You are, at least for now, a
small business.You can’t compete with
the big boys and girls.If you want to
sell books, for example, you can’t compete with Amazon – but, and this is the important point, you
can still make good money selling books. The best strategy is to specialise – find a
niche market. Here's an introduction to the subject.
Let’s take a different example.Suppose your idea is for a website about
dogs.You look on Google keywords and
find that there are on average 4 million searches for ‘dogs’ every month.Great!But, now try putting ‘dogs’ into Google – you get back 200 million pages!How can you ever compete?What about ‘small dogs’?Only 33 thousand searches now, but still 10
million sites.Now, a friend of mine
breeds Maltese terriers – lets try that?Still four and a half thousand searches a month, but only half a million
pages.Better.
So let’s have a look what those pages
are.First up on Google is Wikipedia’s
pages on Maltese dogs.Fair enough.But the second result in the Google search is a site
with pictures of many breeds of dog.This site has
just one page about the Maltese.The rest of the first page of results on
Google features dog breeders and puppies for sale.A well-constructed informative website about the Maltese – origins of
the breed, characteristics, choosing one, diet and exercise, etc, etc, etc,
could definitely compete with that and stand a good chance of getting to the first page of
the Google results, resulting in lots of visitors from those 4,400 searches.
OK. Step two – how to make money?Anything to do with dogs is big
business.Look for affiliates for books,
food, grooming, dog coats, training, pictures, calendars.The list is (almost) endless.Note that some of these may be specific to
Maltese dogs: books, pictures, etc; but others may be generally about dogs or
pets: books again, grooming and so on.Maltese dog owners and fans are your niche market, but your products
don’t have to be unique to that market.Add some Adsense perhaps and you have a paying website.Of course, you don’t have to stick to just a
website, you can try other ways of marketing your niche.
Step 3.Over to you – go and find niches and products that suit you.Please, everybody, do not choose Maltese dogs! It's best, at least at the start, to choose things you know something about, or
that you are interested in. Later, you can move into markets where you know less, but can use your skills as a marketer to appear as a credible seller.
Step 4. Get to know your market really well. Join forums, Google groups, etc to find out the common problems people have and how you can provide products to solve those problems. Copy and use the buzz words and jargon that your group of prospective customers use. Find out and copy the'names' they use for each other - for example, if Maltese dog admirers refer to each other as 'My Fellow Maltesers' (I'm sure they don't!) then use that in your writing.
