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.

Website visitors are a fickle lot, one minute they’re reading an incredibly crafted blog about improving their website. The next moment they’re off checking their emails. Then Facebook. Then off to a website about cheese.

It’s a little ridiculous how our attention wanders.

But I sure do like cheese! Don’t you? There are so many types and flavours! Cheese should be a food group all by itself.

Umm…but I digress…

So you need to make sure your visitors go where you want them. Which is why I didn’t include a link to Cheese.com. Ok…so I’m crap at this game. Remember: Do as I say, not as I do!

Why

Your website has a purpose, believe it or not. And it’s up to you to allow your website to be successful. You do want your website to be successful don’t you? You don’t want to give it crushing self-esteem issues later in life?

Once you know what your website is meant to do, it’s much easier to guide your visitor there. You need to map out a path for visitors to take that ends at the result you want. The trick is to get all the possible random visitor paths to end where you want.

How

To do this you just have to make the result obvious and of value to your visitor. For example, I want you to remember my website and keep visiting. So I write these short teaser blog posts and give away a lot more in-depth information in my Free Members Only Area. Aren’t I sneaky!

You get great information to help improve your website and make money. And I get the pleasure of your company. Win-Win! One day I might even have time to make some helpful and valuable products for you and make some money from this website. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

Homework

Work out what you want your visitor to do and then see if your website’s path takes them to the right destination. If it doesn’t, fix it…

If you’re on my email list, you know I don’t mail very often. Only when I have super important stuff to tell you like what colour socks I’m wearing. But the important thing is I keep in touch. Not often, but I hope just the right amount to make you feel loved.

So it amazes me when businesses have no email list. No active way of communicating with  potential or current clients. How are you supposed to build a relationship if you don’t talk people? Note: As an equal opportunities supporter, I will accept sign language as an answer.

Now I’m not saying you need to leave people swimming in your emails, quite the opposite. Before you send each email you should ask yourself, “How will this benefit the other persons life?” And no, the answer can’t always be “Because they’ll buy my fantastic products and live happily ever after!” We’re looking for a little more than that…

Now my overwhelmingly witty dialogue has convinced you to start collecting email addresses, you need some kind of opt-in process. Most Internet savvy people go for ‘double opt-in.’ This means they’ve given you their email address (opt-in #1) and then clicked a confirmation link in the first email (opt-in #2).

Then you include an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of every email so you can be sure they actually want to hear from you. Because, surprise surprise, some people don’t want to be spammed to death by product offers.

There are various services that will make things easy for you. I personally use Aweber and find it good. It can be a little complex to start with but there are heaps of tutorials to teach you how to use it. It also has a high delivery rate, meaning your email doesn’t get marked as spam as often…unless you’re selling Viagra. Shop around, read some reviews, and make an informed choice.

The moral of the story, if you have information that is valuable to your potential market (their definition, not yours), then you should start giving it to them. The more value you can offer, the better relationship you can build, and the happier everyone will be.

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!

 

 Micro Management: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Micro management is a tendency that most small business owners have. After working so hard on your baby, it’s hard to let go and have someone else complete different tasks and projects. This hands-on approach can also be what is crippling that business and halting it’s growth.

Now when you give a task to someone else to do, they will usually do it in their own way. If the result is the same, does it really matter to you how they do it? Probably not, but I know that answer will probably not make you happy. So, how do you get your staff doing things the way you want them to be done?

You train them. Or shall I say, you train them properly. Training someone is not throwing a task in their lap, telling them quickly how to do it, and then coming back later and being disappointed with the results. Training is making sure they follow a clear procedure to get consistent results each time, every time.

How do you do this? First, you train yourself! Sorry, but having a task done wrong is not the fault of your employees, it’s your fault. If millions of teenagers around the world can run one of the world’s most successful companies, McDonald’s, then how do you expect to blame your employees for not doing your tasks correctly?

So how do McDonald’s get the same result, every time, all around the world, using high school students? Simple, the have great processes.

Before you hand off a task to an employee, you have to make sure it has a process. That means you have written it down in the simplest steps possible. It means you have tested it and followed the process yourself. It means you have stepped through the process with them, explained it, watched them follow it, and given them guidance when they’re unsure.

Only then will your small business create the results you want and allow you to stop micro managing everything. And remember, when your employee finds a better way to do things (which they should), they amend the process and update your operations manual. That’s how a successful small business operates and becomes a big business.