A Money Making Online Business Just Waiting To Happen
Online Potential For Making Money
I've been asked what potential money making opportunities do I wish I had time to work on. Here's a recent one that caught my eye. A Target Market Begging For Your Product
When creating a product or service, nothing beats a fanatically loyal customer base to be able to market to. If you find a product that people are absolutely thrilled about, it doesn't take much to sell them other items to help enhance their enjoyment. After all they are already sold on the product. They are more than likely to pay some money to enjoy even more benefits from it. Because of this, I pay attention to markets which fit this "fanatically happy" criteria. Which is why this potential market got my attention recently. Television On Steroids
I recently came across a very, very active forum for the the users of the "Tivo" television recording device. If you are unfamiliar with Tivo, it is basically a computer dedicated completely to the task of recording television. It records onto a hard drive instead of a vcr tape. Because it literally has the power of a computer, it allows for many advantages over a simple vcr.
You can program the computer to tape every show of a certain type, a certain actor or a particular series for example. You can specify which shows should take priority over other shows. As you watch a show it is also recording. If the phone rings, you hit pause and Tivo keeps track of the show. Once you are done on the phone, hit play and it continues from where you left off. All the while recording the rest of the show so you can watch it. Tivo connects to the internet every night and downloads the latest offerings for your viewing area. A friend of mine recently bought one and he is already raving about it. One visit to the "Tivo Community" (www.tivocommunity.com) forum and you know that there are other people who are seriously happy with their product. You will also notice that there are quite a few people looking for answers to various questions.
As shown above, there are hundreds of thousands of message threads in the forum. This is an extremely active forum.
One interesting thing is that the tivocommunity is not sponsored or endorsed by Tivo. They don't mind it being there, but they don't run it.
Profitable Potential
Just browsing through the hundreds of thousands of posts (!) I realized that there were a lot of common questions people were asking. This is a beautiful niche market just waiting for a product. The forum members were more than eager to answer them but... It was obvious that a compiled resource (ebook or video) of the essentials to know about Tivo would likely do very well. It could cover everything from:
- Frequently asked questions
- Deciding which models to buy
- How to save money on purchasing a Tivo
- Time saving tips and tricks
- Explaination of possible upgrade options
- List of online Tivo resources...
It could be an all in one resource for anyone who has a Tivo or is thinking of buying one. Keep in mind that people are willing to pay for convenience. Yes, they could wade through dozens of forums and resources looking for information but most people would prefer not to. If someone has compiled the specifics on what they need to know, it is likely to sell. Also anyone fanatical about the product would want it just to make sure that they weren't missing any tricks they could do with it.
Educating Yourself
You don't have to be on the Tivo engineering team to understand the basics of this machine. All of the information is available right there for you to compile. You just need to take the time to do it.
After browsing through the forums and looking at the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), I already had a pretty good grasp of many things the Tivo could do. If you set about some time to do some research you could be pretty up to date on "everything Tivo" fairly quickly.
Having A Successful Launch
Here's how I would go about making this happen. While I was doing the research, I would be building a list of newsletter subscribers. I would create an autoresponder for people to sign up to. As I wrote the ebook, I would take some of the tips and create a helpful newsletter out them. My focus would be to make the newsletter as absolutely helpful and entertaining as possible. The goal is to make people look forward to your newsletter and equate your work as quality material.
There would be absolutely no sales pressure or hype. As I educated myself about Tivo, I would start responding to some of the forum questions which I could help out with. Of course in my "signature" line I would include something like: "Free useful Tivo tips to get the most out of your Tivo! The free "Tivo Tips" newsletter is available by sending a blank email to tivo@myautoresponder.com or visit IloveTivo.com"
Of course once the ebook was all done, I would have a nice, very targeted list of potential customers to announce it to.
I would test the price points but probably start around $29 for the ebook. That would be a good place to start and my testing would quickly show the optimum price to charge.
Many Possibilities
In addition to the ebook(s) that I created, there are many other avenues of profit which could be created. For example, the newsletters could be posted in an online archive with affiliate links to relevant products which they could buy. You would get a nice side income coming in from affiliate sales. I also know enough about creating dvd's that I would consider doing that. Maybe compile the ebook contents onto a dvd which shows people exactly what I am talking about. People love visual "here's exactly how to do it" type of instructions. The hour long dvd could be sold on Ebay and via the web site for $39.95...
For anyone up for the challenge, I bet this would make an excellent stream of income. Once it was up and running, it could basically be left on autopilot. By autopilot I mean, customers could:
- Sign up for the newsletter
- Order ebooks
- Order affiliate products
All with little or no intervention on my part. The only time would be occassional updates and some minor customer service related issues. I wish I had some more free time to take advantage of this one myself but you are welcome to it first if you want. It's there for the taking.
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