The Focus of Our Business
Aug 27th, 2008 by Kiwi Champ
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley English novelist (1797 – 1851)
Finding our Niche (or Focus).
Once we have it settled that the purpose of our business will be to help us to achieve the purpose of our life (See The Purpose Of Our Business), we are now ready to start looking for the focus (also known as a niche) of our business.
If you bought and read the ebook recommended here: Excellent Reading to Get Started, then you most likely have at least started writing out your list of interests. You have a jump start 
Now dont get confused, I know we have been talking about focusing on ONE THING AT A TIME or ONE STEP AT A TIME and indeed that is what we will do.
Remember we are planning to build a business, and anything that is built by the pure definition of the word build has to grow or expand.
So of course we will plan our business for now and for the future. (This means having short term and long term goals, and that will be for another subject later on).
Now from this list that we have created, it is time to choose just ONE THING to focus on at first. This will be one interest on your list that attracts your attention the most.
So now on a separate piece of paper, write down this item at the top of your page as a heading (for example: your most favorite interest on your list might be dogs).
Now make a list (just off the “top of your head”) of all you know, don’t know, would like to learn, like, dislike about dogs. Include everything you can think of and keep writing for about 15-30 mins.
By the time you have finished doing this you will start to see a direction on which you can focus.
From this list jot down some ideas to help you find a business name (or perhaps you plan on using your own name as a business name, that is fine also).
For example, using dogs as our main interest, you may have written down things like:
- Grooming dogs
- Dog health
- How to keep your dog fit – tips to maintain daily excercise.
- Breeds of dogs:
A fascinating study of all the breeds of the world - Raising dogs
- Care of dogs
- Dog lovers
Next there is some research to be done. We need to find out some key words related to the words on our list, that are generally popular. This means they will be words people are using to search for things related to our topic.
Some recommended tool to do this are:
or there is
or
Enter your key words or phrases (example “dog training”)
You want to find key words that have at least 65-100 searches a day. Then go to google to find out how much competition there is.
The ideal is that there be no more than 20-30,000 competing sites. (For example “dog training” has over 1 million competing sites. But if you play around with specific phrases such as Maltese training etc, you will come up with a lesser number of competing sites).
Now the list of key words you have discovered in your research will help you think of:
- a domain name for your website (if you dont already have one) Ideas for this could be”
“joebrownlovesdogs.com” (where “Joe Brown” would be changed to your name), “keepingdogshealthy.com” or “thedoglover.com”. - some ideas for some articles you could write or blog posts.
- some ideas for a salesletter
- some ideas for emails (autoresponder messages)
- some ideas for products
Now it is time to go to clickbank.com and find a product to get started with. If you are not an affiliate you can easily sign up, create a unique ID/username and then start doing some searches in their market place using a key word from your list above.
Not all products on clickbank are worth promoting. We are going to be looking for:
- A product that goes with our chosen focus (or niche)
- A product that has a good “gravity score” (this means there is demand for the item and money is being made)
- A product that has a high percentage commission (At least 50% commission offered. You want to earn at least $20 per sale)
- A product that offers affiliate tools.
(Click on “view pitch” to go to the sales page. Then look for a link on the bottom of that page that says “affiliate link”. Follow this to find what tools are offered to promote the product. The more tools available the better)
- A product we could sincerely recommend.
Next step is to decide on the principle method we will use to get started in our business. Look for next post for tips and suggestions that will help you find which one is best for you.
Lets Meet At The Top.
This post was written as a part of a series entitled “How To Succeed”. You can see the go to Part VIII here:
Focus? What With All This Mess
