Okay.

It certainly makes sense.

Looks like I got plenty of work to do before I can try testing my new web site out.

So for now I got a few products I'm going to try out first (I just ordered a couple more BTW) so we'll see how it goes.

Will keep you posted soon.

Thanks, Andrew.

Andy

Hi:

Re: Benefits vs. features

There is a good thread that deals specifically with Features and Benefits here you should check out:

Features Vs. Benefits, What is the difference?
http://www.internetentrepreneurclub.com/in...04&hl=boots

Re: Because I am trying to recommend selling other people's books hence it's difficult to determine their benefits if I don't actually see and try one of these books(I ordered one of them recently) myself first.

Yes, if you are going to sell it you should know as much abou it as possible. If you haven't read it, it will really limit your credibility and if you make claims to benefits that aren't in the product you will have disappointed customers - which will destroy your credibility with them.

Re: With that limitation, do you think it is wise to grab some other people's reviews, which may fall in the same line of opinion as mine, and use that as your benefit within my salescopy?

There are things you can do even though you don't have the books in hand to get you started.

Read existing reviews, both professional and readers.
Create a 'swipe file' of points that you think are important.
If possible go through the index online - amazon provides this service with many books - this will give you a good idea about what subjects are covered.
Review the front and back covers - these often contain great information: something about the authors credibility, bullet points of features and/or benefits, short salescopy and more.

You can also build up other sections of your site/copy:

About me
Credibility section of salescopy
Bonus development
Optin offer
Privacy policy
etc.

With your previous research you can start drafting headlines.

Does this make sense?

Cheers,

Andrew

Thanks for the advice, Andrew.

And I am in the process of drafting my salescopy at the same time readying my website to put up by my web hosting company.

I'm currently facing a big challenge of getting my salescopy right (I will publish them on my website in a day or two time).

In Derek's Insiders Secrets Guide to Online Marketing, it says you need to highlight benefits not features of the product and a lot of people to get confused between these two.

I can understand why so now I'm facing the confusion or difficult.

Because I am trying to recommend selling other people's books hence it's difficult to determine their benefits if I don't actually see and try one of these books(I ordered one of them recently) myself first.

Eg Manga Techniques Volume 3: Robot Design Techniques For Beginners (Manga Techniques) from Amazon.com

With that limitation, do you think it is wise to grab some other people's reviews, which may fall in the same line of opinion as mine, and use that as your benefit within my salescopy?

Thanks

Andy

Hi:

Re: If I was to contract someone to do it, how much do they charge for it? Are they not that cheap?

Good sales copy is expensive, but worth every penny.

Re: Salescopy software

There are trade offs.

Using the software can speed up the process and guide you when you are first learning salescopy.

I strongly suggest that you learn to write good salescopy from scratch - you will be the 'expert' in your niche and you will 'know' your prospects better then a hired hand could. It will also save you money in the long run. But it can take a lot of writing, and editing and rewriting and editing and etc. to get it right and get good at it.

The other important aspect of learning salescopy, is that if you do decide to hire someone down the road, you will know enough to effectively communicate your needs and essential details (like features and benefits) to your writer - speeding up the process, lowering frustration levels and judging the results.

The Super Important Benefit Of Learning Salescopy

The process of learning salescopy really helps you to think like a customer.

It will improve all your customer and prospect communications.

Including:

newsletters
articles
email offers/backend
creating info products
writing ads
public speaking
audio and video products
press releases

So, learn salescopy, but using the software will get you off to a faster start and help you through the initial process.

Cheers,

Andrew

I will do the writing on my own for now.

I'm willing to give my design of salescopy a go before I will try out his sales letter program as noted in Insiders Secrets to Online Marketing

I am just wondering is there any advantage I would gain if I was writing my own salescopy vs using the salesletter program? I know this can be challenge for many people but I reckon it would be a good skill to learn first time before you give up and use the software to program it for you. I wanna determine what are the long-term benefits if I am taking this approach.

If I was to contract someone to do it, how much do they charge for it? Are they not that cheap?

