THERE are plenty of research and marketing tools online that can help budding entrepreneurs find once hard-tolocate niche markets that they can exploit, an Internet expert has said.

Mr Joel Christopher, United States-based director of SuccessAccess.com, a marketing firm, said while big companies like Wal-Mart do a good job serving the needs of the general public, communities with specialised needs are usually not as well-served.

So, companies that can identify opportunities to 'sell more to less people' stand to make good money, he said.

Mr Christopher was in Singapore last week conducting a three-day course on how to build an Internet business serving niche communities.

The 37 participants at his $1,800 course, held at the Novotel Clarke Quay Hotel, ranged from stay-at-home- mothers to corporate executives looking for an additional source of income.

The first step is research, and new tools like WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) make that a cinch, he said.

WordTracker allows entrepreneurs to enter keywords to check whether people are interested in their business ideas. It also helps them assess the number of websites offering similar products or services - potential competition, in other words.

If there is a demand for a business idea and there are relatively few competitors, then there may be an opportunity, said Mr Christopher.

One participant, 37-year- old Luana Wee, told The Straits Times that she joined the seminar with the idea of starting a blog offering parenting tips, an area she said she has 'interest, expertise and experience' in.

After researching the area, however, Ms Wee, who works in corporate sales, discovered that there already are a lot of parenting advice sites. So, she tweaked her concept to instead focus on a site offering online games for children.

Once entrepreneurs like Ms Wee have identified the opportunity, a low-cost, low- risk way to test the market is through the use of free publishing tools like blogs.

Blogs also allow upstarts to generate revenue through online advertising or affiliate marketing programmes, said Mr Christopher.

Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing model where the entrepreneur gets a cut of the profit for sending business the merchant's way.

Mr Christopher said there are affiliate programmes for everything, from electronic products to software.

Websites like Commission Junction (www.cj.com) and ClickBank (www.clickbank. com) specialise in matching bloggers and merchants with these affiliate programmes.

Success depends on many factors, said Mr Christopher, from how good the initial research was to the quality of the blogger's writing.

One of his more successful course participants from Canada launched an e-mail newsletter offering advice on online dating three years ago.

He said the newsletter now generates about US$400,000 ($590,800) a year.