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This post was mentioned on Friendfeed by Jim morris: Online Consumer Market Research Done the Right Way! Spread the gospel http://ping.fm/qndCe...

This should be the 1st article someone reads that is considering building an online business. I couldn't agree more.

Always interesting information-but by the very definition of niche you may be selling something with a small audience and a similar small demand-so then pricing becomes the key

Bestowed honors from Google on the front page for “market research”?

http://nbx.s3.amazonaws.com/google-market-resea…

Hi Jim, I remember your original article well. I have tried to use your approach, but I suspect the niches I am exploring may be just a bit too obscure.
How do you get inside a niche that is pretty much all digital, where there is huge untapped potential that has not yet exploded?
Tracking down offline sources for products that help developers get into the iphone app business successfully, has so far eluded me plenty of interest but no buyers so far. Any tips welcome.

I remember your original article well, Jim. I have tried to apply many of your principles, but seem to have followed some fairly obscure niches, with limited success. How do you advise, getting really useful beta on niches that are as yet underdeveloped and which have huge potential over the next few years? There is very little in the way of offline materials or mileage here, as the niche is entirely digital, relatively new and is on the point of exploding. There will be absolute tribes of developers keen to break in to it and there is only a smattering of good advice out there, with a lack of focussed buying words as yet!!
It's exercising my grey matter at the moment.
Ray

Great post, agree should be a must read before doing any keyword research

I haven't the slightest idea what your talking about ?
I don't know how to get to twitter, let alone Tweet ?
I do know how to read, just not between the lines …

Jim, your article is awesome and very true. But why don't you update your profile picture so it looks like you now. Your current picture is not even close to what you look like in your videos.

Ron

You've got some definite catching up to do then…

The devil lies in the details and actually choosing the right niche market.

The thing with OBSCURE niches is that there is not much there to begin with.

You need GROSS competition because the pie is not big enough when there is obscurity.

Does that make sense?

Please go into a niche that is already developed — otherwise, you are basically delaying your profits when you could be profiting now. I know you are hypnotized by this underdeveloped niche that is about to explode, but I would make sure to go after a niche that is much deeper and has STUFF other than just one thing to offer within the niche. It seems that there needs to be a piece written about how to select the right niche.

The untapped potential thing I'm just not sure about. That's like banking on the stock market to pull through for you. As I said above, the obscure niches need to be left to others while you need to get in somewhere where the competition is plentiful. HINT: When the competition is plentiful, there's MORE MARKETSHARE to grab and pockets of profits that people leave on the table. But it's a matter of looking at the competition and finding the holes to file. Hope that helps, but it's time to get out obscurity

You are not wrong there. Thanks for taking the time to respond. Niche choice seems to be my Achilles heel!

the fact is there are SO MANY places someone can fudge something; keyword research, niche selection, site implementation, site promotion. If one this is amiss, only a slight portion of the achievable results can ever be achieve. But if you're already starting out with a small market to begin with, there can only be meager means. Pick a big market, do things a LITTLE different and unique to attract attention, publish content and you'll get the attention. I know one of my old old clients who used to complain complain complain all the time and I know he's doing quite well as one of the top movie review sites and comcast or one of the major networks take care of the advertising on his site. Just amazing what ONE person can do if they just put their mind to it.

Hey Jim

Loved that article.
Its surprising how much we deviate with the core principals.

We need to concentrate on what is actually selling and the as they say stand in front of that hungry traffic.
Thanks
Hamant
Ps Fancy telling us how you got that article indexed so fast?
Just very curious

Hey Jim
Thanks for the free info I am sure this will send me in a more positve direction in my affiliate career,but have a question how do you find “best selling” in Sears.com etc ? I hate all these so called “supa dupa” research tools that are out there too.

was just speaking with a friend about this issue today, he was as lost as I am – now here's some light. Thanks

Pick a category over at Sears.com and when it loads make sure to select from the sub-category if you don't get this particular one — in this example, I had to go two menus down into Pressure Washers to reveal the best selling on Sears.com http://nbx.s3.amazonaws.com/images/sears.jpg

managed to get top selling,is this the same thing,? only thought it would be more precise it doesn`t kinda list any data.

Mike

Chicken – Egg? Chicken – Egg?

I have spent so much time on soooo many stinking sites reading so many pitches and 'How To's”.

A thousand times, “Thank You!”

OMG! What an amazing development w/Light Blue! What's next…a wrist-watch Smart Phone ala Dick Tracy?!

Glad the lights are going off. Now it's just a matter of finding a product, build a site or a themed-ring of sites around it, promote it through articles and you should have that site up to 5-10 sales by the end of a good month of promoting. Do a few more articles peppered over a scheduled course of time for maintenance and move onto another HOT SELLING or TOP SELLING product. Rinse and repeat until you occupy a huge cloud of various products through the entire vine in your niche. Does this make sense?

Other than sales data — what more data do we need other than the product name brands and the ones near the top — that's selling hot now. We can't anticipate EVERYTHING to be in front of us. Now pick a category of niche prroduct (based on the product you pick that you may know a little bit about — like I know about hand-held PCs software phone for Windows) and create a site around that product first and trust me, you won't have to WONDER at all where to start your keyword research because the product keyword IS the keyword research, you just need to find the other possibilities of keywords and make sure to build and get a page ranked for that. Hope I'm making sense here…

Hey Jim,
Your Niche research article is right on target.
Like your new look, what kind of detox program are you on?
I would also like to know your 10 seconds indexing tip.

Lak, in response to yours and in the order you stated and asked. Thanks for the props on the article. The new look is a transition look, newer look coming. Not really a detox because that to me says herbs or stuff that's unhealthy — I call this a cleanse which can be read about here http://healthandlight.com/MasterCleanse.pdf — and then the 10 seconds RANKindexing tip will be sent via email and how and where that will be revealed.

hi jim
an excewllent piece of research and a real eye opener so you suggest it makes sense to actually locate a real hot in demand market

before we start worrying about finding keywords i reckon you could go to the site and get there main keywords or tags
great stuff
peter mcgrath

Peter, correct! In fact, Tiffany Dow is teaching folks just to create ONE Squidoo lens per product you pick from Amazon. – and that's brilliant, because if you can fill up the squidoo lens with a bunch of content just on a single product, all you have to do is work one lens at a time, promote that lens you built, and then find the next product and build around that using what keywords you can expand upon or find good combinations to cover as much ground on one lens. The point is that you don't want to weigh down a single lens with other stuff but just one product at a time, keeps you focused and tells the engines EXACTLY what that lens is about in a tight fashion. Now, what also ends up happening here is that if you build pages like you would a single Squidoo lens, you don't have to worry about building an entire site out, just worry about building out one main specific product that is a buying keyword. Because no matter what happens, whether someone is looking for a backpack or school carrying case (practically the same thing), the fact is what they end up with a “Jansport Classic Student Backpack Dreamin for my daught at amazon …. http://www.amazon.com/JanSport-Classic-Student-… — and if I sort the stuff, I know exactly what BUYING keywords people are going to end up typing last. That's why doing this research leapfrogs you to getting to the KEYWORDS where the profits are, plain and simple

hi Jim

many thanks for your reply i have noticed Tiffany Dow on the warriors forum
i have taken the trouble to print of your article and the replies really
must look into getting your niche bot software
from a very snowy and cold England
thanks
peter mcgrath

You're a no fluff guy! Always appreciate your pertinent, usable info. Thank you so much!

Great information Jim! You're absolutely right… market research is to be
considered apart from keyword search…Thank you for these pointers
on how to do it fairly easily.

Great post Jim, thanks for this lovely reading!