Cheers,

Andy

Hi:

Re: What better ways to do this is to have found various books that sell these, and determine my own price points along with my UPS.

Will you do the writing or contract someone to do it?

Re: I have a question to ask before I head off in running this 'test' of mine. Don't I need to sign up with my web hosting company first before I sign up with any affiliate programs? Because many of the affiliate programs out there, I found that they need my website details before signing up with them. So I wonder getting my website running first would the first and foremost task to do before hand.

Yes, develop a bonus so that you can begin signing up prospects right away. This will help to 'establish' you. Some affiliate programs are pickier than others. But there are strategies to deal with this also.

You may also want to consider developing a blog - which will help your SEO strategy.

I suggest you sign up for several affiliate opportunities at once. That way if you are denied from any of the programs or their follow up is slow you can still move ahead. It will also give you some choice over which one you would like to launch first and set out some back end products as well.

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

My thinking about my market launch is to market all the best mecha drawing tutorial resources any beginners would love to learn for a great start.

What better ways to do this is to have found various books that sell these, and determine my own price points along with my UPS.

I have a question to ask before I head off in running this 'test' of mine. Don't I need to sign up with my web hosting company first before I sign up with any affiliate programs? Because many of the affiliate programs out there, I found that they need my website details before signing up with them. So I wonder getting my website running first would the first and foremost task to do before hand.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi:

Great.

Out of the possibilities we have discussed, what is your thinking about a launch product/market test?

Best of luck!

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

I rehash my keyphrases to identify other possible competition.

Here are the websites I've uncovered.

Interactive Art School
http://www.interactiveartschool.com
Traffic Rank: 1039990

Animation World Network
http://www.mag.awn.com/index.php
Traffic Rank: 35,976

Anime Cubed
http://www.animecubed.com/howtodraw
Traffice Rank: 10,729

Interactive Art School is one of the few sites that provides online and offline training lessons on drawing art. But in a broad genre of art forms, not anime/mecha specific, so it looks to be useful for me to determine how should my business website look like when providing drawing lessons on mecha drawing. It also provides free lessons samples for students to learn drawing as well.

Animation World Network provides information resources to the animation industry of the world, be it comics, anime, manga, or cartoons. It provides huge archives of monthly magazines, discussion forums, and latest news of the recent developments within the animation industry. This, too, can prove to be useful for me as I do want to provide latest scoop for aspiring artists to be aware of within my website.

Animecube is not really a competitor per se, IMO. The sites's online 'how to draw manga' tutorials are just ordinary link to other websites just like the ones I provided in the my previous post. And moreover they don't include anything about mecha.

Overall, I think I have established some good expectations what my website after conducting these research and competition analysis, and I'm going to take some action.

And yes, I have taken some action in surveying the market by going through the forums. Although I never thought about the other aspects of survey like you mentioned about writing ebooks and developing a dvd.

I'm gong to explore that further and see what interesting results I can come up.

Thanks a lot, Andrew

Wish me luck.

Andy

Hi:

Ok, lots to chew on here.

Re: DeviantArt

If this is one of your competitors you are in big trouble. It is the largest art community in the world! it has over 35,431,771 pieces of content! Yikes!

But seriously, this is a GIANT website with a HUGE community.

You are right, there is a lot you can learn from them. But you need to narrow your thinking into achievable chunks.

Your other two identified competitors look at first glance like you can handle them.

Take a few of your best keyphrases and check out other possible competition, e.g.: "how to draw mecha".

The next thing to do is to source some quick and easy products to test the market and see if you can make the traffic pay.

One concern that I have is that your market might be young people without credit cards and / or starving artists - not that this makes it impossible, just more interesting.

Look for books and ebooks on this subject that have affiliate programs.

Develop some bonuses or a newsletter to get optins.

Remember, if you are an affiliate you may not want to do longcopy - if you can't link directly to a shopping cart, you don't want prospects to read your longcopy and their longcopy!

Get a website up and get testing.

If you can sell other peoples' books, what will you do next? Write your own book? Develop a dvd? How do you see monetizing the market? Well, you can always survey them!

