If the idea of selling through catalogs interests you, especially after reading the rest of this newsletter, then come and check out our Catalog Marketing Program. This might be just what you need to launch your product either regionally or nationally.

Mail order catalogs have long been one of the top ways for inventors to sell their products. Why is this? Catalogs don't mind taking products from one product companies, which is something avoided by many retail stores and distributors. But beyond that, catalogs can help you very effectively meet your sales goals and are often used as a launch pad for a new product.

So many people never think about the package when they develop a product. Packaging should be the first thought in product development -- not the last. Without the package, you couldn't even have a product to sell or ship. After all, the package transports the product from point A to point B, protects it and secures the contents inside.

Entrepreneurs Jim Moritz, 32, and Greg Nieberding, 44, developed the Baby B'Air, a safety vest for babies to wear on airplanes. After examining many different sales channels, they decided to introduce their product through catalogs. According to Nieberding, "The main advantage of catalogs was [that] we didn't need retail packaging." Also, the baby market, like nearly every other niche market, has many successful catalogs with wide distribution and high sales.

While entrepreneurs often succeed by going after narrow niche markets, they don't want to go after a market that is so small it can't support your business. The best way I've found to check out your market potential is a dandy little site run by Yahoo, www.overture.com. Go to the site and go to the box for Current Advertisers and check on the link to Visit the Resource Center. Under tools, chose Keyword Selector Tool. Then put in your search term and the selector will tell you how many times people did a search for that term on Yahoo. I put in the term aquarium pump and found out there were 1644 searches for that exact term in December of 2005, plus about another 1,000 searches for terms that included the words aquarium pump. Not necessarily a great market, as if 1% of the searches bought that would only be 16 pumps per month. When I searched for parrots the total number of searches was over 70,000, a still narrow, but apparently much larger market. The site also has a spot to check for keyword bidding, which tells you what people are bidding to be listed on the right for key word searches.