One of the most important aspects of building a long-term and successful online business is market research. This is because only through market research that you can understand whether you’re in the right market or not, know your target group, understand what they want, what kind of products that can fill their needs and make better business decisions.

However, with the amount of sheer information available online, one can easily get stuck in doing market research and become ‘analysis paralysis’.

Remember that when it comes to market research, there is NO scientific way to measure the results. So please don’t try to be PERFECT!  Do NOT get over analyzed and get yourself stuck in a rut and NOT doing the works that you’re supposed to do.

The KEY to successful market research online is to do it quickly and efficiently.

Here are 5 tips to help you conduct your market research online efficiently:

1. Do NOT try to be a perfectionist!  Pick up one or two methods, then DO IT and accomplish something!

2. One method I use to do market research online quickly and efficiently is called: Campaign Blasts. It’s beyond the scope of this article to discuss this method. In short, it’s a LOW cost method to test several markets using Google Adwords. Go to Campaign Blasts for more information. This method will cost a bit of money but very effective to find profitable markets quickly.

3. Another method I use is FREE but requires more TIME. This method involves doing some keyword research, selecting long-tail keyword phrases, develop free websites and writing articles targeting on long-tail keywords. Go and read these two articles “The Importance of Market Research And Market Intelligence For Your Online Business” and “Step By Step Guide How To Make Money Online Using Free Methods” to learn how to use this method.

4. Always remember that the main objective of doing a market research is to understand the market you want to get involved and your target group. Building a business website without doing a market research is a waste of time and money. You MUST at least know that the market you’re in has potential income and there are people willing to spend money in that market.

5. Do NOT get yourself stuck in a rut and become ‘analysis paralysis’. Try to accomplish something quickly using the methods we mentioned in point 2 and 3 above. While market research is important and can provide valuable information, you should NOT spend too much time on it because the market conditions are always changing. Start something small, see how it turns out and make adjustments along the way. Always try to move FORWARD….

Hope you find the tips useful.

P.S. For more info, read this article: “How To Do Market Research Online“.

Have you heard of KwMap? It’s the best niche brainstorming tool available on the Internet. And the best part is that it’s FREE!

If you’re currently in the process of brainstorming or finding your niche, you should not miss out this free tool.

Using KwMap is very easy.

For example, I’m currently exploring a niche in “panic attacks”. So I go to KwMap and enter the phrase “panic attacks” (without the quotes) in the kw search field.

Below is the result I see…

As you can see from the above screenshot, KwMap displays two lines (axes) full of keyword phrases. One line displays all the keyword phrases that contain your seed keywords “panic attacks” and another line shows you the related niche topics.

You can narrow down to a particular niche topic by clicking on the keyword phrases. For example, if you click on the keyword “agoraphobia”, KwMap will produce the following results…

As you can see it’s very easy for you to navigate and zero in to a more specific niche topic.

On the right side of the diagram, you can also see a list of keywords that is related to your niche topic. You can use these keywords as your main or seed keywords for your niche. For example, you can select 10 or 15 keywords that are most closely related to your niche and then use the more advanced keyword research tool such as Keyword Elite for further analysis.

In summary, if you’re in the process of brainstorming and finding niche, use KwMap! It’s powerful and easy to use. And it’s FREE! I use KwMap on a regular basis to find and research a niche topic.

Are you having a difficult time to come up with a product or niche for your site? If you are, you’ve come to the right place. In this post I will show you how to use eBay to find a market or product to focus on.

But why eBay?

Well, why not? eBay had spent millions of dollars to research what people are buying around the world. If you’re planning to set up a website that focus on Business to Consumer (B2C), eBay is an excellent source for finding your winning markets or products.

If you visit ebay.com, you will immediately see a huge list of categories on the left side of the site. eBay has spent a lot of money creating these categories based on the demand and supply of people all around the world. Each category also has a massive list of subcategories. Just click on a link to see it for yourself. I’m sure you can find something that is appeal to you.

When you pick your market or products from eBay, you can almost be sure that they have a demand (otherwise they won’t appear in eBay). It’s that simple really and it’s 100% FREE. I always go to ebay.com when I’m brainstorming for ideas.

Furthermore, if you have an existing site, you can also use eBay to get more ideas or topics and add them into your site. For example, if you click on the “Health & Beauty” category, you will see there is a subsection called “Skin Care”. So, if you have a skin care website, you can use this list as additional subtopics for your site.

You see how powerful and time-saving this can be? You don’t need to spend hours or days trying to figure out what topics or subjects people are interested in. eBay is telling you exactly what people are interested in based on the research they have done. You just use the information for free.

Hope this market research tip using eBay is useful for you.

Related Article: How to do Market Research online.