In fact have you thought about surveying the market?

If you can find groups and forums on this topic, you might get valuable insight into what 'they' are looking for specifically.

Does this make sense?

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi,

It took me a very long while but I've checked up with a couple of my competitor's websites.

And here are the following three so far:

DeviantArt

http://www.deviantart.com

Polykarbon

http://www.polykarbon.com

Mechazone

http://www.mechazone.com

The bottom two websites are not purely dedicated to teach mecha drawing only, but across the entire board of the anime/manga spectrum. But nevertheless some parts or elements of their websites do present some interesting points on how I should design my website before launching it. They don't have any newsletters sign up program (which is a shame) so I can't highlight how to make my newsletter program happen other than just simply providing one. According to their site rankings based on Alexa data, their ranks were in the 90,000 range mark and they weren't given any user reviews.

Now, on the other hand, the DeviantArt website is an impressive one. It's got a ranking of 103. And this site focus the entire plethora of artworks genre all kinds, from art sculpture, painting, right down to mecha drawing itself. This website is build for the art community of the world. They do have affiliate progammes, sell art drawings of any kind, and have impressive range of sponsors on their sites.

I would love to emulate the similar example this website presents(but only the mecha genre of course).

My vision of my business website is to be the one source location for all mecha anime enthusiast around the world to partake interest in learning about mecha and drawing them, for a start. So my business website is to show people how much fun and easy it is to take up anime/manga drawing practice, especially for pure beginners(and they're plenty of people really interested to know how to draw them). And from there, the possibilities for expansion is limitless.

So my next question is using the information I gathered do you think I should straight away design website along with my long salescopy for a start and see how far it gets to? I really want to give this a try as soon as I can, so that I don't want to miss this grand opportunity while I have the chance.

Thanks

Andy

Hi,

I've done what you asked me to do.

I've prioritised my keyphrases and here they are.

1. draw mecha tutorial
2. original mecha art
3. mecha gallery
4. robot anime beginners
5. learn to be a mecha artist

The interesting thing about some of these keyphrases is that although I couldn't obtain any results from wordtracker but through chat forums I found a small number of people wanting to find some solutions to their problems (such as the last two numbered points here)

First three key phrases have results through WordTracker and here's what I've obtained.

KEI Count 24Hrs Competiting
1. 0.375 3 2 24
2. 12.25 7 6 4
3. 0.009 5 4 2930

From here, IMHO, I can see there's plenty of income-generating potential to be made in this field.

And I know that I have the passion for this.

Unfortunately I don't have the specific skills or talents to cater this demand so I strongly believe that the affiliate program is best profit-making model to start for now (according to Derek's Fool Proof Online Money Strategies)

Do you think this is best option for me?


I'm currently working on it so I will get back to you as soon as I get it done.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi:

It sounds like you have found a good pool to take a dip into. But you still need to focus down to one problem / niche.

As you go through your research you will begin to form ideas of the kind of demand each problem has, the price points, products, competition, etc.

What you do is to place these in priority order.

Then tackle them one at a time.

I can sense that you are thinking 'castle', but I want you to think about a block: fast, profitable, achievable and then on to the next.

Let's take one of your examples for a keyphrase exercise:

draw mecha tutorial

Come up with every word that might mean 'draw', e.g.:

drawing, render, 3d, 2d painting, pic, picture, image, art, etc.

Mecha:

robot, giant robot, mech, meka, powered exoskeleton, battle armor, battle armour, etc.

Tutorial:

learn, example, lesson, instructor, teach, info, learn, how to, etc.

Now combine these in every way possible.

Don't forget to sign up for the competitors newsletters and affiliate programs. Take extensive notes about how you will differentiate yourself from them. Put any interesting words or phrases back into wordtracker to see if they can help fill out your demand estimate.

Cheers,

Andrew

The 25000 is for a single keyphrase, NOT my cluster.

So yes you are right.

Here's what I've obtained.

