Step 1: Find people who want to buy something...

What does this mean?
 

It’s a huge mind shift. Think about it. If you’re like me, you probably thought that you had to write the best eBook or create software that people can’t live without based on your personal knowledge. For a newbie, that’s the fastest road to failure. Do NOT create a product first! Imagine how demoralizing it will be to spend a big chunk of time and even more money creating something you think people want only to find that…well, you were wrong!

That’s when most newbies quit and declare there’s no money to be made on the Internet! Yet, some people seem to actually make six figures a year. Are they lying? What did they do?

Find a market first!
Your personal knowledge is an incredibly valuable asset that should be cherished. And yes, it will help you find potential markets. But it also colors your judgment.

Don’t fall in love with your personal niche interests. Be open minded. Good marketers, according to Mark, start with market research, discovering common problems and providing the simple solutions. Mark describes it as “finding a pond full of fish.” Once you find a pond, then you must figure out what they are hungry for.

Where are the ponds? Where do large groups of like-minded and passionate people hang out? Search engines are a good place to start. When you find what people are searching for, you can drill deeper to target specific groups.

Here are a few additional resources:

• Google Zeitgeist – Google makes available the search statistics that are automatically generated based on millions of searches conducted on Google over a given period of time - weekly, monthly, and annually – for free.
• Forum research – Where do avid participants in a niche hang out? Forums and newsgroups of course. That’s where they display their frustrations, hopes and desires. And that’s where relationships are built. But belonging to too many forums and managing all the conversations can be overwhelming. Not to mention that trolling through forums can waste a lot of time. That’s why I use Russell Brunson’s Forum Fortunes software to manage my forum involvement. It helps me keep track of the forums I want to investigate as well as the conversations I’m involved in or tracking. And it will deliver all that information to my desktop without logging in to each forum individually.
• Keyword search – I use the free tool Good Keywords to dive into niches to validate the size and dedication of a niche. When a niche looks interesting, then I pull up Keyword Elite – another great tool – to qualify the information more completely including discovering related keywords, traffic patterns, and competitors.

The key to finding lucrative niches is to become fluent in the language spoken by the people in the niche. No foreign tongue is necessary. Hang around the group long enough to learn the jargon though and the language the members use to describe the problems and solutions. Listen for the emotions.

After you know enough to know what you don’t know, it’s time to ask the right questions to get insight into their fears, hopes, dreams and desires. Learn who they are and what makes them tick. Then ask them what they want.