This is not my usual type of blog post, so if you are a regular reader here be warned… and if you are new here don’t let it put you off. As you may know I take clients and coach them on how to get more from their blogging and social media. I’m told the depth of my knowledge is impressive, but then I’ve been around for some time, and I’ve blogged in multiple niches, some more successfully that others. You might like to read my skirmish with the weight-loss niche here. I’ve also skirted around the edges of the slimier aspects of internet marketing, and assisted clients from full on IM mode with shouty headlines into a more mainstream, successful marketing approach. I work with a diverse range of people who want to make the most of the skills that they have and develop them.
Every now and then I get approached on how to make money with desperate buyers.
So today this post is about how to approach the buyer who has a problem, who can’t sleep at night and who has money, lots of money to give to you to solve their problems. I hate desperate buying. Truly I do. We all know there’s no magic bullet, no one single thing to make something right, that it takes a bit of effort… when you target desperate buyers you are taking advantage of people unless you do it with good intent. And that can be tough because even with good intent you are still taking advantage of people who should know better.
So what are the desperate buying niches?
We’ll start with health. If you don’t have your health, well you know how much ill health impacts upon your life… If you develop one of these problems then the first place you’ll turn to is the search engine to look it up and see what you can do. If you’re smart, you’ll never look at Google results and go and visit your doctor, and I say that as a resident of the UK where we do not pay to visit the doctor. If you have to pay for medical care and attention, then you will look on the internet to see what you can find out and see if you can avoid visiting the doctor.
Desperate Market: Health
- Insomnia
- Morning Sickness
- Teeth Whitening
- Excessive Sweating
- Acne
- Psoriasis
- Bruxism (Teeth Grinding)
- Impotence aka erectile dysfunction (yes those spammers have a desperate market to tap into)
- Yeast Infection (Thrush)
- Gout
- Halitosis (bad breath)
- Nail Fungus
- Removing/Preventing Warts
- Removing / Preventing Painful Boils
- Cold Sores (recurring cold sores)
- Acid Reflux (heartburn)
- Cure Hemorrhoids
- Bacterial Vaginosis
- Sciatica
- Anxiety/Stress/Panic Attacks
- Pregnancy, Infertility
- Endometriosis
- Eliminating Tinnitus
- Eczema
- Stop Snoring
- Hypothyroidism
- Angular Cheilitis
- Restless Legs
- Premature Ejaculation
If you have any of the above on a regular basis then you’ll want some answers, and you’ll want the solutions. The worse the problem, the more you are likely to pay for a solution. I spent £1,000 one year on insomnia issues, the lack of sleep was killing me. The solution? Get my ADHD daughter some hypnosis for children, insomnia almost cured for just £10.00. I now go to sleep around midnight and not 4am. But I have lavender pillows, memory foam mattresses and crystals hanging from my curtain track… As you can see from my list, not everything health related is serious or life threatening but it is serious to the person who has the condition. And that’s when they become a desperate buyer. They want to quick fix because they feel that when they can stop snoring they will have a better quality of sleep, focus better on their career and their entire life will be brilliant. If only they could stop snoring. They’ve probably lost a partner due to the snoring, they may miss the intimacy their relationship once had as their other half is sleeping in the spare room. And if you are early on in a relationship you may not want someone to stay over for the night, just in case. Can you feel their pain? I know I can. And when you feel pain you become desperate. Your world shrinks down to the size of the pain, you can think of nothing else. I’m not kidding you here. This is how we think. We’re no longer having our desires and aspirations marketed to but our needs.
Desperate Market: Weight Loss
- Weight Loss and all the following subsets
- Eliminating love handles,
- beer belly,
- post pregnancy weight loss,
- man boobs,
- stretch marks
Now we all know, because we’re smarter content creators, that drop a dress size in 7 days is a great headline. We also know in our hearts that a dress size in 7 days is going to take some doing. If it takes 3,500 calories to put on a pound in weight, we’re gonna have to burn at least that to drop one pound in weight. If we spend 20 minutes cycling at 11 miles per hour we’re gonna burn approx 130 calories… You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to do the maths here… that’s a huge amount of exercise to drop a dress size. Sure you’re gonna burn 1400 calories a day just by being awake, but we’re smart. We know that those pounds won’t stay off, and we know we are not buying a long term solution, we’re buying something else.
