Last week I stumbled upon a niche that was perfect for the basis of a new business. I was looking for something and noticed I wasn’t quite getting what I wanted so I started to wonder if other people were having the same problem. So today I wanted to share with you a quick way to work out if a new business idea is viable.

Here is a quick formula that Eben Pagan talked about recently. I think it’s a good way to test a potential business so here are the 3 questions he asks about a new niche and the tools I recommend you use.

1. Is my prospective client experiencing pain and urgency or irrational passion (or both)?

If they aren’t, then you need to motivate them to buy your products. So it’s a lot easier if the motivation comes along with the client. This is basically a judgement call on your part, how motivated do you think the market are?

In my case, I was sure the market was extremely motivated based on the niche and past experience with similar areas. So tick.

2. Is my client proactively searching for solutions?

If people aren’t searching for a solution then you have to track them down and motivate them again. So you need to work out how many people are searching for solutions in your potential niche.

Luckily there are tools for this, so go straight to the Free Keywords Tool at Word Tracker. If you have an account, even better, but this will give you a good indication of how many people are searching for your potential keywords.

Make sure the number of searches is at least 15 per keyword (preferably a lot more!). You have to make a judgement call on how much traffic you need to make your business model work. Also allow for very low conversion rates in your analysis. A 1% click-through rate to your website and 1% sign-up rate should not leave you overly optimistic. Of course you should be able to do much better than that!

3. Does my prospect have few or no perceived options?

Searching for your terms in Google, how many both organic and Pay-per-Click (PPC) competitors do you have? At this point you probably want to remember that ranking well for your keywords will probably take a year or longer so you’ll be competing in the PPC section on Google.

If there is weak PPC competition you may be on to a winner. Remember there are a lot more ways to market your website but Google Adwords gives you a cheap and easy way to buy traffic at the start.

Now it’s time to test your niche.

How to Test Your Niche

The quickest and easiest way to test your niche is to start a PPC campaign for the keywords you’ve uncovered. The step-by-step process is:

1. Buy a new domain or use an old one.
2. Create a simple landing page with an email sign-up offering something of value.
3. Create a small guide or a few web pages that would be valuable for your niche. Preferably in the vain that your product would be.
4. Create your PPC campaign and point it at the new page.
5. See how many click-throughs and sign-ups you receive.

After a week or two you should know whether you have a viable business on your hands. My PPC campaign went live on Saturday and on Sunday I knew I had a strong potential market. For an idea, here are my first day figures. On two similar keywords:

• 535 people had seen my ad (impressions)
• 34 people had clicked through (6.35% click through rate)
• 2 people had signed up for my ‘newsletter’ (5.88% conversion rate)
• A 2.24 euro cost per conversion (0.16 euro cost per click)

So, based on no optimisation these figures looked pretty good to me. Also, the landing page I made wasn’t very strong either. At this point I need to sell an ebook or similar for 27 euros to 1 in every 12 people that sign up to break even on the first sale.

But of course I have plans to increase the lifelong client value with more products and a membership website with a monthly fee. As long as I offer great (valuable) products then I’m sure I can keep most of my clients as the competition is very weak.

Other Important Notes

I thought this might be useful to those people who want to set up an Internet business. It’s also a good method of research for those with existing businesses to do market research. Don’t take the figures to heart as they’re only an example of what I thought was a good opportunity.

People will have success with better and worse figures. The moral of the story is they got out there and did it. This provides you a quick, cheap, and easy method to test your new ideas and see which one you want to pursue.

And, as always, a good business has a solid passion and purpose (see the recent video blogs below). I’m not encouraging you to go out and use this system as a get rich quick scheme because those will ultimately fail. Two other important questions I always ask myself are:

1. Am I passionate about this subject?
2. Does this business have a purpose that will last 100 years or does it fit within the purpose of my  existing business?

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments, I’ll be only too happy to help.

I know you missed my happy smiling face so I’m back with another video blog today. The topic of discussion:

The purpose of your business.

Too many people take a short term approach to business. They’re after the get rich quick scheme or to take advantage of a unique market opportunity. If you don’t plan your business around a greater idea that’s ready to stand the test of time, you’ll end up with a short term business. And nobody wants that, do they?

Also marvel at how many times I manage to say ‘ok.’ Editing your own videos is painful!

