Determining the market you want to go into will be the most important step you will have to take. Missing this one, will cost you time and money like you could not imagine!
The World Wide Web (affectionately called www) is as vast as the human imagination
and growing at an alarming rate (I would not be surprised to see a general crash happen in a near future!).
Anyway, finding what market you want to tap into is a very important decision. Most savvy and experienced marketers recommend that you start with a market you have knowledge in. Hence, if you are skilled in astronomy, you can share your knowledge with the rest of the world on your web site.
It is not sufficient anymore to just choose a broad market like “golf” and think that people will come running to your web site. Honestly, you would be running (let’s do a small Google search for “golf” 2007-07-31: 341 millions other sites. The odds of your golf site getting any traffic are near zero.
You will need to refine your target market more by doing your own research. Hence, if you look at left-handed golfers Florida, you are now competing against 439 000 other web sites, Getting better!
There are internet marketers out there who provide very complicated rules and ways to find your niches (by the way, niches is just a snob way of saying market!) like checking the monthly overture searches and comparing with the competition on a Google search, etc
Honestly, if you have a market you are passionate about, you are willing to build the best authority web site on it (which we will teach you how) and then nurture it with updated content, the odds are good you will succeed!
All right, let’s say you have a burning desire to get into the internet marketing game but a very poor imagination. There are ways to find niches (markets) that you can build an authority site on and dominate the market. Such ways include:
In any airport, stop at the magazine stands or store and look around. If a market is big enough to have a magazine for it, it is big enough to have a web site about it.
Take a free afternoo, and just look on Ebay.com, the biggest store on the internet. See their most popular products.
Subscribe to the service called “nicheaday.com” It is entirely free and provides you with the keywords one niche each day.
Look, listen and learn: if it’s big enough to be on tv or talked about, it’s a market.
IN THIS SECTION WE ALSO WANT TO DISCUSS WHAT YOUR GOALS ARE IN GETTING IN THE BIG INTERNET MARKETING GAME
Your way of doing business will be way more different if you are on the internet just to show your site to your immediate family or if you want to build a multi-million dollar enterprise that you will sell later and retire on a desert island with your loved one.
There are hundreds of internet businesses being sold on the internet daily, some of them for millions of dollars. If you are planning to build your internet business later on, you will need to keep regular bookkeeping of all statistics and expenses.
Honestly, if you give in and buy all those “ready made web sites”, the odds are very high you will not get anywhere. These templates are sold to hundreds if not thousands of people at the same time and the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) just ignore them.
Here comes the bad news: “if you want to succeed in the internet marketing you will need to put in the work.”…at least in the beginning!
HERE IS YOUR CALL TO ACTION:
Take the rest of the day (or more) to define your specific niche (or market) that you want to get into. Be as specific as possible. Do not settle for a broad niche like "golf" but go for the more targeted niche like "left florida golfer" and dominate the market!
This step will determine your overall success in internet marketing and deserves all your attention. If you feel like you have not leveled it, ask your friends and family. They will tell you what you are passionate about. This should be your dominant market.
See you on the next square!
Nathalie
The Big Internet Marketing Game - Finding Your Niche
It is not sufficient anymore to just choose a broad market like “golf” and think that people will come running to your web site. Honestly, you would be running (let’s do a small Google search for “golf” 2007-07-31: 341 millions other sites. The odds of your golf site getting any traffic are near zero.
You will need to refine your target market more by doing your own research. Hence, if you look at left-handed golfers Florida, you are now competing against 439 000 other web sites, Getting better! 
Your way of doing business will be way more different if you are on the internet just to show your site to your immediate family or if you want to build a multi-million dollar enterprise that you will sell later and retire on a desert island with your loved one.
