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Sterling: This is Internet Business Mastery, episode 75.

In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind. Where inspiration seems dead and cynicism rules the masses. You have a desire to break free you feel the need to take control. Now, there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!

Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business online at Internet Business Mastery, I’m Sterling…

Jay: And I’m Jay….

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business even if you’re just getting started today.

On this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we revisit the topic of selecting a profitable niche for your internet business, part one. Plus in the Quick Tip, two awesome and free tools for recording and editing your audio content.

And we’d like to remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart on creating your own profitable internet business using our proven system, claim your risk free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to FreeAudioGift.com.

So Jay, what’s been going on the last week or so?

Jay: Well, I stepped out of my comfort zone a little bit here. I’ve had something on my life plan list that I wanted to do for a while. I’ll tell just a quick little story here, a couple weeks ago my wife was out of town, I was looking for something to do because I was going stir crazy being all alone in the apartment.

I went over to the theatre pub, there’s a bunch of cool theatre pubs here in Portland owned by a company called McMenamin. And they were having a short film documentary night, and it was really cool. For a couple of hours, they were showing all these films that local people had made on a variety of topics.

And it turns out it was being put on by a non-profit organization called Northwest Documentary. And they teach classes, and then three times a year that one of the classes that they teach is this short documentary…how to create your own little documentary. They’ve got equipment you can rent, and then at the end of…I don’t know if they call it a semester or whatever, at the end of the ten-week course they have the theatre pub let them go and show everybody’s films there.

So after seeing that I was like wow, that was really cool. I’ve always kind of wanted to make a short film; I need a new creative outlet. Maybe I’ll do that sometime, but I guess the other piece this ties into another piece of news because it was like well, I was probably going back to New York here soon. On that note, actually we’ve decided to stay in Portland for another year for a variety of reasons. One is we still really like Portland and we know we can go back to New York soon enough, so as soon as we decided to stay here in Portland, I thought maybe I should take that class. And so I called them up, and there was like one spot left they said if I wanted it.

And so I decided fast, and I was like nervous about making the commitment, I don’t know what it is. Part of it is maybe the time commitment, because I know that film can be a time suck. But I guess…I mean I’m very comfortable in internet business, I’m very comfortable in say, making music. But when it comes to like creating a film, I mean it’s only going to be a five or ten minute film, but still. I’m like wow, that’s out of my comfort zone. But it’s been on my life list so I thought, you know what? What better way to force me to do it than to sign up for a class.

So I start tomorrow night as of recording this episode right now, and in about ten or eleven weeks here I’ll have my film debut at the local McMenamin’s mission pub theatre here in Portland. So we’ll see how that goes, but it just reminded me of taking those little leaps that you take in business. It’s the same for any new thing that you want to do in life, and so it’s just interesting as I gave her the credit card and hung up it was like, holy cow, what did I just get myself into!

But off I go, we’ll see how it goes.

Sterling: Well I know that you had all this extra free time, and it’s gone now. I’ll tell you, film making – it’s one of those things that you might not see the light of day for three days when you’re editing, or when you’re writing and creating, and production. It just took me back when you said that, it was like oh my gosh! Because I’ve made several short movies and man they just took over. Especially when you’re getting to be creative and it’s your baby. Suddenly every second that you can give to it you will.

Jay: Now watch me outsource the whole thing to the Philippines.

Sterling: That would be awesome!

Jay: They’ll be showing my film and be like, “Wait a second! That’s not in Portland! What?” I’ll find out tomorrow night what the parameters are, but that would be pretty funny. It’s like oh yeah, I actually outsourced the whole thing. Of course that would defeat the purpose of actually having a creative outlet and making something of my own, but….

Sterling: Yeah, the creative part for you is just coming up with the idea. You’re like oh, I want this, go do it.

Jay: Go do it…and weeks later, good documentary guys! Now I’m going to go show it and take all the credit for it. So yeah, that’s all my news.

Sterling: That happens from time to time in the normal film business.

Jay: Yeah, that’s true. I guess it would be right in line. So I know we talked about even doing some body boarding and some surfing, and other things. What else has been new in your life?

Sterling: Well actually business wise, the big thing that we dealt with this last week was we decided to hire a traffic, or marketing manager. Any friend that I told we were going to do that, they were like, “What’s that?” They’d never heard of a traffic manager or something. And I said, “Oh this is something we made up, we wanted…” and really what it was – in discussing and trying to keep a lifestyle that we enjoy, but also wanting to spend more time adding more content and value to the Academy.

