The Internet is LOADED with opportunity for those who want to start their own online business today! The only thing that seems hard to find is where to start.

Too many beginners start out like a butterfly. They go from program to program as the butterfly moves from blossom to blossom. Like the butterfly, they never land in any one place for very long. Do you know that the average lifespan of a butterfly is 20 - 40 days?

To be successful you need to be more like the tiger. The tiger moves with purpose, focused on his prey to enable a lifespan of 10 - 15 years.

By remaining focused on your prey you stand a much better chance of a feast as opposed to a snack.

Focus is fundamental to success! Without focus your vision becomes blurred. Eventually you become blind.

Too many of us find all those large packages of products, you know the ones I'm talking about, and download all the free ones we can find and buy all those we can afford.

This is our first mistake! Don't look for products; look for markets. Once you have identified a market, the product will come.

How do we find a market? With a little practice, and a lot of focus, it isn't all that difficult.

Just think about your own life. What are the things you want? What are the things that bring you happiness, wealth, health, gratification, or whatever? Would others be interested in these things? Ask them!

With just a little effort you can find out how many people share your interest.

Let's pick 'bird watching' as an example.

If you go to http://www.google.com and type in bird watching : forum in the search bar and click the Google Search button you will find 167,000 links listed to sites

Pentagon Slams Leak Of Afghan War Reports
WikiLeaks' publishing of secret intelligence reports has done severe damage, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday, noting that his department would aggressively investigate how it happened. Adm. Mike Mullen said the group's founder may already have the blood of a soldier or Afghan family on his hands.

Dan Brown Wants You To Tell Him Where To Go
In "Dan 3.0," the popular video blogger will ask his Web viewers what he should do with his life. And every day for the next year they'll be able to vote on the suggestions. "I have no freaking idea," what will happen, he says.

This gives us plenty of opportunity to visit and see what these bird watchers are talking about and what they are looking for. I haven't researched this, but I imagine it is a safe bet that birding binoculars are a hot topic. Have you ever seen a birder without binoculars?

Now type "birding binoculars" (enclosed in quotes) into the search bar on Google.com and we see that their are 9,480 listings of sites that deal with "birding binocular" in some way.

Now we need to know how many people are looking for information about "birding binouculars". Go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ and type in birding binouculars. The results show 19,390 searchs were made for birding binoculars in May 2004. That means that the ratio of searchers to sites (potential customers) is 2.05 (19,390/9480).

We have just closed in on our prey by remaining focused on a market (bird watching), not a product (birding binoculars), and we are nearly ready to pounce like the aggressive tiger marketers that we are.

I will expound on this focused research in Part 2 of The Online Businessperson Butterfly

(c) 2004 - Michael Dixon - All Rights Reserved

Michael Dixon is struggling to become an overnight success (after 18 months in online marketing) at http://www.insaneinternetincome.com?acy and is the editor of the free "Whacky Weekly" newsletter. Subscription form is on the home page.

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