Niche Marketing 101

What's Your Niche Market?

2006-04-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

Knowing your NICHE MARKET and where to find your NICHE is more important than the product you sell.

Most Netpreneurs take a narrow view of NICHE MARKETING as a limitation on their business, when in fact it is the POWER that provides longevity to their business.

The biggest mistake most new netpreneurs make online is that they have no idea where, or what, there NICHE market is and therefore, sell their product to everyone and anyone and in the end sell to no one.

A common misconception is that - if you build it they will come. The truth is you have to find your NICHE and get them to come to your site.

In talking to new netpreneurs the first question I ask is who are you selling to? The almost instantaneous reply and always the same answer is: 'everyone and anyone'.

The next successions of questions I then ask are:

What type of product are you selling?
Who would use your product?
What problem does your product solve?
Is your product distributed easily?
Who would benefit from using your product?

Simple questions, but not so easy for many netpreneurs to answer. If you take some time and answer these very straight forward questions you will find that by defining your NICHE you will be better equip to go straight to the source, than taking a stab in the dark and hoping it will all work out.

You will also find that by defining your NICHE MARKET you will:

Help define your Internet Marketing Strategy
Develop products/services that appeal to your NICHE
Set yourself up as an industry leader
Optimize your site for search engines so your NICHE can find you easily
Maximize your marketing budget where it counts

Once again I ask you: WHAT'S YOUR INTERNET NICHE MARKET?

The truth can be found in your answers.

Gillian Tarawhiti
Community Training Centre

About The Author

Gillian Tarawhiti, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre, an Australian-based Internet Marketing firm that works with individuals and organizations.
Copyright 2004 Training Centre
ezimoni@msn.com

Niche Marketing: Tactics to Use to Make Money With Niche Marketing

2006-04-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Niche marketing has always been a key any success in marketing but lately it has become quite a prominent force in teh online marketing world. Many books, manuals, courses, and web sites have been developed that focus on niche marketing. It is easy to find solid resources on the Internet that can teach you how to make money with niche marketing.

Niche marketing online is a distinct segment of Internet marketing and is the quickest way to get maximum exposure if you know how to leverage the search engines to draw attention to your niche web site.

There's many things to learn to be successful and profit from niche marketing and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) will dictate exactly how to plan your attack to successfully market to customers in your niche.

If you plan to use niche marketing to draw visitors to your web site, here's a few tactics that you can use to make money:

Niche Marketing Tactic # 1, "Research"

Fully utilize all of the research mechanisms that you can find in order to make sure that you truly understand your niche and all of its nuances.

This requires understanding what tools are best to use so you can understand what your target niche market does day to day, where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal and business perspective. Niche Market Research (http://www.nichemarketresearch.com) offers free reports and articles to help you make the most of your research time.

Niche Marketing Tactic #2, "Define your paying niche"

Clearly define who will make up your niche market and make sure that the people in that niche market are willing to pay for the solution that you provide to their problems.

A niche is a clear subset of a larger category.

An example of what a niche market is not: "People who want to learn how to shoot better scores in gold."

In this example, there are far too many people within the main category (golf) to make this a true niche. Virtually everyone who plays gold will want to play better and shoot better scores so this wouldn't qualify as a niche, much less a category worth pursuing.

An example of a niche market: "Women who play gold who want to learn how to drive the ball longer and straighter."

This would be a niche because it clearly defines and segments who you'll cater to and why they would need your service.

After clearly defining your niche market, you should make sure that they are willing to pay for your services. The easiest way to determine this in the online world (other than using common sense) is to find web sites that may be close to, or even in your niche, and see if those web sites charge a fee for their services. In addition, you should look to see if there is a reasonable level of competition between those web sites.

If you see more than a few sites listed on a SERP (Search Engine Result Page) that cater to female golfers for a fee, chances are the people who are your target customer will pay for your services for solving their problem - women who can't consistently hit long straight drives in gold.

Niche Marketing Strategy # 3, "Choosing keywords and domain names"

Research and choose your keywords carefully so you can acquire the best domain name for your site. Niche marketing most often includes maximizing the way search engines work to make sure that your web site gets listed on the first page of the SERP's from your chosen keywords. Your domain name contributes to getting those first page results.

