Your Web Site Concept – The Foundation for Income Development Opportunities!

So, you have a web site concept in mind that you’d like to use to sell wholesale products, market affiliate programs or information products, promote your network marketing program or MLM, or expand an existing business selling retail products or services. No matter what small company promotion opportunity you prefer, our goal is to help you develop a web site development business plan. You will begin by brainstorming ideas to identify a profitable niche web site concept.

Selecting the right web site concept or niche will prepare you for success in your online marketing efforts. The amount of time you spend researching and planning your concept prior to creating your web site will determine how successful you will be in marketing your online business opportunity.

If your goal is to build a non-income producing web site (such as a hobby site) then you can ignore our recommendations. However, if you’re interested in developing an income that continues to grow over time your goal must be to target your visitors and potential customers through free search engine advertising. The key formula to remember is: No Traffic = No Income!

Your Web Site Concept

• Must be a highly profitable niche - one that people search for frequently (Demand) with minimal competition from other web sites (Supply).
• Must be a topic that you enjoy, know something about, have a passion for, or are willing to research further so that you will be able to write content about the topic. This is very important, as quality web site content is the winning formula for attaining and maintaining good search engine ranking.
• Must offer potential for earning income from your web site visitors. If you are selling your own product or service you must focus on the most profitable niche to position your offering in front of the right target customers.

Now, let’s get started with your next assignment – identifying a profitable web site concept.

Step 1 – Create a List of Potential Web Site Concepts

The rules here are quite simple. If you do not have an existing business, I want you to brainstorm ideas and write down any web site concepts that come to mind. Don’t rush - take as much time as you need because the work that you do here will become the foundation for your new web site.

Make sure that you select subjects that you know and like, and that will be of interest to others. The thing to keep in mind is that if you are interested in the subject matter it will be very easy for you to write about it and develop web site content that is of interest to others. Also, remember that everyone knows something that will be of interest to others so don’t sensor yourself – write down each of your ideas.

By following our recommendations you will identify a concept and learn to position it to attract those with a common interest in your subject. The idea is to attract visitors with an interest in what you have to offer. If they are looking for your product it will be much easier to convert those visitors into paying customers.

Start writing now and once your list has been finalized, move on to Step 2. Before you move on, don't forget to add us to your favorites. You will be coming back to our site often.

Step 1a – Current Business Owners

If you have an existing business, I would like you to identify concepts for improving your business theme to focus your search engine marketing efforts on visitors who have an interest in the products or services you offer. Key items to consider are:

• How can you narrow your theme to focus on a profitable niche? For example, if your business sells “fresh fruit” you will likely have more competition then if you were to focus on selling “fresh Michigan apples.” Once they are on your site you can always present other products to your potential customers – you must first get them there!
• What solution does your business provide that sets you apart from your competition?
• How can you target a segment of your market by presenting a new or different angle?

Please keep these recommendations in mind as you brainstorm ideas for your web site concept.

Step 2 – Narrow your List of Web Site Concepts

Now that you have your list, it's time to narrow it down and to select the top three ideas that you are most interested in developing web site content for. Here’s a few tips to consider as you make your choices:

• Select the three that you are most passionate about and that you feel others will be interested in too.
• Make sure that your choices are not too broad. For example, don’t focus on “cars” if your real passion is for “Ford Mustang’s.” This concept will have much less competition (Supply) and will better target the customers you are most interested in (Demand).
• Make sure that your choices are not too narrow. For example, don’t focus on “Red Ford Mustang’s” as you may miss other enthusiasts that have an interest in what you have to offer.
• Solicit your friends and relatives to confirm the concepts that you have selected are also of interest to others. Additionally, this is a great audience to provide you feedback related to your ability to develop content for such a web site. After all, its better to find out you were wrong before you invest any time or money into your new web site. Your goal is to Prepare, not Repair!

Once you have selected your “Top Three Concepts”, it’s time to move on to Step 3.

Step 3 – Research your Web Site Concept Profitability

Now that you’ve narrowed your list down to the top three web site concepts its time to focus your efforts on determining the profitability for each concept. Profitability will be an important consideration in selecting the concept you develop into a revenue generating web site.

You will accomplish this by researching the Demand and Supply for each of the keyword phrases associated with your top 3 concepts. For example, if one of your concept ideas is to develop a site related to “fresh Michigan apples” then this will be the keyword phrase that you will use to research Demand and Supply.

Since the research that you perform will be useful to you later on in your planning, I recommend that you create a simple spreadsheet to capture the information you learn. At minimum you will want to record the following information:

• Concept Name – for example “fresh Michigan apples”
• Keywords – List the high demand keywords or keyword phrases.
• Demand Number – record the number of occurrences that a keyword or keyword phrase is searched each month by the search engines.
• Supply Number – record the number of web pages that are identified for each of your keywords and keyword phrases.

So, with your spreadsheet and top three concepts in hand lets get started researching the Demand for each.

Demand
Simply stated, Demand refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is requested from a search engine. My recommendation is that you use one or more of the following tools to enter your concept keyword phrases. Don’t forget to record the results in your spreadsheet.

Overture’s Suggestion Tool

7Search “Related Keywords” Tool

WordTracker Keyword Research Tool

Just enter one of your concept keyword phrases and select search and you will see a report on the most common keywords that Web surfers search for that contain keywords related to your topic. Additionally, the report will show the number of times that a keyword or keyword phrase were searched in the last month. This is the Demand information you are looking for.

Supply
Supply, refers to the number of web sites returned from a keyword or keyword phrase search. The research you do here will help you filter out the Low-Profitability topics – the one’s which have a high number of web sites for a given keyword or keyword phrase found in your Demand research.

In order to verify your Supply, simply use one of the following tools. I highly recommend my personal favorite, which is Google.com because of the size of their database, volume of searches performed via their search engine, and due to the excellent performance.

Google’s Search Engine

AltaVista’s Search Engine

That’s all there is to it. Just work through your list and determine the Demand and Supply for each of your concept keyword phrases, and identify related keywords that apply to each through your Demand research. Make sure that you record all of the information gained because we will use it in the next lesson.

Let’s break here while you complete your research. Before you do, don't forget to add us to your favorites. When you return we will move on to Step 4.

Step 4 – Select Your Web Site Concept

All right – now that you have completed your research you should have a good idea of the profitability for each of your concepts, and you should have a good selection of potential keywords or keyword phrases that you will be able to use in the development of targeted Web content.

With your information in hand it’s time to select the concept with the best profitability and that you feel most comfortable developing into a profitable Web site. I will also recommend that you keep all of your research as you may find that one of your other concepts could be developed further after you complete this project.

Congratulations – you now have a foundation for your new business development Web site.