Yesterday we covered a brief outline of some of the fundamental ways you might make money on an ongoing basis.
If you didn’t see that post you can read it here.
One of the other important things you need to do-if you want to keep making money on an ongoing basis-is to be alert to trends.
Every niche has seasonality, but also has trends which occur from time to time where new possibilities surface.
As an example in our own experience we became aware some time ago of the extreme importance of video. At that time very few people made videos simply because they were difficult to do.
We started learning how to make videos for use on our own sales pages and we saw increased revenue as a result!
Beyond that we also saw an opportunity to make video creation easier for everyone else.
That means we noticed a trend, learned to take advantage of it ourselves and then turned it into a revenue stream.
You can do the same in whatever niche you may be involved in!
If you keep an eye on news items related to your niche and check emails of newsletters that you may be subscribed to you can often get a heads up about new trends before the general crowd notices the same.
As we explained yesterday being ahead of the curve allows you to put yourself ahead of the late-comers who join in well after a particular new technique has become commonplace. A little research done on a regular basis and an awareness of developing trends can pay dividends.
But what about having that kind of “trend” research come to you, rather than having to do a lot of work every day?
Personally I find Google Alerts quite useful: https://www.google.com/alerts
Example Uses:
- Add your own name to an alert – if anyone is talking about you on the web you’ll find out!
- Add your product or site name to alerts – you’ll see any discussions about them.
- Here’s an interesting one, add the name, product or website of your competition. You’ll learn a bit about what they’re up to. If they’re up with the latest trends you’ll find out as soon as Google does!
- Add in keywords related to your main topic (video creation in the example we mention). Discussions related to that keyword will pop up in your alert notifications.
There’s more you can do, of course, but once you start using alerts you’ll find you get timely information – you just have to act on it.
