Early in my career I was taught a valuable lesson.

It’s something that ALL good marketers do, without exception…

…and that’s to keep a ‘swipe file’.

It’s basically an ever-growing collection of advertisements, sales letters, headlines, emails and promotions that have worked successfully in the past.

The idea is NOT that you slavishly copy them.

Instead, you study the component parts so that you can work out what works.

After all, if somebody has spent thousands of pounds testing different approaches, it would be crazy to ignore what they’ve learned and start from scratch!

So you might ask…

• Why did that headline in particular grab attention?
• How did the advertiser introduce the product?
• What benefits did they emphasise?
• How did they present the offer?
• What key phrase made people take action?

You can then take these key ingredients and apply them to your own marketing so that you’re more likely to get similar results.

The same principle can also be applied to an ENTIRE business.

Rather than sitting at home thinking, “I wonder if anybody out there will actually want this?” you search for evidence that people are ALREADY successfully selling something similar.

It’s a bit like being a digital detective.

You go into the online world to investigate existing businesses, and spy on everything they do…

From their sales promotions and adverts to their social media pages, newsletters and websites.

It’s easy these days because in the digital world all the clues are out there in the open!

For example, you can follow a business on Instagram, sign up to their eLetter, download their special reports, read reviews of their products and even chat to their customers on forums!

On some platforms like Amazon or Etsy, you can even see sales numbers, rankings and other hard evidence about what people are actually buying.

When you find a business that’s doing really well, you can use your research to work out:-

• What do they sell?
• Who buys it?
• How much do they charge?
• Where do the customers come from?
• How do they turn visitors into buyers?
• What else do they sell those buyers afterwards?

Then you can apply these basic elements to reverse-engineer a business that’s much more likely to succeed first time.

Here’s how to go about it.

STEP ONE: Find a Relatable Business

First, don’t immediately choose the biggest, most famous company you can think of.

There’s not much point in reverse-engineering Amazon.

You don’t have 1.5 million employees and billions of pounds to play with.

Instead, look for small businesses that are related in some way to what you are trying to achieve…. even just a solo enterprise that’s perhaps two, three or five stages ahead of you.

That could be a successful Etsy seller with good sales rankings…

A niche Substack publication with over 200 subscribers…

A YouTube channel with 50,000 subscribers and plenty of comments…

A course creator with lots of followers and a continual video presence on Facebook…

All you are looking for is proof that they’re using a business model that works.

There are lots of ways to find these winners.

Amazon and KDP

If you’re interested in publishing books, go into Amazon’s Best Sellers section and drill down into a relatively narrow category.

Look at:

• Best Sellers Rank
• prices
• Kindle versus paperback
• number and recency of reviews
• publication dates
• book lengths
• covers
• titles and subtitles
• other books by the same authors
• recurring subjects and promises

Ask yourself, what factors unite the winners?

For deeper KDP research, Publisher Rocket is a paid tool for investigating keywords, categories and competition.

But start with Amazon itself.

Etsy Digital

Etsy publicly displays a shop’s overall sales total. This means you can distinguish someone who merely has attractive-looking products from a seller who has generated thousands of real orders.

Think of a niche that has a similar kind of audience to yours for example… “printables for educators”… “wedding planners… “crochet patterns”.. “ADHD planners”.

Then click on some of the successful shops. Look at:

• overall shop sales
• number of reviews
• products offered
• typical prices
• bundles
• best-reviewed products
• photography and mock-ups
• titles
• shop categories
• how long the seller has been trading

There’s a built-in tool inside Etsy’s Shop Manager called ‘Marketplace Insights’, which shows you searches taking place right now.

You can investigate a keyword and see searches and competing listings. Sellers currently get 15 keyword searches a week free, while Etsy Plus subscribers get unlimited searches.

eBay

If you have an eBay seller account, their free ‘Product Research tool’ gives you access to up to three years of sales information, including selling prices, sales trends, price ranges, shipping costs and information about competition.

