I’m an Expert; How Can I Find a Niche for My Information Product?

Eben has been dishing some of the best MARKETING GOLD lately in our GURU BluePrint Training Program. I taught a session on how to use a survey to research your niche and find out what your prospect wants, and Eben gave the clearest guidelines I’ve seen to help identify if a niche is “hot” and if you should invest the time and money in marketing to it.

Use, abuse, commit to memory these coming tips on finding your niche. Ignore them at your own peril…

Step One: First, the most successful experts that turn their expertise into products to sell online work in one of the “Three Mega-Niches:”

1. Money and business
2. Health and fitness
3. Dating and relationship

Concentrate your efforts there, and your more likely to find a hungry market looking to solve a problem and ready to buy.

Step Two: Next, look for a niche where you can answer “ABSOLUTELY YES” to the following “Four Niche Test Questions:”

1. Is my prospect experiencing Pain + Urgency, or Irrational Passion?
2. Is my prospect pro-actively looking for solutions?
3. Does my prospect have few or no perceived options?
4. Are at least 1 in 1,000 people LOOKING for a solution for this RIGHT NOW?

Step Three: Finally, after you’ve passed Step 1 and 2, imagine your “avatar” or typical customer in the niche. Step inside his or her reality. Make a long list of your prospects “Fears & Frustrations” and their “Wants & Aspirations.” Go, go, and go till the juice is absolutely gone. You’ll find the insights that come near the end of your brainstorm are very useful.

Identifying your Prospect/Avatar’s mindset is the basis for marketing and for testing our your niche idea.

Step Four: Verify whether your hunch is “Hot” in Steps 1-3 by using surveys and one-to-one consulting calls with clients (free or paid). You are listening for what the customer WANTS (not what YOU want to teach them). Get out of your own “I’m the expert” ego and get in to really listening to what people are asking for.

Repeat until you find a strong niche.

Follow these steps and you will be 500% further along than other experts who are trying to build long-lasting businesses from their areas of expertise.

Good luck and leave me a comment to see how these Tips worked for you!

Identifying a Niche

category, find a niche, information product, niche, test a niche

July 15, 2010

1 Comment

An Impromptu “Thanks” After Today’s Coaching Session Keeps Me Inspired

This came to my inbox today a couple of hours after my second information marketing coaching session with a new client Geert from Belgium
He said, “Emily, this second session alone made the whole 3 months I’ve bought completely worth it. If it ended today, I’d feel like I’d gotten far more value than I paid for.”
I was almost embarrassed, then flattered, then touched, and beaming for the rest of that day. When a client feels expresses that our partnership is really changing their attitude towards work and giving them massive value, I feel so happy and fulfilled (and on the line to give them more! ). Thanks Geert for keeping the cycle going…

Coaching

client feedback, coaching session, guru blueprint, testimonial

July 15, 2010

2 Comments

Share your thoughts on learning how to build an info product marketing business

Here is a link to the survey. Take it and we will review the results together:

http://tinyurl.com/28tsohx

Uncategorized

June 24, 2010

3 Comments

10 Signs an Information Marketing Coach Could Really Help You

1. You are feeling overwhelmed, under-planned, and unsure of what steps to take when.  You’ve heard advice from a ton of people about how to build your business and you’re not sure where to start. “You don’t know what you don’t know.” This is the key time for a coach.
2. You are not a “newbie.” Don’t be ashamed, you have to start somewhere, but when you are new to online marketing you can get a ton of value by watching and learning from online programs and others (like Eben Pagan). Coaching will be more beneficial when you have some learning and experimenting already under your belt. Then your coach can focus with you on implementation and understanding of key ideas, instead of teaching you what you can pay less to learn from a video training.
3. You have at least 3 full days each week to give complete focus to building your online business
4. You have had success in business; either you have worked in a business, corporation, for an entrepreneur, or – even better – you ARE an entrepreneur. You get at a tangible level what it takes to make successful businesses and work hard.
5. You’ve already had some success with an information products marketing business – but you know it should be doing much better.  You’re just not sure why and you need expert feedback about how to take things to the next level.
6. You have resources: 1) a tech person, assistant, or outsourced worker you can turn to for putting up websites and dealing with the “tech stuff”
7. You have at least a $1500 budget per month for: pay-per-click testing and lead generation, coaching, technical implementation (programming, website hosting, shopping cart subscription etc).
8. You have enough free cash flow to afford coaching for at least 3 months. You will need a series of sessions to implement, review and optimize your business activities to see the improvements in earnings and reduction of wasted time.
9. You know you could ‘figure it all out” on your own by watching video trainings, but you’d like to do it even faster – and save time from mistakes – by having someone give you customer feedback and accountability. Simply, you’d like success faster and with less stress.
10. You are ready to be a true marketer and have an open, learning mind. In internet marketing EVERYTHING IS A TEST. The more you get wrapped up and tied to one idea of exactly “what the world needs to learn and what I’m going to teach” the more blind you can become. When you are convinced something has to work that is when you are in danger. Be open to testing and “hearing” what people need from you – not what you need to teach them.

