In our society, there are a lot of “part-time” entrepreneurs, and people who call their venture a hobby. That’s great, and I wouldn’t take the fun of playing business away from anyone, but the big rewards are usually reserved for those who are 100% committed.

This is not to say that if you have a day job and work your business on the side, you aren’t fully committed. Many of us started out that way, and then made the leap to full-time entrepreneur when the money was right.

It’s really just all about your mindset, what you want in terms of success, and how badly you want it. If you want to work your business full-time, or just earn a full-time income from passive work, you’ll create this reality.

But if you see yourself as capable of generating a few hundred extra bucks a month at most, that too is the reality you will manifest.

So even if you have a regular job and just work your business on the side for now, you should think big and be fully committed to your own massive success. Work your plan as if your life depends on it, and big rewards will come your way.

Got a new product idea and want to know if other people will love it as much as you do? Obviously you’ll do some basic keyword and market research, but you should also spend some time browsing forums to get a feel for whether or not people in your target market are talking about your idea.

A forum, or message board, is a Website where people go to read and post articles/comments relating to a specific topic. Generally a forum will be focused on one or two subjects.

Online forums are a valuable source of information and a terrific research utility. I belong to a couple of marketing forums, and if I had time I’d probably spend more time posting there, not to mention participating in some non-marketing forums.

There are forum boards for just about every topic, and the people who frequent these sites are usually highly interested in the topic at hand. In fact quite often you can find experts and professionals hanging out in forums that are focused on their specific area of interest.

If you can find a lot of forums related to your project idea, this means a lot of people online care about your topic. And if you spend some time reading these forums there’s a great chance you’ll find out what’s “hot” within this field.

Every niche or market has a conversation. This is to say that consumers and enthusiasts are always talking about current events within their area of interest.

For example…

• ~ Football fans are talking about the upcoming season right now.
• ~ People who love gardening are talking about the drought and whether or not this spring will bring some healthy rains to their region.
• ~ Smokers who want to stop are focused about their New Year resolutions.
• ~ Politically active U.S. citizens are talking about the next president.
• ~ Video game fans are talking about the latest title launch and whispering about the sneak previews they found online about an upcoming release.

Name a niche or market, and the people who care about it are talking about something specific. And I mean to indicate that a majority of these folks will be on the same page… get it?

Checking out a few forums will allow you to tune in to the current conversations being had within your niche or market. And I have a great tool for finding a list of forums within your topic range.

Click Here to use the Forum Search tool. All you need to do is enter a keyword phrase for your market or niche and submit this.

In simplest terms, a mind map is a diagram used to illustrate thoughts, ideas, plans, etc. in a very detailed manner. This concept is said to have been pioneered by

Peter Russell and Tony Buzan coined the term “Mind Map” in the 70’s when they taught people how to place their ideas into visual map formats. Mind mapping has been part of business and marketing strategy for years, but was first made popular in the Internet marketing sector by Rich Schefren. He introduced the Web entrepreneur to the idea of using sophisticated software to draw literal maps to illustrate their overall business plan, marketing intentions for a specific process, individual sales process, and many other crucial functions.

A quick search for mind mapping software will bring up a number of high ticket applications that range in price from $200 to $400. Perhaps a bit more than many entrepreneurs want to spend.

However, I recently found a gem of a product called MindApp. This great software gives you all the functionality and flexibility of the other more expensive products at only a fraction of the cost.

Incredibly, MindApp is less than $40! You can even get a free trial to be sure you like it.

I wondered if a product priced this low among numerous competitors selling their software at $200 plus coud really be of solid value. So I downloaded a copy to find out.

MindApp is absolutely brilliant! It does everything the more expensive software I have tested does, plus a few things I haven’t seen elsewhere!

I wanted to know more about the company behind this product, so I asked a few questions, and here is what I found out:

“MindApp was launched in November 2006.  Varatek has been publishing hierarchical productivity software since 1984, and this is our entry into the mind mapping market. We saw an opportunity to offer a high quality, low cost mind mapping product using the core of our existing technologies.

MindApp was built for price conscious professionals who need a high quality mind mapping tool.  We put a lot of effort into making sure that the UI was modern and easy to use and that the maps MindApp creates are professional looking and can be used for presentations or publication.

Our big differentiator is value. We think MindApp competes favorably with industry leading packages like MindManager, but at a much lower price. Our message to your readers is that they can have the functionality, ease of use, and professional output of a high end mind mapper at a fraction of the
price.”

This software rocks, and as I’ve already stated you won’t find any other mind mapping technology close to this price point. This is a great study in how a smaller company really can compete on the basis of price/value and, with the product being as good or better than higher priced competition, hold their own in the marketplace.

I hope to see MindApp at the top of their niche in the future. It will be interesting to see how they evolve in their environment.

If you aren’t using visual aids to enhance your plans, you really should be. Don’t get lost on the path of “I’ll do it all in my head” unless you are happy with second-rate results.

I urge you to grab a copy of MindApp today.

Please note this is not an affiliate promotion; there is no affiliate program attached to this product. I just think it’s such a great value, and such a huge advantage, that I wanted my readers to know about it.