That makes it useful for researching everything from collectables and vintage items to products you could source and resell.

Substack

On this platform, you can choose a category closely related to what you are planning, like Business, Food, Culture or Health, then investigate the accounts that are doing well.

There’s a UK leaderboard here with ‘top bestsellers’ and ‘rising’ (publications with the fastest paid subscription growth).

You can also click on specific categories to see the best performing Substacks within them. For instance, here’s a search for ‘crypto’.

Check out the accounts, read some of their free content and ask yourself…

• What subject do they focus on?
• How narrow is the niche?
• What does the About page promise?
• How often do they publish?
• What do they charge?
• What is free and what is paid?
• What additional products do they offer?
• How do they use Notes?

If there’s an example that really inspires you, subscribe and see what arrives in your inbox over the coming weeks.

Udemy

If you’re thinking about creating a digital course, search your proposed subject on Udemy.

There you can see student numbers, reviews, ratings, course lengths, lesson breakdowns and competing propositions.

ClickBank

For digital products and direct-response marketing, ClickBank is a treasure trove.

Its Affiliate Marketplace shows statistics including conversion rate, earnings per click and average affiliate earnings per conversion.

It also shows you something called ‘gravity’ which reflects how many affiliates have recently generated commissions selling that offer… with recent activity given greater weight.

STEP TWO: Become Their Customer

Once you find an interesting business, approach it exactly as a potential customer would.

• Search for the company on Google.
• Visit the homepage.
• Follow its social accounts.
• Sign up for the newsletter.
• Download any free report, checklist or guide.
• Click through its offers.
• Put a product in the basket and look at the checkout.

Then watch what happens next, and take notes.

For instance, what kind of thank you pages and welcome emails does it send?

Do you get an autoresponder email sequence?

What kind of free content do they send, and in what style?

Does this include sales emails and, if so, where in the sequence does it happen, and what is the offer?

Essentially, you’re attempting to work out their sales funnel…

Which means how do they get you from being a website visitor or casual browsers to becoming a paid up customer?

Get a sheet of paper and literally write it out.

For example it might look like this:

Google advert Free 7-Day Decluttering Download PDF >> Email sequence – welcome email + free content emails >> First sales email- £19 Decluttering Toolkit >>Second sales email £9.99/month Membership.

I recommend that you set up a separate free Gmail account purely for your investigations and subscribe to five or more businesses that interest you.

Keep track of their emails and add them to a research folder.

After a few months you’ll be able to see:

• how often they email
• subject lines they use
• free content versus promotional content
• products they repeatedly promote
• launch sequences
• seasonal campaigns
• sales and discounts
• affiliate promotions
• upsells
• how frequently they make offers

You should now have plenty of free marketing intelligence to go on!

STEP THREE: Work Out the Business Model

Never assume that the product you see upfront is necessarily where most of a business’s profit comes from.

• A £7 ebook might simply be a hook to get customers. The real money could come from a £197 course offered afterwards.
• A free newsletter might generate income from affiliate ads or sponsorships.
• A YouTube channel might make comparatively little from YouTube advertising but thousands from an associated membership.

So create a simple ‘Business Model Sheet’ and write down:

• TARGET CUSTOMER: Who precisely is this aimed at?
• CORE PROBLEM/DESIRE:What does the customer want solved or achieved?
• FREE ENTRY POINT: Newsletter, video, report, quiz, social content?
• FIRST PRODUCT: What do they initially sell and for how much?
• SECOND PRODUCT: Is there an upsell or premium version?
• RECURRING INCOME: Subscription, membership, refill, repeat order?
• OTHER REVENUE: Affiliate income, advertising, sponsorship, consulting?
• FULFILMENT: Digital, physical, automated, personal?

Don’t obsess about discovering their exact annual turnover, because you probably can’t access that info.

Just try to understand their profit model, from start to finish.

