In the beginning, how to start an online business will depend on what type of online business you plan to start; either affiliate marketing, internet marketing, direct selling or other, no matter what it is, you need a website. A website will give you credibility and build trust with customers as you promote your products or services. It also displays professionalism to both visitors and customers alike, it is your place of business, much the same as a business with a brick and mortar building.
Now, if you already have a website set up, that’s good, however, you should still follow through with the information outlined here. The first thing you want to do is start gathering ideas as to what it is that you would like to promote. This doesn’t mean that you actually go out and create a product or find one to promote.
What it means is having some sort of an idea first and making a list of those ideas for products or services that interest you the most. These could easily be products related to the things in life that you like to do or even want to do, such as, hobbies, crafts, job related, sports, medical, travel, relationships, nature, building/construction, teaching and so on. There are many fields of interest that one could come up with and there are just as many products or services to match any of them.
Once you have a list of ideas or suggestions that you would like to promote, take that list and narrow it down to one idea or area that interests you the most, something that you can focus and concentrate on first.
Now that you have an idea of something that interests you, it’s now time to see if there’s a market where you can promote any of the products or services that relate to that same idea that you have come up with.
It’s not enough to just say that you want to promote or sell something. You need to know the market that you are in as this will keep you focused on the areas that matter the most. Without having a definite target market to promote in what you will end up doing is what’s called, “Blanket Marketing”. This simply refers to total market coverage and while this might sound like a good idea for some products, with others it will be a complete disaster.
Imagine for a moment if you were promoting a variety of baby products from your website. Now, if you elect to promote your site with a blanket type marketing campaign, don’t expect to see immediate or profitable results. This type of coverage works well for some products, but it doesn’t guarantee that you will have the same success.
Some popular types of blanket coverage are from well known products or services that you have probably seen more than once. Products for soft drinks (Coke, Pepsi), snack foods (Doritos, Lays), and the list goes on. These types of products can afford the blanket market coverage and still get a profitable return on their advertising dollars. However, most people starting out with an online business do not have a large budget set aside for advertising.
To overcome this you will need to focus first on where the customers are for your product ideas. You need to get into a market where there are hungry customers looking for a specific product or service. This is simply called your “Niche”.
So, what is a niche? Let’s use the same example as stated above and go with baby products. That is a very broad subject or topic and could display thousands of products. You simply want to narrow the topic down and find a subject that you can target with a specific audience. This would be your niche which is simply a smaller segment of a larger market.
Now, as an example take baby products as your subject and break it down to list products or services that you could promote from within that larger market. Of course, there will be many more items than these, but it will give you an idea at first on how to break up the larger, more competitive market.
- Baby cribs
- Bassinets
- Baby blankets
- Baby clothes for boys
- Baby clothes for girls
- Baby strollers (this can be broken down further by going into make, model and color) Newborn
- Baby toys
This is how you breakdown your original idea to find a smaller, profitable market, that’s your niche.
This is important - understand that the subject “baby products” is not your niche; It’s too broad of a subject. Your niche would come from breaking up the larger subject to find a smaller, less competitive, but still profitable niche market.
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