Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
Welcome to the adventure of looking to become an Entrepreneur!
As a Zodiac of December I want to show you how to use your skills and learn the many different ways to research and get ideas on what type of business you would like to run and how viable it would be.
This Library of information has been created to help you find the information you need to determine if you have what is required to become a successful Entrepreneur.
Although Google could be described as the Virtual library for the internet I want to show you a few samples of where you could find information that you are not being guided to decide on your Entrepreneur path from the advertising GURU’s that are dominating your thought patterns and playing on your beginners insecurities in the ability to find what you consider a GREAT new idea to make money from.
These are areas of resources and research – not for you to copy but to guide you into a path that has been free of influence – (Ads by the GURU’s).
I personally found the Project Gutenberg brilliant, not just for ideas but for the old style of writing that let me to believe in myself and my thoughts to be successful. I have always been a positive sole and guided myself to become whatever I wanted to do next, but the internet is so full of Sharks that prey on your slight lack of confidence and then WHAM! You are buying some course that costs an arm and a leg and you will get very little more from it than you would have by researching from the internet!
Don’t get me wrong I strongly believe in Mentors and the need for them in many facets of our life but unfortunately these GURU’S are not all Mentors! But learn a good framework about your new craft of ideas and then you will understand the difference between the real GURU’s and the scammers!
Researching your Niche
How to research the ideas that I have thought of to see if they are a viable industry to pursue!
- Related Articles
It is also great to view a list of links of related content you have researched on ezinearticles.com for the niche you are looking at. This is useful to find out how many competing articles there are for the niche. In addition to that, you can also use this as a source of research for creating your own product and/or article rewriting.
And, if you’re really geeky, you can also find some “behind the scenes” information below your search results.
- InfoMine
a search engine named InfoMine.
INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. It contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information.
NOTE: Due to the nature of this search engine, information regarding your exact niche may not be available. However, if you try a broader niche, you should generally find high quality information that should assist you. A great place to go once you have started your research is Grow Your Sales – Our Facebook group. And you can throw out some questions relevant to your topic and have the group assist you to build the foundations.
- Amazon –
There are many opportunities to start a business with Amazon- Amazon FBA or Affiliate Marketing. View a list of products available on Amazon related to the niche. If you’re planning on creating informational products, it’s always a good idea to see how much competition you’re facing, and Amazon is a great place to research that.
- Affiliate Marketing Products
Search Affiliate Marketing Networks on google and see what is available in your related niche. You will need to apply to the network that is managing the product range you wish to promote, so be very clear and thorough when applying as they really do investigate all the information you supply. Making sure that your sites are completed and working. Clickbank is a network that is much easier to get approved for in your specific niche. You can also use this information when creating content.
- Compare Prices
You can write a whole blog on comparing the prices of products related to this niche. This can be useful when providing your customers with product specific data, or when writing a review of an affiliate product.
- Related Blogs
Look up the competition and research for possibilities of link-building, gleaning information and networking purposes. This is such an elaborate topic I discuss this whole topic further in the training packages I have written.
- Related Videos
Youtube is another perfect place to view related topics and what is available or your competition in the niche you are choosing.
- Related Books
Reading is one of the greatest tools to understand your niche and the competition and what is required to overcome challenges ahead. I have found a fantastic site that supplies almost all titles of books in PDF format for FREE! Message me and I will supply you the URL so you can take advantage.
Wiki Answers
This is a page in Wiki where you can find information in the public domain. Wiki is an outstanding resource for information you can freely use as content.
- Public Domain
View a list of websites providing Unlicensed Commercial Content – content related to the niche that is free to use or share commercially. This will usually be public domain content, but please do make sure that you read their license (if available) and adhere to their terms of use. I have listed a few above in the URL copy. - Researching keywords related to your niche idea can often find a more relatable topic that has far greater interest. Niching down further will always find you the buyers of the topic rather than spraying your idea to all that may be interested. Please note that sometimes a keyword will produce products that contain that keyword, but the product itself may be unrelated. Let’s sift through the list and if we see something you may be able to use, you will possibly find a link in ClickBank to get started with. Especially, if health, relationships or wealth topics. In other words, search thoroughly find an appropriate product. It may not always be on the first page.
