Definition of a market

When you first start exploring the world of Internet marketing, you’ll often hear people talking about different online markets.

The best definition of a market is that it is a community of people who share a common interest in a particular subject or activity.
Often this community has its own language made up of terms and acronyms that only make sense to other members of the community.

The easiest way to understand this view of a market is to take a look at some examples:

The ‘Brides to be market’ is made up of women who are currently planning a wedding.
Their area of interest is of course – weddings.

Some examples of the language that is used by members of this market include:

FH – which is an abbreviation for future husband
FMIL – which stands for future mother in law, and…
MOH – which stands for Maid or Matron of honor

The next example we’ll look at is the online gaming market which is made up of people who enjoy playing computer games with others using the Internet.

For example their area of interest might be playing World of Warcraft which is a popular multiplayer game.

And some examples of the language that is specific to this market include: A Zerg Rush, AOE, and Squishy.

Finally lets look at the Golfers market

Their area of interest is of course golf, and some examples of their community specific language include:

Texas Wedge, Mid-Marshie and Apron

Once you understand this concept of a market as a community with its own internal language, you’ll quickly realize that there are hundreds and thousands of different markets out there waiting to be explored.    

Now let’s move on and take a look at the concept of niches.

Within every market you’ll find multiple niches.

A niche is a subset of a market that relates to a specific topic. The easiest way to understand the distinction between a market and a niche is to take a look at an example.

Members of the ‘Brides to be’ market will be interested in a wide range of topics that relate to weddings. These include:

(1) Wedding flowers
(2) Wedding rings
(3) Wedding photography
(4) Bombonieres
(5) Reception Venues
(6) Wedding dresses

Each of these topics can be thought of as a niche that will be of specific interest to members of the ‘Brides to be’ market.

Now lets take a look at keywords and how they relate to market niches.

For example, Sarah and Karen are both members of the ‘Brides to be’ market.

When Sarah sits down at her computer to explore the wedding photography niche, she enters the keyword phrase ‘Wedding photography tips’. Google then returns a list of sites that contain tips for getting great wedding photos.

When Karen uses Google to explore the wedding photography niche she enters the keyword phrase “Wedding photography pricing’. Naturally she receives a different set of results to Sarah because her keyword phrase has a different focus.

The first thing to notice here is that Sarah and Karen are both exploring the same market niche, however, they generate a very different view of that niche based on the keyword phrase they enter into Google.

A great way to think of keyword phrases is that each phrase is literally a KEY that unlocks a specific door to provide access to a market niche.

The second important thing to note is that the number of people using each keyword phrase to explore a niche varies greatly.

For example, on average 217 people per day use the keyword phrase ‘Wedding photography tips’ to explore the wedding photography niche. In contrast, only 5 people use the phrase ‘Wedding photography pricing’ to access the niche.

This means that each keyword phrase has a value based on the number of people who are using it to access a particular niche.

The keyword phrase ‘Wedding photography tips’ generates more traffic to the wedding photography niche than the phrase ‘Wedding photography pricing’.

As a result, the phrase “Wedding photography tips’ is considered to be a more valuable keyword phrase than the phrase ‘Wedding photography pricing’.

Now that we’ve discussed online markets, market niches and the role of keywords, let’s take a look at why these concepts are SO important in the real world.

A few years ago, the CEO of Noble Samurai Eugene Ware, myself and Ed Dale created the Internet Eagles project. For 12 months we worked with three complete beginners to help them create online businesses from scratch.

All three of them worked extremely hard to create their own eBooks and they all followed exactly the same marketing process.

However, the results they achieved varied dramatically.

The first Internet eagle instantly began earning thousands of dollars per month. The second internet eagle basically broke even and the final internet eagle lost money each and every month.

What we learnt from this experience is that when it comes to Internet marketing, success is not necessarily achieved by the person with the best product or the person who works the hardest.

In fact ‘It takes the same amount of time and effort to build an unsuccessful online business as it does to build a successful business’.

The biggest factors that determine whether you succeed or fail are:

(1) The market you select
(2) The keywords you target

If you get these two factors right your online business may produce an income stream that can completely transform your life.

However if you get one of these factors wrong, you’ll probably join the large number of people who make little or no income online.

In our experience, the main reason people fail is that they do not spend the time up front to do the market research necessary to check if their business idea is viable. Instead they rush in, select a random niche, target random keywords or worse – they don’t target keywords at all and then they just hope for the best. This is usually a recipe for disaster.

The people who succeed online take a very different approach. They research markets carefully, they identify profitable niches. They target specific keywords and they follow a proven plan.

At Noble Samurai, we want you to be in this second group and our main focus is to develop the tools and the training that you’ll need to build a profitable online business.

In this lesson we looked at what online markets are and defined them as communities of people who share an interest in a particular area and who often have their own internal language.

We then saw that within each market there are many niches which relate to specific topics of interest to members of a market.

Next we looked at the role of keywords and found that they are the keys to unlocking a niche. We also saw that different keyword phrases have different values depending on the amount of traffic they generate.

And finally we discussed the importance of keywords and found that choosing the right market and targeting the right keywords are two of the biggest factors in determining the success or failure of your online business.