Where? tell me now! wapi? ……(because that’s where the money is!)
I have to figure out this demand conundrum before I put any money down into this new venture that I want to try out. So, I found this tool yesterday that will give you a general idea of what people are looking for in the search engines. This is only a first step and I’m sure I’ll have to wittle it down to really hone onto a particular niche, but it’s a starting point.
I decided to start with the two most popular search terms: Sex and Money — because I wanted to find out what kinds of results they produced. Here is what I found:
Almost 22 million people are typing in the general term “sex” in 3 of the biggest search engines (google, yahoo & MSN). Obviously, this term would be too broad to do anything with so I started looking for niches within this broad category and I found a couple.
Midget sex – 100,000 people are searching for this term so this could be a possible niche.
Iran sex – about 96,000 people are searching for this term. I’m not sure if this means that people in Iran are looking to have sex with other people in Iran or if people in Iran are looking for porn sites starring fellow Iranians!
The link for all the search terms is enclosed below. You just type in whatever search term you are looking for in the box & it’ll spit the number of searches done for each term you’ve typed (Following The Demand)
About 2.2 million people are searching for the broad term money(20 more million people search for the word “sex”!) that surprised me because I thought they’d be more parity between the two words.
The next most popular term under money is “money market savings accounts. About 1.1 million people are searching for that term.
This example also shows me that it’s not just about selling physical products like shoes or jeans. I know a couple of people who are trying to sell insurance. You could look that up as well to try & determine what types of insurance people are looking for.
I picked this one out because I know many Kenyans who’ve tried to sell curio’s in America and failed.
When you type in the words “African/Curio’s”, you only get 186 searches, which means that there is no demand. They’re 300 million people in America, even if say 10 million people are on-line, if the term is searched for 186 times, there is virtually no demand for that product in America.
I picked this one because I had a piece recently on 10 businesses one could start with very little capital. In that piece, one of the linked websites suggested becoming an on-line tutor. I then went on to suggest that one should consider tutoring mathematics (if they had that skill).
So, I decided to look up the term “tutor” and to my surprise, mathematics was not the most popular term searched for under that word. Typing was more popular! Almost 50,000 people are looking for typing tutors! I would never have guessed that and how do you teach typing on-line?
The above search engines are tabulating what U.S. consumers are looking for. If you’re based in Europe, I’m sure they’re other tools can give you what people are looking for broken down by country.
If you’re based in Kenya, I don’t think you’d need this tool unless you were thinking of selling goods in America. I have generally found that it’s much easier to gauge the demand for goods or services in Kenya simply because the country is so small and the competition is not as stiff. If you’ve lived out of the country and you go back, you can pretty much tell, within a few months time, what’s missing.
The next thing is to determine the supply conundrum. If 100,000 people are searching for the term “midget sex” , but you have 99,000 websites catering to them, I won’t make any money because the demand will have been filled.
While business isn’t my thing, I decided on a whim to try out photo and see what hits I’d get. Photography is the one thing I see myself venturing into should I change my mind about business. I got 9.8 million hits. 7.6 million more than money!
egm:
You looked at the wrong thing. Click on the link I provided. It’s a keyword search link that tells you how many times people looked for the term “photography” — do not do a google search. Alternatively, you can go to overture keyword search and type in “photography” to figure out how many people are looking for the word on yahoo’s search term.
The word photography is searched for by 1 million people on the 3 search engines (yahoo, google & MSN) Then you keep looking to boil it down to a niche you like (aerial photography, erotic photography, etc, etc)
There’s no way photography can be searched for more than the word money.
Egm:
I’m always surprised when people tell me that business isn’t their thing. It’s not mine either, but I need money and how else am I going to get it?
Business is anything that brings in money. You could sell cartoons and make money doing that and it would be a business.
Stop thinking like a Kenyan where business means putting on a 3 piece suit and sitting behind a desk giving orders.
Look at Ann Lebowitz and all the millions she made with her photography. If photography is your passion, go with it!
I did search on the link SEO you provided. And I searched for photo, not photography.
Ok – I stand corrected.
You need to “niche” it down because the word “photo” maybe too broad. What kind of photography do you do?
& while you’re here, what do you think of Ann Liebowitz’s photography? was it all mzungu hype or is she that good?
I am in the process of figuring out what kind I like. Having just acuqired a DSLR, my main interest right now is learning as much about it as I can, and in the process learning the basics of photography. Much of what I have done till now has been go with the gut type photography, with little in the way of technique. While it may get you some stunning shots every now and then, my goal is to get stunning shots more often than not.
Phase 2 is to then narrow down on my interests. At the moment I seem to gravitate towards macro (close-up), landscape, wildlife (and nature in general) and cityscapes. Being an outdoorsy type person, I see that as dominating my interests.
These two phases are not necessarily happening sequentially, but in order to maximize on phase 2, I have to have phase 1 down pat.
As for Anne Liebowitz, I had heard of the name before, but until I read it in your comment and googled her, I had no idea of her work. I guess that answers your question somewhat!
Which brings me to another point… studying past and present photography greats. My reading is currently limited to books on technique. As soon as I have gotten some of that under my belt, I shall start adding in books on photographers and their work.
Curious thing about curios, are we maybe the only people in the world who call them that? We are in a project doing some sort of directory. Dude, try a google even. All those 100, 000 people must have been the Kenyans looking for buyers,;).
About Iran sex. Did you know you could get a temporary marriage permit in Iran? Yes, for so real. It is called sigheh, wish we had it in Kenya. That may be one of interesting inspirations behind the Iran Sex searches!!
emmo
imagine?
Dude, hit me with an email if you can, cheers!
I think instead of African Curios try African Crafts or Arts Americans are less likely to use the term curios.
Liz
I was thinking about that after someone mentioned that not many people would type in the word “curios”.
I’ll see what it yields.