The first thing you need to do before starting any type of business, online or offline, is market research.

If you fail to conduct market research, you’ll just be shooting in the dark. You can’t just throw up a site, product, or build a business on the internet and expect to be earning a pile of cash. It doesn’t work like that.

So, how do you find a good market before you start working on a project? I’m going to recommend to you a tool that you should be using when you perform your research. This tool can be used for any market, and it’s used specifically to spot trends. The tool is Google Trends. You can find it at www.google.com/trends.

Google Trends will show you the “Search Volume” information for the keywords which users enter into Google. If the keyword you type in is simply not searched for enough, no data will be available to view. Google also provides numerous examples for looking at trends. On the main page at the bottom will be a list of keywords. Some are single words, others are multiple keywords together separated by commas. Separating keywords by commas in Google Trends will allow you to compare two different trends at the same time. Currently with Google Trends, you can compare up to five different keywords.

I’ve used Google Trends successfully numerous times to spot a hot, growing market. Have you?