Many people say: I want to start an online business but I have no clue how. It's important that you pick something that does not have a lot of competition. For example, if you want to create something to compete with Amazon.com, although ambitious, may not be the best idea.

How do I find a product?: There are many tools available to help people research the online market. These tools are listed below with a brief explanation.

Overture's Tool : This allows you to see the amount of searches per month people do on yahoo!, Ask Jeaves, and MSN. It does not contain information for Google.com.

Checking GoogleAs you will read in the marketing portion of this tutorial, Google is concerned with links to your website, from other websites. One way to see the amount of links your competition has is using a command in the Google search bar. For example, if you wanted to see the check the competition for "Cheap Bird Cages", in Google you would type in the following: allinanchor:"cheap bird cages" . Make sure to do it exactly shown. Then, look at the result. In this case, it says: "Results 1 - 50 of about 27,300". That would be considered lower competition for a true SEO marketer. You can play with your product to get an idea of competition. Remember that if you focus on an area, like Denver, your results will be much lower. For example, "San Diego Hospital" would be much less competition that "Hospital".

There are many other things you can do to reasearch your market. Remember, don't feel like you have to invent something. If you have a business already, think about taking it online. Or, if you have written a book, that could be your product. Hireing a good marketing company and web design firm will help you achieve your goals."