying low and selling high. It has been a basic concept of business since the beginning of time. And the concept doesn’t change when moved to the Internet. Most of the sellers on Ebay are making their money doing exactly this. They buy a product at one price and then resell it on Ebay at a higher price. Their profit is the difference.

Buying and selling products online isn’t exactly the easiest way to make a buck online, but it is one of the easier ones to grasp for people not completely “jived in” with the Internet.

The first step is to find a product to sell. This entails doing some research online to find a product people would be willing to buy. You might first start out with a product you produce yourself because this would give you the highest profit margin. But, if you do not have your own product, you would do that research to find your market. You can do this in a few different ways:

1. Keyword research. Use a service like Wordtracker to see what people are searching for. If people are searching it, they’d probably buy it.
2. Use Google Trends to track usage of particular keywords and see the trend of popularity. See a spike? It might be worth a look as a potential market.
3. Tap into social media and see what problems people are having. A site like 43Things might provide you guidance into things people want to accomplish. Could be an idea for a product.

Once you’ve found a market, you either create a product to sell or you buy one. Creating the product is an entire body of knowledge on it’s own. Buying the product means you need to find a supplier.

If you have a specific product in mind, you might try going direct to the manufacturer and seeing if you can buy from them. Another option might be a site like Worldwide Brands which acts as a database for valid resellers and will help you sort through real suppliers and middle men. You don’t want to buy from middle men because all they are doing is jacking up the price you pay.

If you can drop-ship, I would recommend you do so. Drop-shipping means that you make the sale and the supplier will ship directly to your customer directly as if it is coming from you. This means you will not need to maintain inventory – a huge plus.

Lastly, you will need to decide whether to set up shop with your own ecommerce store, on Ebay, or a mix of both.

On Day 6, I talked about using social media as the spokes of a wheel and at the center of that wheel is your blog.The fact that I made a blog the hub of the wheel should tell you that, yes, the blog is important. Even if your business centers around an online ecommerce store, you should still have a blog.

Why?

As I also said in Day 6, anonymity and impersonal business are a thing of the past. In fact, it is common for small businesses to try to look bigger than they really are online. They’ll use the word “we” when they mean the word “I”. They’ll have multiple department email addresses when there are only one or two people on the staff. They’ll use corporate “lingo” on their website, thinking it makes then look professional when, in reality, it makes them look dumb.

Today, business is about the individual. You are an individual and you are in business. Your customer is an individual and they have a need or desire to be filled. Even if your operation is larger than a one-man operation, you should be accessible and personable and REAL.

With a blog, you can do that and you also have a solid line of communication to your customer. You can post news stories tailored to your market. You can use your blog to get feedback on your products and services (by way of blog comments).

Blog software, too, is set up for interactivity. When you post a story in our blog, your blog software will automatically “ping” any other sites you link to in your post as well as sites which you specify (such as Pingomatic). This serves to notify others of what you’re doing on our blog as well as to notify search engines of your new post – automatically. Search engines like Google LOVE blogs so strategic use of your blog can get your site and brand into search engines.

So, my advice:

1. If you do not yet have a blog, start one. I recommend using Wordpress for your blog. Also, I highly recommend you use your own hosting, not Wordpress.com. You want to you use OWN domain name, not a domain of some freely available personal blogging service.
2. Post often.
3. Make your posts valuable to your potential customer and reader. Do not worry about giving away too much information. It is the free stuff which is going to bring people in the door. If you hold back too much so that you can charge them for it later, you’re not going to have many takers.
4. Like spokes to the wheel, use your social media profiles to drive traffic to your blog.
5. Use the blog to drive traffic to your sales letter or online store. If you are running a service business, make your contact information clearly visible on your blog.

Happy blogging.

I wasn’t joking when I said sheer speed and power. Get it right and it’ll hit you with such a force you won’t know what happened until weeks later. So what’s the difference between paying for ads to be sent to lists and JV’s? Well to begin with, the main difference is the effectiveness of personal lists. The response rate, targeting and conversion rates are unmatched. I’ll give you some idea of the scope of this with some statistics in a second. For now, though, all you need to know is that there are many marketers out there with huge lists, (I’m talking up to half a million subscribers, sometimes more). Very few of them ever sell any ads to their lists because eventually this dilutes the response. It takes a lot of work and dedication to run a successful list that does sell ads and is open to the public. You’d see the difference immediately if you subscribed to a private marketers list. You wouldn’t get a bunch of random ads, and in most cases you actually get far less content than a standard ezine, but the response rates they see are immense for several reasons:

Please Login or Register to read the rest of this article. Gold/Silver Membership required.