It finally made sense to actually hire somebody, not just a Virtual Assistant. Like we’ve got several Virtual Assistants and freelancers that work for us, but somebody that actually works near one of us that we can speak to, give tasks and have them actually go and manage. And in this case, we’re going to have somebody that just deals with drawing traffic and also tracking and conversion stuff for us.

And first order of business, today when we’re actually recording this, is his first day. And he’s going to be coming here to my home office, we’re going to chat, and he happens to be a master body boarding person.

Jay: Nice.

Sterling: So he’s going to take me out and give me some lessons. That’s the first order of business!

Jay: Before we drive more traffic…let’s go hit some waves.

Sterling: You’ve got to get that out of the wayright?

Jay: Yeah, I see.

Sterling: That’s actually some really big news, because trying to keep the lifestyle, all these ideas we have that we want to do for our business, but there’s just not enough time to do it. So at some point when you get to a certain level you have to say, is it worth this investment to actually have somebody doing this for you? And of course, we’ll see. We’ll test it for a few months and if the return on investment that we put out there is worth it, then we just keep going with it.

I’m really excited to see how it works, because believe me – it never gets old giving people the work that you don’t want to do. This is the best way to say it.

Jay: Yeah, well I’m excited about it as well. I mean it’s an investment obviously of money for us to make, but when you start sensing that you’re hitting a growth ceiling, you just have to put yourself out there. It reminds me of when I went to quit my job, or when I went to move to New York and all these…I think we even talked about this in the last episode. But really, that nervousness of we made the decision and plunged in and found somebody, I’m really excited to see what comes of it.

So I guess we’ll be reporting back about that more here on the episodes and stuff. Let me know how the body boarding goes, and most of all let me know how the marketing managing goes too. We’re excited to see what happens there.

Sterling: Yeah, I’ll definitely keep everybody updated with that. And now we want to go to one of the biggest questions we’ve had with this whole internet business thing, and a fear that people have. So let’s go into the featured segment on that.

And now the featured segment….

Jay: Alright, we’ve got some awesome stuff for today’s featured segment on the episode as we mentioned, we’re going to be talking about niche selection. And the reason we chose to do this is because we know this is probably the top issue that holds people back from diving into their internet business.

They feel like well, I’m not sure what my business will be about, what’s the niche I should go into with my site, and my products, and things like that? It’s a topic we’ve talked a little bit about before, and we certainly have a whole course on it in the Academy as well. But it’s been fresh on our mind, especially with starting the platinum program. We had an hour call with all the platinum people and a chance to talk with them about their niches and just to hear first hand what some of the worries, and concerns were about niche selection.

And we could tell that people were building this up to be a lot more of an issue than it really needed to be. And so here in the next two episodes, we’re going to be going over some of the criteria mindset, and kind of diving into that more, and even some new stuff that we’ve been thinking about. In fact, in this episode some of this is brand new stuff that hasn’t even made it into the Academy yet. And if you had to ask us what our top criteria were for choosing a profitable niche, well that’s what we’re going to give you here today on this episode free of charge.

We’re going to tell you what our top criteria, if you can hit these three or four criteria, it’s a big green light for you to go ahead and dive into a niche that you’ve got on your list there. So with that, let’s go ahead and talk about what these top criteria are. First and foremost, especially since the model of business that we’re talking about, it’s content marketing. You want to have some fresh things to say, you want to have your personality in there, this is a very long term business strategy that you can take to the bank for the rest of your life.

You want to make sure it’s something that you’re actually going to enjoy doing, enjoy learning about, enjoy keeping up on, enjoy teaching about, enjoy making content about. So the number one question is, are you passionate about the niche? Are you passionate about the topic? Is it something – whether it’s a hobby or a vocation that you have, or a long time skill that you’ve worked on, or whether it’s just something that you’re interested in getting going on now brand new. Just ask yourself – is this something that I’m passionate about, that I really want to learn about, and that I can see myself being interested in even for in four or five years. Is that something I still might be interested in?

Sterling: Yeah, and you know one of the things I was going to mention too, and I get this question from time to time – there are two ways to do the internet business thing the way that we talk about it. Now number one is what we call the head of the tail, which is what we’re talking about here – a passion business. A business that you’re passionate about, that you’ve got that interest and passion behind it to be able to create the content you’ll need to create and that kind of thing. And it’s all about finding the things that will fulfill you, and that’s what you want to be a part of.

