Free advise!

Isn't this what 'everyone else is selling'? Software?

What I'm concerned with your advice, here, is that it doesn't give specific metrics as far as what your advice doesn't cover.

To the person that asked the question, I'll see if I can't help you out.

Whenever you're building a website, or whenever you're looking to sell an item WHATEVER the medium, you need to make sure that you're conforming to 3 BASIC metrics.

The first metric, is that you need to make sure that your item is in demand.

Why? Well, you need to make sure that people WANT your item! Looking to see if people are advertising the item in a local newspaper doesn't show that the item has DEMAND.

If you are selling on the Internet, (on a website platform) then a great place to see if the item has demand is the Adwords Keyword Tool (although they're coming out with a new tool called the Keyword Planner which looks AWESOME)

If you're looking here a great metric to look for is about 10k to 50k in global monthly search volume. Why? Well, let's look at the math!

If you were to take the mean value of that number, say 22,500, and if you were ranked #1 on Google for that keyword, you'd get around 55% of the traffic (according to sources all over the Internet) That is 12375 visitors.

From those, if you have a 2% conversion rate, you can expect that to translate into 248 sales.

Now, if you had just a 40 dollar profit margin, that would translate into $9,920 per month in estimated NET profits!

On just that ONE keyword.

Instead of fighting for that keyword that has HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of searches per month for DECADES you can get just a low keyword that is MUCH easier to rank for.

However, that's just the demand.

You also need to make sure you're looking at competition. PRs, although they've gotten a bad rap are STILL a good metric to look against as far as your competition. Look, they're a measure of authority. It's not the ONLY thing that goes into 'ranking on Google' but if the top pages on Google are 4's or higher, then good luck with taking their spot in an expedient manner.

You need to make sure that people are ABLE to find you.


The 3rd metric is COMMERCIAL INTENTION.

Are people typing in your keyword to LEARN? Or are they typing you in to BUY?

This can be measured against the CPC of the keyword. If it's > 1.00 than you know that it's a buyer keyword because people are justifying the advertising cost, and it's getting an ROI. (And the margins also justify it)


So - just 'looking into a newspaper' to see what people are advertising is not only a short-sighted way of seeing what to sell, but it would also give you absolutely no direction numbers-wise on HOW to begin a website.

That really should have been your first step.

Know your market, and find your keyword.

In fact, your website should be based around your keyword that fits within the 3 criteria that I mentioned above. Demand, Competition, Commercial intention.

Then, EVERY keyword from there - starting with your category pages - as every website needs a specific hierarchy with navigability, needs to have keywords RELEVANT to each other based on the PROXIMITY PRINCIPLE.

This is why if you have a keyword based on 'leather wallets' you can't sell 'leather saddle bags, leather jackets and leather toaster covers'.

If your keyword is 'leather wallets' you have a LEATHER WALLETS site.

You sell men's leather wallets, women's leather wallets, monogrammed leather wallets, bejewelled leather wallets, chain leather wallets, etc - because these keywords are all based on the proximity principle.

It's a common mistake that people make where they find a keyword, then a supplier, then sell EVERYTHING that a supplier sells because 'well, if someone comes to my site wanting to buy a leather wallet, won't they want to buy a saddle bag?' NO! That wasn't their search query!

And Google knows that. That is why they rank on RELEVANCY now more than ever with their Panda update.

*Minds Blown*