Making easy money requires one thing. Intelligence. but please don’t be put off by that word, you don’t have to be Einstein. The way I use intelligence here is in the context of knowledge about your particular form of business interest. there are three parts to this intelligence.

Knowing your product or offer.

Knowing your distribution channel or how your market will find out about your product and how they will purchase.

These three sectors of intelligence will make anybody rich very quickly if they apply their activities to researching these three areas. Below, let me outline more specifically how this works and get away from the abstract concepts to give you concrete steps you need to take to make some easy money.

Knowledge of your offering.
If you want to make money, you need something to offer others in the form of a product or service. there is no two ways around that, unless you want to rob banks or marry money, you will have to have something that others want and are voluntarily willing to pay for.

Knowing your product comes from knowing your market. there is no point trying to sell something that has no demand. by recognizing what your market wants, you can quickly identify what products and services they may be willing to pay for.

Knowing your market.
At the conceptual level of any business, in the embryonic stages, this is where every single successful entrepreneur begins. now it is time to let you in on one of the most valuable secrets an entrepreneur can learn. To know your market you must be a customer or member of that market first. there is no better way to reveal the subtle and concrete insights you will need than to be a genuine consumer of the product you want to sell. being one gives you an intimate knowledge of the product or service from the users perspective that you cannot uncover in a thousand years of asking customers their opinions.

Many government agencies advise small business entrepreneurs to go out and find customers and ask them pertinent questions that will help them understand their market and what the customer wants. This is a major mistake. You can never really know what the market wants by asking questions of them because it is not accurate information.

So, this is my advice. even before you decide you want to sell big screen TV’s because you learned that the markup and profit is very high. Or you want to sell your own brand of insurance because you learned you dont have to work hard in this industry. make your passion your business. ask yourself, what products and services have you purchased in the recent past and how was the experience. You can genuinely answer all the questions you need to know by simply reflecting on your own experiences and perspectives. make that your business.

Finally becoming intelligent about your distribution channel.
This last intelligence sector should be established even before you decide what you want to sell and who your market is. The distribution channel to a large extent dictates many things about how successful your business will be in the first place.

To illustrate, lets say you choose the distribution channel of a stall at the local Sunday market. Immediately this narrows down your potential product possibilities and the available market. This distribution channel is the oldest on earth. A group of vendors set up stalls offering trinkets and products for sale and another group of people come to inspect what is available and make purchases.

Compare that distribution channel to a print ad. A print ad is viewed by millions of pairs of eyes and a good percentage may be viable customers. This type of distribution channel utilizes leverage. A distribution channel that uses leverage means the available market is much much larger.

The second part of the distribution channel is how the customer will buy. In the simple market stall example, the customer inspects the product, produces cash and completes the transaction. In the print ad, the customer can either come to your business address to do the same or depending on the product it can be inspected in print and shipped by mail. Thinking about how your distribution channel will work can have a dramatic effect on your bottom line because if you can ship product and do not have to set up a showroom so customers can come and visit and if you need not employ staff to handle the customer, then all these over heads are slashed allowing for larger bottom line profits.

Often, the product mark up is not as important as how much you can save on your overheads by constructing a viable and effective distribution channel. Many entrepreneurs become interested in products and services that have the ideal distribution channel for the express purpose of getting involved in the business themselves.

Clearly, the way to make easy money, is to explore and identify the best distribution channel possible, become a genuinely interested consumer of an existing company and reflect on your customer experience in an effort to improve and streamline the service you received.

To Make Easy Money, You Need to Learn How to Research