Researching Your Target Market

In researching your target market, one thing you can do is get out of the office and go to the corner Barnes and Noble. When you are in the store, you need to be aware of the merchandising.

The book publishing companies spend a LOT of money studying the placement of products. As a general rule, those books that are displayed at eye level are the books that they expect to sell. In addition, those on the end caps (especially at eye level) are the better sellers. Take a good look around you and make a note of these.

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.

Are you following this process? 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 infoproduct.