The biggest challenge I have found in any Internet business is creating the right systems that will leverage your time and make money while you are not there. Our ultimate goal is establishing upfront a system that allows us to walk away from the business for at least six months and come back with more money in our bank account. This is the power of running a business online. If you can apply these systems that I show you, you will create a business you own rather than a business you run.

Where Do I Start? Let’s Help You Find Your Niche!

Many people who launched their Internet businesses successfully started with leveraging their industry experience or personal interests. You need to look at identifying market niches that are under served within those areas. Ask yourself what expertise have you gained from your life experiences that you can offer to potential clients? Or what personal interests can you look at turning into an Internet business? For me, I started the dragon boat niche business out of frustration that there was no company in Australia that offered the products I needed. As I was involved in the sport at an elite level I started hearing the same questions, “where can I buy dragonboat carbon fibre paddles?” Each time I heard that, I started to see there was a demand and took this opportunity to create an Internet business. For you, the idea would be different, but the search for an untapped niche market is an opportunity for you to create a successful Internet business.
I recommend doing some due diligence and research to find out if your idea is viable, and here are three major questions you need to ask:

1. Does your idea exist already?
2. Will it be easily identifiable?
3. How will I make it marketable and targeted?

A key point I want to make: looking for a profitable niche market is about finding the buyers first. From my experience, most people start off with the wrong idea and look for a product to sell first. Find out what the problems or needs are from people and provide a solution. (As I mentioned in my example, I saw a problem and offered a solution).

Determine How Hungry Your Buyers Are?

Before you start spending money to set up your Internet business, you need to determine the market size of your niche. You need to find if there is demand from this niche market and how hungry your buyers are. The easiest way to determine how strong the demand will be for your idea is to do research on keywords in that market. Here are the three steps in determining if your idea is viable:

Step 1: Investigate Traffic Volumes.
This is the first and most important step. If you find out that your keyword only has 20 people searching for it, it may not be large enough to provide a good income. To investigate how much traffic you will get for your niche market keyword, go to http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com or any other similar site and type in a broad term such as golf. The site will give you a list of the top 100 search results for that word. For example, you will find golf clubs, golf carts, golf buggies, golf gloves and so forth. Next to each phrase you will see the number of daily searches. Using this list, select the results that have enough searches to determine your targeted niche market.

Step 2: Determine The Amount Of Competition.
Your next step is to find out how many people are competing for the keyword you are wanting to market your idea to. Ideally you want to find out who are the advertisers and marketers and take note of this:

• Few competitors = great keyword
• Lots of competitors = not a good keyword

To determine the level of competition, go to Google.com and type in each of these potential key phrases from step 1 and make a note of how many competing sites there are in that market. See the number of results near the top right of your Google results page? Write that number down next to the keyword you searched.

Step 3: Find Out If There Is Money In This Niche.
The final step is to find out if the buyers you are targeting are willing to spend. There is no point targeting a market where everything is free because these buyers will expect this as well, meaning it is not a good market to target. Continuing your Google search from Step 2, record the number of advertisements that appear for each keyword that you search. If there aren’t any ads, then it is not a niche worth targeting.

I would suggest spending at least a few hours and compiling the information together as part of your research. This will help you determine if your idea is viable for your targeted niche market. If you follow this to find out if there is a niche market for your idea, you will be on your way to building a successful Internet business.

Let’s Lay Out A Plan

Now that you have determined if your niche is viable and there’s a list of hungry buyers waiting, we need to put a plan in place. Have you ever wondered why 70 percent of new businesses fail? It is because they did not create and follow a focused plan. It’s very easy for any new business owner to get distracted as you are gaining knowledge and trying different things. The key is to stay focused on one strategy rather than trying five different strategies at the same time. My goal here is not to give you a tutorial on business planning but to provide you with tools and my experience on how I laid out my Internet business.

For every business idea that I have come up with and thoroughly tested I have always laid out a detailed flowchart and mind map. Two pieces of software I use today to draw my flowchart and mind maps are SmartDraw and FreeMind. You can download both for free. What I usually do is brain dump all of my ideas relating to the business in FreeMind. What FreeMind effectively does is it allows you to see the potential areas where you can make money from the business. For example, when I started to look at how to monetise the dragonboat blog I used FreeMind to lay out the ideas of where I could find sponsors. There was not just one idea, but I came up with 5 different lateral ways to find sponsorship. Give it a go and see how you can apply this in your business.

Once you have created a mind map, the next process is to take the ideas and create a flow chart of how you will systemise the process using SmartDraw. You may use all the ideas in your mind map or you decide some of them are not viable. This is the beauty of using FreeMind where you can save it and come back to it later. The creation of a flowchart in SmartDraw allows you to see the processes involved to turn your idea into a business system. Once you have refined this system you can outsource your work and processes for others to complete.

Take action now and review the action steps provided on the next page. Make sure to allocate time during the week to write down your ideas about the niche you plan to setup your Internet business in. Then map out your plan.

Tyrone Shum
Building Niche Internet Businesses