See below for tips on how to find good affiliate products on ClickBank. For further research into your selected affiliate product, you can also use CB Engine and CB Trends.
Evaluating a Product
Leveraging the Numbers – What’s the Refund Rate?
Every product at Clickbank has some information attached to it, which can help you determine whether it is a good product for affiliates to sell or not. For starters, take a look at the commission percentage – this number will tell you how much you will earn for each sale.
So, for a $34.95 product with a 75% commission, you’ll score a smooth $23.50 for each sale (Clickbank takes 7.5% plus $1 for providing the payment processing). Note that Clickbank does not provide the sale price in the data it gives you. You’ll need to actually look at the product’s site to determine the sales price.
However, if you take a look at the “Earned per sale” amount, you’ll see that this number will not match. For example, the product I am looking at while writing this has an “earned per sale” of $18.62. This apparent discrepancy is due to the fact that the “earned per sale” takes refunds and chargebacks into account. Now, this is a beautiful thing that most people don’t even pay attention to! With these numbers, we can calculate the effective refund rate of this product!
The difference between the $23.50 than an affiliate is supposed to earn, and the net $18.62 that he actually earns is $4.88. And $4.88 is about 20% of $23.50. So, this particular product has an estimated refund rate of about 20%. Ouch!
It doesn’t matter how much I’m going to get paid for this product – I personally wouldn’t feel too good about selling something where 20% of the people who buy it don’t like it. Whether you would or not is a personal choice that you need to make, but I wouldn’t. Your marketing efforts will be 20% wasted in selling this product.
Now, refunds are a fact of internet marketing – so don’t be frightened out of selling something that gets refunds. But I would look for a refund percentage of no more than perhaps 10%.
What About Gravity?
You may notice one other piece of data that Clickbank provides you with: the “Gravity” of a product. Here’s Clickbank’s definition of Gravity:
“Number of distinct affiliates who earned a commission by referring a paying customer to the publisher’s products. This is a weighted sum and not an actual total. For each affiliate paid in the last 8 weeks we add an amount between 0.1 and 1.0 to the total. The more recent the last referral, the higher the value added.”
Pretty cryptic, isn’t it? Actually it’s rather simple once you understand it. The gravity of a product is a constantly changing value that goes up when more unique affiliates have made money from selling it. However, older sales by affiliates are worth much less than recent sales by affiliates. Affiliate sales older than 8 weeks are not used in the calculation at all.
I personally don’t lend much credibility to the Gravity of a product. If the product is on the first page or two of Clickbank’s listings, and if the refund rate is low, and if the referral percentage is high, then it’s a winner in my book. However, one thing to watch out for: if a product is on the first couple of pages (eg, high in popularity), but the gravity is low, it means that not very many affiliates are making sales… it’s possible that just a couple “super affiliates” are responsible for all the sales. This does not mean you should avoid the product, just understand that if you sell the product you’ll be going head-to-head with people who really know affiliate marketing. But, don’t be discouraged to trying products further on the list as they could be winners with very little competition! Just go through the product info and ask your self “Would I buy it?”
What’s the Referral Percentage?
The next thing to take a look at is the Referred Percentage. This tells you how many sales come from affiliates, like yourself, as opposed to directly from the product owner’s efforts. The higher this number is, the better this product’s sales letter is. I know, I know, this is a generalization… but if a product has no affiliate sales at all, then chances are the sales letter isn’t good enough to convert visitors (from affiliates marketing efforts) to buyers.
This is because members of the product owners list will tend to trust him, and won’t need the sales letter to determine whether they will buy this product. However, when referred by an affiliate, the visitor will almost always read the sales letter to decide if the product is right for him… there’s not yet any trust factor between the product owner and the visitor.
Once again, this is a generalization, but in my experience it’s been pretty reliable indicator. So, you want to lean towards products that have a higher referral percentage.