Nos Engine Category Share KEI Count 24Hrs Competing Keyword
13 Google Search Engine 47.05 0.004 211 175 11000000 mecha

I had other few keyphrases listed in my exported csv file from wordtracker, but I decided to select this one for point illustration purposes. Would it be a lot more beneficial if I show more results like this so you can provide better advice on how to strategise for finding better keyphrases?

My top 5 or 6 keyphrases I'm thinking at the top of my head are 'anime mecha', 'draw mecha tutorial', 'mecha build', 'original mecha art', 'mecha club' and 'mecha'.

My business vision for this mecha website project of mine is to provide services or product which specializes in this particular subcategory of anime/manga and my researched indicated there's strong thriving demand for this and it's picking up.

Obviously I need to do the other part of my homework, ie to review the overall top competition for this genre. I'll use your questions and I'll get back to you on them.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi:

A couple of things.

I am not worried about 25,000 competing if I have done a quick review and know I can rank in the top ten. HHhhmm - you do mean 25,000 for a single keyphrase don't you? Not your whole cluster? Let me know.

11,000,000 competing for a single keyphrase is something you don't want to worry about or bother with right now. It's a bit rich for my blood, look for something where you will get more immediate bang for your effort.

Now that you have a cluster of related keyphrases, you can use KEI to help you set your keyphrase priorities. Basically, which are your top 5 or 6 keyphrases?

I am glad that you have checked forums etc. don't be afraid to ask questions and check out the advertising you see. Both these factors indicate interest and market activity.

Do a quick review of your top competition on your keyphrases:

Are they relevent?
What products/services do they offer
what are the price points
do they accept affiliates - sign up, find out what they know
what (if anything) makes them stand out
if they have a newsletter sign up for it with a disposable email account

This info will help you to create a viable business model, decide on tests, potential products, backend sales opportunities and more.

Then it is time to source or create your launch product!

Cheers,

Andrew

Yup.

Will certainly do.

I just done myself a fair bit of research on wordtracker, and here's what I'm getting.

With my selected keywords for my targeted niche market, it retrieved my KEI analysis(from Google Search Engines) to be around 0.004. In spite of being a bit harrowing small figure, its Count and 24 Hr columns do present plenty of optimism (with figures 200+ and 170+ respectively) and the competition is not too bad (it is between 25000 and 11000000). IMHO, I do see there's plenty of potential for a niche market for me to target, and finding ways to expand my business from there. As long as I put my business-oriented mind into full gear.

What do you think of it? Does my approach seem sound enough to make it work? What other advice can you provide before I get too carried away in choosing my business model for profit making?

I have been browsing around in various chat rooms, group forums and blog sites. And my investigation leads me to a conclusion that there's plenty of untapped demand for this niche market of anime/manga(my anime niche is robots BTW if you're wondering what that is) for me and there's only few websites cater specifically for this.

Cheers,

Andy

Hi:

That's great!

Remember, you want to take your wordtracker results as a kind of initial demand estimate.

Take your best keyphrases and get a quick analysis of your competition (natural and paid).

This may give you:

- more great ideas to put into wordtracker - to increase your free traffic
- explore the kinds of products and services currently available - you can always test the market by temporarily selling an affiliate product
- get an idea of price points
- figure out how to differentiate yourself from your competition

Don't forget to start a new 'throw away' email (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) to sign up for the their newsletters and bonuses.

Remember, being frustrated is a good thing - it means you are trying to learn!

Also, I know a week feels like a long time right now - but if you could find a niche market a week - that's OVER 50 NEW BUSINESSES PER YEAR!

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi,

I've finally discovered what my niche market is going to be. I hope it is a good one to pick despite being frustrated for nearly a week not able to find anything at all, along with my current job.

And I just used wordtracker moments ago to generate results I need to determine KEI figure and the degree of competitiveness this niche market is going to be.

The next step for me is to confirm if there is a significant number of people going for this niche market, develop product and determine the business model for making profits.

