So I was goofing around on the web last night and see there’s a new show on Discovery appropriately called “Pitchmen“.

I’m thinking “Doh! Now I’ve seen it all…a reality show about unusually loud infomercial guys!”.

Needless to say it suckered me in as usual and I had to watch the preview clips.  Mainly because my wife and I always joke about how deaf he thinks we all are. But hey, whatever. It works and gets your attention, right?

I tell you one thing, I had no clue what a massive industry all that $19.95 crap is! Get this…one figure in an article I saw said it’s upwards of $350 billion, with a capital B!

Here’s one of the preview clips if you want to check it out yourself:

You can hop on over to the Discovery Pitchmen site if you want to read about it and watch other videos.

But WAIT…there’s more. :)

As I was on the site, I see this little section titled “Tips For Making Millions”.

Well, one paragraph in particular jumped out that I wanted to share as a niche selection tip. Here’s the quote:

“Prevention DOES NOT Sell!
Maybe it’s because you can’t really “see” the results, but products that just offer prevention almost always fail in Direct Response TV commercials. For one thing, it’s almost impossible to come up with effective demonstrations, so it’s a daunting challenge to impart “perceived high value.” For example, someone had a product to test your air quality, but once you got the results back, there was no follow-up on what to do. Another client of Sullivan Productions came up with a product to prevent bathroom odors that required combining two packets of powder in the toilet before going “No. 2.” Although it went against the producers’ better judgment, they liked the client so they went ahead and made the commercial. It failed miserably.”

Very true, eh?

With many things in life, we really don’t tend to have a lot of motivation to take action until there’s an actual problem right at our front door.

Now, that’s not to say prevention doesn’t sell at all or you should avoid it. Just look at identity theft prevention services like Lifelock or life insurance. They’re huge industries. It’s just that prevention typically requires people being fearful and reminded of a potential threat…and it’s consequences.

The main point is though, in general you’ll generally have a MUCH easier time of things if you market in niches where people are at peak motivation…which is when they need to solve an immediate problem or fulfill an intense desire. That kind of goes back to what I’ve mentioned before about how everything we do is to either gain pleasure or avoid pain.

So there you have it…even if you hit mute on your TV every time Billy Mays comes on, that one little tip can make you a ton of lettuce!

And remember…

If you buy within the next 10 minutes, you’ll also get a super sized tub of Oxy-Clean, a ginormous bottle of Orange Glo, one of the deluxe attachment thingys, and a Flat Screen TV…all for only $19.95…CALL NOW!!!!!

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