STEP FOUR: Find Out Where Their Customers Come From

Google the company name, product names and website address. Look at what appears near the top of the results.

Are there lots of reviews, press mentions, Reddit discussions or affiliate articles?

This can tell you whether the business is benefiting from SEO, publicity, affiliates or word of mouth.

Or go to YouTube and type in the product name to find reviews, demonstrations, affiliate videos, and sponsored content.

Next, look at the business’s social media (enter the company name into Google + a platform name to see if it has a presence on it).

Again, if it has a thriving channel on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn, then this is evidence that it’s getting traffic from them.

A helpful free tool is Meta Ad Library, which lets you see advertising that is currently being run across Facebook and Instagram.

Search the business name and look at:

• How many ads are running?
• Which products are being pushed?
• What hooks keep appearing?
• Are there several versions of the same advert?
• Which landing pages do they send people to?

If a company is running 20 variations of adverts for the same product, that’s a strong clue that Meta advertising matters to its business.

You can also check Google Ads Transparency Centre which lets you search by advertiser or website and investigate active advertising from verified advertisers across Google.

This will show you whether the business is advertising through Google Search, YouTube or other Google advertising channels.

Another tool is TikTok Creative Centre which lets you investigate ads, products, and trends that are getting traction right now.

Finally, look at how aggressively a business tries to capture your email address. Does it offer:

• 10% off your first purchase?
• a free report?
• a quiz?
• a checklist?
• a competition?
• a free mini-course?

If you immediately get a sequence of five or ten emails, email marketing is probably central to their strategy for getting customers.

STEP FIVE: Process the Evidence

Now it’s time to bring it all together into a single document that you can use to create your own business.

Take everything you’ve found in the previous steps, and feed it into an AI tool like Claude or Chat GPT.

PROMPT: ➡️ “I am investigating [BUSINESS] because I want to understand why its online business model works. Based on the website, products, prices, customer reviews, emails and research I have supplied, identify:

1. Its likely target customer
2. The main problem or desire it addresses
3. Its core value proposition
4. Its main products and price points
5. Its likely customer journey
6. Its main customer-acquisition channels
7. Its likely revenue streams
8. How it generates repeat purchases
9. The five most important reasons the business appears to work.

Then ask:

➡️ “What are the five most important principles that a small one-person UK business could borrow from this model WITHOUT copying its branding, protected content or individual products?”

You could also feed it the results of your investigations into multiple successful businesses in the same niche.

Then ask AI: ➡️ “Compare these [X NUMBER OF] successful businesses. Identify the patterns they have in common in terms of customer, products, prices, positioning, marketing, traffic generation and monetisation. Then identify five gaps or underserved customer groups that none of them appears to serve particularly well.”

STEP SIX: Find the Gap

If you find somebody selling a brilliant printable wedding planner, don’t just copy their design, wording and illustrations and produce the same thing.

That’s just ripping someone off.

Instead, identify the principles that work, so you follow the business model.

But there’s one more step you should take.

Because you don’t want to become a weaker copy of a market leader.

Instead, you should find your own unique angle or ‘USP’.

Look for a market gap based on:

• AUDIENCE – Could you specialise in a slightly different target market or niche group?
• GEOGRAPHY – Is a successful American idea poorly served in Britain?
• PRICE – Could you create a simpler inexpensive version of an expensive solution?
• FORMAT – Could a book become a course, template, newsletter, app or workshop?
• SIMPLICITY – Can you make a complicated solution easier?
• SPEED – Can you help somebody achieve one narrow result quickly?
• BUNDLE – Could you combine several things customers currently buy separately?
• PERSONALITY – Could you make a dry topic warmer, funnier or more human?

You can always ask AI to offer you some suggestions, based on the research you have given it.

Now you’ll have a very good chance indeed that your first product or service launch is successful.

So what do you think? Is this useful?

If there’s anything you need clarifying, or want me to give you further help with, then let me know!