Blind leading the Blind

Hi Nasrat,

It is next to impossible to make sales on the web if you don't have credibility or credentials. And while is it admirable that you wish to learn marketing, if you don't know much about it -- it will be hard to sell products based on marketing. You can disagree with that statement if you want, but based on my experience, it is true.

What can you do? I don't know -- only you can answer that, but if I were going to market anymore informational products on the web, I think I would choose a niche market that has a LOT of room to grow. I would write about something I KNOW about. Let me give you some ideas about what I might do, and see if it inspires some ideas in you.

Our family business is MacLellan's Cottages located on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Every year a few thousand tourists come to this area to vacation on the beach, do a little fishing, site seeing, clam digging, bird watching and hunting in the Fall. Every year we get the same questions:

• Where can I fish and get bait and supplies?
• How do you dig clams? How do you cook them? What tools do I need?
• Where are the good hunting places? Where can I stay? Where can I find a guide? A map?

Although there are many places that rent cottages and do the Bed and Breakfast thing, there are not any websites I have seen that offer any information that answers the many questions visitors have every year. So there would seem to be a need for very general information that anyone who grew up there would know the answers to. But when you live in Chicago IL (example), and don't know these answers, how do you find these things out?

Of course you would have to test the market, to see if people would buy these type of informational products. In all reality, a large percentage may just decide they will wait and ask questions when they get there. But there are numerous websites that offer cottage rentals, etc., that don't sell any products. They only advertise their cottages. So offering these folks a commission for helping you sell (an affiliate program), might generate a good response.

In conclusion, I feel you might have better luck marketing products that are based on something you know about. I've been developing commercial websites for four years and know how to market well enough to keep myself busy and employed. But I don't pretend to have any expertise in marketing, and wouldn't try to sell information telling someone else how to do it. There are just too may people around who know a whole lot more about it then I do.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan




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