Niche marketing research is a vital part of determining profitable opportunities online. Rather than create a product around what you like, or think is best you'll want to find markets with the best possible potential to become profitable.

For this technique I like to use the market research of a very established and successful company to cut through the noise and find valuable information about hot markets.

You've probably seen those 4 Dummies books, that cover many popular topics in a variety of different subjects, right? I like to use the 4 Dummies website as a jumping off point for ideas to use for creating small reports or ebooks.

A quick look at 4Dummies for niche marketing research reveals an assortment of potential short reports. Here all of the niche research has already been done for you. You can assume that since book publishing is costly, that 4 Dummies doesn't waste money producing books in which there's no demand.

To get started try entering a few keywords into the search bar to see what turns up. Chances are, if the folks over at Dummies have written about it, then it’s a topic that sells.

For my search I entered the keyword, 'scuba.' From the search results for this keyword we can see a lot of travel related books.

Clicking on a book title will reveal additional details about the chapters within the book. From there, click on the table of contents to take a look at the subjects covered inside. This is information is pure gold and can be quite valuable for finding individual topics to use for your own reports.

Alternatively, you can look at the individual articles which use many effective long tail keywords for the topic. These long tail keywords are often too small for a book to be published on, however they may be perfect for a small online report. You could use the main points of the article, research for more information and elaborate on each of them to create it.

Hope this information gives you a jump start on your niche marketing research. I know for me it's another great way to quickly determine a product demand. For more information about making money from ebooks, check out the Instant Money Reports course.