Customer Mind-reading: What Should I Sell Online?

What should you sell to make money online? 

This common question has an easy answer - You should sell what people want to buy.

This answer may sound like double-talk but today customer "mind-reading" is more possible than you may realize.  How?

Through the Internet, of course.  The Web offers you more customer competitor research tools than were ever available to entrepreneurs in the 20th century. Directly from your PC desktop, online research can tell you what people are interested in and what they are buying. Even better, many of these tools are FR-EE.

Here are some resources you can use to start your own research.  These links will show you how many people are searching on specific keywords, trends in topics and products, and help you determine the best approach for your e-commerce web site:

• Google "Sandbox" Traffic Estimator
• Google Ad Words
• Yahoo Buzz
• Google Zeitgeist
• Word Tracker - paid service but offers free trial
• Site Build It - paid service that includes Word Tracker usage

The key here is to remember:  If you want to make money, focus your efforts on selling what people want to buy - not just want you want to sell.

So, don't start a web site or invest in e-business tools until  you have a clear vision of what you are selling to whom and the profit potential of that target market.  Instead you should save your money (and even more so your time) to invest until after you have determined a profitable niche to target.  Use these tools to help you do that.

Comments

[build an online shop]

There is a great source at paypal.com - log in there and check out the shops section. You can browse shop categories and see how many sales a particular online shop has made. Its a great resource.