Go to Digitalpoint's keyword suggestion tool and type in keywords that you feel people would use to find the product or service that you offer within your niche. Look at the number of searches performed per day for those keywords and review the other keywords listed. http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Type the keyword phrase that you think best suits your USP's target customer into Google and assess whether or not you can reasonably compete with the sites that are listed on page 1 of the SERPs.

Can you get a page 1 ranking knowing that you'll have to compete with the sites already listed?

Repeat the process until you have decided what your main keywords will be for your product or service within your niche.

Those keywords should be in your domain name and preferably, they should be your entire domain name.

Example: if you've concluded that "blue widgets" best suits your USP and you feel that you can compete for page 1 listings on the SERPs with the sites that come up on page 1 for the keyword "blue widgets", then a good domain name for your niche marketing site would be "bluewidgets.com"

Niche Marketing Tactic #4, "Posting keyword rich articles or reports throughout the web"

Niche marketing doesn't differ fron any other online search engine marketing, posting relevant content is the best way (bar none) to get the right type of traffic to your niche site.

Writing keyword rich articles or reports and posting them to high traffic web sites is a great way to make sure that you get maximum exposure within your niche market. People will use your keywords to search for information about the topic that they have interest in, and they will come across your web site on the search engines results.

Niche marketing caters to a distinct and select group of people who need what you have to offer. If you define your niche properly and make sure that your ability to solve their problem is something that they will pay for, you will have established a "money maker"

Utilize the search engines to make it easy for your niche market to find your service or product. Niche marketing is the easiest way to be successful on the Internet if you do the proper research.

About The Author

Karl Augustine - Publisher, "Starting Smart!"
"Learn SEO - Top 10 listings"
http://www.9mistakes-online.com/nichemarketing.htm

Learn how to become an expert in your chosen niche. Dominate your competition even if you don't have a product or can't write good articles.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/ean.htm

Niche Marketing Destroyed!

2006-04-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Why pay for the many Niche Marketing services, products and sites that are springing up everywhere when you can discover your own profitable niche for free?

A Niche market is something with a high demand and a low supply. Luckily, using keyword tracking tools and search engines we can find these relatively easy.

In fact, there is a site that does it for you. It's called Nichebot and can be found at http://www.nichebot.com and it doesn't cost a cent.

To discover your potential niche just type a search term into Nichebot. It can be anything, but if you're stuck for ideas just look in magazines, newspapers, websites etc. for a two or three word term, preferably something that could potentially lead to someone spending money. For example, objects of any kind or services - e.g. "Carpet Cleaners" or "Engine Tuning" - it can literally be anything!

Now type the term(s) into Nichebot and look for the Ratio. The lower the better. The ratio is the number of searches for your term divided by the number of websites that serve that term.

We'll take one of our examples to illustrate. "Engine Tuning" provides a number of options with a ratio of less than 1. "model engine tuning" is searched for 264,000 times and has 4 web pages serving it!

So what do you do with this niche?

The quickest and easiest way is to target your niche keywords with Google Adwords. You first need an affiliate link of smoe description, or failing that target an Amazon or eBay link using the niche keyword.

Write your niche keyword into the title of your Adwords Ad (in our example "Model Engine Tuning") and it will show in bold. Write a short description ("Get the most from your Model Engine, tuning secrets revealed.") and link it to your affiliate link.

Read "Google Cash" for more information on using this method of targeting niches. http://www.googlecash.info

The second, more profitable, method is to build a website around your niche. Your first step is to register the domain. If "model-engine-tuning.com" doesn't exist then grab it. The dashes help with the search engine ranking by separating the keywords.

Then you need to put some content at your page. I'll leave the design up to you but it shouldn't be too hard to find pictures, articles and links relating to your subject.

Finally, you'll want to make money with your site. The easiest ways are to use content-targeted systems since they'll provide paying content related to your site.

The top three are:
1. Google AdSense
Simple to install once you're approved. You have many formats to choose from and they are proven to pay well.

