How to research Supply and Demand for your home business |
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Supply and Demand Research UNLEASHED!
WARNING! This is yet another LONG newsletter...
Last week's newsletter generated a bigger response than all of my other newsletters combined!
In fact, over 30% of the subscribers to the Yahoo! Store Profits Newsletter - that's nearly 6,000 emails!
If you recall, in that newsletter, we asked what you would like to see us write about, research, and recommend in this year's newsletter.
It's pretty much a tie for first place!
So, you asked for it, and now we're gonna talk about it!
Drum Roll Please.....
--- The Winners are "Speeding up supply and demand research AND new ways to Source Products".
Honestly, because you took the effort to respond, you've enabled us to target the information that you want to know about with precision.
So, without further delay, let's take a look at the latest, greatest method that Audrey and I have come across to speed our Market Research...
At the end of this newsletter, I'm going to introduce some fantastic new software that you can download and test for F R E E that's based on everything we've learned about Supply and Demand research.
For those of you that can't wait, here's the link: http://www.online-store-profits.com/marketresearchwizard.htm
--- First, a little back story...
As you know, deciding what kinds of products that you want to sell in your e-commerce store, on your eBay auctions or in your mail order catalog can make a big difference in how quickly your e-commerce business grows - if it grows at all.
In fact, before we refined our own little method of determining how ripe a market is for sales penetration, we made some DISASTROUS inventory choices. And before we discovered the ease and convenience of drop shipping, all of those bad choices were actually wholesale purchases - meaning, we kept inventory.
Frankly, we were left holding the bag on most of the stuff. I mean, we actually had trouble selling the remainder of it for pennies on the dollar at a garage sale!!!
So, we decided that before, in fact, IF we ever make an investment in inventory again, we needed to figure out a way to test supply and demand.
--- Present Day.
Well, it worked. Ever since we adopted our supply and demand techniques into our product research, we've NEVER had to close a store because a product wouldn't sell.
The problem is, it can take us WEEKS of study before we can successfully evaluate a products potential in the marketplace.
You see, we spent time at Overture, Word Tracker, Find What, in Google Ad Words Keyword Tool, in eBay... And at each one of those sites, we had to enter all of the supply and demand data into our spreadsheet.
Then, we crawled the free search engines and figured out what kinds of stores were selling in that industry.
Then, we crawled through the Pay Per Click Search Engines and figure out what kind of money people were willing to spend on clicks and how many of them were bidding...
Then, we went to all of those advertisers sites and took a long, hard, critical look at how they were selling their product, and what sort of price point that product was commanding...
WHEW! It's a Ton of work - This I can tell you first hand!
But, the truth is, it works - for us, every time we do it. So, even though we spent a lot of valuable time deciding whether or not a product was worth our marketing effort, the results paid off in the form of a profitable store.
Unfortunately, this kind of concentrated research left a lot of our Yahoo! Store Profits customers in a state of "Research Burn-Out". The ones who stuck it out would usually report back and tell us that all of that effort had resulted in sales for their stores.
On the other hand, we also got a lot of emails from folks saying that they were growing frustrated spending all this time on research when they wanted to be building their store.
Look, you MUST do the research - there's no way around it. It's the foundation on which an e-commerce store is built.
Not only could your research efforts result in discovering a highly lucrative product line, they also equip you with a list of Highly Relevant keywords and Keyword Phrases for you to use when your optimizing your store for the Free Search Engines and creating your keyword list for your bidding strategies in Overture, Find What, Google Ad Words, etc.
--- Still, we thought there should be an easier way. And now, there is...
After months of trial and error and some very rigorous beta testing, our friends at World Wide Brands have created an incredible piece of software called "The Market Research Wizard".
I was privileged to part of its development process, and I must say that this product has been put through some of my own torture tests.
Here's a brief overview:
-- First, the Market Research Wizard allows you to do 90% of your supply and demand research from ONE program on your computer. No more skipping around from web site to web site, entering passwords and waiting, navigating the CONSTANTLY changing web menus.
From the Market Research Wizards Interface, you can quickly and Automatically check supply and demand data from:
EBay Find What And Overture.
These web sites are the 4 key portals that we used to use when doing our supply and research demand manually.
-- Second, not only does it research a set of keywords, it will suggest ALTERNATIVE and RELATED keywords. It's exactly like an automated brainstorming machine. So, from one set of keyword searches, using the Market Research Wizard might give you HUNDREDS of alternative Keywords and Products to research - which you can turn around and re-research automatically...
