Free Internet Marketing Research Methods

There are a number of free internet marketing research tools and resources that will greatly enhance your ability to identify and exploit profitable niche markets.

These include:

  1. Google Directory
  2. Google Keyword tool
  3. Google Trends
  4. Forums
  5. Clickbank
  6. Quantcast

In the next several blog posts we will examine each of these in turn as we pursue our web marketing strategy of identifying profitable niche markets where we can become a dominant force.

The first market research strategy we will examine is the use of the Google Directory to begin the process of drilling down from a major category into some potential niches.

To start we will open our browser and go to http://Google.com/dirhp

When we do we will see a page that looks like this.

Arts, Business, Computers, Games, Health etc. are major categories that you can use to begin the sorting process.  For this example, we will select Health and click on it.

When we get the next screen we start refining our search. Notice at this level the categories also have a number along side them, giving an indication of how many articles are in each category.

By selecting Conditions and Diseases we are brought down one more level, where again we find many additional sub categories.

Here we will pick Sleep Disorders for this example. And are taken to on final screen, where we can pick a particular niche to explore. In this case we will select Sleep Apnea and begin our process of determine whether or not this is a good niche to consider for our purposes.

Here we can explore existing sites that are related to sleep apnea. They are initially ranked by Google Page Rank. By searching these sites we can check to see if there are advertisers on these sites which will indicate whether or not this is a viable market for us to enter. We can also research the topic to identify any gaps we might be able to fill, and possibly identify even smaller niches we might wish to enter.

This is a very simple tool to use, and yet a powerful way to begin your niche marketing research. In our next post we will explore the Google Keyword Tool.