2. Amazon.Com
Will provide ads for books, videos, software etc. related to your search term.

3. Ebay.com
Will provide listings of current eBay auctions related to your search term. You can also get eBay signups that you will make money from for life. After you have installed these you can search for other commissionable links with the likes of:

Commission Junction - http://www.cj.com
or Associate Programs - http://www.associateprograms.com
and counteless other Affiliate Directories. Search Google for more opportunities.

If you can source a resaleable ebook or software program of interest to your visitors that will net you even more profit. You can also sell products from Drop Shippers (something eBay sellers have done for years) which will get you good profits from little work.

If there is no ebook or report you can sell perhaps you'd like to create your own or even hire a write to create one for you. Try Elance to find a "ghost writer". http://www.elance.com

Another profitable area on a popular site will come from building a list, selling ad space, and running joint ventures. Capture your visitors address by offering a report. This list can prove very valuable once it grows. You should also utilise PopUnders and Banners which can either promote your own paying services or others. You can even use these banners and popunders from exchange services. These will generate hits for you that you can use on completely unrelated sites. Niche sites are very easy to find and design and you DON't need "gurus" or expensive services to do it for you!

Happy Niche Hunting!

About The Author

Stuart Reid publishes Netpreneur News and maintains NetpreneurNow.com and it's Members Site. To join at no cost and immediately gain access to a ton of valuable eBooks, Reports and Tools simply visit http://www.netpreneurnow.com

Why You Must Have More Than One Niche Sites

2006-04-23T19:44:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of diversifying your investment portfolio?
No? Well, it's extermely famous in financial planning.

Those financial planners will tell you that in order for you to minimize risk of lost, you should have different types of investment to generate multiple income streams.

This is to lower your risk of putting all of your eggs in one basket.
Do you know that the same concept applies to your online business?
Let's say you have a niche website targeted for dog owners and you're making a good income each month from it.

Do you know how fragile an internet business can be?

Once someone find out how profitable your online business is, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how you've achieved it.

Don't believe me? Here are some food for thoughts for you.

If you are getting traffic from JV partners, what's stopping your competitors from contacting them to offer a better compensation than yours?

Ooh. You think your JV partners won't take the bait because they are your friends. Fine.

What happen if your competitors end up becoming their friends by end of the month? Heck, they might be sipping coffee together at StarBucks!

Oops. You've just lost 50% of your income when that happens.

Or maybe, you are getting traffic from the search engines. With today's easy-to-use software, it's just a matter of time before your competitors figure out how you get top ranking at Google.com. Is is fair for me to say that they'll want to copy you legitimately to get the same success as yours?

And here's the scariest part of all - As long as they are not copying apple for apple, they have the rights to copy you!

You can't stop them from contacting your JV partners.

You can't stop them from writing the same book as yours but with a different angle.

You can't stop them from reading your salesletter and hiring a better copywriter to write for them.

The only way for you to 'save' yourself is to have more than one niche sites. So, if you have 4 niche sites and each of them is generating the same amount of income, you know that each site is giving 25% income to you.

If one of your niche sites is taken over by the competitors, you still have 75% income to support you financially.

And remember, we don't live in an ideal internet marketing world.

Your website hosting, email database and etc can give you unforeseen problems. And you can be wiped off overnight because of this.
Prevention is ALWAYS better than cure. If you already have a profitable niche market, don't just sit in front of your TV hoping to cash out money from it each month. Build more online niches, then you can do whatever you want with ease of mind.

If you need to make sure you have a profitable online niche, you can use Niche Checklist to check it out. Go to:
http://www.nichechecklist.com

Copyright 2005 Patric Chan

About The Author

Patric Chan is a direct response expert, internet infopreneur, marketing strategist and author. At the age of 24, he had achieved many extraordinary results in the Internet Marketing world. He had joint-ventured with many famous internet marketing experts in product creations and selling online. Get the latest internet marketing tips at http://www.InternetMarketing-Tactics.com.

Get a large keyword list that you can use to obtain profits from Google Adsense. Some keywords have a high earnings per click. Learn more:
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/tpk.htm

Multiple Income Streams from Niche Markets

2006-04-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Mutilple income streams, do you find the term confusing? Don't, it's really quite simple.

