200-Proof Marketing

This is one of the biggest traps in the Internet Marketing community. Everyone says to create products about your hobbies or things you enjoy with no thought of their profitability.

In a perfect world we would all have hobbies that were also great markets to sell to, but it’s not a perfect world.

When I was younger me and some friends invented a sport we called “Extreme Repelling” where we would find tall cliffs, antennas, buildings, and so on to repel from.

Repelling is where you use a rope and a harness to descend down the side of a cliff or other tall structure.

We would repel upside down, backwards, forwards, do spins, time each other to see who could get down fastest, etc. I know it was a little stupid but it was a lot of fun.

Do you think I could create an ebook about how to do crazy repelling tricks or anything similar that would sell at all? I doubt it, maybe some crazy rock climbers would buy it but it certainly wouldn’t be worth my time.

What if you’re hobby is knife making? There is a hardcore group of knife makers out there but it’s a pretty small group and although I’m sure you could make a profitable beginners product for this niche, it would bring in less than $100 a week, if that.

I do believe you should love what you do, but your job isn’t to be a knife maker or a extreme repeller, your job is to be a Marketer and Businessman.

Love what you DO, not what you SELL.

I love Marketing, Advertising, and Business in general. It’s one of my passions that I’m a little obsessed with. I enjoy selling products and making money as you should.

If you just want to make an extra buck by cashing in on your hobby, you’re welcome to try but I doubt you will ever be successful unless you’re also passionate about Marketing.

If someone told me when I was a kid that I would grow up to be a Marketer, I would have laughed at them. I thought I was going to be a Pilot or Police Officer, not a boring business man.

Oddly enough I stumbled across Marketing(fate?) and instantly became obsessed with it. We’re talking 16+ hours a day reading about Marketing for several months or more.

Here’s what I mean by saying don’t love your products…

Obviously you should strive to make quality products that help your customers. Because If you don’t, you will severely damage your products long term profitability.

When you create a product, you can’t afford to get attached to it. Products can and will fail sometimes and if they’re going to fail, you want them to fail as soon as possible so you can move on to the next product which could be successful.

The idea is to Fail Fast. You learn from mistakes and get better each time you try. The faster you fail, the faster you will succeed. Failure isn’t the end, it’s just part of the process. It’s a result that allows you to learn.

Like I’ve said before, there’s no need to be original when looking for a product to sell. Just start looking around at what’s selling well right now.

Find a product that’s already doing well, then create a competing product and do your best to beat your competitors.

Sell what’s already selling, not what you think will sell. Learn that and you will be far ahead of most people.

It’s really not too difficult to find winners when other people have found them for you.

I’ve given away more valuable information on this website than most guru’s would be willing to sell you, and this is one of the most important lessons I can teach. I wasn’t successful until I learned this lesson.

Sell what people want to buy, don’t look for people to buy what you want to sell.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Marketing Under The Influence, Random Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.