Success on the internet depends a lot on what you know about your target market before starting! If you want to make money on the 'net, you've got to be prepared to do some market research online!

It's important for you to know...

How many people are looking for your product or service and...

How many companies are supplying that same product or service

These numbers give you an idea of how much money you can make with your concept.

The number of people looking for your product or service is called the "demand".

The number of companies offering a product or service similar to yours is called the "supply".

If demand is 1000 and supply is 500, you've found yourself a market ;) Supply and Demand on the Internet

The internet works a little differently to the "offline world"...

Supply is the number of people searching for information on your product or service, while demand is the number of web sites providing that info.

Got that? No? Let me elaborate...

...If 1000 people are searching for "golf clubs", that really means that 1000 people are searching for information on golf clubs.

By the same token, if 500 web sites are supplying "golf clubs", they're really supplying information on golf clubs.

Information is the key word there. If your web site doesn't provide valuable information on a particular subject, it might as well not exist!

That's the key difference between offline marketing and online marketing. You're not marketing products, you're marketing...

I.N.F.O.R.M.A.T.I.O.N !

To help you understand why that's the case, here's a simple but true quote...

"Most people use the internet to research their next buy."

If you're providing the info they're looking for, they're a lot more likely to trust you with their money.

But you've got to be willing to put the work into it in the beginning. If no one's searching for your content, or there are too many sites supplying that info - you've lost before you've even begun!

I hope that, by now, you've started to realise just how important it is to do your market research online first. There really is no point in starting a site that no one's looking for. So make sure you find a niche people are interested in reading about before starting your site.

Good luck!

Norio is a young South African entrepreneur that enjoys teaching others the things he has learnt to make running his business easy & profitable. He runs a web site teaching people how to start and maintain successful web sites for free: http://www.free-websites-from-scratch.com