Brain storming formula
Brainstorm Your Ideas - A simple formula to get the best niche!
This is best done with a few people to get a wider range of possible ideas. Friends, family or business associates make a good group or do it online with some internet friends.
Write it down – try and write down 20 to 50 ideas but don’t limit yourself if you get more, but no less than 20. Remember in brainstorming there are no bad ideas. It will be hard to start with but the ideas will come. Here is a sample of mine
Rating Difficulty
In the difficulty column give it a ranking plus a numerical value. Use the same for each section. This ranking will be dependant on your experience and skills to turn this idea into a product. Don’t ask others to answer these questions as only you know what are your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t think to much just let this whole process do the work for you.
· H = Hard = 1pts
· M = Medium = 2 Pts
· E = Easy = 3pts
Developing your idea.
In the develop column place an “M” = 2pts for Me and “O” = 1pts for Outsource. This is who will be responsible for actually does the work for this idea. If you are skilled and want to do it then place an m next to the idea. If you would like to outsource the idea then put an O.
How Much Knowledge Do You Have?
· E = Expert = 3pt
· L = Limited = 2pt
· N = No personal Knowledge = 1pt
Now go through your list and add one of these letters and numbers next to each product. This rating is based on your own personal knowledge of each idea.
Gather the Statistical Information
Many people fail at this point because they choose products on an emotional level. Essentially they choose products they want to create. Don’t get fooled by this and try and stay detached at this stage. I know its hard but once you have released a few successful products you can afford to be a bit more risky about your projects.
What you should be looking for is the top category – Easy/Me/Expert
The last priority would be Hard/Other/None. This one would surely take money time and effort. We all have limited resources and this group would certainly use them all up. All the rest will fall somewhere in between.
Now take the top ten ideas and move onto the next section. If you have too many over 6 you may want to do the brainstorming again.
Evaluating your top product ideas.
This is the essential part of the evaluation process that gets overlooked.
So we compare the top few with our previous results.
Video Lights – 10 – E/M/E – 8 Total 18
How to blog – 5 – M/O/L/ - 6 Total 11
It has become fairly obvious that Video Lighting would be a good product to progress with and I did and it is selling well. How to blog would also be a good product to develop next.
Do not make the mistake that most people make and try to develop all the products at the same time. Select one product, create it, market it and make some money before you move onto the next.
Lets assume it takes 3 months to develop a product and you have three products ideas. If you create one product at a time you will produce a product every three months. If you try to develop all the products at once it could be nine months before you have a finished product to sell.
You will have to evaluate each product idea and the target market that the product relates too. It is best to promote a product the market currently wants or needs rather then develop a product you think the market might like.
You need to do research on the target markets to see if your idea is what they are looking for. Research by doing keyword analyses and looking at web sites, forums, blogs and ezines.
How did we find this information/
The key to any product is in the research. Here are some tips you can use to evaluate your product.
1. Passionate – if people are passionate about a product or service you will find they will want to talk about it. For example you will find hundreds of sites, books, forums etc on Internet Marketing so it’s safe to say they are passionate. But just don’t restrict this to online. Have a look in libraries, bookshops, libraries, TV, Seminars etc.
2. Have Money and Spend Money – Now this seems pretty obvious however I know many people who developed products for niches that just didn’t have any disposable income to spend on their product or just went for the wrong demographics. For example don’t sell baby apparel to children. Sell it to parents or even better grandparents.
3. Repeat Buyers – If you can develop products that people will continue to come back and buy, it will make your business grow a lot faster. You might create a series or membership site where people pay a monthly fee or get delivered a product each month.
4. Insatiable and Addicts – Definition impossible to satisfy; “an insatiable appetite”; “an insatiable hunger for knowledge” Baby boomers are quite often the target here as they have all the top three attributes and there are just so many of them.
Theory – The Next Big Trends
Every 18 sec for the next 18 years someone will turn 59.
What Business do you want to be in?
5. Reachable – These days most people are reachable through the Internet or different media formats. Some products that may find people not so reachable maybe specific groups in certain countries or demographics.
6. Already Interested and Motivated – Again this is fairly self evident, however we are looking for people who are actively looking for what we have to offer. Some people maybe interested in using an RSS script however we may need to motivate them by showing the numerous different ways it can be used.
7. Possible Back End – Very few people become millionaires by selling a 10 or 20 dollar product. A good friend of mine, Mike Filsaime, sold a script for $997 and used a long pre launch process to really build up the interest with interviews, testimonials, free reports, prizes and gifts and joint ventures. He sold a thousand when it was finally released within the first 24 hours. That’s $997,000.00 for one product in 24 hours. He gave away a lot of things first to sell his backend product that made him all the money.
8. Already Predisposed to buy - Sometimes you have to create the predisposition to buy like Mike did however there are huge groups out there that are already motivated. This is why we say solve a problem or help people to make money. Hobbyists, sports etc are all people ready to buy if you make the right product.
At the Core of Each Product/niche is Content.
Whether it will be text, graphics or media or a combination of all three you now need to develop an outline. Below was my outline for the eBook on video Lighting. Just remember if it is an audio, video or eBook, at the core of each product is content.
Project Outline
Organizing Your Research
The last part of your project is to gather all the elements. I actually add this to an excel spread sheet with the above Project Outline.
Obviously if it is an information blog you will attack it a little differently.
So here is my blog on Photoshop tutorials. http://www.msiphotoshop.com
I followed exactly the same procedure but instead of project outline it was blog outline. I still needed graphics, content etc but I could do a lot of it on the fly.