And that’s what we teach here at Internet Business Mastery and at the Academy as well. And then there’s another way of doing this particular business too, which is called the long tail. And I guess the head of the tail and the long tail we discuss in the Academy, but it’s based on a book by Chris Anderson. Chris Anderson, I think it’s actually called “The Long Tail,” but the long tail part of this kind of a business is just where you pick niches that could just make you money or niche only as opposed to being passionate about the idea.

And again, what that is is just picking something that you want to make money with, but it doesn’t mean that you have to have an interest or a passion at. And there are people that teach that, there’s quite a few people that teach just the ‘niche only’ part. But for us, we just happened to be the type of people that we have to really love what we do. And part of the reason of not being at a regular business or a regular job is because we wanted to be a part of something that we were absolutely passionate about, we found fulfillment from, and it helped us with our purpose in life basically.

So that’s what we teach here, and again sometimes people go, “Oh, I might be afraid of being the head of the business,” or a lot of people just teach, “Go find any niche that’s going to make you money,” and I just wanted to say which one we do. We do the passion business, that’s what this particular criteria is going to be about is passion, and stuff to make sure the niche is also viable as well as you’re passionate about it.

Jay: Yeah, it’s also called like the expert model versus the publisher model, and when you come to the publisher model, all these little niche sites. It’s more about throwing a whole bunch a whole of stuff against the wall, it’s more a numbers game in a way. And sometimes it’s like jumping on ‘flash in the pan’ kind of niches, you can ride for a little while and you’ve got to have your other things constantly coming into the pipeline as well.

And sometimes one of those will take off, and you can ride it for a few years or something. But for all the reasons Sterling just said and because there’s like this long term equity in your business, we like become the brand, build up the community – because that’s the kind of thing that’s not a ‘flash in the pan’ or you just ride it for a few years. You can ride it for many, many, many years to come. But obviously that takes a certain level of passion to do.

So that’s the number one question – are you passionate about the niche, or could you be?

Sterling: Of course, that’s the other side of it.

Jay: Could you see yourself being passionate about it? Okay, so the next question you have to ask yourself is…I mean obviously in choosing a niche, you’re choosing a target market. You’re choosing a certain kind of person that you’re trying to reach, a certain kind of person you’re going to do business with, a certain kind of person that you want to attract to your products, and services, and content. And those people consist of your target market.

So does the target market have either an urgent pain, or do they have an irrational passion? So you need to ask yourself – do they have an urgent pain, something that they urgently want to solve, or are they irrationally passionate about something? And in both cases, the key here is it’s based on emotion. These are people who have an emotional need or an emotional desire, an emotional want going on that they’re making their decisions based on.

So a couple of examples – one example of irrational passion would be golfing. People are mountain biking, so lots of little sports of hobbies are irrational passions, or particular causes people are irrationally passionate about. If you just think about the things that you’re really into and people are so passionate about something – they’ll continuously seek after new stuff, new information. They’ll continuously be into spending money on the latest thing – Mac users, Apple fans, iPhone fans – these people are irrationally passionate about….there’s people out there who always have the latest coolest thing from Apple.

And Apple does a great job of building up that irrational passion in their consumers. You could find a market that has that kind of irrational passion; it’s a very powerful thing. Golfers are always looking to shave one more stroke off of their score or to have the latest coolest clubs that they can take to the clubhouse and all their buddies will see them and go, “Wow!” shiny, new, awesome, and impress your friends. I mean it goes down to the basic fundamental desires that we all have – the desires to have recognitions, the desires to succeed, the desires to be happy and secure, and free.

So is there something that ties into one of those emotions and the broader umbrella being irrational passion? An urgent pain – something that comes to mind for instance, there’s a platinum level client that I’m working with in my new platinum media group and she works with pregnant women who have been put on bedrest. So basically their doctor has said okay, you’ve got to stay in bed for the next three months or you’re going to lose the baby that you’re carrying.

So obviously when you’re put in that position, you’ve got an urgent pain – all of a sudden…if you have other kids, maybe you’ve still got…first of all, maybe you have a job and it’s like okay, how am I going to handle that? And maybe you have other kids you’re taking care of, and how am I going to handle that? And how am I going to take care of my laundry and….and I’m stuck in bed, and I need exercise. How am I going to take care of that?

And she had been through this experience and she said, “As soon as I was put on bedrest, there was all these urgent things I had to get taken care of, and I couldn’t get good support and services, and information on how to take care of those things. And I’m dealing with heartburn as a pregnant woman, and how do I take care of that?” So those are urgent pains, there’s a good example of one of those.

What other things come to mind for you Sterling?

