What do I look for in a profitable market?

Before we enter into any relationship with a client regarding online marketing we look at two key factors:

• Visitor Levels - How many potential customers (web-site visitors) are there in this market, and;


• Visitor Values - What is each one of these potential customers worth? Together, they will tell you the QUANTITY, as well as the QUALITY of potential customers in that market.

Here's what I mean...

Visitor Levels

Visitor Levels are simply the number of people who are searching online in a particular market. The more people search for keywords related to that market, the bigger the market must be; and the bigger the market is, the more potential customers there are!

However, the problem with just using Visitor Levels as an indication of the quality of a market is it only gives you part of the picture. There are plenty of online markets that have high levels of traffic, but low levels of buyers! People browsing within these markets generally aren't "hungry" to buy. In most cases, these people are looking at websites for information! They don't want to spend any money.

So while you may receive a lot of visitors to your web-site, it's unlikely that any more than a tiny portion of these people will buy from you. That's why it's not enough to just look at the traffic levels in a market. We need to find markets full of people who have money, and are willing to spend it. We want markets that are full of BUYERS - not just browsers. That brings us to the second key factor we should look for in markets...

Visitor Values

It makes sense to target markets where we can find the big spenders. Big spenders make big purchases - and for us that means big profits!

However there are plenty of markets that spend big, but have only a tiny number of customers. Let's take the example to the extreme, and consider some really big-spending markets, like people searching for "private jet purchase". This is a HUGE spending market!

Each market stands on its own merits, how many people do you think search for "private jet purchase" online? The monthly average according to Google's keyword tool is 46! So not many!!

The issue that you have with low visitor levels it could take months to evaluate any marketing! That is why we look at what it is the client or ourselves willing to pay per sale. By using these two factors we can establish two key metrics, visitors and value to support the monthly online marketing budget and the potential for success.