"How To Create New Products or Services...Let Me Count The Ways"

By Christopher Wright
Posted Wednesday, October 13, 2004

"How To Find New Ideas For Products or Services...Let Me Count The Ways"

By Christopher Wright, Guerrilla Marketer
(www.GuerrillaPromotions.com)

Ok, here's the game plan. Joe, you roll right and block the defensive end...oh wait a minute...WRONG GAME PLAN!! Just as in the Super Bowl you need a game plan, so it is so with Internet marketing. One question I often hear is, "What product or service should I promote?" Sometimes they may not want to necessarily start a new product/service, they may only want to enhance the one they have or are involved with.

Your challenge is twofold. First, you must find out what's hot, then you'll have to find a way to make a product/service (or enhance your present one) from this acquired information. As is often the case, we can't see the forest for the trees.

"Finding Gold Where Everyone Has Already Been"

Here are a list of places that we visit almost daily, but now I want you to look with different eyes.

Download Sites: DownLoad.com, TuCows.com, Zdnet.com. DownLoad.com is probably the most visited download site there is around. On their front page is a list of the most downloaded software/info (by day-week etc.). They also have categories you can go into to get a peek at what's hot for that particular subject. This also applies to other download sites like Zdnet.com and TuCows

Books: BarnesandNoble.com, BooksAMillion.com, and Amazon.com. Lets focus on Amazon, since they're the largest and most known of the three. Amazon provides a 'top seller' list on their site for the most purchased books from their site. These may or may not be the same as what's on the New York Times best seller list. What is to be noted is that these are the most popular books purchased ONLINE (hint-hint).

Music: Amazon.com and CDNow.com. Did I just mention Amazon in the section about books? Well...they're also mentioned in the section about music. They may have began their career as booksellers, but they've drastically diversed their inventory. Again they have a top sellers list of music sales.

Award Sites: Visiting some of the most popular award sites also gives you a sense of what hot and popular. Some of the most 'respected' sites are 100hot.com, CoolSiteOfTheDay.com, and USAToday.com

"Connecting The Dots"

Now that we know where to go to find out what's 'in', lets see how we can apply this to create or enhance our product or service. Go visit Download.com search a category that's as closely related to your present business (or what you would like to do) as possible. Write down the top 3-5 programs/software. Next, follow the same procedure with Amazon.com in the books and music categories. Now your next task is to do some competitive analysis on the award sites. You don't want to copy exactly what they're doing. Your goal is to just determine what they're doing and why they were chosen for these awards and see how that technique can be applied to your situation. Try to find and evaluate sites that are related to your own.

For each item in your list you created, ask the following questions. Is there an ezine dedicated to this item? If there is, is it operating at its full capacity? This may be your opportunity to get a lock on the subject. Is there an ebook detailing how this product/service works? If there is, does it actually show how it can be used profitably? Could a live teleconference or forum discussion be done with this item? Can this be 'tweaked' to attract a very specific target group? If so, is there an ezine of ebook just for these very specific target groups?

And so it goes on..and on..and on. I've made MILLIONS...ok maybe just $1,000's (but didn't that sound good :) using this tactic. Be warned that once your 'top gun' becomes more known, others will be on your heels to get a piece (or all) of the pie. How well you defend your territory depends on deep are your pockets. Some of the times, these 'secrets' are only extremely useful when no one or only a few people are using them. After everyone and their mother's using the same technique, it usually isn't worth trying to defend anyway. Hint-hint (FFA Link Pages, SafeLists, or new automatic traffic generators).

Best of Luck!!!

About the Author
Christopher Wright, Guerrilla Marketer
"Free..Explode Your Traffic..Send Your Articles To 100+ Ezine Editors"
(http://www.GuerrillaPromotions.com/TrafficMagic.html)