Think you’ve found an amazing product to sell? I bet it’s rubbish

March 21, 2006

So youâ€™ve found the most amazing product for your home based business to sell â€“ blue googlepings. You love them, your mother loves them, the whole world will love them - they’re a great idea. You buy a thousand blue googlepings and you advertise them everywhere. You run ads in the local and national papers, you buy opt in mailing lists and mail 1000 letters, you set up a website to sell your googlepings.

After two weeks, you have spent a fortune, and you havenâ€™t sold a single googleping. You pop down to your local shop to find more newspapers to place ads in, and you see an advertisement on the wall for pink googlepings. You look round the store, but you canâ€™t find them. Eventually, you ask an assistant where the pink googlepings are, and he says, â€œSorry, theyâ€™re sold out. We have some more coming in next week, but theyâ€™re all on back-order. People just canâ€™t seem to get enough pink googlepings.

You rush home to search for pink googlepings on the Internet, and sure enough theyâ€™re selling out everywhere. By now, youâ€™re so upset, you feel your head might explode. Why on earth didnâ€™t anyone tell you that people wanted pink googlepings, not blue ones? You didnâ€™t ask anyone, did you? Except for your mother, and sheâ€™d say anything to please you.

Many home based businesses make mistakes like this when they’re starting out, but this scenario is never going to happen to you, is it? Definitely not, because you are going to do your research, before you try to sell anything to anyone â€“ especially blue googlepings. Youâ€™re going to find the customer first, and discover what they want.

Ok, so maybe your business doesn’t even have any customers yet, what do you do? Suppose you have a great idea for a product or service - ask around. Visit places where that product is selling, such as shops, or trade fairs. Speak to people and find out how popular it is. Suppose youâ€™re selling a new golf club, thatâ€™s guaranteed to improve a golfers performance by 50%. Talk to regular golfers, and see if the product is something that would interest them.

If youâ€™re selling a service, make calls to people who are already providing that service. Pretend youâ€™re a customer, and see how quickly they can come out to you. If theyâ€™re all snowed under for the next couple of weeks, chances are youâ€™re on to a winner.

Selling on the Internet is even easier. You can use this free tool to see how many people have searched particular words and phrases in the last month - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ This will give you an idea of how much demand there will be for the product you are considering selling. For instance if only fifteen people per month have searched your product, it may not be worthwhile selling it. Unless, that is, youâ€™re selling a new range of the most sought after private jets; you have exclusive rights to sell them, and a huge profit margin.

If you already have a website, you can see what your existing customers want. Putting a forum on your site can work in some cases. Forums enable you to see what your customers want, through their discussions. However, you must be aware that statistically many people who visit such forums rarely look at the rest of the site, and they are also less likely to click on advertisements. So you would need to advertise the desired product in a prominent area of the forum. However, for most sites, a forum is not the best way to get customers. I prefer the next option.

Many hosting companies have a built in tool, which allows you to see which pages on your site are most popular. If the most popular page is, â€œHow to find cheap fishing rodsâ€, it might be an idea to advertise cheap fishing rods on your site. However, if the most popular page is, â€œHow to pick the best quality fishing rodâ€, it may be that your customers, are looking for a higher quality brand of rod, rather than the cheapest.

Whatâ€™s the point, you might be thinking. Those visitors looking at those pages are going to go and buy their fishing rods somewhere else. They might not even return to my site. Thatâ€™s true, but they will if you give them an incentive to return by getting them to sign up to an opt-in mailing list. Then, when you put additions on your site that may be interesting to visitors, you send them a newsletter, and persuade them to come back to your site, by telling them about your irresistible offers and information.

On one of my sites, I use two opt in mailing lists. The one on the home page has only a 1.2 percent opt in rate, which means that only 1.2 people in 100 visiting my site will sign up. The un-blockable pop up one has an 11.5% opt in rate, which means that 11.5 in every 100 visitors sign up to the list. Unfortunately, most services donâ€™t offer un-blockable pop ups, which is a shame, as so many people have a pop up prevention on their browser, so an ordinary pop up wouldnâ€™t work. I use Aweber, which is a brilliant service. It allows you to create as many opt in lists and newsletters as you want, so you can use it for several sites, if you wish. The great news is, the next 100 visitors to this site can take advantage of a special offer.

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