Entries Tagged 'Market Research' ↓

Thanks to the forum of Teaching Sells, I’ve been alerted to another survey tool that addresses my complaints about the free version of Survey Monkey. Apparently SurveyGizmo.com is a great option that addresses the downloading of data and the thank you page. It also integrates well with Google Adwords for conversion/signup tracking.

It’s nice to be a part of a great resource like Teaching Sells, helps keep you up to date on the latest tools and strategies. They’re in the middle of a new course called “Quick, Easy, and Inexpensive Niche-Focused Membership Sites” which has been very useful. Check out their free report entitled “Forget Everything You Know About Making Money Online (And Start Making Some)”.

If you’re looking to survey prospects, subscribers, or customers you might be interested in the enhancement that Google made to Google Spreadsheets that turns it into a free survey tool.

There are existing services, such as Survey Monkey, that already offer a free alternative but I noticed two things the Google Docs enhancement offers that you don’t get with the basic Survey Monkey version.

Offering Incentives
Whether you’re sending current subscribers or prospects generated by paid traffic to the survey, you can always increase the survey response rate if you offer something free in return for taking it.  I wanted to send people from my last Survey Monkey questionnaire to a free report if they took the time to fill it out but Survey Monkey wanted me to upgrade to a paid version to offer this feature.

In Google Docs, after you create your survey you can select the “Custom confirmation message” checkbox in the Preferences section to turn on a thank you message.  You can enter the message you want people to see once they’ve completed the survey and point them to whatever free item you promised.

Data Download
In SurveyMonkey, you can look at each individual survey response or you can look at a summary of total answers but you can’t download all the responses into a spreadsheet for further analysis unless you upgrade to a paid package.  With Google Spreadsheet all the responses are easily available for analysis or download.

Basic Service
You do get what you pay for. The survey form interface is very plain for Google Spreadsheet so you can’t customize it with any of your own graphics or different color schemes.  In addition the survey functionality is not as sophisticated as what Survey Monkey can offer with some of their packages.

However, if you’re just looking for a basic, quick & easy tool that’s free, Google Spreadsheet should do the trick! Thanks to Aweber for alerting me to this market research tip.  Check out their video demo.

I took Colin’s advice and decided to take a little break from the Web the other day and do a little alternative keyword research in the bookstore.

I headed to the section in Barnes & Noble covering the topic I’m researching and sure enough they had several shelves of books on my area. I started off with the Bestseller shelf so I could dig into what keywords are hot right now.

I didn’t even have to open a book, simply scanning the cover and back gave me enough keywords to work with. Not only did I find some good keywords but I saw some useful examples of enticing sales copy on the covers!

I’ve since used those keywords as Amit’s videos walked me through the process of setting up an Adwords campaign in his Super Affiliate Accelerator training.

It definitely helps me to get away from the computer for a few minutes every now and then, in this case, it helped me build a new keyword list!

Who should I sell to? Do I delve into a market I’m familiar with and interested in or should I just go after the highest paying products?

Just Do It
For my first affiliate marketing project, I’ve decided to go with an area I already know something about to cut down on the learning curve in terms of content creation and user needs. I just want to get something up and running and start making mistakes, I mean money : ).

Long term, I’d like to avoid spinning my wheels in a wide variety of markets and focus on a few core areas like the Uber Affiliate discusses in Diversification or Domination. Since Colin McDougal has beat into my brain the importance of building a brand, the strategy of learning and dominating a market with a known brand makes the most sense to me.

Which Market to Choose?
I started coming up with a variety of ideas a little over a year ago when I spent a brief stint in the eBook mentoring program of Andrew & Daryl Grant. Since I had already done some brainstorming & reseach on the markets and had domain names I used these 10 ideas as my short list.

For each one I did some keyword research in Wordtracker and created Google alerts on those keywords. As the daily alert emails come in I check out the websites and take some notes on my findings. Hopefully this process will lead me to a big fat juicy market or at least help me choose a niche to start with.