For the last few days I’ve been re-reading Good to Great by Jim Collins and the chimps (his researchers). If you’re in business and you haven’t checked it out yet then go get yourself a copy. Not only has it made me take a long, hard look(again) at my business, but it has also given me some killer ideas for what makes a successful website.

I’ll be talking about those ideas over the coming weeks in another exciting development. It’s time for Craig to start his video blog and talk about himself in the third person!

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while but technology and my bad video making skills have been standing in the way. While my skills haven’t improved a lot, they’re just going to have to do. Anyway, this is going to be a very informal and relaxed video blog. But don’t worry…I will be wearing pants (we’re not getting that relaxed…).

So, if you’re interested in quick tips on improving your website (and business), then subscribe to the RSS as I hope to have the first ‘episodes’ on the way soon.

In the meantime, you can check out Jim Collins’ website for some good immediate material. Because I know how frustrating waiting a few days for one of those old-fashioned book things can be!

It amazes me how many small businesses never bother to plan or work out where their business is going. But then I see the results of those businesses and it all becomes clear.

If you don’t have a strategy for your website and business, you’re literally going nowhere. The people that have an idea in their heads of what they want to achieve and how they’ll do it are moving in the right direction. The ones that actually bother to write it down blow everyone out of the water.

These are what success stories are made of!

Why

We all know most small businesses fail. We’ve seen the statistics and don’t want to become one. Well if you look at the reasons for failure, most of them can be tied to poor planning and management. What does that mean? They didn’t have a strategy to be successful.

Having a strategy isn’t about being successful anymore, it’s about surviving! It just so happens that having a strategy also makes for hugely successful businesses. Not a bad benefit, eh?

How

Planning doesn’t have to be the complicated techniques laid out in business books. It can be quite simple, but it still takes a little bit of thought and effort. I’m sorry, but Santa still hasn’t trained the elves how to do all your planning for you, along with make your products and services…you still need a little involvement in your business.

But all you need to plan is two things:

1. A goal
2. A plan to reach that goal

At the end of the day, it’s not that tricky! Work out where you want to go and how you’ll get there…surprisingly simple isn’t it?

Homework

Write down your goals and actions you’ll take to get there. For a more comprehensive idea of what to do, check out the new article in the Free Members Only Section: Action without Strategy wears out the Hamster.

The most important thing is to just do something, anything, that will contribute to building your website.

It’s Friday and I don’t know about you, but this is when I usually look back and wonder what I achieved during the week. I check my nice little Action Plan and see what I managed to tick off each day.

While this is good and I know I’m making progress, sometimes the little things can get in the way of the big picture. So today I spent some time reanalysing my long term goals and planning for the future.

I think it’s important for all small business owners to do this, especially when it comes to your website. The website can often slip down the list of priorities as other ‘more urgent’ things spring up. My aim is to stop you mistreating your website like this and give it the attention it deserves.

Think of me as your significant other that harasses you because you just forgot our anniversary…again! Though it’s up to you whether you imagine me throwing plates at your head…

Why

Taking a step back and deciding where you want to take your website is an important first step in the improvement process. Without an idea of where you want to go, you’ll never reach it. Quite frankly, if you don’t know how important planning is we’re probably wasting our time here.

So let’s get to the real stuff.

How

Setting long term goals for your website isn’t the trickiest thing in the world. You just decide what you want to achieve with it in the future. Bear in mind, the more you want to achieve, the more effort you’ll have to put in. Which is really where I want your mind to be. Right now, your website is not living up to it’s potential.

When I plan I look at two areas: Objectives and Goals. Everyone seems to have a different method for planning, but here’s mine. I like to keep it nice and simple to ensure I’m not planning for the sake of planning.

First you come up with your objectives. These are in an unquantifiable form like make more sales, increase website traffic, etc.

Then I take those objectives and work out how they can be made into measurable goals. So in a years time I want to have x amount of sales and x amount of unique visitors a day.

So now I have my objectives and goals for the coming year. The next step is to fill in the steps it’ll take to get there. So I do my 6 month, 3 month, and 1 month goals.

The final step is to assign actions I will take to reach these goals. Again, I work back from a year and work out what I need to do, right back to the coming month. So now I have a list of the most important actions I will take each month.

I always plan more accurately in the short term and am a bit more vague in the long term. Those months will fill themselves in at the end of the month when I go through and plan out the next months actions in more detail.

