How to Test Market for Free from Your Own Web Site

Keywords: Internet Marketing

Here’s a novel way of test marketing new produce for free from an existing web site. Maybe the idea is not so new but it’s new to me and I know for a fact it works - because I tried it out and the results were spectacular.

In a nutshell…

Recently I developed five new interlinked products which I was loath to thrust upon an unsuspecting public without some idea of their uptake potential. I looked at several online test marketing software kits but baulked at the price tags. Then I decided to undertake a little experiment. I added two new pages to www.writing-for-profit.com of which the first was devoted to Product No.1 (which co-incidentally comprises the other four) with the second page offering a free ebook extolling the virtues of the new package. Bearing in mind that this new parcel was disparate from my core produce I featured these additional pages with navigation buttons entitled ‘WHAT’S THIS?’ and ‘AND THIS?’ Then as belt and braces security so as not to confuse visitors I explained in a regular page why I was doing this by coming up front and confessing that I was test marketing.

My thinking was that I was not only adding content to my existing site but also creating stand-alone pages to tempt the search engine ‘spiders’ to locate them in appropriate new categories based on the power of my keyword selection.

In short, it worked, and worked spectacularly.

For one of these keyword phrases I ended up with TEN additional No.1 ranking spots plus dozens of complementary positions ranging from 1-30 on Google, Yahoo, Teoma, AOL, MSN and All The Web. You can evidence an example of this for yourself by entering ‘start a business masterplan’ into either Google or AOL. It should show up at No.1.

So far so good, and then within hours of being listed, came further success.

The downloads on my freebie ebook were phenomenal and continue to escalate. Orders for Product No.1 started to roll in, a trickle at first, then increasing in number.

I haven’t re-invented the wheel, but maybe, just maybe, I’ve tweaked it a smidgeon. Whatever, now I can set about developing my new web business…

Jim Green is a successful Networker and bestselling author with a string of niche non-fiction titles to his credit including ‘Starting Your Own Business’ (How To Books ISBN 1-85703-859-2) and ‘Starting an Internet Business at Home’ (Kogan Page ISBN 0-7494-3484-8 – currently ranking No.3 at Amazon.com out of 27,376 competing titles). His Masterclass Tutorial is available at

http://www.writing-for-profit.com/start-a-business.html

Posted by Angie at July 1, 2004 01:47 PM