Many affiliate marketers use the power of Google Adwords to drive targeted traffic to their sales sites. For those who target the right market and keywords will get a lot of qualified buyers from Adwords. But this is not the topic we want to share in this post.

In this post, we will share with you how to use Google Adwords to perform a market research. Adwords is not only powerful as a tool to attract potential buyers, but it’s also powerful to use as a market research tool. You don’t need to spend any money to use the technique described here.

First, in order to use this technique effectively, we assume that you already have a niche that you want to target. If you want to learn the process of identifying your niche online, please read this article: “Online-Business-Journey: Market Research“.

Now, the idea of using Google Adwords as a market research tool is to find out the following important information…

1. How many competitors are currently promoting the niche online?

2. How do they promote the product? What is the sales process?

3. Do they use opt-in form to capture email addresses?

4. Are they a merchant or affiliate?

To find out and analyze the above information, just go to Google and type in a keyword phrase that you want to target in your niche. For example, if you type “back pain relief” (without the quotes), you will see there are many Adwords advertisers appear at top and down the right side of the page.

NOTE: Read this before continue…
When you click on those Adwords ads, the advertisers are paying Google for every click. So, if you’re doing a research, you should be ethical and have a proper moral conduct. Here is the way to click on a paid ad without costing the advertiser… Use RIGHT-clicking instead of left-clicking! Just move your mouse pointer to the title of the ad, RIGHT-click and select “Copy Link Location”. Now open a notepad, right-click and select paste. After you paste in the notepad, look for the website URL. Copy the URL and then paste it into your web browser to view the website. This is the same as clicking on the ad but this one doesn’t cost the owner. So please always exercise a correct moral conduct when doing your market research using other people ads.

Now, use the above method and find out your competitor’s marketing strategy or how they promote the product by visiting their sites. Pay close attention to the following…

* The words they use in their ads. Why do you click on a particular ad over the other? This is very important as one of the secrets of success in using Adwords is to achieve high CTR (click through rate). The higher the CTR, the less money you pay for your PPC ad. If all these sound alien to you, please check the related resources at the end of this page.

* Do they offer a free report in exchage of email address? This is also a very important marketing strategy. Most people don’t buy when they visit your website for the first time. So it’s a smart strategy to offer them something valuable (or something that’s closely related to what they’re looking for) for free. They need to give you their name & email if they want to obtain the free gift. So, you can follow-up with them by sending them email in the future. The email list is a very important asset in your online business. Perhaps you’ve heard of a phrase “the money is in the list”!

There are many things you should take note and analyze. I suggest you subscribe to a few email list and see how do they follow up with their potential customers. All these analyses take time but it’s part of the puzzle in doing a proper market research before jumping in. You will want to assess and understand your competition and learn how to play and compete in the market. This is how a proper market research is done!

Related Resources:

1. How to find hot markets or niches. An excellent site showing you step-by-step how to find and research hot niches.

2. Beating Adwords. A complete guide on how to use and profit from Google Adwords.

If you’re looking for some market research tips, you’ve come to the right place. You will learn how to identify market or product that is already selling and how to find a marketing strategy that works and copy it.

First, please always remember this marketing rule (for me personally, this is the #1 rule I will always remember in marketing). Here is the rule: “Don’t reinvent the wheel”. In other words, sell what people are already buying! This is because it’s a lot easier to sell something that people are already buying rather than trying to create a new market.

Many Internet Marketers choose to prmote products that they have knowledge or an interest in. There is nothing wrong with this approach as long as there are people buying or spending money in this market (again this is marketing rule #1). It’s a waste of time to build a website promoting products that nobody is buying.

Another important point to remember when doing your market research is… NOT to ignore markets or products that you don’t like or know nothing about. It’s not what you like that matters. It’s what the potential customers like that matters. Again, remember the #1 marketing rule.

Now, how do you know that there are people already buying in a particular market?

Here is how… Do a search at Google for a product/market you’re interested in. Look at the Adwords Ads that appear on the right side of the page. If there are five or more Adwords ads, you know that there are already people buying in that market. If there are no people buying, there will be no ads displayed as no one will spend money on ads if there are no buyers.

Next, what you want to find out is how these advertisers promote the products? What is their marketing strategy? Do they send people to a landing or review page or direct to the merchant site? What kind of words they use in their ads? What kind of bonuses they offer to their potential buyers? How long have the ads been up and running? etc.. etc..

You need to monitor these ads for a couple of weeks. If you notice there are certain ads that keep reappearing, you know that they are making money. Now, what you need to do is to follow or copy their marketing strategy, or better yet try to do it better than them.

For more information on market research tips, check out: “How to find hot markets“.

Related Article: How to do market research online.