In the world of Niche Markets in Internet Marketing, multiple income streams simply means having more than one source of income. This is achieved by making money from more than just one online business.

Each different web site would generally be a different business. They could relate to each other, but not necessarily. You could have businesses that have nothing to do with each other. Both methods are quite successful.

Let's look at different scenarios. How to market unrelated products? In the offline world, we are quite accustomed to seeing a little bit of just about everything sold in department stores, from razor blades to baby clothes to fashion dresses to living room furniture to washers and dryers, and so on.

Is this how it's done in the onilne world? Absolutely, but it is not the only method. Mega Internet stores have evolved in such a way that to compete, you must be huge, and have tons of money to finance the operation, including the cost of the ever-changing web site. The competition and horrendous costs leave no room for the little guy, so he has to find another way to do business.

Enter the newcomer, looking for a way to make a living on the Internet. Seeing he can't compete selling a large mix of hard goods and soft goods, he can decide on a "niche" product to market. A niche product simply means specializing in one key product, or just a few related products.

This concept applies to both hard goods (items that must be shipped), as well as to downloadable information products.

This opens up a whole new world of possibilities, and it means a whole different way of conducting business. Specialization s often achieved using mini-sites that sell only one product. The mini web site might have from one to five pages, but usually just a single page.

Your information product that you want to sell needs a web site, hosted by a web hosting provider that provides you their service at a reasonable cost. Let's assume you started selling your product, and after a few months it is bringing in some income. It might amount to $1,000 up to $3,000 per year.

That's not too bad, and is worth keeping, but certainly not enough to make a living with. This is where the concept of multiple income streams comes in . During the months that your business is building, you could be looking for other ideas. You find one that excites you, and more importantly you do the research and discover a good potential for attracting customers. So you go ahead with a second web site.

You have now achieved multiple income streams! Over time you have other great ideas. Actually, you are now up to four web sites with different ideas. Two of them are related information products, and the other two are hard goods. All four are successful. Each one separately does not make enought to live on, but the combined four bring you in respectable dollars.

But how are we controlling our costs? This is important to do, seeing we have the cost of some advertising as well as the web site costs. We found it necessary to build a customer list for each different product, and periodical emails are sent to your list. All these costs can become quite extensive, almost prohibitive. So, what do we do? How can we maintain our businesses, yet keep our overhead down to where it isn't cutting hugely into profits?

One critical aspect to look at is your hosting and to look for a web site hosting service that includes all or as many tools that you need in order to do some serious Internet business.

The tools aren't all you need to consider. Sure having a hosting service that gives you an autoresponder is certainly a huge help. But, we have four sites here to market and the average rate of $24.95 a business, that's close to $100 a month, a pretty steep bill especially if you are just starting out.

Now we are looking for a host that will provide all the tools we need to run our businesses, plus we want one that will allow sub-domains in case we have closely related businesses. Can we get it all at one low and afforable price. In addition to the tools we need and the overall hosting package we need for FOUR business, we are all about multiple income streams, so let's see if there is a way to benefit (PROFIT) from the hosting company as well.

Many hosting companies now offer an affiliate program where you can earn a commission by refferring a business and gaining customers. That's pretty much a given, however the KEY is to ensure that the commission is recurring and not just a one time commission. Not sure what I mean about recurring income? Check the link out below for more information on recurring income streams.

This is all great but the question now "Is there really a hosting company out there that will give me all the tools, let me host multiple sites for one reasonable price AND on top of that let me guild another income stream?"

The answer is yes and you can read my review of Recurring Income Streams and how a company called "ThirdSphere" is an excellent example. At the same time you can learn the difference between Multiple Income and Recurring Income Streams. Read about it here: http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/thirdsphere.html

Having Multiple Income Streams from Niche Marketing is mandatory in today's Internet Marketing World, if that is you want to make any serious money. Internet Marketing today has become much too competitive, and the newcomer has very little chance of breaking in.

Niche Markets, each with their own web site and relevant content is THE best solution. Niche Marketing is the hottest topic on the Net today. Niche Marketing is featured on my web site at Best Affiliate Products, and you can learn much more about it at http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/nichemarketing.html.

