Getting a perfect result from searching for business ideas is simply a process of elimination
I could find you a dozen very profitable business ideas – that was carefully researched in one day, but remember that I do research for clients almost on a daily basis, so you need to follow a few rules to be certain that your results are correct and safe to work with.
Finding some perfect business ideas is simply the process of following a few easy to do steps and analyzing those results to know which business ideas are very good and which business ideas are a little weak
You need to decide as to what sort of business idea you are looking for before you even begin
This is vital to the length of time you spend in doing your research, as you would not need to spend a week doing research for a website that you plan to build up as another income stream for your business portfolio, but you will need to do extensive research into a business idea that you are going to invest large sums of money into.
How to get a lot more detail on this topic
This post is only going to give you a guideline on what you should do to find your best business ideas, and I highly suggest that you get a copy of my $5 report that details out a lot of these research methods – it is titled before you do your business plan – click that link to go and see what it entails, or click on the image.
The real research is dependent upon the field of business that you would like to pursue, as some online research methods do not work with more obscure businesses. A great example of this is engineering related businesses, for example doing the analysis of core samples related to mining will not show a lot of activity online, and therefore you would need to do different types of research offline.
Start by choosing you business niche
I say this often, but a successful business does this thing well…
Find out what people want and then sell it to them
This step is not vitally important, but it will help you structure your research better and not have you get to a point where you have to start all over again from the very beginning.
What I normally tell people to do is to simply write down a short list of your skills, and then another short list of the things you are really passionate about.
Then the trick is to combine a skill you have with a product you are passionate about, and use that as a starting point for finding the perfect business idea.
However the item you are passionate about is more than likely your best bet, as skills can be easily acquired – if you really insist upon starting a new business venture in a field that you love but have no experience in. Do not let that put you off.
Naturally if you choose something medical as your passion, you are not going to become a Doctor in a few weeks, but if that is what you really want to do, then you would choose a business idea in that field, or closely related, and while you are getting a Doctors degree you can build and run your business anyway. Personally I would hate to try that combination – as I suspect that the studying hours will be a lot and force your business to really put a strain on your time, but I digress.
So You choose a niche topic
In fact I suggest that you start off with two or three and research all three to get a better idea as to which one is far stronger than the other business ideas.
Let me show you a quick made up list of business interests that you would have put onto your list.
Horses – breeding – riding school – training – horse store (products)
Green products – electric cars – solar electricity – recycling
Fashion – retail – clothing – clothing design – organic fashion products
So now you would have a base to use as a starting off point fro the research into what you would like to own as a business – naturally if there is potential for that idea or product or service.
So now you would take this list and use it in the next step – keyword research. Do not take this step lightly.
The most important step to seeing if your business ideas will be viable
I am not going to mince this comment – THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP!
LOL – I didn’t mean to shout, but this step – the keyword research will give you an almost 100% success rate as to the potential and viability of your business idea.
If you do this step carefully and when you are done there is very likely going to be only two or three possibilities that will come out of the original list that you submitted – or started above, to be able to use as a real business idea.
I am not going to explain to you here how to do keyword research, as I have a lot of other posts on this website that does exactly that, and I even have a free keyword tool that you can get if you do not have it yet – see the banners on the side of the website.
I will now go away and do a quick bit of keyword research into that list above and come back to show you some potential markets that might be worth pursuing.
My Initial results from the keyword research
Business ideas – The horses niche
This niche would always be area specific, as the ownership of horses and their upkeep is a very expensive thing to do, and therefore you need to take that into account.
But let us presume that you do have some experience in the training of, or breeding of horses, and that part of your business is not an issue, it is more about finding out the potential size of the market.
Now I am south African, and am fairly aware of the strength and size of this industry. I know that because this horse business is small and “clicky” here that you need to take that aspect of the idea heavily into consideration. So if you wanted to pursue something relating to horses, you would need to be certain that there is “new inquiries” all the time.
Here is a pic of the initial horse keywords. the results on the right hand side relate to South africa.
Now if you look – only 58 people a month in South Africa look up the exact keyword “horse training” this is a fairly low number, but if your website, when you have built it correctly, ranks for this keyword, and 150 other related keywords – you will get traffic.
The Broad search results for the keyword “horse training” is 1300, so a well developed, and correctly done website, with all the word-press, seo, social stuff etc built in – should get that many visitors a month.
