Hello All,

Bubba is at playgroup this morning so I get a chance to do a little catch up work. Yippy! So with out further comment I will continue on with writing the training series about learning how to create a business online.

In this post I will be writing about Week 8 of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Training Masterclass Coaching Program.

So lets begin with this weeks tasks…….

Internet Marketing Masterclass Week 8: Initial Niche Selection

This week is all about selecting our niche, we were sent 6 videos to watch and our usual welcome letter and checklist of tasks to do.

Video 1: Introduction To Niche Selection

According to John, choosing a niche is not as hard or as confusing as we may think. Just because a particular keyword is being highly used does not necessarily mean people are spending money with in that subject matter.

What is a niche? I have been talking about “niche” so I thought I had better explain. A niche is a topic or also considered a micro market. For example in my case “Beauty” is the market, “Beauty Treatment” is the niche, and “Spray Tanning” is the micro niche. That is about as simple as I can explain it!

One of the best places to research market niches is using sites such as Clickbank, Paydotcom, Amazon, Ebay etc. Simply type in your keyword niche idea into any one of those sites and see if there are products already selling. If there are, then the market you are looking into is potentially viable. You want to pick a niche where people are already spending money. (ie There are already hungry buyers! )

A lot of people believe that a crowded market means you have a lot of competition and according to John this is not necessarily the case. A crowded market can mean that there are already wanting buyers with in that niche and there is more potential for future joint ventures. (We will cover more on joint venturing at a later date.)

Video 2: Products That Solve Problems

One niche area that we can look at is picking subjects where a product can solve a problem.

Everyone at some stage will have some sort of problem they need to solve and a product that solves a problem will sell highly. The trick is to identify with the problem and make our product actually solve the problem!

For Example:

1. How to get rid of acne
2. How to stop snoring
3. How to loose weight
4. How to manage depression
5. How to say ‘No’ to people
6. How to get rid of bad breath
7. How to increase your energy etc etc etc…….(The list is endless….)

Video 3: Products That Teach

Another niche area to look at that can be quite profitable is “Teaching people how to”. For this John Suggests we think about what we are knowledgeable in that we could teach people how to do!

For Example:

1. Teach people how to spray tan (my product niche)
2. Teach people how to speak another language
3. Teach people how to play a musical instrument
4. Teach people how to draw
5. Teach people how to maintain a car
6. Teach people how to budget etc etc…………(The list is endless)

Drawing from our own life skills, qualifications or circumstances, “What could we teach someone?” We don’t realise that some of the skills or knowledge that we have and take for granted, that someone else might actually want to learn!

Other Examples:

1. How to grow roses
2. How to grow vegetables
3. How to cook
4. How to entertain your child etc etc etc………………….

Video 4: Products That Reveal Secrets

Another profitable niche area is the “Tips, Tricks & Secrets” section. Our product could be based on tips and secrets for a particular topic.

For Example:

1. Tips on saving money
2. Tips on being happy
3. Secrets to cooking like a chef
4. Secrets to developing your inner beauty
5. Secrets to successful relationships
6. Secrets to happy children
7. Tips on maintaining your weight
8. Tips to anti-aging…………. etc etc etc………..(Again this list is endless)

Video 5: Using Clickbank To Find Our Niche

In this video John shows us how to search Clickbank to help us decide on what niche idea to persue. He suggests to use the “hungry market analogy”. (ie Select a niche where there is already a buying market.)

We are shown step by step:

1. How to do a search on Clickbank using our keyword selection
2. How to understand what the gravity of a product means
3. And how to search the different categories and subcategories.

Video 6: Time To Research

In this video John shows us different ways we can research our niche for actual product ideas, now that we have narrowed down our choice from eliminating the topics that don’t fall into the “hungry buyer” analogy.

Using Google to do our research, we are shown:

1. How to search for ebooks in our niche
2. How to search for newsletters in our niche
3. How to search for forums in our niche
4. How to search for blogs in our niche

Week 8 Summary

Like I mentioned earlier, this week was all about researching our ideas from the list that we created in week 7 and choosing our niche. When I did this part of the course I had already decided I was going to use my knowledge with Spray Tanning. As I did my research I did discover that the topic was not classed as a “hungry market” and that there wasn’t much in the way of training information out there. I think at the time I only found 2 other competitors that weren’t even listed on Clickbank, Paydotcom etc.

In hindsight maybe going with such a micro niche market was not a good idea from the potential buyers market point of view! (After launching my product in February earlier this year sales are still very low. But they are on autopilot!!!! )

Instead I decided I need to create a product about something I was passionate about and could use my knowledge and experience to develop the product further over time. Plus I had already collated a lot of training tools and information from my experience teaching the salons and colleges so all I had to do was piece it all together to create my finished product.

What I did like about this weeks training was that it gave me heaps of ideas for future products and topics I want to explore further.

Week 8 Checklist:

Our checklist tasks for Week 8 were:

1. Search the Clickbank marketplace to help narrow our niche selection from the list we created from Week 7
2. Search Google for research information on our chosen niche
3. Research, Research, Research, make notes, sign up to forums, buy products if need be to help with our research.
4. Visit the masterclass forum’s product development section and communicate with other students if stuck for ideas and suggestions
5. Continue to post to our blogs
6. Continue to visit fellow student and marketers blogs and make comments where appropriate to help traffic generation. (This process also helps with ranking as well.! )

OK so that is Week 8 wrapped up.

So until next time……..

Enjoy Your Learning!

P.S If you want to read more posts on my master class training, you will find them all listed on my masterclass training page. Click on the following link to get to that page: My Masterclass Training

P.P.S John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Masterclass Coaching may be closed at the moment. He has just started the new 2010 program and he only ever takes a limited amount of students at a time so as to dedicate himself to our learning, basically it is a first in first served situation.

Update 10/4/2010: John has just released a one month $4.95 trial to Masterclass meaning you can sign up for $4.95 and trial the training. As far as I know he is limiting these places. If you see a sold out sign, then do sign up to be notified when there are new places available again.

This training program was the best decision I ever made. I would not be doing what I am today if it wasn’t for John. I can not recommend this program enough!

Click On The Image To Be Taken To John’s Coaching Website

(Please note: You should assume that any links in this post are possible affiliate links. Please refer to My Website Policies Compensation Disclosure for further information.)

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