Read Your Market''s Mind - 3 Great Market Research Resources

By: Jeff Smith

Starting a new online business, developing a new product,
launching a new marketing campaign, buying advertising can all
depend on how well you are able to research your market.

All business is based on demand.

The formula and 40 techniques for finding demand we list in "The
Ultimate Information Entrepreneur''s Success Package" at
http://www.infoproductcreator.com show that there are many ways
to discover and test demand.

One of the leading ways is to look at magazines, journals, and
media sources within a given market or on a specific target.

Specifically, what you want to see is evidence that:

1. There are multiple magazine titles focused on your market
and/or proposed business idea. If there are no magazines
targeting your market, that is a surefire warning sign that you
may not have your market segmentation or problem statement
correct.

2. You want to see evidence that the magazines targeting your
area of interest are healthy. How often do they publish, what do
they sell for, how many pages are in the latest issues, how are
they supported (what is the subscription price and how much is
it to advertise), what is their circulation, how long have they
been publishing, has their format and topic been consistent over
time?

3. You would like to see an active advertising section that
shows evidence of other business owners within your market
spending money on advertising, consistently. The presence of
recurring advertising is one sign of a healthy market. Look at
what they are selling for signs of what products are in demand.

Personally, I make it a habit to visit a large bookstore at
least once a week to take note of new magazines, new issues,
article patterns and advertising patterns in magazines within my
markets.

Another approach is to research these magazines online. Here are
a few resources that can help you perform this research online:

1. Publist - free media guide search, they require your contact
info first. Good for researching titles, publishers frequency,
etc...

http://www.publist.com

2. Magazines.com is a great (and massive) source for finding out
rankings of magazines within given subject areas.

http://www.magazines.com

3. MediaFinder is a super online resource, but requires a fairly
steep fee - $49/month, which may definitely be worth it for 30
days when you are researching new markets.

http://www.mediafinder.com

Finally, don''t discount making it a habit to wander through your
favorite large bookstore once a week to take note of magazine
titles, health of the magazine (#pages, price of advertising and
subscription, how long published, #subscribers, etc...)

Jeff Smith:
Turn Your Knowledge Into High Profit, Hot Selling Infoproducts
(Reports, Ebooks, Books, Seminars, Courses, etc...) Discover the
Formula For Creating Your Own Infoproducts In This Free 7-part
Formula Available Here: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/ebook/