A. Find out what people want!

How ? Find out what they are searching for…
Here is the the top 10 best online marketing research tools for your business…

Google Trends charts how often a particular search term is entered relative the total search volume across various regions of the world http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Displays the keyword searches data collected from Yahoo! search log files. Updated each weekday, it shows the percentage of users searching for a specific tem/keyword. http://buzz.yahoo.com

eBay Pulse delivers a snapshot of the eBay marketplace. eBay Pulse features top 10 popular searches, popular stores, popular products and highest/lowest priced.http://pulse.ebay.com

Research online markets, find niche opportunities and exploit them before your competitors. http://www.wordtracker.com

Find out what’s hot online - this very second! http://del.icio.us

See how much competion you have advertising in your desired niche. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

eBay Pop is a beta site that captures some of the buying buzz, popular trends, and fun things happening on eBay. It’s a new way to stay in the know, current with the trends and to impress your family and friends. (Smashing Favourite) http://www.mpire.com/ebayPop.ivk

Currently tracking 94.9 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. Is your niche blogged? Why not blog it! http://technorati.com/pop/

See what the tech savy users over at digg digg on this user generated news site! http://www.digg.com (smashing favourite)

What marketing resources list would this be if we didn’t include the hottest online app of the moment Facebook! Search the Groups for your niche and see what people are saying! Better still create a group based on your niche and market your product/service to them! http://www.facebook.com

For Smashing Design I chose to market my web design and seo services primarily to Manchester businesses. This was an easy decision based on the following reasons…

1. I live in Manchester

2. I found out from my market research there are over 3000 people searching for the term ‘web design manchester‘ each month - plenty of work for a professional web designer!

3. I love designing and optimizing web sites for success!

Thirty day challenge update - After 2 days market research I have found my TDC niche!

All I can share with you at the moment is that it involves green technology and virtual worlds! Sounds exciting - it is!

Good luck finding your niche ….

Update2 - Seomoz has just released the very useful popular searches aggregator that aggregates the top searches from most of the sites listed above and more. Check it out….. http://www.seomoz.org/popular-searches/ A must have tool for a search marketer!

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Easy enough I hear you say but there is a catch! You can’t spend anything to get started you must leverage free web 2.0 services to achieve the goal.

I’m intereseted as to how they are going to go about this hence my participation. I’m presuming the use of Seth Godin’s Squidoo platform.

If you are not signed up yet it is not too late, Sign Up Now.

My personal goal for the challenge is to surpass the $10 set target and make £200 ($400 ) via niche affiliate marketing & adsense. I would feel great pleasure in paying the rent this way!

good luck to all those that are participating…

[Update] IncomeHero is offering his $121.01 adsense check he made in July to the most consistent 30 day challenger blogger - that’s almost a third of what I need to make so it’s a no brainer. Im signed up!!! [/Update]

So that now makes this e-marketing experiment a lot more interesting… not only will I be attempting to make money with affialate links and adsense I will be blogging for money too!

Finally, I am away @ the Big Chill Festival this weekend. This creates the challenge of mobile blogging! An entirely new concept to me & a perfect opportunity to get up to speed with the mobile-web….Could one make money by simply mblogging?

We will see!

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The blog’s key audience is business owners, web professionals, clients, potential clients and media agencies.

The aim of the blog is to educate, share and hopefully spark discussion on the above topics!

I hope you find this blog useful…

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