Information Product: Researching Your Target Market

You will also want to look at the magazines and be aware of the same exact thing. With magazines that are at eye level, you will also want to notice:

1) The number of magazines on any given topic;
2) The price of the magazines in any given topic;
3) The titles of the articles within the magazines for the hot topics.

Now, take a look at the "House Plans" type magazines. There are a TON of them! And, they are all very expensive. Chances are that this is a hot topic.

Your goal at this point is to find a topic -- ANY
topic -- but preferably, a HOT topic. If you pick a hot topic, no matter how much competition there is in the market, you will at least get over the first hurdle of having an audience.

Your research will tell you whether there is a market for your topic, and it will also tell you whether the market is over saturated.

But be careful... In a highly saturated market, you'll need to have more money to spend on advertising, especially if the cost per click is fairly high. Thus, it wouldn't be advisable to pick a highly saturated market for a first info product.

If you're really stumped for a topic for an info product, you can use the Yahoo Directory for Hobbies. It can be an absolute gold mine when looking for profitable topics for info products!

Remember that most people are extremely passionate
about their hobbies. So, if you create an info product around a hot hobby, you are sure to rake in the dough!

You can also take a look at the Yahoo Groups that exist for your market. Yahoo Groups are forums that are housed at Yahoo and run by independent people. There are tens of thousands of Yahoo Groups available.

The way that they work is this: people join as members of each forum. They can participate either by going to the forum to view and post or by subscribing to the emails for that group.

You can get these on an individual basis or in a daily or weekly batch of posts. If you find a hot group, make sure that you DON'T select the individual posts or you will be bombarded with email! (In fact, I have a separate email address that I use for Yahoo groups so that I don't have to look at all of that mail unless I have time for it.) Bookmark the groups that you find that pertain to your topic!

These can be an invaluable resource when you start marketing your finished product. You can find Yahoo Groups for Hobbies at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/dir/Hobbies___Crafts

Still stumped for ideas on a topic? Well, here are my bookmarks that I list as "Find What's Hot". If you don't find a hot topic, one suitable for the next best seller, I'll be VERY surprised:

* http://www.MyHotItems.com -- This is a directory that is generated based on keywords being searched over the last 7 days.

* http://Buzz.Yahoo.com -- The Yahoo Buzz Log - this is an index of the top 15 search terms for that day on Yahoo. It sorts the results by various categories. Down the left side, you'll find Today's Top Movers, Actors, Movies, Music Sports, etc. On the right, you'll find a bit of analysis about search spikes and trends. Very enlightening!

* http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html -- Google's Press Center - the Zeitgeist - In German, "Zeitgeist" refers to the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era. Google chose this term as the name for its list of the top 15 most searched keywords. Google also breaks their lists up by categories such as the Top 30, Popular Retailers, Popular Sports Queries, and Popular Music rated categories.