Discover a winning business idea

Before you do any marketing or anything else, you need to be absolutely clear about what your online business is about. This means that you need to decide up front if you will sell your own products/ services, or if you will sell someone else's. A lot of marketers expend their energy and their money to promote something nobody wants. Or they choose to build a online business inside a niche that's too small. Or they pick a large marketplace and find it too difficult to separate themselves from the pack. Internet business ideas are all around you. Some online business ideas come from a careful analysis of market trends and consumer needs; others come from serendipity. If you are interested in starting an internet business, but don't know what you might sell, exploring these ways of getting internet business ideasflowing will help you choose.

1. So how do you start? First you need to begin with a self-analysis:

• What hobbies do you enjoy or have enjoyed in the past?
  
• What do you know about? What you can teach others?
  
• What kind of products do you like, enjoy, consume and benefit from ?
  
• Do you like the product/service you're planning to sell ?
  
• Can you see yourself getting excited about it ?
  
• Would you buy it or use it yourself?
  
• Would you sell it to your friends or your next-door neighbor ?
  
• Can you see yourself selling it for next five to ten years ?
  
• Is this a product/service that you intensely desire to bring to the marketplace ?
  
  

2. Then analyze the product/service you choose from the customer's point of view:

• What does it achieve, avoid or preserve for the customer?
  
• How does the product improve your customer's life or work?
  
• What kind of customers will you be selling it to?
  
  

3. Imagine that you've hired a management consultant to get advice on introducing this new product/service. They're going to cut right to the chase and ask you these very objective, bottom-life questions about the product :

• Is there a real demand for the product at the price you'll have to charge?
  
• Is the demand large enought for you to make a profit?
  
• Is the demand concentrated enought so you can advertise, sell and deliver it at a areasonable expense?
  
  

4. Dig even deeper into the potential success of your product or service by determining the answer to the following questions:

• What is going to be sold, exactly? Describe it in terms of what it does for the customer.
  
• To whom is it going to be sold? Describe your ideal customer.
  
• What price will you hate to charge for the product for it to be profitable?
  
• How is the product going to be sold? What method of sell, or process of promoting, will you use?
  
• How is the product/service going to be manufactured or produced?
  
• How is it going to be delivered to the customer?
  
• How is it going to be serviced, repaired, guaranteed or replaced?
  
  

5. And you are not done yet.There are a series of additional questions you need to ask before make a final decision on a new product/service offering:

• Is there a real need for the product/service in today's market ?
  
• Is your product/service better than anything else currently available ?
  
• What are the ways that it is superior to your competition?
  
• Is your it lower priced or of better quality than anything else that is available?
  
• Do you think you could become the nomber-one supplier in the market for this product/service?
  
  

For a product or service to succeed, it must be the right product, being sold at the right time, to the right customer, in the right market. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you to really determine which product or service hold the most promise for you.