Let’s suppose that you already have your own idea about a product, our mission now as a marketer is to determine if a particular niche market is worth pursuing. For example, while you may get a kick out of dominating the “underwater basket-weaving” niche, if no one else shares your enthusiasm for this hobby you’re going to have a tough time making any money.

Ok, so how do you decide if a niche fulfills the Qualification Factor?

Simple, just make sure it possesses at least 2 of these characteristics:

1. It is actively searched for on the Internet

These are the strategies I’m using successfully to make some extra money. Hopefully, you’ll be able to spawn other ideas from this list as well.

Keep in mind that StumbleUpon traffic is awesome when you manipulate it correctly. Many office workers are surfing SU while at work, Stay at home Moms/Dads, etc (in other words, more people with money to spend). It’s not anything like MySpace traffic. StumbleUpon now has over 1,000,000.00 users.

This is where I go to niche-specific sites.

So I’ll set up a mini-course on my autoresponder with my content.

I like mini-courses better than just a free report to get them to opt in, because the free report is a one shot deal. I want to “train” them to be on the lookout for my emails, to anticipate them and open them. That way when (or if) my offer shows up in their inbox, it may have only been a day or two since they last heard from me, not weeks or months ago when they got their free report (in that case they’ll likely forget they signed up for your list and promptly delete your offer, unsubscribe, or report it as spam).

If I have a free report I want to use, I’ll simply break it up for my mini-course. But as this is a new niche, it’s unlikely I’ll have a report yet.

Plus, the bid process also tells you a little about the moneymaking opportunities of a market. As a loose rule, if the max bid results are between 30 cents and $2.00, it’s a good indicator that people are making money in this market. I call this my “magic window.”

Over $2.00 means that the competition is too fierce for my tastes, but depending on your market and eventual product selling price and demand, it may make sense for you.

Just because a sub-niche is popular doesn’t mean people spend money on it.

Amazon is a great place to see what currently exists for any given sub-niche. Chances are, the more books there are written on that subject, the more that market spends on those topics.

For example:

When selling a product, a lot of people make the mistake of developing their product first, and then trying to find a market for it. Of course, the process should be reversed.

Find a market first that spends money, then find out what they want and give it to them.

It is certainly easier said than done, but there are a lot of places online where you can do your market research for free. They’ve done most of the work for you already. You just need to know where to go and what to do to connect all the dots.