by Claude Pelanne at November 7, 2010.

Monthly Archives: May 2009

3 Key Steps in Finding a Profitable Market

How To Target A Market

If you are thinking of setting up an online business, one of the first things you need to think about is finding a profitable market in which to develop your business. You need to find your target market.

Profitability

How do you go about doing this? Look for a market with high profitability. You want to find a product or service for which there is high demand. High demand means good chances of high profitability. You also want to see high competitive activity or supply. Why? Because that means people are making money. It means there is a good chance you can position yourself to make a good profit if you plan your marketing wisely.

Categories and Keywords

Some typical areas of high demand and strong supply are categories such as internet marketing, stock, currency and index trading, health programs, weight loss and even gasoline efficiency for your daily commute. You can determine how these areas are doing by going on Google to find the dominant keywords for a particular product or service. Google Adwords is a great tool to use for this purpose. For example, look up affiliate marketing or currency trading and see the results you get. With the keywords from your research, you can then do a Google search to see what businesses pop up.

Check out the top sites both in the organic return down the middle of the page and on the top and right column where the paid sponsorships display the level of interest for paid leads. A presence of paid sponsors indicates that people are paying for ads and making money for the product or service you are researching. It also shows you what the competition is doing and what you need to incorporate in your own planning to get good results.

Marketplace Sites

Another option in evaluating the profitability of a product/service is to join Clickbank, Paydotcom, cj.com or any number of resell sites for product and services. With Clickbank, for example, pick a market category that fits your prospective product /service. There you will see the leaders in the category. You will also see the level of affiliate sales activity, the commission amounts being paid, information about the product and the contact information of the owner or originator of that product or service. This information will tell you, who is making money and what the business sector profitability is. With this information you can decide to rep a product or service or find something similar to resell or develop yourself.

Affiliate System

Once you have made your choice of a profitable market area, you want to find a specific product, preferably a digital product, that you can “front end” to get started. In this model you want to own resell rights and make your offering of affiliate resale rights at a very low cost, somewhere between $10 and $20. You offer your affiliates a commission of 75-100% for the delivery of leads to your web site.

This affiliate system will help you develop your customer base to which you can cross sell and up sell all sorts of related products/services and that is where you will make your income. These back end products can be cd’s, DVD’s and all sorts of software needed to carry an online business.

Part of the process of setting up your online business means you will need to register a domain name and sign up with a web hosting service. Your Web site will be the place for your presell, sales and order pages. You will also want to sign up with an autoresponder service to organize your email responses to your affiliates and customers.

Conclusion

When this early research and set up process is done, you will have a chosen a profitable market sector and you will have selected a list of products that you can front end and back end to grow your business. You will be ready to move to the next stage of your business development; working out a marketing plan to capture and grow your customer base and preparing the final stage of launching the actual business.

With careful research and preparation on the front end you will increase your chances of success when you are ready to make your move.

May your travels be prosperous.

How to Control Your Emotions in the Internet Marketplace

Take Control of Your Impulses

You are minding your own business when the email arrives. It is about the latest and greatest opportunity of the moment. The internet guru is about to launch the latest version of 2.0 and you can get it while it is available. Remember, this is a limited time offer open to a limited number of entrants. Miss this and you can wallow in failure.

You take the bait and head for the site. There is the video ready and waiting. Open it, hit play and soon you’re sucked in. Here he is, Mr. Guru, multi-millionaire, sharply dressed and very smooth. You swoon…he really makes sense; he knows exactly what you are going through. You are feeling that blast of momentum build. You say to yourself, this could be it… the ticket to riches and prosperity. No time to waste…let’s get it.

Sound familiar? Well, did you know that there is a center in your brain called the amygdala that controls your feelings of fear and impulse? It responds to stimuli in 12 milliseconds and fires up whenever something from an external cue such as a tragic event or daily occurrence sparks it into action. Something as innocent as a sales pitch can trigger it and have you doing things you might never have considered.

Well, welcome to the world of internet marketing. A market where selling never ceases and up selling and cross selling are the daily staple of the marketer.

So what can you do? There are a few things to keep in mind and some steps you can take to keep your emotions in check.

Reappraise

The concept of reappraising is actively used in the research of emotive decision making. One tactic is to reinterpret what you are hearing and seeing, to create a less emotional scenario that will challenge your impulse. Does the sales pitch really take care of your need to make money today, or is your urgency artificial because you know there is no easy money to be made?

Step outside of Yourself

Take the time to imagine someone else listening to the sales video or reading down the Web sales page and position yourself to give them advice on what they are hearing and reading. Is the sales pitch offering anything new that will change the condition of the person being solicited? What is the outcome that can be expected? Will it really change things for the better?

