Target Surfing

To know the importance of having a website for your business is one thing. Knowing the purpose behind having a Web presence is a whole other thing.

If your business is already up and running, you’ll have to cater your strategies to what you already have in place, particularly in terms of your pre-existing customer base. That means getting them to fill out cards in your physical business, or otherwise enticing them to your website with special offers. Then follow-up emails. We’re still talking basic marketing and backend selling—making money on those who are the easiest to sell to—those you’ve sold to before.

But if you’re still unsure of what kind of business you’d like to create, take a good, long look at creating an online business.

What works in your favor is that the easiest way to make money online is to focus on a specific market, find a product that they want, and give it to them. Searching for your best prospects online isn’t that much different than offline.

How do you do this? The same way you look for anything else online: surf. Just type it in—for example, maybe you have a passion for scuba diving that you’d like to turn into a business. You find all the news groups, forums, and websites regarding scuba diving. Is there anything that they’re talking about a lot? Any patterns where something is wanted but not easy to find?

That’s how you find your target market. It may take you a day, a week, a month, maybe longer. It depends on what your market is and what you’re trying to find, but whatever the niche, there’s a large enough market that’s relatively easy to get to. You know where they are, and after some research you’ll know that they want something specifically. All the gamers are hanging out in one market. All the sports nuts are hanging out in one market. All the people that are interested in holistic medicine are hanging out in one market. All the doctors are hanging out in one market. It’s easier to get people than you might think.

Try getting those people through the local newspaper. If 20,000 people view your ad (theoretically), you’d be doing great to get 10 of them to show interest. Online, you can go right to where all of your target market hangs out. Your target market is sitting right in front of you.

There are tons of people who know enough about the money-making potential of the Web and ask, “So what do I sell online? What’s going to be a hot seller?” It’s the most common and most fatal mistake.

You never decide on the product. You find an easy, targetable market, find out what they want, and you give it to them. It’s the easiest method in the world. You have an instantaneously successful business. It is a no-brainer. It doesn’t take any smarts to figure that out.