Sterling: Well, even Internet Business Mastery, if you’re in a ‘9 to 5’ job that you absolutely hate, that’s a pain that you have. And even people who are just like, “I want to maybe add $1,000 a month to my income, and I want to create something that brings that in without working a second job outside of the house,” that’s yet another pain. So if you have those pains, then you go looking for a solution.

Jay: So you’ve got to ask yourself – does your market have an urgent pain or an irrational passion? And all the time people come up to us and say, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got a great idea for a business, and I’m going to offer this thing and it’s going to be red, and it’s going to come in five sizes,” and they name it off. And then I immediately go, “Okay, who’s the target market for this?”

And they usually tell me, “Okay, it’s probably middle aged women who live mostly in Middle America,” actually most of them usually haven’t even thought about it that much. Let’s say they do and they have a description, they’re like, “Probably people who are x, y, and z.” And I go, “Okay, and are they experiencing an urgent pain or are they irrationally passionate?”

And sometimes people are like, “Well, I don’t know. I mean maybe…” and so it’s an extremely important question to ask yourself.

Now the next thing is, let’s say the answer is yes; there is an urgent pain and/or an irrational passion. Then you have to ask yourself, well is the market proactively searching for a solution? Are they aware of that urgent paint or irrational passion? I mean it might sound funny, but sometimes people have an urgent pain, but for whatever reason they’re not really looking for the solution to it, or they aren’t looking for your solution to it.

And it goes back to something we talked about in the past of like needs versus wants. I mean you might have something like oh, everybody needs this, or all those middle-aged women in Middle America, they need this product or service. But the question is, do they really want it? Are they actually looking for it, because they have this urgent pain or irrational passion? They’re aware of it, and they’re out there looking for the solution for it right now.

Because if you’re market’s not actively looking, then you’re going to have a hard time getting their attention, and you’re going to have to talk them into the fact that they actually want what it is that you’re offering. So ask yourself – is this just a need or is it actually a want? Is there that desire, and are they out there actually looking for the thing to fulfill that desire?

Sterling: Yeah, there’s a couple of things that people ask me that are usually big warning signs when they’re talking about their business. And if I ask them first I say, “Who’s looking for your solution?” And they say, “Everybody,” they get a big ‘X.’ FAIL – no, that is not true. Or if I say, “Is your market looking for this solution?” And if they say, “This is something they need. They should want this.” That’s the other kiss of death – they should.

I say if you have to teach them that they need what you want to sell them, then you’re very, very likely to fail. You want to find people that are already waiting for a solution and you just swoop in and give it to them.

Jay: And I guess a good example, I’m trying to think of a way to illustrate. Let’s take Internet Business Mastery as an example, and there’s a lot of people out there who hate their ‘9 to 5’ job and they want out of it. And that’s an urgent pain, they hate their boss, or they hate that they don’t have enough time to spend with their family, or they hate all the overtime they have to work.

It’s a huge amount of people who are out there in that situation, urgent pain going on, right? But how many of them are actually are looking for a solution? I mean sadly a lot of people, it’s just become the status quo of, “Well, we’re just going to deal with it”. Now thankfully there are obviously enough people who are out there who want a solution to that, who are out there looking for a solution, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a business and a market.

But that’s to illustrate the point of, there’s a type of person who has an urgent pain and maybe they’re kind of aware of it, but they’re not actively looking for a solution. I have a lot of friends and even family who hate their job, and in my opinion they could really need or listening to Internet Business Mastery, it could be very useful to them. But if they don’t actually actively want to find a solution or out there looking for a solution, I mean that’s a whole different story. To have the urgent pain, but then to actually be looking for the solution to it is a different thing, so that’s why we want to make that delineation there.

Sterling: Well, and we both know from personal experience that you can’t make them want to even if they have the pain, because believe me I’ve talked to my family and friends a hundred times about, “Well you really should start an internet business! Look at what it could get you!” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, you’re right.” And then nothing happens. And you don’t want that person as a market.

Jay: Even if it’s just to get them to think about other possibilities, whether it’s an internet business or not. Sadly, a lot of people aren’t willing to…they’re afraid of change, and they just go back to what they’ve been used to. And sadly what people are used to is the pain, and so they just continue to put up with the pain. So yeah, you have to really be digging into the psyche of your target market and just thinking about….and that leads into this number four.

So we’ve had three criteria here – number one, are you passionate about the niche? Number two – does the market have an urgent pain or an irrational passion? Number three – is the market proactively searching for the solution? And you might ask yourself, well how am I supposed to know?

