Okay, so you have established that you have product ideas that will fit into markets that are broadly popular. Now you need to dig down a lot deeper, to see whether your specific ideas have merit. In other words, are people already searching for products similar to the one that you plan to create, and are they buying?

Here are several ways that you can establish this.

Keyword research – Search for keyword phrases that directly relate to your market niche, in order to establish whether they’re being searched, and therefore whether they are valuable or not. You should also search for ‘need’ phrases like:

How-to
Alleviate
Stop
Discover
Cure
Quit
Learn and other similar words and phrases.

This will help you zero in on the topics that searchers have already demonstrated a hunger for. This keywords search will tell you whether there is a problem that your potential customers need answers for. If so, then you’re on the right track to identifying a great product idea. Use keyword research tools like these:

Good Keywords
Google Adwords Keyword Tool
WordTracker’s Keyword Tool

And of course your Google Assassin Keyword Tool.

eBay Pulse – is a goldmine of “current trend” information that shows all of the top items of interest in each category on the worlds #1 auction site. eBay Pulse is therefore extremely valuable for helping identify what people are searching for and then hoping to buy. Another excellent tool for extracting research information from eBay is the Hot Item Finder which tells you what the most regular searches carried out by eBay customers are, by revealing the items with the highest number of bids, determined by your own inputted keywords.

Yahoo Answers – People visit Yahoo Answers to get, well, answers to questions that they cannot find anywhere else. Thus, it is a great site to see what people are asking about. Search the site using the keywords that you have already collected together. It is even better if you can actually start getting involved by answering other folk’s questions, as this once again begins establishing your credibility as an expert on your topic, whilst starting to create relationships as well.

Forums – Spending time looking around in online forums which are in some way related to your niche can be time well spent. Pay particular attention to the questions being asked. Note them down, because once again they give you clues as to the types of things that people need to know, and the solutions they are seeking. Make an effort to contribute as well, because this helps to start building your reputation as an authority, a ‘go-to’ guy (or girl) that others can rely on. You are also starting to create relationships with your potential target audience too! You can find a massive list of forum sites covering all sorts of niche markets and topics at Big Boards.

Search Engines – Run searches based on your topic keywords in all of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Assuming that you are using a one or two word search term, this is likely to throw up massive numbers of results, but that is only relevant in so far as it proves that people are searching for your topic in the most general terms. It is definitely not telling you that they are genuinely hungry buyers and that they will buy your infoproduct. If, however, no-one is searching using your key words or phrase, then that definitely tells you that there is no market, and you should possibly go back to the drawing board! This is the main reason that you should run this quick check.

Social Networking Sites – Leading social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are the places where people from all over the world ‘meet’ to chat. Not entirely surprisingly, they chat about the things that interest them most, so by ‘listening in’ and getting involved, you can pick up huge amounts of information about what is ‘hot’ and what is not!

Clickbank – Clickbank’s Marketplace is the biggest depository of digital products for sale online. With over 10000 products available, a keywords based search of the site will quickly show you whether anyone else already has an infoproduct targeted at the niche you are aiming for. If there is anyone already in there, however, do not panic! Competition is always healthy, and this will allow you to look at what others are already doing, to see how you can improve on it!

CBEngine – Another cool little Clickbank related resource is a site called CBEngine, which gives you access to an outstanding list of ‘up-and-coming’ Clickbank products to keep an eye on. In other words, this tells you what is going to be popular on Clickbank’s main site in the coming weeks and months.

Incidentally, if you do not have a Clickbank account at the moment, then you need to open one right away, as this is going to be one of the key sales channels that need to utilize once your infoproduct goes live.

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