Google Trends is a fabulous tool for researching national and international search trends. It lets you compare search popularity of different keywords, find seasonal trends and a lot more.

Depending on the state of the world, new search terms often enter the Google Trends chart. An interesting keyword phrase that entered Google Trends recently is …

Recession Marketing

The Google Keyword Tool can get us more useful data… Here are some of the top searches that involve recession and words like business or marketing.

How do you market during a recession?

The first and most important thing is not to panic. If the sales are down, it is time to sit down and analyze your products and / or services. Find ways to make your offers more attractive. You could offer special discounts or offer additional freebies. You could create product bundles and special offers. You could also use the time to improve your products so that you will be ready to reap the rewards when the recession is over. Some of your competitors may have even disappeared by then!

This is also the best time to boost your on-line marketing efforts. Use Google Keyword Tool in combination with Good Keywords v3 to find additional keywords and use them in your web pages (or do a Pay Per Click campaign). Good Keywords v3 is a freeware (there are no sign-ups required).

Here is a screen shot demo of Good keywords v3. You can also find additional on-line marketing strategy articles at SEOLab.

We get about 3-4 emails a week from people who want to know how our software can help him or her make money. 

Typically the person wants to know how he can make make $MMMM in the next ‘N’ days using our software…

Click Here To Make Money?

Unfortunately, our software products do not have a button called "click here to make money"!

The reason for these emails is not hard to find. The Internet is full of sites promising quick money for a few hours of work each week. Many of them sell the "simple N step formula" (or whatever) to make you rich beyond your dreams in a few days!  All you need to do is buy the 78 page PDF ebook for $19.95!

Yes, it is possible to start and run a highly successful on-line business. But the sad truth is that majority of the people who try after reading these ebooks fail. This of course, makes it easy for the ebook sellers to sell even more PDF files!

If you want quick money right now…

• Find a job or if you already have one, find an extra part time job.
• Find something you can quickly sell (using eBay is also an option).
• Make a list of things you are good at. Offer your expertise to some one in your local area who may need it.
• If you have been frequenting any on-line forums, offer your expertise to the members of the forum. Do this carefully and only if the forum allows it. Many forums have an area where members can barter services.

On the other hand,

If you want to start an on-line business, do it for the long haul!

• Learn the basics – about the Internet, about websites, ecommerce and other related stuff. Do it even if you are not a techie. You don’t have to be an expert. All you need are the basics. It will come in handy very often.
• Decide on your product or service based on your core competence and abilities. Many "ebook experts" will advise you to pick your website subject based on niche keyword analysis and other "quick" step formulas. Don’t. Treat it as a proper business from the start and use your own observations, common sense and knowledge to decide what it should be about.  See "Internet Keyword Research – Are you putting the cart before the horse?"
• There are a number of ways to make money on-line. These range from selling a product or service directly, suggesting other people’s products and getting a commission (affiliate programs) or putting up advertisements on your web page and getting paid when people click on the advertisements.
• Use the web to learn more about the fields that interest you. Study the existing products and analyze the competition. You can even run trial advertisement campaigns on Google to study the market.
• Avoid any product or service that depends too much on a third party. There is nothing wrong about earning from Google AdSense, but don’t make it your only source of income. See How Vulnerable Is Your Internet Business?
• Do not jump into things you know nothing about unless you are a quick learner and can handle surprises. Some  people will advise you to sell software products after getting it developed at sites like Rentacoder. Again, nothing wrong with it, but don’t expect to get high quality software for $100! Most often, the support requirements will sink your software business in no time.
• Register a good domain name and create a website. Learn to manage the website yourself or hire some one to do it.
• There are ways to get that initial traffic to your website. Work on it and make your site grow.
• Constantly tweak and improve your products and services.

If you want to grow a successful Internet business you should learn everything about your business, your customers, their fears, their problems, solutions to their problems, your competition, their products, their support policy, and so on.

Are you into car rental business?

You should know everything you need to know about your customers – who are they? what do they look for? what are they most worried about while renting a car?

Once you learn everything there is to know, you will be able to provide solutions for existing problems and then to improve on those solutions.

Fortunately the Internet and the search engines make it very easy to research this and more. You can use Google to find your competitors, forums where your customers hang out, the problems they discuss, their opinions about your business and that of your competitors, etc.

Keyword Strategy Studio makes this process even simpler. Type in a keyword phrase and you quickly get all the top ranked sites for that keyword. Thisis what your potential customers also see when they do a search. Print out this list and then visit each of these sites. You can also right click from within the software to open the site in your default browser. Start using it today as a learning tool to find everything you want to know about your business.