The first thing that you need to do is to create for yourself a clear vision or idea of what you want to do. You need to determine what your product or service is going to be, who your target market is, and just how you can genuinely and meaningfully help them.
Now, that last part is most important. You need to be sure that you are actually, and sincerely willing and able to somehow improve the lives of your customers. Selling a less-than-reputable product or service is going to cause a lot of damage for you and your business. It is a sure fire way of going bankrupt.
Throughout your entire business experience, always keep the customers wants and needs at the forefront of your mind!
So, how do you come up with your idea? Well let’s start with a simple exercise:
Take a blank sheet of paper and a pen. Write down no less than twenty things that you enjoy. Don’t write down things like “weeding” or “mowing the grass” (unless you genuinely enjoy doing those things). Try to focus on your hobbies and enjoyments. Do you enjoy arts and crafts, writing, landscaping, cooking, building things, demolition, eating, Frisbee, football, teaching, learning, and pro wrestling?
What is it that YOU sincerely enjoy? Again, you want to make a list of no less than twenty. Once you have this list, look it over, and pick out your top five.
Now we’re going to determine if there’s any consumer need for those topics. So go to your internet browser, and type in this should forward you to a much longer link, where it will ask you to enter in a combination of letters or numbers. Go ahead and bookmark this page, because you’re going to be using it ALL THE TIME.
Once you’ve submitted that code, you’ll be taken to a very simple, mostly blank screen that says: “Keyword” then a box, and a “submit” button.
Type in the first of your five choices. For example, let’s say you chose “cooking”. If you type that in and submit, you’ll get a nice long list of key-words and phrases which contain your idea-word. These will include things such as: “cooking”, “cooking utensils, “food cooking”, “cooking recipe”, etc. Write down the top 15 – 20 results, as well as the number of searches that they received in the last month (this will be the next column to the right).
Now head over to your favorite search engine and type in the first of those key-words. Now, this is the part that’s going to require a healthy investment of patience and perseverance. Click on each of the top-ten results, and take a look.
In doing so, you’re going to find three different types of sites:
1.) Sites that have nothing to do with your topic. Skip these.
2.) Sites where something is being sold. These are either your competition or your potential partners, depending on what exactly you’re selling, and on your business model.
3.) Content Sites. These are your competition, so look over them and determine what they’re doing well, and what they need to work on. You want to mimic and improve upon what they’re doing well, and avoid what they’re not doing so well.
So you want to do that with each of the 15 – 20 keywords that appear for each of your five ideas.
I know that it’s a LOT of effort, and time consuming. But what you’re trying to determine here is supply/demand. You want a topic that has a lot of searches, but not a whole lot of good content or merchant sites. This will help you determine which of your five ideas has the greatest chance of filling an existing consumer need.
Now, once you’ve done that with each topic, you need to determine which idea you want to build a business around. If you’re looking at one of those topics and thinking “, ya know, I just don’t know.” Then that’s not the one for you. Even if it has the best supply/demand ratio.
Your chosen topic should have the best supply/demand ratio, but also be the one that you think you’ll enjoy best.
Once you’ve determined that…CONGRATULATIONS! You now have a business idea, a general understanding of the demand for the products and services that relate there to, and you also know what you’re competition looks like!
And in addition, you have a knowledge that you chose the BEST choice for YOU. You know that this is something that you can enjoy, and be successful at!