I was reading Gene Simmon’s book, Sex, Money, Kiss a while back and was struck by the KISS rock n’ roller’s business acumen. The man knows his market. From magazines to artwork, snowboards to baby clothes, Simmon’s has been relentless in thinking up new ways to extend his product line. In his book he credits part of his success to waking up each day and taking a moment to think up answers to the question, “How can I make more money today?”
Try it yourself for a few weeks.
Here are some of my answers just to get you started:
1. Advertise more. Take out web ads. Try writing for off-line magazines and mention my blog in my byline. Classified ads for my blog?
2. Brainstorm ten products I can sell that would be a natural extension of my primary one - my blog.
3. What other of my interests would make for another product line? My obsession with home pizza-making? What about a pizza blog? An acrylic painting blog? A gardening blog for absolute beginners?
You get the idea. Now ask yourself, “How can you make more money today?”
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Finding a Niche
A woman in Ontario made an obscene amount of money during the early days of the Pokemon craze importing merchandise from Japan and selling it online. Another stumbled onto a niche market as a graphic designer producing t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, tea towels, et cetera with stylized drawings of a particular dog breed - I think it was a bulldog of some sort.
The point? If you can find your own niche market online, you can make big bucks. In their article, “Niche Marketing Secrets” Rufina James and Bart Baggett state that to find this kind of group you need three criteria:
1. They have a crazy, passionate level of interest in a problem, topic or hobby. Hopefully, they will be willing to spend any amount of money on their desire or obsession. For my mother it’s cookbooks. She has a few thousand already, but always finds room and money for that next one that promises something new.
2. They have money to purchase your product. I’d love to buy a house, but until I get that precious down payment together, a real estate agent would only be wasting her time trying to sell to me.
3. They must be large in number and easy to reach. Few leads and hard to reach ones at that means you’ll just be spinning your wheels before your business goes under.
Find a group like this, offer them what they want and making sales should be relatively easy.
The point? If you can find your own niche market online, you can make big bucks. In their article, “Niche Marketing Secrets” Rufina James and Bart Baggett state that to find this kind of group you need three criteria:
1. They have a crazy, passionate level of interest in a problem, topic or hobby. Hopefully, they will be willing to spend any amount of money on their desire or obsession. For my mother it’s cookbooks. She has a few thousand already, but always finds room and money for that next one that promises something new.
2. They have money to purchase your product. I’d love to buy a house, but until I get that precious down payment together, a real estate agent would only be wasting her time trying to sell to me.
3. They must be large in number and easy to reach. Few leads and hard to reach ones at that means you’ll just be spinning your wheels before your business goes under.
Find a group like this, offer them what they want and making sales should be relatively easy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)