Control the cues

Letting the sales pitch dictate urgency and need can set off the amygdala and get you super motivated to make the buy decision. Distance yourself by literally turning down the audio or just taking some down time to let things settle. If the seller has a time clock running, as one I watched did, turn off your machine. Its amazing how time off and distance will change your outlook.

Tap into your emotions

As the sales pitch unfolds, ask yourself out loud, if this product will get you to your goal and keep you focused on your plan or if it is a diversion that will cost you time and money? Do you really need to follow the pack or are you better off sticking to your plan? Keeping your focus is the key to your success. You have to remain keenly aware of how outside stimuli can lead you astray. Spectacular deals coming in via email are among them.

The best thing to do in a lot of cases is to sleep on it. There is a reason why someone is selling and there has to be a much better reason for you to be buying, so take the time to figure it out.

If you can take these steps and apply them to the next “great opportunity” you should avoid the trap of buyers remorse and make your decision based on careful consideration of your planned goals and your business plan.

May your travels be prosperous.

PS. This article is based on Jason Zweig’s article “How to Control Your Fears in a Fearsome Market” that appeared in the WSJ. If you get a chance look it up and read it.

Affiliate Starting Line: Happy New Year

: Image by AWWS via Flickr

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners Note For The New Year

I have been reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and in the Introduction he describes four “obstacles” we all face as we decide how we are going to live our lives.

Actually I prefer to think of these as four steps as opposed to obstacles. We may stumble on the way, but if we stay focused, we can make it to the top of the flight of stairs.

Step One

Step One is the stage of layered and buried expectations and personal calling. We all know deep down what we would rather be doing, but all too often we are taught that things are impossible and we settle for less. The burning ambition to be what we ought to be is there, but it is buried under years of “prejudice, fear and guilt”.

Step Two

Step two is the “Love” wall. This is the stage where we fear doing what is really our calling out of respect for our loved ones and what they expect us to be, or out of the fear of social rejection. That leads us to compromise so we conform to group expectations.

Step Three

Step three is what we reach if we beat through stage one and two; that is the fear of failure. The idea that we can fail speaks to our image of our selves, the sense of humiliation and embarrassment that comes with tripping up in public. The fear of financial loss is part of the process but not the most important factor. Personal commitment and determination play a far greater role.

Step Four

Step four is the most trying and noteworthy. That is the fear of success. What do you do if you actually realize your dream. Why you and not all the others who failed before you? How do you deal with the guilt of achieving your ultimate goal. Of all the steps this one has a quality of moral persuasion in accepting defeat and avoiding success. Many a person has ripped defeat from the jaws of victory and felt personally vindicated. What a shame.

Your Plan

So here it is. Regardless where you are in your quest to grow your online ambitions get rid of all the silt, uncover your real calling, and focus on your goal. Tell the folks and family that it is your calling. If they truly know and love you, they will support you all the way.

Get over failing, it is part of the process and no one has made it without stumbling and blowing many an opportunity. The answer is not to avoid making mistakes, you are going to make them. The point is to avoid making the same mistake twice. As the saying goes, when you make ten mistakes, get up eleven times.

And finally, when you rack up the sales, the traffic, the huge list of followers, congratulate yourself. Why? Because you paid for it the old fashioned way; with your own blood, sweat and tears.

We are all on the same Starting Line. Let’s make sure we are all at the party on the other side of the Finishing Line.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

May Your 2009 Be Prosperous

How to control your impulse in a huckstering market

I’m working on an article that will look at how you can overcome the emotional buzz that your brain sends out when reading a well crafted sales pitch. It appears that the fear center of the brain, the amygdala can respond to these unsettling stimuli in one 12 milliseconds or one 25th the time it takes to blink your eye. I read about this phenomenon in WSJ in Jason Zweig’s column. His article was about panic selling on Wall Street and Main Street. My article will be about panic buying on Digistreet. There are tactics and methods to overcome the hype and gross overselling that passes for business on the WEB. So stay tuned I’ll be posting the article tomorrow.

Your Picture and of Your Voice—Video and Audio Products

: Image via Wikipedia

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: Audio Information Products

Affiliate marketing is moving into the digital age of audio and video. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a picture with a thousand words may be even more powerful. As information products make their way to the marketplace, and as the volume of people looking for information increases, the importance of multimedia distribution cannot be underestimated.

The Marketplace

There is still a very important place for the written word in the creation and distribution of information products. But the role of audio and video, in the form of an audio pod cast or webinar or as a video program, is becoming more commonplace and expected. Video tutorials have proliferated and are now very much the rage with the super affiliate community. There is no doubt that anyone intending to do business online will have to learn to master the creation and distribution of audio and video information programming.