ACHIEVING SUCCESS PT-4

MONEYMAKING CAPABILITIES


In Achieving Success Part 3, we defined niche market and learned about the three modes of developing what we want to sell. As we're taking a start-small-today grow-big-tomorrow approach to achieving success, we shall frequently occupy our minds with the term "niche business". A niche business venture can be profitable simply because it targets a smaller competition. It is, therefore, very essential to capitalize on a niche market that has customers who are accessible, that is growing fast enough, and that is not already owned by one established BIG vendor. Within the confines of a niche market, you can proceed with your financial journey by finding and serving small but potentially profitable market segments... and designing custom-made products or services that meet their needs. You are targeting a small market segment that has money to spend. You don't want to start off by competing against the likes of King Kong or Godzilla or Amazon.com. Start small. Quite a number of today's giant companies started from university dormitories, garages and basements.

Find the best niches in which to market your product or service

In your quest to determine what product or service to develop and sell, do not commit the common error of developing a product or service without considering the need to first identify a problem. Developing the product or service first and then trying to find a market for it can pose a serious threat to its commercial viability. This would require an additional budget to launch an extensive market campaign in order to create awareness for the product or service.


The best approach to product or service development is to first look for a problem and solve it with your product or service. Alternatively, find a market first that spends money, then find out what they need... and give it to them. This is a straight-forward Demand and Supply approach. This will give you an edge over your competition in the niche marketplace.


Brainstorm for ideas. And put all ideas down in writing, regardless of how silly they might sound from the moment of conception. Next, research the moneymaking capabilities of a niche on the Internet and or in your small town. This will cost you nothing. You're simply researching what people are talking about or seeking. Listen to the news, watch television, read the dailies, etc., and take note of the most searched or talked about topics. Are parents discussing HOW TO TAME YOUR ANGEL GONE WILD on TV Talkshows? If you have an experiential insights on taming a son ordaughter gone wild, write a how-to guide fordesperate parents (target audience). Are wives discussing HOW TO GET THEIR HUSBANDS TO COOK FOR THE HOUSE? Bundle your experience on how you got your husband to start cooking for the house into a self-help book for the household.

RECALL
Information Products is among the top two hottest products in the largest marketplace. It will cost you nothing to write how-to, self-help, what-to-do, self-enrichment, self-development, etc., books... and it would cost you nothing to publish them.

USEFUL SOURCES
Apart from your local newspapers, TV programs and other areas to research hot topics you can bundle into products or services, search the Internet marketplaces such as Amazon.com and eBay. For instance, you can visit http://pulse.ebay.com to learn about the popular and most wanted items on eBay.

eBay Pulse contains a significant number of dynamically generated lists showing popular searches, stores, products, and more. Browse http://pulse.ebay.com to see what people are looking for across eBay this very moment. Check the largest stores at eBay Pulse to see what they’re selling. Ponder over what they must be doing right to stay large on the market. As you generate ideas along the way, make sure you put them down in writing. Please do not keep ideas in your head. At the “Category” panel, select a product of interest from the drop down menu and click on update to display popular searches of the selected product at eBay.

Search the departments at http://www.amazon.com to view products on the market. Books, for example, account for a large portion of the Internet revenue. Therefore as you carry on with your niche market search for ideas, look out for titles that people are searching for that they can’t find through the mainstream booksellers. You could become the number one resource for the “hard-to-find books” on a particular subject.

Choosing a title for your Information Product
If, for example, you plan to write a technical book on “material surface improvement” and are not sure of the title, you’ll want to start your search through the following steps:

STEP 1
Go to http://www.amazon.com.

STEP 2
Select “Books” as the niche product, and then type “surface coating” in the search field. Hit the ENTER button or click on GO. Write down the total number of the search results. Let’s assume you found 7938 books having “surface coating” in the title.

STEP 3
As in Step 2, but type “surface engineering” in the search field. Take note of the total number of search results. Let’s assume you found 3385 titles.

STEP 4
As above, but type “thin film coating” in the search field. Write down the total number of related titles. Let’s assume you found 1276 titles.

STEP 5
Search for books on “diamondlike carbon coating” in the search field. Let’s assume you found 20 titles.

STEP 6
Compare the search results in terms of the total for each title. What did you learn from the four sub niche (titles) searches? First, when we searched for a more general subject under surface improvement by typing in “surface coating”, we found 7938 results. This indicates that there is a significant level of competition under the more general subject. Secondly, we tried “surface engineering”, another general topic. This yielded a result of 3385. Thirdly, “thin film coating” narrows our subject search results to 1276. This is not bad, but we need to narrow our subject in order to stand out. Lastly, we typed in “diamondlike carbon coating”, which is essentially another thin film technology for material surface coating, but refers to a specific surface coating technology. This yielded a search result of 20. This indicates that, for now, there isn’t any tough competition out there for the selected title.

STEP 7: CONCLUSION
The result in Step 5 indicates that the sub-niche, a book on “diamondlike carbon coating”, is not mainstream. The result is much better, for there is a market potential here… And essentially there is less competition in the Amazon Marketplace for this sub-niche. This hints that it is practical to present a specific topic for an academic book rather than a broad title. Mainstream publishers are likely not to select a broad title anyway. They would say: "Your material sounds interesting and we believe it has a potential... rah rah rah... but unfortunately we have several titles in this field. Good luck with your publishing ambition... Hmmm where is that bin?"

A book that deals with a specific subject, such as How to Prevent Breast Cancer, is highly likely to target a specific and ready-to-spend-money group than a book that is entitled How to Combat Cancer. If you are a genius and know everything about any form of cancer and how to prevent them, then split your ingenuity into How to Prevent Prostate Cancer, How to Prevent Cervical Cancer, How to Prevent Ovarian Cancer, How to Prevent Cancer of the Blood, etc. Once you are subject-specific conscious, you’ll be able to target the group that is at risk to any of the areas you address.

AUTHORPRENEURSHIP
Authorpreneurship can be defined in simple terms as the art of translating your writing ability into an income or a second stream of income. This follows that an Authorpreneur is an author who gets paid to write. He or she is the writer who seriously treats his or her writing capability with a business approach.

Who is an authorpreneur?
YOU. Once you decide to let your writing potential create an extra stream of income for you... you become an Authorpreneur, your second profession.
 
Becoming an authorpreneur is quite simple. The attractive part is that you don’t necessarily need to write your entire book before you get paid. First you write a book proposal, and a publisher will give you an advance, which you can bite on while you complete the entire work. How does that sound? Do the smart thing, give yourself a second profession.
By submitting a book proposal you’re determining the commercial viability of your niche product for a niche market well in advance. This is how you avoid costly mistakes. The submit-book-proposal-first approach is a good reminder of the fact that “it pays to find a niche market for your book before writing the entire work”. Selling a book based on its proposal is much easier than selling a book that you’ve already written.

What if I don't find a publisher?
Self-publish your work. Do not allow mainstream publishers to dictate the course of your ambition. If they turn you down, shake their dusts off you... and move on to self-publish your book without any delay. It's free to do so.


That's it for now.
Thanks for being generous with your time... and for giving me the opportunity to share a few tips with you. Please send comments and related questions to help me better my presentation. And please be kind enough to share the lesson with your friends and family.
If you are an expert in this area, please click on comment to contribute your self-enrichment knowledge.


See you again on Saturday 30 January 2010.

ACHIEVING SUCCESS PART 5: MONEYMAKING CAPABILITIES 2