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by: Dan Boudreau
Businesses arise when entrepreneurs identify wants or needs and create products or services to fill
them. This means doing ongoing market research. Here are some of the free research tools that are
easily accessible on the internet, and which are certain to make your market research easy, fast
and fruitful.
Search Engines: Search engines index billions of web pages, enabling users to find
information through keyword searches. My favourites are google.com and clusty.com.
About: Visit about.com to explore this amazing website, which offers articles by
more than 750 experts on a range of subjects. It's useful for finding information on different
topics and has a handy "See What's Hot Now" link where you can learn which questions and topics are
getting the most hits.
Blogs: These are personal journals published on the Web. Blogs include personal
reflections, opinions on a variety of issues, and usually include links to the owner's favorite
sites.
BoardReader: This remarkable service reads forums and message boards from more
than 750,000 websites. Just click on boardreader.com and enter your search words to find
information, images or videos from many sources.
Ebay Keywords: Click on buy.ebay.com/index_A-1 to discover a list of the most
popular keyword searches at Ebay. This tool helps identify how buyers are finding what they want or
need.
E-zines: Tile.net hosts many e-zines, mailing lists and related information.
EzineArticles.com is one of the largest collections of articles from more than 150,000 expert
authors.
Google Trends: Housed at google.com/trends, this service enables you to plug in
key words or topics and instantly pull up charts and graphs showing broad search patterns and links
to the relevant websites and articles that drive them.
Google Insights: This site at google.com/insights/search/# enables you to search
terms and topics and filter by country, region and timeframes. It produces a map showing the
regional hot spots for your topic, as well as lists of related search terms.
Google Groups: At groups.google.com you can search through existing group
discussion forums or easily set up your own groups for topics of your choice.
MediaFinder: This website claims to be the world's largest database of U.S. and
Canadian magazines, catalogues, newspapers, newsletters and journals. Click on mediafinder.com and
use the keyword search box to locate media for topics you wish to research.
Yahoo Answers: At answers.yahoo.com you can find out what questions are being
asked for a range of categories, along with answers provided by random contributors. You can also
ask your own questions and provide answers to others' questions, making this an opportunity to
network and be recognized as an expert in any given area.
These tools will strengthen any market researcher's toolchest, and they can be easily accessed from
the Market Research SpringBoard. Whether you're looking for business ideas or researching an idea
you already have, the resources above are sure to get results, quickly and at little or no cost
accept your time.
About The Author
Dan Boudreau makes business planning achievable, fast and fun. Want to learn more about how to do
your own business plan? Subscribe to the RiskBuster Newsletter and instantly download a free copy
of Dan's popular fast-track business plan template at http://www.riskbuster.com/letter/do-it-yourself-business-plan
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