What would you say is UNIQUE about your business online?  Why would customers come back again and again to you?

One of the most important steps to take BEFORE setting up a WordPress website is to identify a business niche that is UNIQUE and is driven by one of your PASSIONS! Choosing a market niche and making your business model unique can be compared to giving one of your best friends–let’s call her Sally — in your life a personalized gift for her birthday. One of the reasons why you are able to give Sally such a personalized gift is because you took the time to get to know her ahead of time and you knew what was valuable to her. You knew that Sally is the type of person that loves personalized gifts, instead of a simple gift certificate to Wal-mart

Your main goal though is to choose ONE of your passions and then put a plan of action together to prove your ideas among your target market – just like meeting a new person for the first time and you want to know what you have in common so you “test the market” and ask him/her some questions about what they like.

Some questions that are answered as you prove your ideas within your target market are:

• Are people willing to pay what you’re asking?
• Is what you’re offering unique?
• Are there a number of ways customers can get the same product elsewhere?

Check this video out from the Stanford’s Entrepreneurship Corner. It think Guy Kawasaki shares some awesome marketing advice.

Now that you’ve watched the video above here are some steps and tips that I use as they relate to the video that you can use to refine your passions and find a unique market niche to make money with on the internet.

Brainstorm a List of Passions

Take some time to brainstorm the types of books you love reading, the places you visit, the conversations you have with friends, the hobbies you have, the buying habits in your life and so forth. This first step I am focusing in on dumping all my thoughts out on paper without reservation – no holding back

Help with Choosing a Profitable Passion

To choose a profitable business passion to promote  sift through the list of passions you have and research them to prove which one has the highest demand, lowest competition and people are already paying for the product/service you are about to sell on the internet. The path to making it easier to making money on the internet is found in discovering what people are ALREADY PAYING FOR and then put yourself between the customer and the product/service. In essence you’re setting yourself up as the opportunity presenter, and for your efforts you’ll get paid if you do it right. If you’re wondering where to research what is selling on the internet as it pertains to your business passion you can go to Amazon, Craigs List, Google, market specific blogs, forums and so forth.

Here are some questions that I have found helpful to determine at this point which three passions to begin researching:

1. Which ones do you find yourself naturally learning about on your free time?
2. Can you visualize yourself working day in and day out within this area of passion?
3. Does this passion bring the best out of you?
4. Are there a lot of questions you have within this area of passion that I would LOVE learning about?