Tell me if this approach sounds like a good idea to you, Andrew? At the moment, I am learning to build up my website in HTML/PHP (I used to be a web programmer BTW) so that I can speed up my learning in making business website. That way I can maximise my input to deliver the best output in spite of difficulty with time management at times.

Regards,

Andy

Wow!

That's certainly a mouthful of help you're giving here!

It makes a lot of absolute sense when you put it that way.

Yes.

Now I got the motivation to get going ahead.

Thanks a lot you two.

Will keep you posted on how much progress I get far.

Cheers

Andy

Hi, I think that the answer Andrew provided is an invaluable one - not just for this thread but for many more. In my opinion there is always a niche - no matter how large the subject matter is. I have two passions - golf and salt water aquarium. I found a niche in both - what you need to do is NOT think like an internet marketer and think like someone who is searching on the internet. Put yourself in your potential customers shoes. Also browse the forums, chat rooms etc and pay close attention, read between the lines - you will be surprised how much you can pick up from these areas. Also have a think to yourself what problems do you encounter, what causes you issues - if it is causing you issues then it will certainly be causing other people issues as well.

Never give up - just keep digging

Peter

Hi:

When you discover that a certain niche or market is saturated it is time to:

Narrow down the field, or
find a different approach

Manga is a HUGE international market.

[this section is for those of you who are going "Manga?!? What is that, some kind of juice?!?!"]

Manga refers to a huge market for a kind of long format comic book. The word usually refers to the Japanese style/market. But manga is gaining an international following through translation and a growing number original stories published in other languages.

Unlike what the relatively narrow scope of comics that most of use grew up with (superheroes or Archie), the manga industry has a huge variety of titles for all ages and interests. The content can be very adult.

Manga can go on for 100s of volumes.

The closest analogue that we have is probably the 'graphic novel'.

One of the best known English titles is probably Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman. It won a a Pulitzer Prize Special Award.

[But I digress!]

So your first step is likely going to be about subcategories.

Think of it like this; what you are talking about is a huge warehouse store - what you want to think about is a boutique.

Off the top of my head, let's think about some smaller slices to tackle:

how to draw manga
manga conventions
how to start a manga club
how to get manga published
list of manga publishers
manga back issues
where to order manga
how to write my own manga
trade manga
manga collectibles (manga themselves or their toy and curio spin offs)
manga costume
manga posters
original manga artwork
manga news and reviews
manga podcasts
pick one genre of manga, e.g.: baseball

I'm sure you can come up with more.

Here are other tools you can use/check the market with:

wordtracker.com - do you/have you used this site? It is an invaluable tool to help you determine internet demand - what people are typing into search engines

Groups and forums - go to google groups and other online forums and browse through them. Make a list of the kinds of words and questions people ask and how often they are used

Go to amazon and look for titles that deal with your subject, again, what questions are they answering and what words are they using?

Get a few industry publications to find out what is 'coming up', what problems exist in the industry, what they are reviewing (software, titles, spin-off games, etc.).

Remember, to get started, all you are looking for is ONE problem. Don't get too complicated.

Here is our definition of a niche market:

A group of people who are searching the Internet for a Solution to a Problem and Not finding many relevant search results.

When you are brainstorming ask yourself the reporters questions:

Who?
Who did/will/should/ought/can be involved? What are the people aspects of the problem? Who did it, will do it? Who uses it, wants it? Who will benefit, will be injured, will be included, will be excluded?

What
When
Where
Why
How

Hope this helps, keep us up-to-date on your progress and don't hesitate to ask questions or seek clarification.

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi all,

I have a very important question to ask.

From 'Insider Secrets to Online Marketing 2007 edition', under 'Choosing a product or service people want', it highlights the importance of identifying the actual problem people need to solve and I realised this is quite a challenging step for me to work on.

My area of interest (AOI) is anime/manga and during my internet browsing, I discovered there's plenty of heated compeition going around offering several soutions to several types of problems people seek in this AOI. I find it difficult to find my niche market at a narrower scope as I don't have appropriate tools which can help me to identify my niche market.

