Niche research can be challenging – but there’s a simple way to get ideas, whether it’s for an affiliate product or for your own information product.

One of the best ways to find a hot selling product is to look for a problem that lots of people are facing, and then offer them a solution.

But where do you find people talking about their problems? Well, wherever people ‘hang out’ to chat – particularly in online forums, especially if they are busy ones.

You can locate suitable Forums by browsing through directories listing online forums – such as www.big-boards.com.

Or you can search for them using search engines by typing in the search term: “(Your niche topic) + discussion forums” - using the inverted commas (“”) for a ‘Broad Match’ search.

You can tell if a forum is suitable for your niche research by looking at how often people post there, and how recent the latest post is. If there are few visitors in the last few days, the forum’s probably not suitable for your needs.

Check the quality of the discussion before you make your decision to use that forum or not – and then move on to the next one.

The best way to do your research will vary from forum to forum. But generally, you should look for ‘hot’ threads – discussion topics where there are a large number of page views or responses.

For example, if a discussion has over 400 views in a day, or over 1,000 views in 3 days, the topic is likely to have great potential, and will show you what are the ‘triggers’ that will get your target market’s attention – and the issues or problems they are seeking solutions to.

If you often see the same or similar questions being asked on forums, this can indicate an opportunity you can tap into.

So think of a topic and go and look at some forums!

Happy Niche research!

John

Have you spent any time recently looking at Google Books?

It’s amazing what you can find there… Anything from Shakespeare to the day’s ‘Random Category’ – be it Steam Engines, Confucianism, Housekeeping, Self-development, Political Psychology or Arboriculture!

And there are plenty of classics — from Francis Bacon to Napoleon Hill.

Sadly, they don’t yet have a category of ‘Internet Marketing’ or ‘Web Business’ – or even just ‘Business’ for that matter!

But you can search the millions of books already available — try searching for ‘copywriting‘ – there are some useful resources!

But there is a wealth of material and you can often pick up a lot of valuable information at no cost.

Not surprisingly, the whole site is geared to getting you to buy the books you look at—which you can do through a range of bookstores.

So, all in all, it has similarities to Amazon and some other online Bookstores that increasingly allow you to ‘see inside’ the books on offer.

Google Books does, however, allow you to look at much more of the material inside a book than other sources—and there are some where you can read quite a few chapters—even if the deliberate policy of missing alternate pages (or whole sections) in some chapters can spoil your fun a bit!

So go over and have a look at http://books.google.com/books

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

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A topic that came up in two recent consultancy calls with Mastermind Program Members was using the correct spelling and language for your target market – and then directing them to the appropriate affiliate website to make their purchase.

Let’s look at a physical product that can be marketed through a Hub and Mini-site strategy – for instance ‘Media Centres’ (but don’t ask me what they do!).

First question… Who is my target market?

Second question… Where are they?

Third Question… What style of language do they use – ie how do I need to ‘speak’ to get their interest?

The Center of The Matter

Let’s look at media centres – or is it centers…? ‘Media Centre’ is the British English spelling… The Americans would refer to a ‘Media Center’.

To see what I’m talking about, do a Google search on the term ‘samsung media center’… When I did this, the first result was for ‘Samsung United States’, using the spelling ‘Center’, and so on down the list. When I spelled it ‘centre’, some UK suppliers appeared in the top few listings who did not appear for the other spelling (along with Samsung USA again!).

Now Google’s search algorithms are clever enough to get round the spelling question, so ‘center’ comes up even when I type in ‘centre’ – particularly as that is the spelling used by the manufacturer. And Google directs me to search using Google.co.uk anyway, whereas in the USA, they’ll be using Google.com with it’s algorithms set to focus on US-based searches.

What The Domain…?

But all this becomes more important when you’re selecting your Domain name for a Mini-site, doesn’t it?

If you choose ‘SamsungYH-999GSMediaCentre.com’ as your domain name, and use this spelling on your web pages, you’ll get British-oriented (UK) traffic – if indeed you get any, as Samsung don’t call it this (they use Center). If you want to target American traffic, you’d need to use the ‘Center’ spelling.

You can check on sites like Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk that focus separately on the US and UK markets and see what comes up for ‘Samsung YH-999GS Media Centre’. For my search, Amazon.com returned ads while Amazon.co.uk didn’t.

Now, if I live in the USA and I’m looking for a ‘media center’, I’ll expect it to be sold, and delivered within, the USA. I don’t know what these British pound thingies are (and the price converted into dollars is higher) and I don’t want to wait three weeks (or pay for) my purchase to be shipped across ‘the Pond’.

And vice-versa. If I buy on-line in the UK, I want it to be delivered tomorrow from a UK supplier (but see ‘Side Note’ below).

So make sure your supplier/portal matches your market… and your target product.

Side Note – Arbitrage: It’s sometimes cheaper to buy in US$ and get it shipped from the USA – subject to taxes, duties, warranties, servicing requirements, etc… So there can be opportunities for ‘arbitrage’ for uncomplicated products, by sourcing/shipping them cheaper from the US than consumers can buy them in the UK… but let’s save that for another blog post!

Divided By A Common Language

And don’t forget to use the appropriate words that your target market uses. Terminology can change between countries, states and even counties. An example I came across recently was the terminology used by different State administrations for corrective driving courses for speeding offenders in the USA. Nearly every state calls it something different (I don’t have space here to list them all!) – so you’d need state-specific web pages if you were marketing this product…!

The Moral Of The Story: So, when you’re selecting your domain name, make sure that you’re targeting your market correctly, using the right spellings for the market – and as used by the product supplier – and that you’re directing your prospects to the most appropriate seller.

This isn’t really complicated – but I hope the above will help you focus on getting things right rather faster than if you have to find out for yourself… the hard way!

PS: See my blog post “The Anatomy of Great Copy ” on how to find some of the answers posed above…

Happy marketing!

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons