One of the oldest pearls of business wisdom says, “find someone who is already dong what you want to do, or knows what you want to know – and spend your time learning what they do“. There are patterns in the way successful people operate. You can learn a lot from going through what they write, paying attention to the way they advertise, how and where they spend money. If you put their methods into practice you can expect to accomplish at least some of what they accomplish. You just need to know what to look for.
Let me point out that many of us tend to look in all the wrong places. All the tools you need to build a successful business strategy are available at your fingertips and almost all of them are free!
For those who have absolutely zero money to invest, one of the great things you have at your disposal is Google. It’s just a search engine, right? It’s way more than that. For one thing, Google has tools you can use to actually analyze trends–that means you have access to information they have already compiled that tells you what the bulk of people who are doing online searches are searching for… and that is valuable information when you’re trying to figure out what sorts of products and services you want to offer.
Work smarter, not harder… Here are a few tips to get you started:
Tip #1:
Diversify. Set up multiple profit centers so you aren’t depending one thing being hot all the time. Products and services go through popularity trends and you want some products or services making you money when others aren’t.
Tip #2:
Go have a close look at what other successful people are doing and copy it. This goes for anything from how they write articles or ad copy to how they set up their web pages. Look at the top listings in Google for anything you are interested in adding to your business and analyze their web sites.
Tip #3:
Use Google Trends to stay on top of what’s hot. Decide what types of products or services you want to offer in your online business based on the analysis they’ve already done for you. Just do a Google search on “Google Trends” and you’ll get there.
In future articles I will talk specifically about E-bay: How to use it as a tool to spot trends you can leverage. There are important things you can learn from the top power sellers on eBay.