And one of the best ways is criteria number four – ask yourself are you a member of your own target market? Now see, going to Internet Business Mastery – Sterling and I, we’ve both been there. We knew what it was like to have a ‘9 to 5’ job, to hate it, to be looking for something else to strike out on our own, to start a business, to specifically start an internet business, to put ourselves out there as an expert, to go into something we were really passionate about and turn it into an income stream that allowed us to have new freedom in our lives.

We had been through that process, we know what it’s like to think about what the needs, and wants, and desires. I mean we know that market inside and out because we are members or used to be members of that market in the ‘9 to 5.’ So if you want to go into the knitting sweaters market, are you somebody who actually enjoys knitting sweaters yourself? I’m imagining if you’re going to teach people how to knit sweaters, it’s something that you have done or that you’re going to learn how to do.

I mean if you want to reach out and teach…for instance we had one woman in our platinum group, she wants to reach out to human resource professionals who are hitting a plateau in their career and they want to find a way to leap to the next level or even strike out and do freelance on their own. And she is a member of that market, she’s worked for a long time in human resources, she hit that moment in her career where she wanted to take some different steps, strike out on her own, do some freelancing as a human resource expert.

So she was a member of her own target market. She intimately knew the needs and desires, and wants, and questions of that market. Now if you can’t answer yes to that….

Sterling: Yeah, meaning like if you’re picking a niche or looking at a niche that you absolutely want to go into, but you don’t or you cannot answer that first part of that question as yes….

Jay: …then you need to at least ask yourself, do I have access to this target market so I can talk to them in person regularly. Maybe you have a family member, maybe you have clients, maybe you have friends, maybe you can join a local Meetup group with that target market; a way that you can interact with those people on a regular basis. Because if you don’t know your prospect well enough, you should be talking to them…right now if you’re in a position of, “Well I’m not in my target market, and I clearly need to know the needs and wants of my market better,” then I’d say right now you need to be once a day live or on the phone talking to those people.

That’s one of the big reasons why we enjoy doing the platinum group. I mean there’s a ton of reasons why, but one of the reasons why is because we actually are live on the phone through webinars and through consultations talking to our target market. I mean we love doing the podcast, we love doing the Academy, but there’s a whole different level when we have the opportunity to talk to a focus group of our target market live.

And that’s why we’re here doing this show and sharing new things with you about niche selection, because we just got done with two weeks of talking to our target market live and in person over the phone, and it brought up all these new realizations about what their little hangups were and the things that we might be able to say to help them. And so now we’re here bringing that to the podcast episode to tell the rest of our market.

So ask yourself, if I’m not a member of my target market, can I at least get that live interaction on a regular basis with people who are in my target market?

Sterling: And there are other ways too, if you don’t have direct access, don’t be too afraid of it because there are other ways, and there’s things that we teach in the Academy too where you can survey your group by buying traffic to them, or you can even find forums where these people hang out. There’s a lot of different ways to do it, but obviously the top way of doing it is being able to have access to be able to talk through the internet or even in person to people that are your target market.

Jay: Okay, so when you do talk to your target market…and so this is still all under that heading of either being in or having access to your target market – how do you find out what their wants and needs are? Well here’s a couple questions actually, well three questions to be specific that you should ask them. Whether this is in person or this is on the phone, or whether this is through a survey or in a forum, these are questions that you should be asking and looking for the answers to and that is what are your top questions about…your one or two questions about topic ‘x’ – whatever your niche is.

You ask your target market, what’s your top question or the top problem that you’re running into when it comes to topic ‘x?’ When it comes to knitting sweaters, when it comes to dog training, when it comes to growing tomatoes – whatever the niche might be.

So number two – ask them how hard has it been to find the answers to those questions, or to find the solutions to those problems? How hard has it been? And if everyone is saying, “Oh easy,” well then, obviously then you’ve got a problem. But actually the more important reason to ask that is, the people that say, “Oh, not hard at all,” they’re not as much your target market. You want to really be listening to the people who are saying, “Oh, really hard,” or “pretty hard,” or “it’s kind of been tough.” Those are the people you really want to be listening to because not only do they have the need, they’re aware of it, but they’re having a hard time finding the solutions.

That means that they don’t have very many options available to them. So those are the people you really want to be looking for and listening to. Third question is – what would it mean to you if you found a solution to this problem? So if you ask your target market those three questions, it’s going to help you find out what those true desires are, what the hole in the market is, what it is that you can offer that it will not only make money, but it will be relatively easy to find these people and sell this solution to them, because obviously if it means a lot to them and they’re having a hard time finding the solution, and it answers one of the top two questions or problems that they have, that’s when you’re really shooting fish in a barrel, when you have your target market, and product, and service and your niche nailed.

