There are many crucial factors which should be always considered while planning a new online project. Many newbie internet marketers make this mistake frequently; they do not spend time in doing research and project planning. Their decision is just based on hype, they hear from somewhere that there is money in any niche; they just start running and copying in a blind manner.

Beware and stay away from this mentality….

So what we basically need while doing our research for a new project?

In a simpler sense you need to know lot of things while designing, developing a new project as well as during content preparation.

Basically you want to know (you need to research your market)

1. Age group of the audience
2. purchasing power of the audience
3. educational status of the audience

Let us take an example. Suppose you need to start a website for car insurance (you made up your mind for this, however this niche is super competitive and saturated and starting a new website in this niche is not a very good idea if you are new to this field and have small budget, this is just an example to make you understand the point) J

Now let us check which website has the Google number 1 crown for the keyword “car insurance”

Number 1: www.progresssive.com

Number 2: www.geico.com

Now let us check them one by one

Site: www.progressive.com

Page Rank: 6
Alexa Rank: 6270
Backlinks (Google): 708
Backlinks (Yahoo): 214531
Pages Cached (Google):2080
Domain Age:
Created on…………..: Mon, Nov 17, 1997
Expires on…………..: Sun, Nov 16, 2014

Site: www.geico.com

Page Rank: 07
Alexa Rank: 3702
Backlinks (Google): 676
Backlinks (Yahoo):86203
Pages Cached (Google): 1800
Domain Age:
Creation Date: 22-jul-1995
Expiration Date: 21-jul-2010

I think the data from the top 2 is sufficient to establish the competitiveness of this niche and it will be very hard to appear on first page in a short period of time. Here I am not suggesting you any niche to start with, our topic is something else from this. Now back to the topic.

So we have got some pretty impressive data, do I need something else?

Yes you do. Up to now you have just checked the competition and feasibility of a niche you wish to enter. You need more data about the 3 points which we have discussed in the starting of this article, for planning and developing your website. Ok I got it… Now how and where can I find those data?

There are many ways to research it. The simplest one is to use a website called www.quantcast.com , visit QuantCast and you can get audience data of any website on the internet.

Now in our case let us see what happens, I opened quantcast.com and entered the URL progressive.com for information.

Data you get:

1. Visits per month, people per month with daily, weekly and monthly comparison of visits.( you can know how many people use the website)

2. Which subdomains of the website, are receiving most and least traffic.( you get the data about the various segments of the website, where people are visiting and get an idea of demand)

3. The most important factor is demographics, which tells you about the percentage of male and female visitors, age group of the visitors, ethnicity, percentage of households with kids’ visiting the website, the income level of the visitors and their educational status.

4. At last Lifestyle which tells” People who visit this site are likely to visit sites in these categories” and which other website visitors go apart from the one in question.

Oh my God, now you know everything about your prospective audience. Yes now you have the power, you can now plan the design, look and feel, colors and graphics, content and all other factors of your website. The best part is, as you now have an idea of the educational background and purchasing power of your audience, now you can decide how to market your website, which offers to use and which products to sell.

I would be happy if I was been able to convey the right message to you.

So use QuantCast in your market research and make your planning better.

I do not know what your reasons to join internet marketing are, but the general thing which underlies in every new online project is to invest minimum time, effort, money and gain profits. Atleast I have the same reason when I joined the cyber world.

Like this article or have some questions, post in the comment section and I will try to reply it.

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