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Day 2 - The Getting of Idea’s
By Mike Mindel | August 2, 2007
This content has been summarised from day 2 of the Thirty Day Challenge.
Today is all about getting an idea - seven to be precise.
95% OF PROBLEMS AVOIDED WITH MARKET RESEARCH
Over the last two challenge, 95% of problems with a site could have been fixed (or the decision made not to go forward could have been made) at the market research phase. Had the correct research been done. This is why we spend a lot of time on it.
You need a lot of ideas. Many ideas will fall at the market research stage and so you need more to fall back on.
WHERE TO GET IDEAS?
Somewhere external e.g. a craft market where every stall was a potential niche idea for someone doing the Thirty Day Challenge:
- How to make candles & make money from it by selling at country fairs,
- Doll makers,
- Childrens clothing.
Also look at:
- Television shows
- The mall
- Beer making and brewing.
- Watching and observing…
DO NOT CHOOSE THE MEGA TOPICS
Do not tackle any one of these crazy, crazy psycho markets. Do not choose any of:
- Getting fit or losing weight (yawn…)
- Dog training
- Obvious health related: vitamins.
- Internet marketing
- Real estate
People are all over these niches.
Choose something small, get some success & then get bigger and bigger. You don’t want to play major league baseball before you have played in the little leagues. It’s like turning up to play for Manchester United but you’ve never played football before.
The brightest minds on the net spend time trying to figure out how to make money in the mega markets. Don’t compete. Not the first time!
We want you to choose a niche that is truly off broadway - New Jersey - off Broadway.
DON’T EDIT YOUR IDEAS
Don’t edit at this stage. Tomorrow we will whittle the ideas down. But now it’s brainstorming time. Doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad. Just churn them out.
DO THE WORK FIRST
Do the daily training first, and let the forum be your reward. If you’re stuck then go to the forum to get some help. It’s too easy to get caught up in the forum posts or a stumble button.
Do the work first!
BENEFITS OF THE 30 DAY CHALLENGE THIS YEAR
You get a real appreciation of how the world is changing and how we are truly starting to communicate differently.
In some ways it’s communicating the way we used to communicate in small communities. We all went through a period where we didn’t speak to people at all - a fear dominated society. This drove a lot of people online. The statistics of people online are extraordinary. Buying books is down, tv watching is done. Internet usage is going up.
In the meanwhile, the online communities e.g. Facebook, the World of Warcraft are getting busier and busier.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE THE TOPICS YOU LOVE
There are those topics that you love - e.g. underwater kickboxing expert. So you might do all your research on the market. But there is potentially a problem here:
- Everything you write may not be good enough for you.
- How enthusiastic are you about your job after 15 years?
- The curosity about a new topic may not be there if you know it well.
THINK ABOUT THE MARKET
When people are interested they buy everything they can get their hands on. This is great for information products. People who are passionate about a hobby get on the net and research the information. They are curious & enthusiastic.
You’ve got to remember it’s not you buying this stuff. In Internet Marketing people get a bid jaded with emails and launches and sales letters. But in underwater kickboxing your potential customers have probably never seen this type of stuff.
IT’S MARKET RESEARCH NOT PRODUCT RESEARCH
Remember: this is not PRODUCT research, this is MARKET RESEARCH. You are not trying to create a product - yet.
A new tool for making bratwurst is not a market - it’s a product. Some example markets are:
- underwater kickboxing
- sausage making
SUGGESTION FOR TEAMS
Don’t put up a post with a heading like ‘help. I’ve got no team’ or ‘can’t get team mates’.
Think about it. If somebody read that, is that the kind of person you want to be a team-mate? No. It isn’t. Which is why you aren’t getting a team.
Instead come up with a clever name, look at the teams that filled up quickly and the headlines they used. There’s a pretty good lesson right there - in the forums.
Be proactive. Get in there. Don’t just sit back and hope.
See what other people do well & copy! Come across as ‘proactive’ & ‘positive’.
TARGET MARKET
For those whose first language isn’t English, think about creating a niche in your country & language. There is a huge opportunity there.
WHERE TO GET A WHOLE BUNCH OF IDEAS
Look at the popular searches section. They are interesting but not so useful by themselves. But look at the ebay categories.
You’ll see Antiques, Art, Baby, Books, Business & Industrial, Cameras & Photo. All of a sudden you have more ideas than you can shake a stick at.
So let’s say you pick Musical Instruments, and you’ll see the most popular searches for Musical Instruments on ebay. Well these searches can be the basis of your niche market ideas.
When you drop down the category again you’ll see more categories related to Musical Instruments. E.g. DJ Gear & Lighting. As you drive down the categories you are finding more and more ideas for niches.
A great niche might be ‘how to get DJ gigs in clubs’, or ‘how to become a pro DJ’.
You really want to be where people are pulling money out of their wallets - and that’s Ebay & Ebay pulse.
Technorati is a search engine that focuses on the blog. It looks what people are blogging about & it collates all the blogs & posts together under one search function.
If you click on the popular button you can see a whole bunch of useful information e.g. Top Favorited Blogs, Top Searches.
Click on Popular section and look for the Top Blogs section.
These are authority blogs that make great idea starters e.g. Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things.
