Step by Step - Surveying Your Niche Market

Step by Step - Surveying Your Niche Market

If you do not find out what people want, or plunge blindly forward and create a products on a whim, you could end up with a dead duck product ( a product that doesn't make any money and yes, I've had a few).

You then not only have wasted your time and money but it can put you right off the entire entrepreneurial activity of making money online.

So do a little market research (in depth information can be found at What's My Ebook Idea Worth? $19) or survey your market to find out what they want to buy, how much they want to pay, and what they are likely to purchase in the coming year.

1. You could go through all the pain and suffering of setting up a website or web pages, installing fancy scripts and testing like crazy to ensure everything worked perfectly, or you could sign up with a free survey service (many of them offer trial periods - long enough to collect the information you need) and they supply you with a url where visitors will go to fill out your survey. Over at questionpro.com they have a number of survey styles to choose from (you would alter one of the marketing templates to suit your needs) and a free trial.
2. Make your survey as simple as possible. You don't want to ask 40-50 questions that your target market may not know or care to answer. If you do, they won't answer your survey, or worse they will fill it out falsely. You want to keep it simple enough that anyone and everyone in your market is capable of responding, you're not imposing on their time, and that you get enough information for your venture to be successful.

   Here are some sample ideas of questions you may ask:

   • In the next 3 months, what would you most likely purchase...
   • How much money are you willing to spend on...
   • What is the main problem that you have with "ABC"...

3. Create a free report on the topic that you feel your target market is most interested in. Do some quick research and write an essay, or summarize a certain subject. This free report is going to be the 'hook' or reason why people will take the time to fill out your survey in the first place. If you don't give them a reason - or a gift of some kind - they most likely won't participate.
4. Find an ezine or newsletter that offers solo mailings, ask busy blog owners if they'll allow a link to your survey for a short time, or run a pay per click campaign on google and advertise for participants (Perry will show you how to do this cost effiiciently in his free course on google pay per click).
5. Your ad just needs to be about getting a free report if they click on your link. The link takes them to the survey page that gives a short explanation that all they need to do to get the free report is to fill out this short survey. Here is an example ad for a niche market acne product:

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FREE REPORT! Learn How to Clear Up Acne in 10 Days with this new Healthy and Holistic System.  If you're sick and tired of pimples, blackheads and other acne ruining your life, you'll love your reflection after you've followed my methods for the next 10 days.  This Free report reveals how you can quickly start living acne free! Click here: http://www.controlmyacne.com
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Of course that's just a fast example, I have no idea how your ad will work, or read, but the point is to just get them to go to the page, and a free report is a simple way to do it.

A few tips with creating your niche market survey:

• Do not have any of the options already checked. This will create false results as people will just click the "submit" button quickly and not even change the "already checked" results.
• Make sure and have "None of the above" options for each question. All of your products ideas might not be bought by anybody, and if you do not have "none of the above" options, then you would never know and you could still possibly end up creating something that nobody wants.
• No fancy designs. Have your web page that hosts the poll on it, simply for hosting the poll. No need for fancy, flashy designs and links going to several different places. Just have your poll and that is it. After you have done the above, tally up the results and begin designing the product you are going to create. Usually, you will see the results are pretty one sided. The majority of people will have picked the same options, which is what you want.

If the results show that everything is pretty equal, then pick the option
that you are most comfortable with creating. If the majority of the results show "None of the above" answers, then create different questions and survey more people in your target niche market.

Running an online target market survey for niches is really very simple to do. Don't get in a panic and think you cannot do it. Just follow the instructions and learn all you can while you're at it!