Business in General
Make Sure You Are Selling Into Demand
What does the phrase refer to?
First, let me tell you what it is not.
Harry has a great idea for a product that he created. Everybody is going to want it. All he needs to do is set up a web site to sell his product online and it is guaranteed to be a million seller. Not!
Aunt Ethel blogs about the sweaters she knits for her poodle “Fluffy.” She makes (and wants to sell) pink ones, green ones, and yellow ones and thinks she can peddle them at $25 a pop online. Probably not!
Randy’s restaurant is a great place to take the family for the Wednesday Night Special and the karaoke entertainment. All owner Randy needs to do is get a web site going to advertise his place and the rest is history. Not!
You see, people believe that selling online, or even just having a presence online (usually a web site of some sort) is all that is needed to make money. Not again! “Build it and they will come” is not the reality of online business web sites.
Usually they dream up a product or an idea first, but rarely take the time and effort (which isn’t much) to perform specific market research to identify whether or not there is market demand for their business idea.
Demand? What’s that and why should I be concerned about it? I have a hunch that my product is going to be a best seller!
People . . . your success at making money online depends upon your ability to sell something to your niche market, i.e. online demand for your product or service!
Don’t start with a product. Don’t go to the effort to start an online business with a product in mind. Why?
It is very, very difficult to create demand for any product or service. It takes time, lots of money, and huge exposure these days. Leave “creating demand” to the giants like Apple, Amazon, and Google. A much more profitable approach for the small business owner is to tap into demand that is already in the marketplace. Find a hot demand and step in front of it with your own product or service (or an affiliate product).
Because you don’t know if anyone is looking for and will buy your product. In other words, you haven’t researched the demand for your product or service.
So many would-be online business owners start there . . . they “pick a niche” which means they decide on topic or subject of their business. Then they pick a product to sell as an affiliate, or even better, they proceed to develop their own product or service. They come out of the chute with guns blazing . . . without really knowing if their product is really wanted by consumers.
The Internet is literally littered like a grave yard with offers for products nobody wanted to buy!
One of the reasons so many people struggle to begin a profitable business online is the fact that they initially believe you have to “pick a niche” like you would pick an item off the menu at a local fast food joint. But usually doing so leaves you with only a broad market that you’ve chosen to go into without a clue as to how you can be a successful seller within that market.
I know I have given this advice before, but a true niche is not “weight loss” or “travel” or “fitness.” Those are broad markets. There is a huge difference between those gigantic marketplaces and a specific defined niche.
Niches are voids in a market that you fill with your own product or service. Read that again.
You create a niche when you find an unmet need or problem that you can solve and then you position your business in a unique way to offer that solution. Do you see the difference? Niches are not markets.
A niche is a specific place within a market where you position your business in a way that sets it apart from the competitors. You create or discover this niche through market research by identifying current demand expressed by your targeted audience.
The key is to get specific and drill down into a market so that you can offer solutions for specifically defined problems or desires of your audience.
When people go online to solve a problem they don’t search for broad terms like “fitness” or “travel” (again, those are gigantic markets). Using the travel example, they are looking for specific things like “discount cruise to the Bahamas” or “top attractions in Branson, Missouri” . . . long tail phrases about the very particular and exact solutions they want to find.
So it all begins with finding market demand within your niche. Once you know what that is, it is up to you to then offer your own (or affiliate products and services) to meet that demand with valuable solutions that your prospects and customers will love.
I hope this little discussion of “selling into demand” will help you understand that starting a business online is all about seeing what your target audience really wants and giving it to them!
You find a demand first . . . then sell into it with your product, service or affiliate offer.
To your online business success!
Steve Browne
www.stevebrownedirect.com
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