Can anybody know any tools/steps on how to go about this? I'm advised not to focus on the my AOI where the market is pretty saturated. However, I'm still very determined to do this because I chose a product/service that I believe it's worth striving for and I'm very passionate about it. I don't want to be discouraged and then start new (different) one from scratch.

Any help offered will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi:

Don't forget that he is hosting his own blog and has built it up over time. He has done a very good job of web development.

Don't forget that as well that free hosts limit commercial activity on their services. Always double check the terms and conditions.

For your business you want to OWN the domain name, most blogs are hosted by someone else as a subdomain.

But it IS exciting, isn't it?

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi Andrew!

Are you kidding me? Is this really a blog?



I had no idea you could do this with a blog! Wow! What's the point of having a web site and paying hosting fees when you can have a blog like this?

Sherryl

Hi:

Re: Is it possible for a beginning internet entreprenuer like myself to build and develop a business website part-time as an ongoing basis?

I think what you have heard here is a resounding YES!

Most people start out on the Internet as hobbyists or just using it for some other kind of information gathering.

There are very few 'over night' successes in any industry - though it does make for interesting magazine and newspaper articles.

Building a business part-time, particularly on the Internet, is a great way to build yourself other streams of income with exceptionally low risk and investment.

Realistically, this is how most people begin. That's one reason I like reading Secrets To Their Success and other Internet Entrepreneur stories.

It's all about passion.

Q: How did a t-shirt hobby turn an unemployed Frenchman wealthy?

A: Blogging

“I sell between 1500 and 1800 t-shirts per month”

Average price = 22.00 EUR = $28.0613 USD

1,800
x 28
----
50,400
x 12
-----
$604,800 USD per year

Interview here: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/06...view_patri.html


Cheers,

Andrew

P.S.:

Find the Patrice Cassard blog here: http://www.lafraise.com/

Hi Sheryl/Dave,

Thank you so much for the advice.

It's certainly giving me plenty of options to determine how much success I can get far when working part-time.

Thank you very much to both of you, and I'll looking forward to hearing more things from you as I continue on participating in this forum asking important questions on building successful business websites.

Kind Regards,

Andy

Hi Andy,

It's perfectly okay to build your website over time, but it's important to make sure that the pages online are fully functional. By that I mean, that you don't have a broken links or "under construction" pages. These things will hurt you in the search engines.

I suggest getting basic shell up first (home page and your first level sub-pages) so that your home page navigation links works before uploading the site. Once the basic shell is in place, you can easily add more pages later as time permits.

If you build your site using PHP, working long term (where you may wish to go back and change navigation links and basic design elements) will be even easier. PHP will allow you to make changes to one element (like your navigation links) and carry the changes through to the rest of the web site.

Good luck!
Sherryl

I think so, you just have to develop a a higher level of time management.

I personally learned everything about Internet marketing while serving in the US Army back in the states and over in the middle east. I also do all of my own work for the business. I built my site, and do all the day to day work. I still have a great career going in satellite telecommunications, but I have a way better job now that I'm out of the army.

Another aspect that will really help you out is automating your business. Don't ever think about doing it yourself or hiring some human to do it, when you can buy a piece of software to do it for you. Automation will save you exponencially as your web business grows.

I think I'm about two steps a head of you on this, and you can!

Hi there,

I am wondering if anybody out there can answer this simple question?

Is it possible for a beginning internet entreprenuer like myself to build and develop a business website part-time as an ongoing basis?

At the moment, I am having a great career in the Computer Industry and my career lifespan is roughly new (I've been in the industry for 2-3 years). I thoroughly enjoy it and I do want to stay focus on to have a successful career life.

But as far as looking for ways to earn more money other than relying on my current job is concerned, I am keen to find out what better ways to do this other than joining this forum filled with incredible foray of enthusiastic business-minded individuals. So I do want to be successful in this area as well.

Hence I would like to find out if any individuals out there who are in the same situation as I am and currently succeeding. I would love to obtain and heed your advice so I know what to expect as I continue on to work on my business website more diligently at the same time working hard on my young career as an IT professional.

Thank you

Kind Regards,

Andy