research methods in hci

Almost every fellow teacher I know holds a part-time job to help make ends meet. They work at corporate retail giants, or tending bar (yes, a first-grade teacher I know told me she makes more in two nights of tending bar than in one week of teaching), or working the register at the supermarket. Little Miss Bartender is the exception to the low-paid, slightly-embarrassing, part-time work rule for most teachers.

It's a problem, especially considering the brutal work schedule most teachers are faced with on a daily basis. (If you doubt it, ask a teacher you know; the profession is not what it looked like from your desk in the 3rd Grade.)

One solution is online income for teachers. The market force trend lines are unmistakable: the internet is becoming the preferred first stop for information, especially of the "how-to" variety. Money spent online increases about 25% a year, according to bizreport.com, which predicts Europeans alone will spend more than $407 Billion in 2011.

A demand for "how-to" information coupled with a supply of how-to lessons written and produced by teachers equals opportunity. Teachers should naturally own the how-to online market.

They don't, right now.

One obstacle is a lack of ecommerce marketing knowledge among teachers.

They often need some "how-to" on taking advantage of the opportunity. This article is the first in a series of articles designed to serve as a source of helpful information for teachers who would like to earn money in a more creative, interesting and profitable way than working for a big box store, or delivering pizza, or even tending bar. Because those late nights at the bar can get really old.

Teachers who want an online income should learn basic marketing research first of all -- it takes ten minutes

Teachers who have some ideas for online how-to articles, ebooks or videos should first of all divine whether there is a searching, paying market for the product. Suppose I wondered if origami video lessons had any interest on the internet. How would I determine whether there really were an interest?

Using a simple, online keyword research tool, teachers who want an online income can discover about how many searches per day are made for a particular keyword. That tool is at http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Open the keyword generator tool linked above in a separate browser window.

In the search field, type "origami." Or use your own search term. Perhaps "crayon resist art," or "how to draw anything," or any other potential topic for which you may consider creating and marketing an online, downloadable, how-to product (ebook, audio, video, etc.) for a mid-sized (or larger) online income.

The results will return a lot of information. I want you to focus on only one piece right now: the overall daily estimate. That number shows you, obviously, a (good) estimate of the total number of searches (at the main search engines) performed with that keyword in one day. For "origami," my research today (it will vary over time of course) showed about 2,418 "origami" searches are performed every day.

That tells me there's a high level of interest in origami.

It's an indication there could be a paying market for good, downloadable, online origami instruction at the right price.

This isn't the end of your market research, necessarily. But it does tell you whether the topic for which you are considering producing an ebook, audio or video for online income has any "buzz" online.

Try other keywords associated with the topic for which you are considering making a downloadable product. "Origami" has few related terms. But let's try "paper crane." I just ran it through the seobook tool. The number of daily searches is estimated at about 26. Not as good at 2,418. But, over time, it's not a bad number of searches. Twenty-six multiplied by 365 equals more than 9,400 searches per year.

Clearly, trying to market an ebook or video on "origami" in general is far preferable to "paper crane." That's a fact we couldn't have known without the valuable tool at seobook.com.

So teachers: here's your homework. Come up with a list of five to 10 how-to topics on which you could write or produce an ebook or video. Then run related keywords through the seobook keyword research tool. Choose two or three topics which are shown by the tool to have a high degree of interest. Then come back to this article and follow up with more information on how to market them.

Some of the lessons will include:
-How to make a .pdf book.
-How to choose a website host
-How to design a simple, one-page website to sell your product.
-How to keep your expectations realistic. You won't get rich quick. But you'll do better than working at a big box store. And maybe even better than tending bar.
-And much, much more.





Reference research: research Dr. and health research and shopping research and my social page




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