Module 1 Day 7: Commercial Indicators Within Microniches #tc10

If you are creating a site that you wish to make money with then you must make sure there are related products to sell right? You are pretty much guaranteed that a well known product is  going to have some commercial value but what if it is a niche hobby or interest. The Challenge videos cover how to ensure that there is some commercial viability to go forward with.

The commercial indicators covered are through looking at each of the following areas and seeing what products exist.

  • Google Adwords – Are there more than just one or two ads displayed on the side of Google when you search for the keyword?
  • Products related to Microniche in Ebay – Are there a number of products in the auctions at eBay? Showing that even if the product isn’t new that some interest sustains it.
  • Products related to Microniche in Amazon – Searching both for products and/or books is helpful to gauge commercial viability.
  • E-Stores or Online Shopping sites for related products – Often specialist shops become important when the interest is niche and not commonly sold in the major online sources.
  • Information products – No matter whether your microniche is just a product, there are sometimes some great related courses or ebooks sold within the microniche area of interest. You would just search for your keyword and add the word ebook to pull out any of interest.
  • Affiliate Programs – Major suppliers like Amazon may not be the best method of selling niche products or information, the creators, manufacturers or suppliers  may in fact give you a higher commission or more range to interest your browsers. Easily found by typing in your keyword and the phrase “affiliate program” into Google and seeing what is returned. Often I find it surprising the number of affiliate programs out there that exist for the most obscure things.

Personally, I must admit this part of the process has always been a weakness of mine and looking back on previous efforts I see that a lot of lost opportunities have occurred by not selling enough on the web sites. I know you can go overboard with this but by placing the right product in the right place in your content has got to be useful for anyone who is interested enough to read it – hasn’t it? People are becoming more and more switched off to seeing advertisements on pages but that has been mostly due to irrelevance of the information.

My own personal enlightenment on this subject was gained when I looked back at previous attempts of website creation and seeing that I had never looked properly at the bottom line. If the site has cost me time to create then why was I either producing just information pages on one extreme or on the other simply plastering it lazily with hugely irrelevant ads. I personally need to think more about adding both value and revenue to the work produced.

This essentially completes module one of The Challenge 2010 and I know I spent more time on it than planned – but I am so glad I did. I am looking at this whole process now as something that can be tested, more efficient of my own time and more effective in positioning a site in the current state of the Internet.

I have 10 Challenge niches that complete the commercial test and many more (increasing all the time) that are going to be useful in testing the amount of work needed for variations of the process. Module one will be a constant effort from time to time when an idea is formed or a newly discovered niche tested. When the golden eggs appear I will be in like a shot!! 🙂

Related Challenge Journal Blog Entries
including any reference to work done during the week off.

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