Now as a horse trainier, it is a service, and you would be getting clients that are repeat payers, so you could consider this business keyword.
However with this example, you need to do a lot more of those “before you do your business plan” research methods to see that your location etc is all within the best parameters for that business idea.
Comment here – Multiple business streams
I am a very firm believer in having multiple business streams, or add on, and even up sells. The – do you want fries with that sir? – concept always works very well, as someone who has already made the decision to buy something will happily add more items if they are available.
So back to the horse training example, it could be that you also write up a very detailed training product and sell that online, via kindle, or its own website. This extra source of income will naturally be 100% gravy.
Then you add the horse products store to your business, and find those specialist items, that are not available at your local opposition.
Finally you take that store mobile and attend all the horse events and build up a client base from those regular events where you will be exposed to the horse community all the time.
Eventually you build the biggest horse specialty events and track stadium ever seen in the world and stage massive international events. (OK, I am just joking here, you would need to be an exceeding ambitious person to want to take your business to that level)
Next example – business idea – Green products
Here is the picture of my very first look at the keywords
You will see that solar power immediately shows itself to be potentially strong, while recycling does get a lot of searches my initial knee jerk reaction is that the recycling searches are not going to be to buy a product, but rather for information.
This sort of thinking is bad, and if I was researching properly for myself, I would definitely look into that one properly.
Here is a better look at the solar power results.
Please note this, firstly I am not doing long explanations here about keyword research, so I should just point out that these search results are “exact” and not broad, which is always a far smaller version of what your overall potential is as a website owner, if you have built it correctly.
Secondly I am not doing this very thoroughly, as I am just trying to give you an overall idea as to the traffic potential for at idea, or item. Online searches will always give you a very good idea as to the strengths and weaknesses of specific keywords (read items here) so please remember that when doing your own research.
So taking this ideas from a South African point of view, (and remember that wherever you are in the world, you would just adjust your local search results to help you see the potential for that area) you have a potential of more or less 3000 possible inquiries a month to your website.
It would then be how you handle those inquiries that make a lot of difference to your profitability – but that is marketing, and a whole different topic.
Final Business example from my list above. – Fashion
Here are the pics
I then chose one at random – bags – and did the search with the exact button off, and set it to broad, plus I set the search results for everything and not results closely related to my inquiries.
this was the result…
Can you see that this is a searched for item that has tremendous potential, as you can see that the numbers are extremely high.
I would personally start my own factory and by using these keyword results above – I would build a range of bags that are driven by pure supply and demand.
This access to the searched for keywords is so powerful, that if you build a website, and did everything in your power to make that website get to the top of as many of these keywords as possible, you will become extremely busy over time.
This volume of searches are very high, and naturally it will not have a very high conversion rate into sales, but at 0.5 % of 200 000 visitors a month – you would be selling 1000 bags a month just from your website, and you would still be getting the benefit of the keyword knowledge to stock your retail store with items that you know are in demand.
Remember that with such high volumes of searches going on you could easily create a brand name, and create scarcity for that brand and have the potential to be the next international star/designer. However to achieve this you would definitely need to have your website set up to the latest Google Panda specs, with all the mobile, social, content and web 2.0 systems carefully knitted into your overall marketing strategy. (want to know how to do that? – use the contact me page and we can talk)
Conclusion
My bad – I see that I have not given you a lot of step by step points to go and use to apply the tricks to getting a great new business idea found.
I see that I have gone into a bit of detail regarding only the very first step, and apologise for this.
It does tell you though that to do your research properly is something that takes a bit of effort, but will be well worth it when you are done because you would have covered all the different ways to check the viability of the business ideas that you would like to look into.
Do yourself a big favor – get a copy of my report
The before-you-do-your-business-plan report that I wrote does cover all the steps that I tell you about, and is only $5.
Here is the link – before you do your business plan
Perhaps more importantly you need to learn how to do the best keyword research, as this is the key pivot to your success and failure, both online (especially online) and offline.
The details that you can get from extensive keyword research is indescribable, and will be the biggest asset to your business. use the banner on the side of this website to go and get yourself a free copy of the traffic Travis keyword tool. It comes with training and a whole lot more.
My thanks
I hope that you gained some valuable information out of this post, and if so I ask that you please share it with your friends on your social websites. the links to do so are here below.
I appreciate the time you took to read this post on your business ideas and where to start
