Muse idea: Philosophy Survival Kit

[Keep a Movin' Dan]

I'm a philosophy student, read 4HWW, with winter break coming I now have time to try out creating a muse. The one topic I know better than any other is philosophy, so I've decided to try creating a multi-book philosophy survival kit for philosophy students--especially ones in introductory classes, though I can credibly claim that the material will work up to the level of graduate pro-seminars--who are struggling in their classes. Specifically, I'm thinking one book on skills, one mini-encyclopedia, and a vocabulary flip-book that could be cut into flash cards if desired.

I estimate that there are about 50,000 college students in introductory philosophy classes in any given semester. If I pursue this, I'll be betting on the thought that since they're already paying a lot for classes, at least some of them will pay to pass their classes. If I can sell to 1% of these students every year at a $50 profit per unit, I'll be doing reasonably well.

How viable is this? How do I develop it? How do I advertise it? How do I get testimonials out of college students?

[sub8hr]

First question you should probably ask yourself in terms of where to advertise is what common gathering spot(s) will you find these philosophy students at and how do you get an ad put there. That's an extremely narrow target that will be tough to hit. Something I'd imagine would be tough to hit through keywords in SEM too.

[Keep a Movin' Dan]

The one place students thinking about classes can be counted on to go is the university book store. As far as online goes, I've been playing around with Google AdWords' Keyword Tool, and found decent search volumes for some relatively obscure philosophical terms, which I can't see anyone but philosophy students searching. For example, "consequentialism" has an approximate average search volume of 9,900, "categorical imperative" 18,100, and so on. That's the bottom end. The less obscure terms yield much higher results: "Aristotle" gest 368,000, "Kant" gets 165,000, "Utilitarianism" gets 74,000. Tentatively, I'd plan on advertising to people who do those kinds of searches.