I'll catch up to you in my back yard in Niche Country.

Fred Farah
Best Affiliate Products and Niche Market Strategies
Subscribe to Niche Market Strategies Newsletter
And Niche Madness 7-day email course
http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com/
Copyright 2004

About The Author

Fred Farah
Long time business man who is willing to share his expertise using his web site Best Affiliate Products.
It's all about affiliate marketing to niche markets.
Lots to learn from the Niche Madness 7-day eCourse, as well as the Niche Market Strategies newsletter.
http://www.bestaffiliateproducts.com

How to Find An Affiliate Program For Any Niche in 2 Minutes

2006-04-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

There is a great trend lately of marketers finally moving to niche markets and not just focusing on selling to the make-money-industry. This is an excellent move and one that will prove to be very profitable for you. However, a problem that many affiliates are hitting is that they don't know how to find good niche affiliate programs.

If there isn't a program in ClickBank, most affiliates are lost! Also, since ClickBank doesn't allow us to search their database, its too hard to find anything there.

Well, here is a quick and easy way to find any and all of the best and most profitable affiliate program for any niche you desire.

To find affiliate programs from now on you will use Google to help you. Google is a great tool to use because...

It's free
Any site that comes up on the top results is likely reputable and has been around
You get thousands of results you can search through
You can make your search very specific

Alright, let's discuss in steps, how to Google to find affiliate programs.

Go over to http://www.Google.com
Type your "Nich Title + affiliate". This is the step that a lot of people can get confused in so let's clear it right now. Example: If I am searching for an affiliate program on dog health, I will type this phrase into Google = dog health + affiliate
Now the results that I get, all the pages that have the term "dog health" and the term "affiliate" will show up.
Next open a program like Excel or just take out a piece of paper.
Go through the results in Google and keep noting down the different programs that come up.
Once you have 10 programs listed, go back and research each of them to find the most profitable one.

Try this strategy on search engines like Yahoo as well. You will get different results and combined between Yahoo and Google, there is no way that you won't find a good affiliate program.

What if you don't find any affiliate programs this way?

Then most likely an affiliate program for your niche does not exist. A great way to make money now is to contact a few of these websites and introduce the concept to them! Perhaps help them set up an affiliate script and share in profits actually, if there is no affiliate program in that niche, you and that company can make BIG profits from it!

There, now you have NO excuses not to find profitable niches and build websites for them. You can now find a profitable affiliate program for them all.

Anik Singal
Founder
http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com
Support@AffiliateClassroom.com

About The Author

This article is written by Anik Singal, founder of AffiliateClasroom.com. Anik Snigal has developed his own affiliate system that helped him earn well over 10,000 in just 60 days. Now, he's looking for a few students to train one step at a time.
http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com
Support@AffiliateClassroom.com

Do you use Wordtracker to research and find keyword phrases to promote your web site. Learn to easily find niche phrases within the Wordtracker database. Discover the best related keywords and phrases in a short period of time.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/wtm.htm

Finding "Riches in Niches" by Streamlining Your Web Content

2006-04-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

When marketing online it's crucial to remember the old business adage, "There are riches in niches." Niche marketing is the process of filling a small, distinguishable segment of the marketplace in a way competitors are not. Your business must have an edge - online and off. An effective web site should state it's purpose immediately. Here's why:
1. Web Usability, Your web visitors are zooming by at the same rate as drivers viewing a billboard at 70 mph. This is no Sunday stroll. Your visitors want facts, not whimsy. They want to know if they've found what they're looking for. Give them what they want and tell them what your company is all about - quickly.
2. Search Engine Optimization. Your web site will not show up in search results unless your it has the words people use for searching. People look online specifically for what they want. Get into their heads. What keywords and phrases do people type in the search boxes when looking for businesses like yours? Use those words in your web content.
3. It's Good Business. Every day breeds its own crop of great online business ideas, but that doesn't mean we have to do them all. Trying to do too much could keep you from capitalizing on the economies of scale a focused business enjoys. Plus, a narrower focus helps keep your sanity.

