If seasoned marketers read my headline they would just laugh and flip the page or I guess its close the window now… First of all I hate everybody who starts off explaining what something is not. Why do they do that? We want to know what something means not what something doesn’t mean. It just seems a little off to me but oh well, marketers will be marketers. I just wanted to get that off my chest because it ticks me off that people do that. Where’s the meat people?!

All right now lets get back on course. Let me tell you how to do your own free market research.

To start building a business you have to have a profitable market right? So here are two steps to get you on your way.

STEP 1: Find a profitable market
To do this you have to do one or all of the following:

1. If you have a market in mind go to Google (the ultimate market research tool) and count how many Google Adsense ads there are on the right hand side of your screen. If there are more than three you have a nice market if you have more than twenty you have a hugely competitive and profitable market. To get into this second one you will need a different set of skills. Anyway, if you do find more than three ads then you can rest assured that people are willing to pay to sell in that market and you may even have a niche market in your hands.

2. Go to Amazon.com and pick a category, then go to the best sellers section of that category and see what’s selling. Then you could possibly sell info products for that product or brand, or maybe even start selling the product itself.


3. Do the same thing for ebay.

4. Do the same thing on Twitter. Yes, Twitter. Check to see if people are tweeting about this product and if they are, get involved!

STEP 2: What do your potential customers want?
This second step is very important especially if you are in an over-saturated market. Now that you have decided on a market, choosing your product is next. A great guerrilla tactic is to go to forums related to your market. People love talking about what features some products need. Build on this and you will have a nice product. Also go to product review sites like: cnet.com or review centre.

When you figure out what they want, they will thank you for it.

These simple strategies will let you know if the market you have in mind is worth getting into or not.