There are excellent articles that come up that make great ideas for niches. Here’s a personal favorite: giant wall stickers.
Ed found ’speed reading’ and ‘Japanese monster costumes’.
There are all sorts of different blogs. But the popular ones will get the most traffic. They know how to cater to that traffic & know how what things people are interested in.
Also see the Top 100 Favorited Blogs on the left hand side of the Technorati popular page:
There are so many places to get ideas. So it’s best to choose those places that will reward you doubly. In other words you get leverage for your choice.
On Ebay you saw what’s popular when people want to buy stuff. Technorati is about blogs - what are people talking & gossiping about.
The third important element is what are people passionate about - what are their hobbies and interests? That’s where Google Groups comes in.
Browse the group categories (where it says ‘Browse all group categories’):
Notice the activity section: High, Medium, Low. Also look at the number of members in each group: <10, 10-100, 100+, 1000+. But activity is most important. You want high activity items. So click on High Activity.
e.g. freshwater aquarium, home repairs.
Offers a similar range of topics to Google Groups.
In particular look at the Google Hot Trends Report.
You can change the date & view trends for that period. This site gives you all the hot topics of the day.
Interesting topics include: just salad, x games, astrology zone, red sox radio.
It’s what people search for on a daily basis.
Find out what people want to know in a particular category. E.g. Beauty & Style:
Just look at all the questions being asked by your potential target market? You could find answers to those questions & people will pay for that information.
LAUNCHPAD
Here’s your Day 2 launchpad!
I’ve put each of the above resources below. Just click on each of the resources below and it will open up in a new tab window on your Firefox browser.
- Ebay Pulse: What’s popular to buy & sell on Ebay?
- Technorati: What are people talking about?
- Google Groups: What are people’s hobbies and interests?
- Yahoo Groups: More of the same.
- Google Trends: What are the hot topics of the day?
- Yahoo Answers: What do people want answers to?
When you’ve got all your fantastic ideas…
NOW WHITTLE THEM DOWN TO 7
Remember don’t judge or edit - once you have your list pick the seven that appeal to you the most BUT STAY AWAY from those “MajorLeague” niches I talk about in the podcast.
-Mike
Technorati Tags: the getting of ideas, ideas, market research, thirty day challenge, where to get ideas, mega niches, don’t edit your ideas, 7 ideas, market research not product research, underwater kickboxing, sausage making, topics you love, do the work first, ebay pulse, technorati, google groups, yahoo groups, google trends, yahoo answers
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Topics: Daily Summaries |
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:05 pm
hey thanx for that superb site, its like a written summary of the vids, i really love & appreciate it
oil
August 5th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Hey Mike,
Thanks for creating this blog to help us out. It’s much appreciated.
May I recommend a plugin that would allow us to print this excellent information to read offline?!
WP-Print
lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-print.html
If it’s possible to add this, that would be excellent. If not, no worries!
~Shannon
August 5th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Hey Mike,
I’m a little confused. I reviewed your spreadsheet and it makes total sense on how you found the niche market based on the market and niche you placed next to each other.
The part I’m confused about is how you determined the items to put next to each other.
Were they just random thoughts that you put together and see if anything sparks or did you have a process?
What made you decide to put flower arranging next to People who like watching animals. These seem to be completely unrelated.
Thanks,
~Shannon
August 5th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
The flower arranging, monkey arranging thing was a bad joke that went wrong.
I forgot to remove it from the spreadsheet.
I’ve updated it btw.
Mike
August 5th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
I knew it was a joke (that’s why I choose it), but the same question still applies to the other market/niches you used in your example.
~Shannon
p.s. Thanks for uploading it. Much appreciated!
August 6th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Firstly. I must hold my hands up and say I made an mistake in the spreadsheet I made public.
Following this thread I noticed that some of my niche markets smacked of product and service.
I’ve since adjusted the spreadsheet to make the niche markets a bit clearer.
As for the other question about random thoughts. Sometimes it’s completely random. I put a random niche & a random market together to see what happens when the two ideas collide. Similar to Edward de Bono’s PO method.
Other times I have the idea and then break it back down into the niche and market to see if it’s sound.
Hope that helps.
-Mike
August 6th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Thanks for this great “cliff notes” to refer back to…and also for answering “reader” questions and not just letting them sit out there, floating. Your answers are to-the-point, clear. Thanks!
Cheers!!
Kelly
August 8th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Thx Man U r making our life easier
U r making it more easy to complete this compition
Thx Again
August 10th, 2007 at 12:18 am
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August 26th, 2007 at 1:12 am
[…] On Day 2, the Topic was the Getting of Ideas, discussing some tools and websites we can use to get ideas about stuff that might sell. So our homework was to get Seven Ideas and to not edit these ideas. […]
September 1st, 2007 at 3:57 am
Hi Mike, Thanks for your efforts here, much appreciated.
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:55 pm
How much time should we spend on this process?
January 31st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Thanks Mike - that spreadsheet really helped me
see what I should be looking for - although it’s
still a challenge…
Fran
March 13th, 2008 at 1:04 am
[…] See Mike Mindel’s blog for where to get ideas. Social Bookmarking Posted by julieanne on September 6th, 2007 filed in 1 Testing the Market, 1. Research […]