Over the next few weeks he will be writing articles about product and membership site ideas as well as uncovering various niche markets. 

When I first started my online business venture I really struggled for product ideas. No matter how hard I tried I kept coming up empty. 

Man I must have been blind because when your eyes are opened opportunities abound. 

In future articles I will be revealing some niche markets, relevant key words, product ideas for those markets and more... 

But as a way of introduction to these series of articles... 

Have you ever considered the similarities of your own home town and your Internet business?

I was going for a walk the other day which included walking the length of our main street. Our town has one big long street full of various shops and businesses. 

I was contemplating business ideas at the time when it suddenly struck me that every business on that street was showing me that there was a ready made market for each one of them. 

From clothes stores to newsagents to food shops and so on. Every one of those shops was a niche market I could use on the Internet. 

In fact I could build my own Internet town! 

In the real world to own or rent every shop, pay employees and stock the stores would be a financial impossibility. 

But on the Internet I can own an entire town for the cost of web hosting and domain names and I can almost entirely automate the process - WOW! - don't you just love the potential of the Internet. 

Anyway - in my musings I couldn't help thinking how similar my town was to my Internet business. 

You see, our town was built around the main highway - our big long street full of shops was right where the traffic was. 

But a few years back they decided to upgrade the highway and in so doing by-pass our town. 

The doomsayers were saying this would be the end of growth in our town. Who would come off the highway to enter our town? 

Well... a few years later and we are booming. Hey - we're better off then before. The highway goes past us and the only way to enter our town is by 2 exit lanes from the highway (one at either end of the town) 

The Internet is like that - it is the highway and when you build your Internet town you are going to need exit lanes from the highway to get people to enter in. 

This is where all of the various ideas for attracting traffic to websites comes in with the biggest of course being the search engines. 

The point being if it is possible for my town to do it then it is also possible for us to do it online. 

Anyway... Go for a walk through your shopping center and see all the product ideas you have at your disposal. 

Let's consider a baker shop for example... 

Now let's just pick one product they sell - the pie. 

I can think of a product immediately like... 1001 Mouth Watering Pie Recipes. 

You could have recipes for meat pies, meringue pies, apple pies and so on. 

AND... You could get other people to write it for you. Imagine offering a pie recipe contest in your town with $300, $150 and $50 first three prizes to the winners. 

All recipes have to be sent to you via email so all you have to do is copy and paste them into your word doc and entry requirements allow you the rights to reproduce the recipes in a book. 

For a few hundred dollars you have a book ready to go. 

OR... what about interviewing all the bakers in your town and write a book about starting a successful baking business. 

This is just from the baker shop - you could write books about cakes and more... 

When thinking of what you can do break down the 'FOOD CHAIN' 

What I mean by this is all the businesses that spring up to serve another business. 

Think about newspapers for example: 

Businesses that arise from that industry are journalists, office equipment, printing supplies, newsagents, paper delivery trucks (both those who drive them and those who make the truck), recycle centers and on and on we could go. 

I know a guy who is making a fortune making and selling photo copier cupboards... I think that's what you call them - you know the cupboard that photo copiers sit on in most work places. 

He is making money from a business in the 'FOOD CHAIN' of photo copiers. 

As I said earlier I will be writing lots of articles as well as creating my own Internet town over the course of the rest of the year. 

But if you can't wait do the following and search for product ideas.

1. Go for a walk through your own town shopping center
2. Look at all the different magazines being sold in your newsagent
3. Look through your local yellow pages and check out all of the businesses that exists

If your eyes are open you will have more then enough product ideas and niche markets then you'll know what to do with. 

© Allan Wilson. Jul. 19, 2004