Time to Share - How to do a survey to over 20m potential buyers.. for FREE

That got you thinking didn't it? Where am I going with this?

In the online world, to sell things that are in demand, we know that we really need to flesh out a niche to understand what people are looking for and whats in demand. So naturally we ask questions usually in the form of questionnaires or surveys... and then based on the responses, we get some good data and use this data to create a product that people are going to buy.

Simple right? But what if your starting out and don't have a list or don't have money to spend on PPC advertising or survey software? Where to from here?

Well I'm going to show you my little trick to ask over 20million people what they want (right now!), in whatever niche I'm interested in, 24 hrs a day, absolutely free.

Here it is:

1. Go to Twitter Search - search.twitter.com

2. Now type this as a search query (put whatever keyword/niche you want):

-http keyword keyword keyword since:2009-05-30 ?

3. Enjoy

What does this do and how does it work?

If you put keywords such as: 'can't lose weight' or 'help make money' you will find plenty of people who are genuinely looking for help or advice in these areas, not people posing a question and then giving you a link to some affiliate product or a blog post (ie.. want to lose weight? visit http:// etc).

Using the negative (-) before http I have eliminated all links and this includes affiliate links and general web links. Because searching for what people want doesn't involve what people are selling.. but rather what people are asking.

I have also in this query asked for all tweets from May 30, 2009. So you have timeliness insuring your results capture whats hot right now.. not what was hot in December 08.. this could be a major factor. But change the date and you can take it as far back as you like. (YEAR-MM-DD)

Finally I have ended the query with a question mark and this tells twitter search to find only tweets where a question is being asked. You can remove this if you like and will get more results.. its up to you.

How to take advantage?

Going through the tweet results will enable you to find a pattern and get an understanding of particular areas in that niche which is giving people trouble or is relatively unserviced. Just keep asking questions and finding out what people are really after in your designated niche.. eliminate a lot of guess work. Remember this is what's hot off the press.. questions and queries of concern, in real time. Brilliant.

I have created a demo video here. If you want to see me go through it.. also a little self serving plug

So get out there, take advantage of understanding exactly what's piping hot right now... develop a product high in demand and the sell it to the hungry market.

...oh and make some money