I was recently inter­viewed by a print mag­a­zine about how I started my busi­ness. In it, I offered sev­eral tips and ideas on how to carve a niche in the mar­ket­place that I per­son­ally applied.

I real­ized some of these tips were par­tic­u­larly pow­er­ful. So I wanted to reprint some of my answers here for you.

If you know my per­sonal story, you know how niche mar­ket­ing played an impor­tant role in my career.

Long story short, as the child of an alco­holic I feared rejec­tion immensely, which led to a reclu­sive child­hood. We all fear rejec­tion to some degree. But for me, it was debilitating.

I wanted to over­come my fears and decided to dive into the world of sales in order to fight them head-​​on. Years passed and many fail­ures ensued until I finally became the top pro­duc­ing sales­per­son in Canada for a major For­tune 500 company.

How did I accom­plish that?

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In the com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place of the new mil­len­nium, the demand for spe­cial­ized prod­ucts or ser­vices will increase. If your site sells every­thing or to every­one, chances are that your audi­ence will not per­ceive any greater value in shop­ping from you than any­one else.

The more generic you are, the greater your com­pe­ti­tion will be since you’ve placed your offer­ing in the same ring as the Wal-​​Marts, Tar­gets, and eBays of the world.

To bor­row the fish­ing anal­ogy, some peo­ple say that going after a larger mar­ket is cast­ing a wider net. Not so. (The net is really your website.)

Rather, it’s like fish­ing in a larger body of water where there are more fish, the fish are more spread out, and there are more com­peti­tors going after the same fish you are.

Unless you are try­ing to be another Wal-​​Mart, there’s no point in com­pet­ing with them. The sheer size of such big box Goliaths gives them a size­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage — par­tic­u­larly pur­chas­ing power, both in terms of prod­ucts sold and adver­tis­ing dollars.

In addi­tion to being able to buy more ad space than small busi­nesses can, they can buy their stock at con­sid­er­able bulk dis­counts, osten­si­bly giv­ing them the lower price-​​point advan­tage against which most small busi­nesses can­not compete.

So how do you increase your sales in such a com­pet­i­tive, price-​​sensitive marketplace?

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In prac­ti­cally every major mar­ket­ing teach­ing, course, or sem­i­nar I’ve come across, I have found that almost all suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing on the Inter­net really boils down to two essen­tial fac­tors: traf­fic and con­ver­sion.

Sim­ply put, vis­i­tors and sales.

In fact, I’ve been to two-​​day Inter­net mar­ket­ing sem­i­nars and work­shops, where the first day focused on gen­er­at­ing traf­fic and the sec­ond day on build­ing sales.

That’s all well and good. How­ever, I believe there’s one more key com­po­nent. It’s one that’s grow­ing not only in pop­u­lar­ity, but also in need and impor­tance. It’s the one fac­tor on which the other two hinge. And it’s one that seems to be the least talked about.

In my career, I’ve seen the proof again and again. If you incor­po­rate this third ele­ment into your busi­ness model, chances are you’re going to see sub­stan­tial, con­tin­u­ous growth in your busi­ness — with a lot less effort than you’ve orig­i­nally thought possible.

What is it? What is this third, miss­ing element?

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It’s my wife Sylvie Fortin’s birth­day today. (Yes, she’s a Hallowe’en child! She’s dress­ing up as Lucy Ricardo tonight.) But appar­ently, she’s the one giv­ing out the gifts — or is that treats?

You see, the other day my wife held a pri­vate, closed-​​door webi­nar that shows you how to both spot and tap hun­gry mar­kets — there are a few million-​​dollar tips in there! For­tu­nately, we recorded it.

And right now, we’re releas­ing it to the pub­lic for free!

I’m proud of my wife, her bril­liance, and the knowl­edge she so will­ingly shares. And when I say her “bril­liance,” I mean it in more ways than one. In fact, it’s golden! Go check out the video below and you’ll see exactly what I mean…

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The 10 Com­mand­ments of Power Posi­tion­ing: Mag­i­cal Mar­ket­ing Strate­gies for Cre­at­ing an End­less Stream of New, Repeat, and Refer­ral Busi­ness is Michel Fortin’s ebook that brings together the art of posi­tion­ing with the sci­ence of direct response.

This ver­sion is the 3rd edi­tion with over 140,000 copies dis­trib­uted to date! This is includes third party dis­tri­b­u­tion since peo­ple are invited to freely pass the ebook around. In fact, the esti­mate is in excess of 140,000 copies in all. (It’s prob­a­bly closer to 300,000 copies if not more.)

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EDITED: The spe­cial has been extended, pos­si­bly a day or so, since I made a mis­take. (Read below for the details.)

Did you miss out on the 10th anniver­sary spe­cial I did last year, where I offered life­time mem­ber­ships to my pri­vate copy­writ­ing how-​​to site, “The Copy Doc­tor,” for just a frac­tion of the cost?

Since that time (and even to this day), I get hun­dreds of emails from peo­ple who missed out and want to know if I’ll ever do it again. I wasn’t plan­ning on it since 10th anniver­saries don’t come often.

How­ever, with so many peo­ple clam­or­ing for it, I thought about it for a while and made a deci­sion. (If you missed out, then you’re going to like this!)

I’m ready to pro­mote Life­time Mem­ber­ships of Copy Doc­tor for just $397 to a few select peo­ple, one more time, until the end of March, 2008 (end­ing in a few days). And pos­si­bly for the last time, too.

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Many copy­writ­ers often talk about tar­get­ing a niche… get­ting to know them so you talk their lan­guage and describe your solu­tion for them as though you were one of them.

I’d like to take a con­trar­ian view.

I think it’s silly to worry about tar­get­ing a “niche.”

I pro­pose that all peo­ple are the same at their core and if you are actu­ally work­ing a true mar­ket… tar­get­ing is as silly as pre­tend­ing that some peo­ple don’t eat or sleep or have sex or breathe.

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