For some reason some people seem to think that all they have to do is build a site and the customers will come running. Well I hate to burst anyone's bubble but online marketing is not "Field of Dreams". You can't just throw up a site selling anything you want and expect hungry buyers to come like crazy. You've got to decide who you're going to sell to and what you're going to sell to them and you must do research on these to things.

If people aren't searching for the product you want to sell then all of your efforts will be in vain, not to mention wasted money. So how do you find out if people are searching for the product you have? Simple, just go over to http://inventory.overture.com and type something in. However, you'll have even more success if you first decide who you're going to sell to and then decide on an in demand product. For instance, I might decide that I want to sell to stay at home mothers. From there I've got several options and niche product to choose from.

Also, it's very important that you don't expect to be the next online Wal-Mart. If you think you're going to sell anything and everything on one site then I can say without a doubt that you're dreams of online success will come to a quick end. Why? Several reasons, first you probably don't have millions of dollars to spend in advertising like the mega stores. Second people who are shopping online have different expectations than when they go to a mega store like Wal-Mart.

When you're selling in a certain niche it gives the impression that you know more about you're product and deliver better quality than the guy who sells everything from hairbrushes to garbage bags. So how do you find possible niches? Well it's going to take some time and research but if you really want to succeed online then I know you won't give up. Here are four techniques that you can use to find a ton of possibilities.

First I recommend that you have a brainstorming session, get your spouse or a friend involved too. Think of everything that interests you or anything that you have knowledge about. Don’t limit yourself when thinking about these things. Don’t say, “Oh no one is interested in that”, you don’t know yet. Just write down anything and everything that comes to your head.

Second I recommend that you go to Yahoo Shopping http://shopping.yahoo.com. On the left side at the top you should see "popular categories". The links in that area are exactly what the heading says the popular categories if you sell something that's related to one of these categories you got a really good chance of being successful.

And believe it or not you can sell an information product is related to one of these categories. So when you're looking in this area don't think you have to be limited to selling a hard good product and one of these categories. Here's an example: one of the popular categories towards the bottom is called, "home and garden". You could sell a number of e-books related to successful gardening tips or something like that.

Just like it says these are the categories that are the most popular. Look carefully through all of those categories and the different things that are being sold. If you can sell a product that’s falls within one of those popular categories (weather it be a physical product or information product) then you’ve got a pretty good chance at success.

Third I recommend you go to the Clickbank website http://www.clickbank.com and browse through the site. Click on the “Promote Products” link. Remember Clickbank has two types of products, ebooks and downloadable software type products. Also remember, Clickbank doesn’t sell anything, they are a marketplace that people sell through. The products are listed starting with the most popular in each category.

Fourth got to http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html and click on the, “Hot Items by Category” Link. Even though we’re not talking about selling on eBay this can still give you some preliminary ideas for both physical and information products that are in demand.

If you follow these four suggestions you should have ideas coming out your ears. Now what you want to do is take all the ideas you have and go back to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, http://inventory.overture.com and start plugin in your ideas. I suggest that if something has less than 10,000 searches per month that you move on to something else, but that's just my opinion. I would narrow all my ideas down to 5 or 10 and then go to Google to check out what the competition is like. Good luck and whatever you do don't give up. Who knows how many people gave up just before they struck gold at internet marketing.