Alright, number five – and this is an important one as well is – does your market have the income to buy your solution? And that’s another one that people come to us and they say, “Oh hey, I’ve got such and such idea, and this is going to be awesome!” And case and point, when I first decided to go into internet business, and I was looking for a niche, I mean one of the first things that came to my mind was working with musicians, working with artists – because I was a musician myself and I thought wouldn’t it be cool to teach musicians how to market themselves better, or how to make money with their concerts or their CDs, and things like that?

But what do we usually call artists, what do artists usually call themselves? Starving artists – and so that’s a market that might struggle…and I have a couple good friends that are in this market. And they do alright, but they also have that frustration of, “Man, my market never has money to buy my solution!” And that’s because they went into a market that didn’t readily have money.

Sterling: And this actually…the same thing with the starving artist, I had a friend from Los Angeles that we talked about several of his niche ideas, and one of the ones that was his favorite was helping beginning actors because he was a very professional actor, knew how to get through all those first hurdles. And by looking at it, the starving actors are starving. There’s a reason they’re waiting tables, they don’t have the money for the type of products that would make it so that he could make a living off of that.

And through some quick easy searches, he was able to see that they just didn’t have the money. As much as he was passionate about that industry, he had to go into a different direction with it because they don’t have the money. And this is a very important thing, even as you’re looking at niches that you’re very passionate about, you’ve got to be able to also answer this question, because I see it quite often when somebody’s like, “Oh, I’m going to go into this market,” and I’m saying, “Well, are they willing to pay?”

Because you can be passionate about it all you want, but if you go into a market where everybody wants to know the information, but there’s a billion sites out there that give free information and like the people just aren’t prone to paying for that information, obviously we’re trying to cut out as many ways as we can that you might fail at this. And that’s one big one; you’ve got to make sure they’re willing to pay.

Jay: Alright, so there’s five criteria for you. Number one – are you passionate about the niche? Number two – does the market have an urgent pain or an irrational passion? Number three – is the market proactively searching for a solution or an answer to their urgent pain, or something for their irrational passion? Number four – are you a member of the target market, or do you at least have access to regularly talk to your target market for understanding their needs and desires? Number five – does the market have the income to buy your solution? These are our five top criteria.

Now in the Academy, we have a whole course and we’ve even talked on previous episodes where there’s another fifteen, or sixteen, or seventeen other criteria that you can go and look at. And you know, those are nice things to look at as well just to get a nice warm fuzzy about the growth of the market, and the demand, and the competition, and some things like that.

But I want to point out something very important, some people at the beginning of this episode thought, “Oh awesome, they’re going to tell us what are the top criteria,” and you might have thought okay, we were going to tell you to go do keyword research and look for a magic number of ten or greater or something like that. And we’re going to dive into this topic a little bit more in the next episode, but the truth of the matter is, if you answer yes to each of those five questions right there, I would say that you owe it to yourself, and not only to yourself but to your waiting market – the people with that urgent pain, or the people with that irrational passion that you will be reaching out to and impacting their lives – you owe it to them and to yourself to go into the market and to at least test it right away.

To at least test it right away, and I think that’s where a lot of people get hung up, is that they’re afraid of….I understand, I’ve been there and I’ve made my huge list of ideas, and then I feel like oh my gosh, this next actual decision of which niche is going to make or break my success. And that’s just not true, the truth of the matter is is that the secret in internet business is how quickly and easily you can act upon an idea and test it out within a matter of maybe a few months.

And maybe your first time at it, it might take several months to kind of test something out. And when I say several, probably only four or five a lot of times. And you’ll get faster and faster, and the truth of the matter is now if I had to start over tomorrow, I could probably get something up and tested and know whether it was a good market within a few weeks. And so that’s why it’s important to get in there and act now, to step into the stadium, to step up to the plate and start swinging at the balls because you’re not going to hit a ball until you step up to the plate and swing.

So take those five questions, and go over your list of stuff and see if there’s one where you can tweak it in and you get an answer of yes to each of those five questions, and if you do – you owe it to yourself right now to put that idea online and start seeing if you can get some attention. Start seeing if you can traffic to that site, start putting up content and seeing what people bite and what they say, and what they want, and start serving people and talking to your market, and just get out there and start acting.

Five criteria for you, what else do you have to say about that Sterling?

