Find Your Online Home Business Idea!

Estimated Time for Completion: Between 30 minutes and 2 hours + "sitting time".

OK, I'm sure you're eager to get started on finding your perfect online home business idea, so let's begin!

First off, I suggest you get a cheap notebook to record your scribblings in... your idea list will grow and change, and you want it all in one dedicated place so you can refer back to your ever expanding list of great business ideas. :-)

Begin by making a list of TOPICS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN. Just start writing.... To get you off and running, ask yourself:

What are my interests, my hobbies, my passions?
What do I do for fun, for relaxation, for the love of it?
What do I talk about, read about?
What do I already know a lot about?
What would I like to learn more about?
What do my friend always ask me for help with/suggestions about?

What you are doing is creating a list of possible topics that you can expand on and use as 'seedlings' to plant the tree that will become your online home business!

If examples help you, here are some selections from my Big Brainstorm List:

Interior Design
Feng Shui
Round the World Travel
Budget Travel
Dogs/pets
Career Coaching
Essential Oils/Aromatherapy
Sound Therapy
Small Business
French Food
Empowering Women

Don't edit yourself! Just let your ideas flow out of your pen and onto the page. That's what brainstorming is all about, after all. If it pops up, jot it down. There's no commitment right now -- you are just fishing for ideas.

Great! You should now have before you a list of between 10 and 30 topics. Pat yourself on the back. You've just completed Step 1: The Big Brainstorm!

RECOMMENDATION: I'm going to recommend that you complete Step 1 and then let your list sit for 24 hours, or at least overnight, before you begin Step 2. This resting period will make it easier to skim the proverbial cream (the ideas that really excite you) off the top.

SIDE NOTE: Keep adding to your list whenever an idea comes to you. And they *will* come to you! In the shower, on the subway, while out for dinner, in yoga class.... keep a pad and pen handy so that you can capture ideas for future online home businesses!

Estimated Time for Completion: 15 minutes

Congratulations on completing Step 1: The Big Brainstorm. You're well on your way to finding your online home business idea(s)!

Now on to Step 2: Whittling The List. In this step, you're going to pare down your Big Brainstorm list to your Top 5 Ideas.

Did you let your list 'rest' for 24 hours, or at least overnight, like I recommended above? Good. That will make your work here easier!

Here's how to begin. Eyeball your list. Let your eyes wander quickly over the list and when you read over an idea/topic that you feel an immediate 'yes' to, put a star next to it.

SIDE NOTE: What's a 'yes' and how do I know if I felt one or not? OK, let's delve into that for a moment. As you look over your list, certain ideas/topics will grab your attention. They'll seem to sparkle a little bit brighter. You'll feel a little physical pull inside (usually in your stomach, solar plexus or heart) when you read the words, and that, dear friend, is a very big cue from them to you. It means you may be on to your shining star, the online home business idea that makes your heart sing! That *IS* what you're looking for, right? :-)

Now back to the task at hand! As I was saying, some ideas will feel flat, others will sparkle. Put a start next to your sparklers. My list looked like this:

Interior Design
Feng Shui
Round the World Travel
Budget Travel
* Dogs/pets
* Career Coaching
Essential Oils/Aromatherapy
Sound Therapy
* Small Business
* French Food
* Empowering Women

Estimated Time for Completion: 60 minutes

So you've brainstormed a list of online home business ideas and you've whittled your list down to your top five. Excellent work! Now it's time to take those ideas that made the cut out onto the open road of the Internet for a little test drive.

Did you know that you can actually TEST YOUR IDEA to determine what your chances of building a successful online home business are BEFORE you commit to the idea and BEFORE you spend a single dime to develop your idea? Well, dear reader, it's absolutely true!

The purpose of this exercise is to assist you in gathering the crucial information that will tell you if you've got a potential winner of an idea on your hands -- or a dud.

The first and easiest way to evaluate your online home business idea is BY THE NUMBERS. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can find out the number of web searches (ie. Google searches) for your idea 'keywords'. This will show you the relative demand for your idea/site/product. And of course, it's all about simple economics. No demand = no money. Good demand = good profit potential!

So where's the genie in the bottle that's going to divulge this amazing information to you? Voila, here's the link to Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool. (I'll also post it again in The Link List portion of this web page, so you'll have it easily accessible!)

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Let's take a minute here to talk about this tool. What you are going to be doing is plugging keywords into the search box on Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool. After you hit the enter key, you'll then be given a list of keywords and the number of searches done for the keywords in the last 30 days.

What you'll come away with is a clear look at how many people are interested in your idea/keyword, as well as many other potential ideas/keywords to help you more finely hone your concept.

For example, the keyword 'dog' is very broad -- plug it into Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool and you'll see that in May 2006, 817,074 searches were done on this keyword. Scroll down further, however, and you'll also see that 15,461 searches were done for the keyword 'dog toy'. Do you think that that might be a fun idea to start a web site around? Could be!

So now you're working with Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool doing some keword test driving. You've accomplished a LOT so far, and you're quickly honing in on your online home business idea! Way to go!

But I'm guessing you probably have some questions, like "What's a good idea look like?" and "How specific should I be?" Excellent questions, and they lead me to the topic of -- Niche Marketing!

Yes, I can see the furrowing of eyebrows and hear the scratching of heads, but fear not, this is easy stuff. A 'niche' is a slice of the pie, not the whole pie itself. And your online home business should focus on that slice.

In Step 3 we discussed the example of 'dog toys'. Those two keywords are a niche, or a slice, if you will, of the 'dog' pie. Granted, that doesn't sound too appetizing, but your chances for online home business success are *far* higher if you go after after just a slice of the pie and become an advocate of niche marketing.

Why is that, you ask? Two simple words -- targeted traffic. By choosing a niche to specialize in, you're appealing to a specific group of of 'pre-qualified' potential customers who are actively searching for your little slice of the pie. This specific group is your targeted traffic and when you draw them to your web site, they are far more likely to be interested in finding out more about your product/service!