Now What?
By Diane on Aug 10, 2010 in Marketing Training
So You Have Discovered Your Passion!!! Great!! Now What?
Market Research
Now it is time to do your market research to find out if your passion is actually a viable business. I mean,
the reason you have a business is to make money right? The key is to take that passion and turn it into a
business model of sharing that information, product or service with others.
Well today I am going to give you the information you need to make an educated decision or at least dig
deeper into your passion and target how you will monetize from it.
What you will be doing is taking your passions, choose a niche, spend some time researching it and learning
about it and then share it. Keep in mind that you don’t even have to be an expert in this area. You just
need to have the desire to learn more about it. You have to remember that you can teach someone about
your passion with just beginning knowledge. Your ideal customer or client will be at the beginning when
they come to you, just like you were before you realized your passion. This person will likely be someone just
like you, with similar interests, passions and goals. We will talk later in another newsletter about list building,
so for now, lets just find out if you have a hobby or a business.
Aside from marketing to your ideal client, there are some other considerations you want to keep in mind when choosing your Niche.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, niche means:
2a: a place, employment, status or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted
b: a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species c: the ecological role of
an organism in a community especially in regard to food consumption d: a specialized market.
When we talk about our “niche” in Internet Marketing, we’re referring to d: a specialized market,”
although the other definitions are relevant. If you’re passionate and knowledgeable about underwater basket
weaving, but only four people a month search Google for those keywords, what you have is a hobby. If you’re passionate about iPhones (right now), and eleventy-billion people are searching Google for iPhone related information, you’re going to be competing with some pretty big dogs. I’d recommend something in the middle.
One way to narrow down your niche is to use a similar method we used to Discover Your Passion.
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write down all the subjects you’re
knowledgeable about. Take some time with this, you know a lot more than you think you do.
Then, in the second column, make a similar list of things you’re passionate about. PASSIONATE! Not just interested. Then, see what turns up in both columns. On another sheet of paper, make a list of just the things that are in both columns, with the most fascinating (to you) subject first, the next most fascinating subject second, and so on.
The next question is viability…
are there enough people interested in the information or product or service you are offering to make it profitable?
To figure that out, you will need to do a little market research.
One of the first ways to establish whether or not your market has profit potential is to search Google.
For example, lets say that your passion is Wreath Making (Which just happens to be my passion at WreathMakers.com)…
Watch this quick video about market research:
Other places to do market research and find products to sell:
The next way to establish whether or not your market has profit potential
is to look up and join some forums
that are relevant to your interest. Within the forums, people talk about their problems. These problems are
waiting to be solved…why shouldn’t they be solved by you. Taking a look at the problems people have within
your niche can help you to narrow down your niche, as I stated above. If your niche is to large to compete with,
narrowing it down to a solution to a common problem can be just the right approach to your success.
Get out there on the net and do some research. Be sure to bookmark some of the sites that you find
interesting. Remember to use your research as a source for your own creative content.
Research tools:
Market Samurai
Google Toolbox