Sterling: You got it; you hit it all. The owing it to yourself is a big thing, and getting over all these little number things also that you said, this ‘there has to be this many people in it,’ and all this stuff. Those are just things that usually end up being fears that you have about actually going and actually doing this thing. This owing it to yourself in the market is so incredibly important, so definitely consider that and think through that. And hopefully be inspired by that to actually do it.

Jay: And the people who succeeded in this are the ones who start now, and they just keep at it. And they just keep taking action, and keep taking action, and when they swing at the ball, sometimes they’ll hit a single, sometimes they’ll hit a double, sometimes a triple, sometimes they’ll knock it out of the park, and they’ll just keep swinging. And sometimes you have to bunt it, and cut your losses and move on, and that’s fine.

But the thing is that you keep at it and eventually one of them does knock it out of the park, and it may be your first niche, and it may be your second niche, but the point is that you’ve got to act now and in doing it. The stuff we first dabbled in when we got online, we actually don’t do those niches anymore. And part of that is because we got a better understanding now of who we are, and what we like, and what we’re fulfilled by, and what our lifestyles that we want. And part of it is we’ve tried things that just didn’t work and we had to move on and try other things.

And the funny thing is that the two niches that…I mean a couple of niches that I can think of that we’re involved in right now – one being Internet Business Mastery, the numbers by most people’s formulas and calculations, the numbers that they’re telling us, we should absolutely not do this business. And look, here we are enjoying it, doing it every day and impacting people’s lives, and making good money doing it.

Internet business – I mean it’s a crowded niche, but we found a way to make it happen. Anyway – we’re going to talk more about that next time, and in the next episode. For those that are still a little bit like, “Oh, but what if the demand isn’t…or what if the competition is too much, or what if the numbers are not quite right?” We’re going to talk about that some more, but enough said on this one, so go ahead and take those five and go through your list.

Brainstorm as many as you can, and take those five questions and analyze all the different ideas you have and see if you don’t come up with at least one where the answer is yes to each of them.

Sterling: Okay, so we don’t have any announcements this week, but we do have some breakthroughs. First we want to congratulate our platinum members on their breakthrough progress. They’ve been choosing their niches, starting to work with full time V.A.’s, and launching their new sites all in the last month. And here’s a couple of things that they’re up to. First is – Jackie – she’s having her Virtual Assistant go through her blog and pull out short tips that she can send out to Twitter.

And this is a really awesome idea that anyone listening to this episode could do, and you could put that absolutely into action right away. And actually it’s going on my list as well – go through all the blog posts and pick just one tip. And especially if you have a blog post that has ten tips, one today, one in a couple of days. You could do that all the time.

Jay: And then, just because stuff is always coming and going on Twitter, even if you get a list of like a hundred tips that you pulled out of your blogs, like you could put those out over several weeks and then even repeat. I mean that’s not the only thing you want to put out on Twitter, but if you work that into your Twitter strategy as well, I mean repurposing at it’s best right there.

Alright, we’ve got another platinum member. Today we’re bragging about our platinum members, because it’s been so cool to see the progress they’re making. But one, Sunday, she’s been having a Virtual Assistant go out and actually write her e-book for her, which is very cool. I mean typically we do our content ourselves, and we definitely have other people edit it, or other people go and transcribe it for us and post it for us and stuff like that, but we’ve traditionally created all our own content for whatever reason.

But when I heard that she was doing that I’m like you know what? I need to chat with you some and see how that goes, because that’s really something I should try out myself is….at least a rough draft of something you could have a Virtual Assistant do research and put together a rough draft and then you go and put your own voice in or whatever. Or not, just put out the thing that they write, because they’re definitely…a lot of Virtual Assistants are great writers out there.

And she said just today she’s hiring like her fourth Virtual Assistant, so it’s pretty amazing. I mean that’s like more than we have working for us. I mean we have a number of freelancers working for us, but full time Virtual Assistants, I think we only have maybe three. And so, I guess two are from Internet Business Mastery, I have one myself. So she’s surpassing us there, so that’s pretty awesome.

And then something she said recently in the forum. She said, “I’ve learned to take myself out of the equation as much as possible. I’ve learned that the quicker I let go of my ego and my need to put my personal spin on things, the faster that things seem to get done.” And I’m sure that’s something I still get stuck on.

Sterling: I was going to say, we still might need to do that.