The result is a Action Plan for the next month with the most important actions listed in priority. I realise these are the actions that will grow my business so they should always get the focus before the daily problems that tend to appear.

Make sure you’re getting closer to achieving your biggest priorities every day, before getting sidetracked with the latest emails or surfing the web. This is the way to growing a successful website and business.

Homework

Guess! Take some quiet time over the weekend and go through this planning process for the next year. Then on Monday, get started on your biggest priority of the month.

It’s here! Are you excited? I am…well a little.

Yes, I’ve finally finished my first little website help video. It’s nothing impressive like the StomperNet guys produce or anything. In fact, it’s dramatically unfancy but I hope the content helps you.

It talks about the biggest problems small business owners face with their websites and then presents my blueprint for a successful website.

There’s another one on the drawing board that will go a lot more in-depth but I just wanted to test the waters with this one and see what feedback I got. So please let me know what you think in the comments below.

The short version with lovely background music (~4mins):

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yWuMQUH6FpM[/youtube]

The long version with my voice over explaining it (~10mins):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnYO2YaFRAM[/youtube]

You can sign up for the next video here:
The Web Business Blunder

For my business, the end of 2007 was a time of change. I refocused what my business was actually doing based on my strengths and how I could help the biggest number of small businesses. So far, those changes have made a big difference and I’m looking forward to getting fully up to speed soon.

So what has the new year bought for your business? Personally, I prefer other goal setting techniques over new years resolutions. However, the new year is a natural point to think again about where we’ve been and where we want to go in the coming year.

Obviously, this should be used for your website as well. Take this time to work out where your website is, how it performed in 2007, and how you’d like to see it perform in 2008. Back this up with measurable statistics and you’re in front of most business website owners.

So take this time to look at last years website statistics…or talk to your web designers to find out where the program is. See how much you’ve improved. Analyse how many sales you’ve made. Is it enough? How many more do you want?

Set goals and put some effort into achieving them. I promise you that you’ll see results.

Ok, so I kind of trailed off in the middle of my 5 biggest secrets web designers don’t know about making money on the Internet series.

Christmas was one reason, too much work was another.

But the main reason is I wanted to separate it out as an article you must read. So that’s exactly what I’ve done by revamping my website and adding an articles and videos section.

So head on over to check it out, and read in full, The 5 Biggest Secrets your Web Designer doesn’t know about Making Money on the Internet

And when you’re done, come on back to the blog and let me know what you think or ask any questions you may have.

Talk soon.

Once you’ve started to write your content, you need to put it on your website. No worries, just create a few article links and she’ll be right!

Wrong! This is another way to get visitors to leave your website. You sure are getting good at driving traffic away from your website, eh?

So how do you keep that oh so precious traffic on your website for hours at an end? You structure it properly of course. So what exactly does that mean?

Your website is telling a story. The story starts when the visitor enters your website and ends when they leave. It’s up to you whether the story ends happily for both you and your new customer. Or sadly after the Big Bad Wolf eats Grandma, Little Red Riding Hood, the Wood Cutter, and skips off into the forest with their wallets.

How do you tell the story? By linking the relevant content together in a clear, logical, and easy to follow way. The homepage flows into more useful information, the articles flow into other related articles. And all the time, your website is building a relationship with your visitor.

After all, when you have a relationship with a visitor, it’s much easier to slip a ring on their finger and convert them into a long term customer. To death do you part!

 

 How to get ripped off for web design: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So you’re looking to get ripped off for the design of your new website? No problem! Here’s my easy guide to help you out:

Step 1. Decide you want a website.

Step 2. Approach a web design company.

And that’s it folks. This is a sure fire method for leaving you poor and with a complete waste of a website.

Oh? So now you want to know how not to get ripped off? Interesting, but ok…I’ll try to help. How about getting involved in the web design process. How about finding a company that actually approaches your website as a marketing tool rather than just a pretty…or not so pretty…brochure? How about reading a little about what makes a website successful? How about getting many opinions on what you need?

Even if your web design company promises everything it should…and most do…it doesn’t mean they will actually deliver on their promises. It’s easy to promise something when the buyer doesn’t know what a good result will look like anyway.

How do you know your web design company is giving you the right advice? See how closely they work with you to provide the result you want. Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll start to see less rip offs in the web design industry. And maybe your website will start making you money, instead of just costing you money.