-- Third, the Market Research Wizard will show you who's bidding on your researched Keywords, how much they're bidding, and give you a LIVE HYPERLINK directly to your competitors site!
This is KEY! You need to know what your competition is doing! Now, instead of finding their hyperlink, entering manually, and keeping track of the data by hand, you can simply click on the link in the Market Research Wizard's interface and you'll be taken directly to that site's sales page.
-- Fourth, using a carefully tweaked set of Supply and Demand Algorithms, the Market Research Wizard will evaluate the supply and demand potential of that product related Keyword on a scale of 0-100.
So, finally (can you hear me breathing a sigh of relief?), you don't need a scientific calculator and a list of algebraic formulas to decide whether or not to pursue a product keyword.
The word for the day - Time Savings!
-- Lastly, you can save all of your Research Projects for future use AND export your data to an Excel Spreadsheet.
Let me tell you why this is important - There will be times when you're doing your Supply and Demand Research with the Market Research Wizard where you'll find a neat little product, but it doesn't have enough related products for you to open an entire store around...
So what! Save the DATA anyway!
Later, after you've got your main store up and running, go back to that data, find an affiliate program for that product and presto! You've got a revenue stream ready to go, complete with keyword research and your competitors advertising ready for investigation!
You see, the Market Research Wizard is not JUST a product evaluator. The keyword data that the Market Research Wizard evaluated is also 100% Relevant to your Search Engine Optimization Efforts and to your Pay Per Click Campaigns.
----- Yeah, but does it work?
This is what I did to test the Market Research Wizard.
I took a set of Product Related Keywords that I know sells for our stores like mad AND a set of Product Related Keywords that result in only a trickle of sales...
The first set of Keywords was "Lord of the Rings Swords".
After entering that data into the Market Research Wizards Category, Product and Name Brand Fields, I let it go to work, crawling the Internet, sponging information.
In less than a minute (with a cable modem), it returned its results.
The Market Research Wizard told me that I had a 78% chance of successfully marketing the "Lord of the Rings Swords"
In the month of December, Audrey and I sold over 150 Lord of the Rings Swords at www.a2armory.com
-- So far so good.
Next, I entered the keyword "Big Screen TV".
The Market Research Wizard told me that I had a 28% chance of marketing that product successfully.
We have an affiliate web site that's highly optimized for the keyword "Big Screen TV".
Just as an aside, Audrey is about to become an Accredited Search Engine Optimizer - she knows what she's doing when it comes to getting good Search Engine Rankings...
Still, in the Month of December, we had exactly 2 Affiliate Sales for Big Screen TVs for a net profit of $142.
Compare that to www.a2armory.com which did just less than $18,000 in sales, it's clear to me that I should have waited for the Market Research Wizard to be completed before I invested a bunch of time in our Big Screen TV site.
-- The Bottom Line?
This is it. This is the tool that we've been using for the last 6 weeks to decide what new products to take to market.
The Market Research Wizard is also the tool that we used to research the launch of http://www.likeapromedia.com - the Avid training DVD that's generated $6,432 in its first month on-line.
The Market Research Wizard is the tool that we have up and running on our Lap Tops whenever our PC's are running.
I know that our R&D lives just got a TON easier - now, you can take advantage of this technology for yourself.
Go to: http://www.online-store-profits.com/marketresearchwizard.htm
and download the F R E E Trial. It's a fully functional version of The Market Research Wizard that's only limited by the number of total searches that you can do.
We've only done this 2 other times, but it's a new year, so what the heck -
--- "The Market Research Wizard gets Yahoo! Store Profits FULL recommendation as the best, most innovative, most PRODUCTIVE research tool in the universe"
Think about all of the products you could have researched in the time it took you to read yet another of my long winded newsletters... :)
http://www.online-store-profits.com/marketresearchwizard.htm
Next week, we'll talk about our Trade Show experience and how we walked away with a product line for a whole new store.
Till Then,
Andy Jenkins http://www.online-store-profits.com
P.S. I forgot to mention - Chris Malta actually wrote a little program that plugs into the Market Research Wizard that lets you check the Drop Ship Source Directory for Products AS YOU RESEARCH THEM! So, if you come across a killer product line, you can automatically use the Market Research Wizard to check the Drop Ship Source Directory Database for a company that will drop ship that product!
Too cool!
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