Jay: How come I’ve got to have my fingers on everything? And then also I was just chatting with her right before we recorded this, and she’s super excited because she’s putting in all the little traffic ideas, and getting her V.A.’s working on search engine optimization and stuff, her Lexer ranking has plummeted, it’s gone from like 6 millionth ranked to now 2 million. Obviously the lower being better, as far as top traffic on the internet. There’s billions of websites out there, so that might sound like big numbers, but that’s significant. 6 million to 2 million, and I told her in no time you’re going to be in the top million.

Even if you’re in the top few hundred thousand sites on the web, it’s like you’ve got to be making money or you’re doing something wrong. So that’s very exciting, that means that there’s a lot of progress when it comes to the traffic and things.

Alright, one more I wanted to share here, and it just makes me smile as I see some of these forum posts and breakthroughs from the platinum people, because this is the talk of successful people. This is how successful people who are make things happen, this is how they talk. So Pete, this is something he said. He said, “I’ve been focusing on my mindset, I’ve been thinking of creative ways to make things happen in my life and business. I worked out a deal with my boss so that I can go in at 9:00 instead of 8:00 so that I can work on my business in the morning when I’m the most productive.”

Brilliant stuff right there. He also says, “I’ve been thinking of all the tasks that I can have my V.A. to do while I’m at my day job. I’ve thought more about my priorities in life and how I need to rearrange some so that I can reach the freedom and fulfillment that I want for myself and my wife. I thought about ways to go part time in my job so that I have more energy for reaching the freedom and fulfillment goals. I’ve thought about another niche that I want to pursue at the same time as my current one because I like the idea of diversifying, and now with a V.A. to help me it seems more reasonable. And that leads into the mindset of being an overall thinker and creator of content versus getting bogged down in the technicalities. Overall it’s great to imagine all the possibilities that are out there.”

So really good stuff, we just wanted to brag a little bit about the progress. And you know when we say brag, it’s like this is them just digging in and doing it. I mean sure we’re giving them some guidance, but I’m just really happy with the self starting, self directing action that they’re taking in their businesses and the great ideas that they’re coming up with themselves, and even stuff we’ve never done before and we’re going wow, we’ve got to ask you how to do that.

So well done everybody, thanks for sharing your breakthroughs so we can all benefit from them, and picking out some tips and being inspired by them as well.

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip….

Jay: Alright, on this episode’s Quick Tip, wanted to talk about a preferred tool for recording and editing audio. Audio is a great form of content to put out there, and kind of the tried and true thing which happens to be free and also seems to be available for PC and Mac is Audacity. You’ve probably heard us mention this before, I know we talk a lot about it in the Academy and even have some tutorials for it. And that’s spelled Audacity, it’s kind of an open source free software that you can download and use not only to record but also edit your audio content.

However, and that’s still something that we do use sometimes as well, and lots of podcasters use that. But…

Sterling: Before you go into it, I just want to say that Audacity if you’re wondering, oh does it have good quality, and what do you guys use and stuff, I actually used Audacity for the first three years of the podcast, and there’s no change in what it sounds like specifically.

The only reason I went to kind of a little bit of an upgrade was for some of the quickness of tools, but Audacity absolutely works and to prove it, we used it for many, many years on Internet Business Mastery.

Jay: Definitely. Now, in terms of…yeah, there are some tools that cost money, it might be a little slicker and have a few extra features, be a little easier to use, but it’s a great place to start. However, along those lines and just recently, I had already mapped out this episode and stuff and all of a sudden I came across this new thing by a company called Aviary. And they’ve come up with a tool called Myna. And this is actually an in browser audio editor and recorder, you don’t have to download anything; you don’t have to install anything on your computer.

You just do it right there through the browser and it’s actually pretty dang slick, I messed around with it for a little bit. I haven’t done any full production something that I post to the internet, but just the basic features. It was like wow, this actually may be easier than Audacity, and you don’t even have to install anything. So that might be something you want to check out as well, for your browser or whatever your operating system is. It should be able to work just fine for you. So that’s Aviary, and it’s a service called Myna and we’ll put links in the show notes.

But the easiest way to get to them is just to Google Audacity or Google Aviary Myna and you’ll be able to find them right away. So two tools that you can try out for recording, and editing, and producing your own audio content or podcast for your website.

Sterling: And let us know, go back to Internet Business Mastery in the comments section and let us know what you think about the new one – Myna. Now if you’d like dozens of others resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy along with video tutorials showing you exactly how we use them. To get a thirty day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit FreeAudioGift.com.

That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business.

You’ve been listening to the Iconiclass of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay! Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever, the free builders of designing your ultimate internet lifestyle! Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter! And you’ll get instant access to the life changing audio presentations, pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com! Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!