Time has come to make an assessment of my business and activity to ensure that I am on the right track and that I can travel with the highest speed possible. During a recent seminar I was told that the two key factors to assess a business success are a “clear strategy” and “flawless execution”. The second is heavily dependent on the first, because it doesn’t matter how well you execute if you are going in the wrong direction.

The Web has now become the fundamental sounding board for any business, whether online or offline. You can get an instant mirror of what people are saying and doing and what they want to achieve. You just need to know where to look and have the courage of facing what you find. So today I have started a process that will bring me to much better understanding of what is out there and how can I conduct this blog more properly.

I want to share with you the process I have followed so far, so that you can also use for your own planning. My core business is international real estate and also international business opportunities, and I focus mainly on connecting Europe to the USA.

The first reality check I have done is to go to Google Keyword Tool to see how many searches are available in this specific area and how much advertising is associated to those searches. I got 49,500 searches per month with a 100% saturation of advertising presence. This tells me that “international real estate” it is a nicely sized niche with a lot of competition, which is a very good indicator as competition and advertising exist only where money is available.

I went then on Amazon.com and checked the same keyword “international real estate” and I found 94 books published in the last 20 years. Not too bad for a niche market (international travel for example has 730 books) but there are no magazines and there is only one book published in 2010, all the other 93 are older. This tells me there is no much demand for fresh information, at least offline.

Then I have gone to Alexa.com and I have entered the same keywords and I found a well developed site that has lot of traffic and a very strong Internet presence and that promotes international real estate properties along with jobs overseas, books and retirement plans aimed to the US citizens who want to move away from their country. The site is very appropriately named escapeartist.com and it provides a wide mix of information.

This indicates that people who buy real estate abroad usually do it for experiencing a different life and not only for investment purposes. The fact that there is a very successful site is anyway a good premise for the development of my blog.

Now let’s dig a bit deeper in what people want to do in 2010, aside from my specific area of interest. So let’s go to 43Things.com, a site where anyone can place his desire for the future. And we see that the most popular new year resolutions for 2010 are the following:

1. lose weight (I do share that one)
2. be happy (who doesn’t want to be)
3. fall in love
4. get a job
5. travel
6. quit smocking
7. get married
8. love
9. find love
10. lose my virginity

This is a picture of what happens in the US and to a smaller degree in the rest of the English speaking world. We do have a strong national interest for traveling which even surpasses to some degree sex. But now lets look specifically at real estate and we see that 7464 people have goals specifically connected to the acquisition of real estate or selling and some of them (less then ten) want to deal in international real estate.

So I am in a narrow niche and I could definitely benefit by associating my work of proposing foreign investment with travel or relocation opportunities. In a nutshell, it should be easier to sell real estate to foreigners in a locations that are good for tourism.

This research took me a little over one hour and has spanned four sites. It will have to be continued but it already gives me a much better idea about the direction I should follow. This is my gift to you in compliance with rule number 18 of the “Art of Money Getting” by P.T. Barnum that states: “Be charitable” meaning “assist those who are struggling for themselves”. I hope this can be of help to you.
Roberto Mazzoni