Just as you have the number of days in a row that you’ve abstained from something, something that’s useful, especially for something like Engineering, is counting the number of days in a row that you’ve studied. I don’t know how this’ll work in practice, but yeah, it’s worth a try. Like I know now, you just can’t cram Engineering. Anyway, enough rambling.

On the way back home, I was waiting for my train at Melbourne Central. There was 7 minutes until the train was coming and I was contemplating whether I should go back to the ATM to buy some credit for my prepaid phone. In the end, I didn’t, which was stupid since that meant I had to call reverse back home again in the sam week. It’s like $5 a call or something like that and because I don’t pay the bills, this isn’t good.

So this is the niche I’m talking about. Let’s see if it satisfies Travis Sago’s criteria in his Bum Marketing Mindset:

1. Mind Share: People are desperate to call home, they’ll be thinking of ways to call back somehow.

2. Emotional Temperature: Again, desperate to call back, dreading walk back home in the dark (fear of darkness/being jumped). Or dreading walk back full stop (fear of exercise).

3. Talking about it: Not sure about this one, but the service in Melbourne is 1800Reverse and it’s pretty much the go-to service if you’re out of credit or whatever. As the ad first showed, I’m sure it took off in popularity and it spread by word of mouth.

4. Paying Money: People who are desperate to get home will pay a reasonable amount to make sure they can do so. What’s better, a $20 taxi fare or $2 for a reverse phone call that you might not even pay?

5. Who else is promoting it?: Are there affiliates promoting this offer around? For something like this, there’s probably no affiliate program. I’d say they focus more on word of mouth. But I think there’s a similar thing on Clickbank which has affiliates swarming all over it.

6. Disposition: Will they resort to a higher authority? For this sort of service, it doesn’t really matter for a few reasons. They are pretty desperate. A call is a call and if it means that they can talk to the person they want to talk to, that’s all that matters. 2: there is not much competition for this over here in Australia, so as far as we’re concerned, 1800Reverse is the “official” reverse phone call service.

The purpose of this post is primarily for me to start getting my marketing mindset in the right gear so I can find more desperate niches to work with. Hopefully this has helped you too if you’ve read this post to the very end.

The frequency of my AM epiphanies has dropped somewhat I guess as I result. AM is still on my mind a lot of the time; it’s just mainly things like how much I’d rather be doing that than what I’m doing at uni atm.

I can’t really remember where I had today’s epiphany. I was reflecting on a recent email I received from Colleen Slater, aka 60 Minute Affiliate. She’s started promoting her own get your ex back type product. If you’re familiar with the industry, you would know one of the undisputed leaders of this niche in particular is Travis Sago, the original Bum Marketer. His product, The Magic Of Making Up, dominates Clickbank and has a huge as gravity, mainly because he helps affiliates make their first sales or a decent income supposedly with it.

The main epiphany was in the fact that there are several products on the market that are successful and that will help people solve their problems. Why are AMers wasting so much time and effort competing with each other, trying to get their product on top? If it works, it works. The main thing is to help people. I guess that was a more holistic and humane epiphany.

The more marketing related epiphany was the fact that there is only one audience but several products. You shouldn’t let yourself get caged into only promoting one product. Start off with one to test the waters and acquaint yourself with the niche. Once you get it  going, look for subniches that might branch off your niche that need their problems solved and address those problems.

It should never be about the product. It should be about the problem and the people. That’s why people can just create a product like Colleen Slater has. I guess my first epiphany is helpful in putting your head in the right place when you’re going about promoting your stuff on your blogs and what not. Don’t promote the hell out of a product. Focus on the people, focus on the problem and let the vendor’s sales pages do the talking.

I guess I really do need this break away from AM, just because it’s helped me to greater appreciate Marketing in general. I love seeing things from a new perspective.