One of my sites, I help newbies to understand all this internet marketing stuff. Just the basics because I’m far from some hot shot marketer with 1,000’s of people on his/her list. Tiffany Dow may disagree but the truth is, I just stick to the basics with a few sites and have no complaints.

Anyway…

Sometimes, people will ask me to work with them a little because what they’re doing is not working.

90% of the time the problem is, they did not do their research thoroughly.

I’m studying something now and wanted to share it with you because it serves as an excellent example of what happens in business when you do not do your research.

Here it is >> Kitchen Nightmare . This has got to be the best business study I’ve come across in a very long time. But before I share, the man with the plan (Mr. Ramsay) needs to wash his mouth out with soap,lol!

Here is a sample. Watch it and then go on and watch every video like it on youtube.com

Jim Rohn Who was Tony Robbins first mentors and business partner said "wise men Learn from other people’s failures. The businesses Ramsay is called on to help are failing for the following reasons and are worth a study.

1. Bad message to market match. (Didn’t do their research)

In marketing there is a saying called message to market match. If your product or service is not making money it could be because of a bad message to market match . Your message is just not getting through to your prospects. This most of the time comes down to bad research or no research which is the case for most of these restaurant owners.

This reminds me of internet marketing.
Many people come to the internet wanting to make money with an idea they have. So they build a site and offer based on their likes, needs and wants.

This is the biggest mistake one can make because most of us are out right delusional when it comes to what we think is going to sell and what we think people want.

Ramsay goes into the streets and asks people what they think (research) about the restaurant in question. The feedback he gets tells Ramsay which direction the restaurant needs to take to dig out of the hole their in… Most of the time.

2. The owners of these restaurants are frozen stiff.

They at some point hit a road block and instead of going over, around or under it, they stop and sit there like a deer caught in the headlights.

This is why I believe Ramsay is so rude with them. He is poking and jabbing to get them unstuck. Getting unstuck is like being reborn for some of the owners and boy do they resist Ramsay… Amazing.

One lady took her life savings and opened a fine dinning restaurant in an area where there are loads of car clubs, homeless people, and school kids with no money. I asked a friend what were these people thinking and she said " The problem is, they were not thinking."

I see so many newbies as well as myself in the past have some cute idea and just get right to the building of a blog without ever considering their target audiences needs, wants and interests. Now that is a recipe for disaster.

So what do you do?

Research deeply.

The biggest part of making money online is market research. But most just think it’s a cute word and spend zero time on it. For many, it’s not their fault because it’s not a sexy topic that gets a lot of buzz but trust me, it is everything!

I can sum up your research real easy… Become your target market.

Here is an activity to get you going on some good researching…

Take out a sheet of paper and write at the top your niche that you’d like to be in. Let’s take trout fishing.

What is the age and income group?

Are they buyers? Do they buy stuff they don’t need all the time if they think it will catch more fish?

Are they marred? Do they take their kids with them fishing?

Are there some highly active forums on trout fishing you can hang out in and take loads of notes on the mind sets of some of these fishing people?

What really pisses these people off big time?

What makes them so happy they could cry?

Go to the bookstore and check out the magazines they read. What are the common colors used? Maybe these are the colors your blog should be? What’s being sold on the inside?

What are the words being used in the headlines for products being sold?

Now here is a biggie: What type of phrase or words do they like to use? Knowing this will help you write great content for this niche. You can get this data in the forums.

For example, I know the Internet marketing niche pretty good. Here are some of the words they like to use and can relate to:

1. Auto profits
2. Server crashes
3. Product Launches
4. Download protection
5. PLR
6. Master Resell rights
7. Newbies
8. Gurus
9. List building
10. Backends
11 . OTO (One Time Offers)

If you’d like to make some good cash online doing niche marketing, you’ll have to become your ideal customer first. This is done via research. There is no other way around it.

Did you know big companies pay crazy amounts of money to do focus surveys way before they even have a product? Why is because they know if the survey goes well, they’ll have money in the bank when they launch their product. If the survey goes bad, lucky them! they’re only out of the survey money.

But with the Internet we can spy on our prospective markets right from or home and for free.

Please do your research. I talk to too many people that build businesses on the Internet that are just not saying or selling anything and it all could of been avoided with research from day one.

Here are a few more ways to get data from your target niche

1. Go to Amazon and look up books in your niche and read all the comments from buyers.

2. Search http://blogsearch.google.com/ and search blogs in your niche. Find some with loads of comments. Those comments are GOLD.

3 . Youtube.com and read the comments posted on your target niche videos.

Now take all the data you find and study it. Soon, you will start to notice pattens. These are the same pattens your target market uses to digest information, buy stuff , etc…

Comment pattens, buying pattens, product review pattens, language pattens, etc… Armed with this data, you should be able to easily enter any market you choose and write great ads, sales letters and content.

Here is a resource for you. Google this name, "Glenn Livingston" and get on every list you can find of his. He and his wife have nailed research cold and have become very rich as a result.