Almost every week I run into a thread here on digitalpoint asking if a market is a good market. From proxy to pron, someone wants to know if there is any money in them. Because of this I felt I should take an hour of my day to spread some light on the question of what is a good market that “You†should get into. First off, the bottom line is that not every market is for everyone. While some markets work for me, others will never make more than a couple dollars a month in it. This simply happens because the people that have found success in such markets had a unique idea, budget, and or other things that are unseen to all of us. Does this mean the market is right for you, and how can you tell? As many ideas are available to us within our life, so is there market for these ideas. Because of this I have outlined a couple hundred rules that I follow when picking services to develop for my company, and I’m about to share with you a couple of them rules. 1. Without question I must fully understand all things about my market if I want to find some level of success. 2. Does the ROI fit my needs? 3. Do have I have money or the skillz to be able to develop the technology and design to fit the needs of service. 4. While I may have a great idea, what is my short and long term plans to get it on the customer’s plate for dinner each night. The first skill that I always must follow without question is; do I understand what I’m getting into. We all must be able to rap our minds around that we are doing to be able to be good at them. If you don’t fully understand how to play poker do you really expect to beat the guys that do, or even less manage to stay in the game past a around or two? When I approach markets I look at them in two fold. First do I really understand what I’m going to be doing, 2nd if I really understand why I’m starting this service then I should be able to answer my question “is the proposed market able to return the level of money that I want or needâ€. Back in the day when I first got started I had over 59 sites, all of them making anything from $10 a month all the way up to $200 a month. The main problem was that I was doing many things that I did not fully understand, so I had to learn to close down what I did not understand and only focus my time on the services that I had my mind rapped around. After that point I managed to grow past 50k a year, and within 3 year I was writing my first $240k check for the year, because I was willing to stop doing what I could not manage to compete in, and focus where I was able to be a market leader. As we each have our own level of what is a ROI that we need it is up to you to decide if it fits your needs. If you got into being an internet developer for fun and your making beer money, then more power to you. If you got into this biz to make a million dollars a year then you need to start focusing and finding the services that you can rap your mind around and understand where the road is heading so you don’t run off of it like 99% of you normally do, because you should never lack understanding of what you are doing. Once you understand what needs to be done, and you are able to get a good idea if the market will produce a minimum level of income to fit your startup and continues revenue needs, then it is time question your skillz, or if you got the billz. If you have the skillz to develop the technology that is needs to start the service then you can probably skip this. However as I have seen over-and-over, most people don’t have the skillz or the billz to cover the development of an idea, so they resource their time without money to resort to installing WordPress or other free CMS application in a pipe dream that somehow the standard install will get customers attention even though they have seen that same platform 100 times before you got a new domain to install it on. If you are unable to develop the technology yourself, or can not pay the piper to build it for you, then you should abort right now and go find another idea, as we all have plenty of ideas, but we are only looking for the one great idea! Now that you have found an idea that you fully understand, plus it has the possibility of your required income, and you have the skillz or billz to develop it, you are only left with one last task that will outline the launch, and life span of your venture. Without a voice, without a sound, no one will ever know about your great idea. While you may have a great idea you won’t have any traction if you are unable to find a way to get it to the market continuously. Looking into your product & budget you should be able to almost instantaneously find the answer to your marketing, and with each step you should almost find even greater ideas that will attract more customers to your door, as easy as it is to drink water, because all the things that got you to this point is the answer to how you will market and grow that new shiny business idea online. If any of the answer eludes you, please put your idea on the back burner until you find your answer, otherwise you are only losing money, and life itself! Marketing is the long-term life of your ideas, without it your business has a slow grow or slow death to its success. As I’m not a writer (If you have not noticed), I put my marketing into what I call net casting. To me it’s like throwing a net into the ocean and never taking it away. PPC is not like this, each month I have to throw money out the door if I want to keep paying for that net to sit in the water. For me I don’t like the idea of spending more and more money to continue to make more money, so I focus on the things that will add more value and only take my money at the time of the first casting of the net. From building email list, networking, paid reviews, press releases, and affiliate is how I build and market my products 100%. It fits me well, and is cheaper in the long hall IMO! One last word on networking… Many people get the idea of networking wrong. They shoot of emails, PM’s, phone calls or whatever to people asking for their business, they try to put their card into your hand even when you don’t want it. Networking is not about the biz, but is about building friendships, build the friendships and then market your biz via the friendships, not the other way around! Hope this post helps a couple people, and enjoy! Best, Levi