The key to success after creating a website depends on how you advertise your site. You must advertise or forever remain unknown. If you have “the better bed warmer,” you have to let the people know about it, or your ideas and efforts will come to nothing.
Everybody has an idea for a product, a service or a “how-to” manual of some kind. Many people spend half their lives perfecting a product, learning how to perform a special service and creating a website – only to end up penniless and heartbroken because “no one visits the site” to buy whatever it is they’re trying to sell.
In most cases, it’s a matter of whether you want to “go down in history” as just another entrepreneur, hard-worker, author or you want to “get quality visitors to your site and enjoy the re wards of them buying”
Do some basic common sense product analysis and market research before you begin creating, learning or putting together something you want other people to buy. The same kind of “research” will save you time, frustration, and money, if you apply the same principles to every “selling opportunity” that arouses your interest.
Make up a check list of questions that must be answered before you embark upon any project or get too deeply involved in any selling situation. Such a check list should answer the following questions:
l. Who will I sell it to?
2. Do these people really want, and need it?
3. How large is the market?
4. How will I reach these people & get them to buy?
5. Is anyone else selling a similar product, service or book?
6. What makes my product & strategies different?
7. Can I supply the product at a price the customer will pay, and still make a profit for myself?
8. How much time, effort & money will I have to invest in order to reach my profit goals?
9. Do I really have the resources, and the stamina to carry this idea through to success?
Once you’ve answered these questions – completed this bit of basic product analysis and market research – then you can start planning exactly how you intend to sell it, and map out your advertising strategy from there. You’ll find success in any selling effort, much easier, and much more profitable, if you honestly and objectively answer these “check list” questions before you begin.
It’s absolutely imperative that you analyze the product, and profile your prospective customer – the salability of your product, and the demand for such a product by the people you want to buy.
When people neglect to analyze the product, and answer the basic market research questions, they’re almost certainly doomed to failure. These are precisely the reasons for failure amongst people who attempt to start an internet business.
Remember, your first task is to determine who your most likely customers are, and then design your advertising campaign to reach those specific people. Generally, you wouldn’t try to sell garden tools with an ad in a car care magazine; or socket wrenches with an ad in a magazine for brides-to-be.
The bottom line is in knowing your type of customer – presenting your product or opportunity in a style that appeals especially to that type of customer – and then placing your ad in places reaching your kind of customer.