Coaching

June 23, 2010

2 Comments

How Much Time and Money Does it Take to Start an Internet-Based Business?

Short answer: In my experience people need to devote at least 3 full-time days per week and get used to writing a lot of copy (5-10 pages per day), or shooting video (3-5 per day), and networking and establishing real relationships with other industry experts for at least 6 months to a year to get real traction in their online businesses. Much of success has to do with how well you identify your market, their fears, frustrations, hopes and aspirations.

The people I’ve seen become successful have not done any less than the above, and most of have put in very consistent effort full-time, even on the days when they don’t feel like it.

Also, how well you can implement quickly, test, apply what you learned from the results, and repeat makes all the difference. Get used to failing FAST, learning from it and quickly getting to the bullseye.

Fortunately, starting an online business does not take the money of a brick and mortar business. The start-up costs are practically the least you can have for any type of business.

Three close friends (not marketers or writers to begin with) in my inner circle that started their online businesses 2-3 years ago are making 500K-1M per year. So I see it really works – and I saw how they really worked.

Those are just my close friends, there are many more examples of success among peers and clients, but I won’t make claims about them here.

Let’s face it; the choices for where to get started in this industry are overwhelming! So many people claim to be able to show others how to easily make money online. Who are they and how can you tell if they are legit?

Did you ever hear a wise relative say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees…and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”?

It is tempting to want to want to believe an un-credible marketer who taps into our deepest desires, “How I Made $800K In My First 12 Months Marketing Online Without a Product of My Own! And How You Can Copy My Success Through a Proven Yet Simple Step-by- Step System of Video Tutorials So Simple even a 5-Year-Old Could Do It!”

The coaching I do is not for the person looking for easy money with no work; this type of business doesn’t really exist in the long-term. If it did, no one would bother with Harvard Business School, they’d buy 3-step “copy and paste” video trainings…

So let’s be clear, I won’t show you the exact 20 places to click, 10 things to write and how to withdraw the resulting piles of cash from your bank account. But -working with me- you will have access to the best information about how to get going on all aspects of your business, from setting up a landing page, to getting traffic, to writing a sales letter, to lining up email auto-responders. Basically, you’ll get all of the Nuts and Bolts of an information products business.

Your dream of having a lucrative business while teaching what you love is completely possible. I’ve personally seen it happen many times for people who take what they know, turn it into an information product and set up a system to sell it online that runs on AUTO-pilot.

In fact, if you can use a computer, and you can use a browser, you can learn what it takes to publish information products online and start making money.

Eben Pagan, who I work with, started his own business this way about 8 years ago. He started with a desktop computer that he paid $800 bucks for and a copy of Microsoft Front Page for $179. He invested about $2,000 in pay-per-click search advertising before he got it all going and started to figure out how the machine ran and how to make money.

Now, was he lucky?

Maybe…

But it wasn’t like he started the thing and the next day he was making millions of dollars. He had to really work hard and try and put ingenuity into testing ads and doing different marketing. But it didn’t cost him a lot of money. What he really had to invest was what they call “sweat equity.” He had to spend time learning the system.

Once he learned a method for getting leads, selling to them and converting them into customers, and following up and selling them more products, the thing started turning into a machine. It started to run on its own momentum: a perpetual motion marketing machine.

Not every business is like that. Eben tried businesses that didn’t work and he started others instead.

It won’t really require a lot of your money to get started.

What it will require is your ingenuity and effort, and that you are determined to figure out what works for you.

Uncategorized

build information product, making money online, overwhelm, step-by-step

June 23, 2010

1 Comment

How Much Money Can You Make and How Long Will It Take To Make Money from Internet Marketing?

I get asked this question all the time.

It is a tough question because it depends on you, your niche market, how quickly you come up to speed, how well you implement, how well you take the ideas and methods and go and execute them and get results and learn from them, then go and execute again and get results and learn from those. You will go through this cycle over and over again, and you will learn how to grow your basic business machine.
For most people that have no experience at all, it takes a little while to get up to speed. We’ve known people that made money in the first few weeks or months. I’ve also known people that really had to stick at it for six or 12 months before they really started to get traction, and built out all the ways to get the machine running to begin making money.

The good news if you can test, repeat, test, repeat quickly you’ll find out what works as quickly as possible; the potential to make money is limitless!

Uncategorized

information product marketing, info products, internet marketing, eben pagan, guru mastermind

June 23, 2010

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