Desperate Markets: Finance
I will call any reader a liar if they say they’ve never once worried about money. At some point in our life we worry about money. We worry about paying the bills, the rent, the mortgage and other things. We worry about our jobs, our careers and we worry that we might lose all that we hold dear to us because of our problems.
- Debt Consolidation, Credit Repair
- Avoiding Bankruptcy
- Securing a Mortgage
- Preventing/Dealing with Foreclosure
- Work At Home (securing telecommuting positions, online work)
- Finding a Job (offline, resumes, preparing for interviews)
Finance and cash desperate people, where so we start? Like the weight gain that causes people issues, financial problems don’t happen overnight. They creep up upon and one morning a bill comes in and there’s no money. Instead of getting some financial and budgeting experience we look at shoving something on a credit card. I don’t have a credit card for this reason, I deal in cash because if I can see it, then it exists. Credit is money that don’t exist… my money hang-ups come from after my redundancy and the credit crunch. I can’t shift ‘em. Sure, there are positives like finding a new job and boosting your career, but financial desperation is truly a terrible one, and if we go through life with perfect health and never gain a pound in weight after high school, you can bet your life at some point you will feel the money squeeze. This niche is the worst of the lot, as its something that everyone will experience at some point and we can never truly lose the icy claw that grips our heart when a red bill comes through the letter box.
Desperate Markets: Relationships
- Get Your Ex Back
- Marriage Repair
We all feel the need for companionship, human beings are social creatures. And being part of society means being part of a couple. If you’ve been single for any amount of time you’ll know that people try and set you up all the time. Relationships and managing them is another lucrative niche. We’re conditioned from an early age to feel complete when we’re with someone else. Making good with relationships is possibly the least sleaziest of all the desperate markets we are looking at and exploring. But like health has weight loss, relationships has dating…
Dating
- online dating,
- approaching women
- approaching men
- pheromones,
- confidence,
- seduction guides
And the dating niche is utterly deplorable as it preys upon someone’s loneliness to extract cash from them. These are the most common desperate market places out there, and every person reading this post will have experienced one of them at some point in their life.
So how do we approach desperate buyers?
- Start with a keyword rich domain name and create a niche site.
- Write quality articles with your buyer in mind and develop good quality products.
Did you notice I mention quality here? In the past I’ve shared how to use experts to create stronger content. Create content that you would want your mother to read, and create a site that you can show your family, even if it is about dating. Put your name and your face on the site, and share your story. I’m telling you this because you will want to stand out from all the crummy sites out there, and no one wants to attach their name and face to a site about erectile dysfunction, especially if they are male. You need to take a step beyond the stock photo. Understand that your readers will not be with you for life. That you will struggle to build a community, sure some people are open about their issues but the other 99% will lurk and talk behind the scenes.
Readers will move on once their problem is solved. So if you are in the credit repair business you need to remember that you will need a constant stream of traffic to sell your products, and they only way you will get referrals is by having a great product that works. You will need to continually list build, and you will have a high drop off rate. If you don’t then you are not solving the readers problems and you’re just scamming them. Harsh? yes. True? yes. The truth about marketing to desperate buyers is that it’s incredibly tough, and you will need to be creative and you will need to be constantly innovating – and that’s hard work! It will never be a truly passive income.
Sarah PS Yes, pain might sell more and making your readers hurt might make sales… but… 30% of people are now immune to pain based marketing. The internet is educating them and removing their fears. It’s time to learn a new way of marketing to people with problems.
[Contributed by Sarah, Content Creation Expert at Sark eMedia.]
