Small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs are frequently misinformed about how to perform market research effectively and identify a lucrative niche.
The route that the majority of unwary business owners follow is to end up at a keyword tool or database to start their search.
I can speak from personal experience when I say that keyword databases are not the first place to look or even should be taken into consideration as a keyword research expert and founder of one of the top keyword research firms on the internet.
This is why.
The main keyword databases that are now accessible to the general public only provide search counts on a small quantity of data that only represents 1% to 2% of the real searches individuals conduct worldwide.
They are only able to forecast (emphasis added) the vast majority of queries made on the top five search engines, namely Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and Ask.com, which together account for 97%–98% of all keyword data.
Most crucially, keyword research does not reveal what people actually purchase online; rather, it just reveals what keyword phrases people use in search engines to look up information.
It doesn’t necessarily follow that a group of people will buy anything just because they search for certain terms or brand names.
That’s a crucial distinction that many business owners and entrepreneurs frequently ignore.
Your first concern should be finding evidence of a group of voracious and ardent customers that wish to trade their money for a service or product (knowledge, whether physical or digital), when looking for a lucrative niche market.
You might have the best product in the world, but without this essential qualification, you might not have a market to offer it to.
Before you go for the gold and invest all of your resources in building a website, creating a product, or spending money on some kind of online property, this article will provide you with a number of excellent sources to look at that will give you a head start to discover a truly, successful market exists.
You have a good cause to investigate more into a keyword research service if you have determined that you have located a market with indicators of sufficient commerce moving through it in order to learn what keyword phrases people use to find the market you have chosen.
Let’s start by discussing how to locate a lucrative market.
Magazines
Searching for a magazine in that sector is one of the finest ways to identify indicators of a highly profitable market.
If a publisher has the resources to produce and distribute a full-color magazine, then there are almost certainly advertising that contribute to the funding of the magazine’s ability to distribute all the copies, which almost certainly means that those advertisers are making sales.
Now, with so many marketers selling in a magazine, you might start to wonder if there is too much competition in the market.
In fact, it’s a positive indicator to have rivalry since it shows there are enough consumers to sell to and a substantial pie to be had in that market.
There may not be enough product being offered in that market, or there may not even be a market, if there is extremely little competition.
The size of the revenue share you can take will depend on how strong the competition is.
You can visit Magazines.com without getting up from your chair and browse through the variety of categories to select a lucrative subject or sector in which to launch an online business.
For the sake of stability, you’ll want to pay particular attention to each magazine’s subscription base and length of publication.
Make a list of the magazines you want to read, and then search for them at a big newsstand that has just about every magazine on the market.
Either way, you’ll need to make a final decision on whether you want to represent actual goods or digital ones in order to gain a better understanding of what customers are purchasing online.
Personal Items
There are two enormous markets that receive a ton of traffic, move a lot of merchandise, and are excellent locations to discover what customers are actually purchasing.
Let’s begin with the very first sizable marketplace…
eBay
You may browse a list of the top products on eBay that people are purchasing through auctions or from vendor-created eBay stores.
Please use the reference below to access the extended version of this article to view a visual guide on how to find the most sought-after products.
Amazon
Amazon is a huge marketplace that caters to more than just books.
Almost any brand or product can be found that is a game-changer.
Look once more at the best-selling items in the categories that grab your attention.
Digital Products
Check out the Clickbank digital marketplace, which ranks product sales from highest to lowest sellers in each category, if you want to offer digital products that don’t require inventory and typically have large profit margins for affiliates.
Simply browse the categories at Clickbank.com, and you’ll find the top sellers of software, subscription services, and digital information products right at the top listings.
For a link to the longer version of this article with visual aids and more in-depth instructions, see the reference section below.
After compiling sufficient market research, you can choose from these options:
Make an internet store that ships tangible goods and items (inventory is required)
Sell products via eBay’s online stores or auctions (inventory required)
Create a website that acts as an affiliate for sellers and requires no inventory.
Make your own digital goods, service, or program (no inventory is needed)
You can be confident that you have completed adequate market research to identify “proof positive” of what people are purchasing and, consequently, a lucrative niche market if you used at least two of the four locations mentioned above.
Then, with a small investment of $50, you can rapidly develop a non-complex website with a straightforward product offering and identify some affordable keywords to employ in a Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click campaign to test the market.
If the preliminary test results are positive, indicating that you made money from your test, you can put more effort into the project, carry out more thorough keyword research, and spend more money on advertising.
In the event that the test results are unsuccessful, try a different market until anything takes.
I think you now have enough knowledge to start looking for a market that will pay you indefinitely.