“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” –
Wernher von Braun
Research is the single most important step when deciding on a business model to pursue and when building that business from the ground up.
Do not skip or skimp on this step.
Test everything. Do complete research on every idea you have. And even more when you start building your business.
While you go through this process, keep good documents and file your finding. You will need these notes when you start your new business properly.
We recommend a spreadsheet to organise the data.
Don’t have any Idea Yet: Read my post about how to find an idea!
The goal of the research is to get as much of the following information as possible. Build a list of each.
- Young Competitors (Low Domain (Ranking) Authority)
- Dominant market leaders (High Domain Authority)
- Keywords and content Ideas (Low competition KW’s)
- Products and services (Ideally suited to your nook)
- Market and side industry allies (Reach out – to get to know)
Keywords and Competitor Research
Look at the top sites that come up in the search results for phrases that you know are searched a lot in your industry.
See who they are and what they’re doing.
Look and see what their business model is. What they’re actually doing and then go and see how popular their site is. Check them on one of these sites.
- Ubersuggest (Free)
- Ahrefs.com (Paid)
- Semrush.com (Paid)
- Alexa.com
What we’re interested in, is the sites listed in Google for all the different keywords in your nook.
If a website is on the first page of Google there’s something happening with that site. They must be doing something right because Google is telling us it’s the most relevant business for that keyword.
Find all the keywords related to your nook. Research who ranks for these keywords. List everyone who would be a competitor. Fill in your spreadsheet.
Go through your competitor’s list, one at a time. Follow the next steps for each competitor in the list.
Study Your Competitors
We have written in-depth about this here.
Make a list of competitors and prospects
View your competitors from your customer’s perspectives. Look for the things they are doing well, and also look for things they suck at.
Add this to your spreadsheet.
Dig Deeper in Your Niche
Complete other research, such as;
- Check out terms related to the nook in Google Trends
- Set up Google Alerts for anything to do with your industry/competitor
Research all the shoulder niches on the usual Social Media networks.
- Youtube
Research your Nook on Reddit
The best place to find out more information about an interest is on Reddit. And the best place to do that is with redditlist.com
You get a better view of the sub-Reddits than the actual Reddit search engine. The column in the middle shows how many subscribers a sub-Reddit currently has. The other important one is on the right, the fastest-growing sub-Reddits.
For research, they are both interesting because one will have less competition (as it’s growing) and the other already has a large-established audience so it’s easy to see what type of content they like.
Note the most popular topics being posted.
When you find a subreddit you like, go find the most popular content ever posted in that category. This will give you great content ideas for your potential new website.
Going through all the content you get a real idea of what makes that particular audience ‘tick’. Particularly, when it comes to up-voting articles.
Putting it All Together
Put all the information in a spreadsheet and use that data to figure out which one will make the best business model for you.
What we are looking for?
A combination of knowledge and passion that can be monetised.
So to summarise
- Don’t pick a tiny niche. Pick a vertical. Meaning it’s huge and contains billions of dollars of transactions. Research the monetisation potential.
- Pick a vertical that you have passion for. Or a complementary skill set or knowledge base.
- Pick a vertical that you know nothing about but would love to learn. Research that niche.
- Pick an angle. Find the gaps where you can slip between your competition. Or spot opportunities, to do better than a particular competitor(s) to take market share.
But don’t give up. Read my post about persistence here
Document the Research
As I mentioned before, you put all this research into a spreadsheet.
You should have a worksheet for each;
- A list of all the competitors
- List of business one step removed (shoulder business) – Not competition, but possible relationships for mutual benefit
- A list of related keywords
- Create a list of different content ideas
- The potential range of products and services that you could offer
Comparing Research
If you have 3-4 ideas and you did this kind of research for them. Pretty soon you would have a very good idea of which one is better to pursue.
If you get stuck and have two final ideas, you will need to do some further testing. I Called it, putting it to the people. By that I mean, testing each idea via social media.
- YouTube (make videos about each topic and upload them to see what the response is)
- Start talking about each topic on Twitter
- Put a Facebook fan page for each topic, and see what happens
- You could even go as far as placing ads to see the response
Point to make here. You need to go to as far as you need to to be sure your idea is worth pursuing.
Check it! Does your Idea have what it takes to be successful?
What’s Next? Take your research and create a Branding Strategy
If you have any questions, just leave a comment through the contact form. I will leave a reply on this page, so it can benefit everybody.