Developing your web site should be an exercise in niche marketing. Every page should be specific, addressing one thing (if possible). Too many doodads vying for attention confuses visitors and waters-down the impact of your message. One idea communicated clearly and with personality will cause people to respond and register, download, call or buy. Best wishes finding the riches in your own niches.

About The Author

Jennifer Ryan of The Marketing Shop is a web promotions and sales expert. Having earned numeros awards, recognition and financial success in sales, Jennifer now sells online for businesses worldwide. Using a variety of tools - web design, copywriting, SEO, pay-per-click and web site conversion enhancement - she creates Websites that Produce. Visit http://www.the-marketing-shop.com today to sign up for her monthly newsletter (generous with free tips and advice!). Email her at Jennifer.Ryan@The-Marketing-Shop.com.

A 4-Step System for Uncovering Hot Niche Markets

2006-04-23T07:57:00.000-07:00

Whether you are an affiliate marketer, a website designer or you make your living creating and marketing info products such as ebooks, discovering profitable niche markets to exploit is probably at the top of your "to-do" list. The following is a four-step system you can apply anytime you need to find a new niche audience to target and profit from.

1. Initial Brainstorming

This first step is best approached with a very open mind and a notebook and pen handy. The idea is to seek topics that are outside your current realm of knowledge. One of the best ways to do this is by reading blogs.

Bloggers come from every walk of life, and you will find blogs with information on almost any niche topic imaginable. Best of all, bloggers profive fresh, timely information.

Start spending some time reading some random blogs. A good starting place would be at blog directories such as Blogdex - http://www.blogdex.net. As you are reading, you'll discover many different topics being discussed. Many of these you may have never heard of before. Start writing these down.

Example: You found yourself reading a blog post that described the blogger's recent experience at a demolition derby. Maybe you don't know much yourself about this niche, so you add "demolition derby" to your list.

2. Keyword Research

Once you have a list of several possible niches, the next step is to find out what keywords and keyword phrases people are using to search for this and related information via the major search engines. Good Keywords - http://www.goodkeywords.com for example, is a free Windows software you can download that will help you do just this. With this program, you can type-in a topic from your list and the software will begin to uncover many related keyword phrases being actively searched for.

It takes time to get the hang of this software, but once you master it you will be able to generate large and valuable keyword lists. After you uncover at least a few dozen related keyword phrases, save your list and move onto the next step. If you are not able to uncover many related keyword phrases, chances are there is not much potential here and you should start over with another topic from step one.

Example: Using Good Keywords or a similar tool, you enter the term "demolition derby". You soon have a large list of related keyword phrases people have been using to search for information on this topic, such as "demolition derby video" and "demolition derby car for sale".

3. Secondary Idea Creation

Read through the keyword list you generated. Some of your keyword phrases are going to give you ideas for other target audiences you may want to explore in the future. Take some time now to write these new ideas down while they are still fresh in your mind. Save this information for later reference. You can never have enough fresh ideas to explore when trying to uncover under-exploited niche markets.

Example: One of the keyword phrases in your "demolition derby" list was "demolition derby game online" - you note that later you should explore what other types of online games people are searching for.

4. Niche Potential Analysis

If you used Good Keywords to mine for keyword phrases, you will have also been provided with an approximate number of times each of these terms was searched for during the past month. The next thing you need to do is compare this number, representing potential search engine traffic, with the number of websites already catering directly to these searches.

To do this, start by taking your keyword phrases and do an exact phrases search on each of them at Google, making certain to surround your keyword phrase in quotes. Write down the number of results Google brings back for your search. Next, compare the number of monthly searches for each phrase to the number of Google results.

If you are lucky, you will discover that some of your keyword phrases with good monthly traffic don't have many results in the search engines yet. If you find that you have uncovered a niche that has several keyword phrases with a high number of monthly searches and at least a few of them have a low number of results in Google, chances are you have found a very good niche to exploit with your next online project. If not, go back to the list you created in step one and repeat the process.

Example: You discover that the phrase "demolition derby car for sale" is searched for around 700 times monthly, but brings back only 486 results in Google and the term "demolition derby pic" receives several hundred searches a month but only returns 258 results in Google. You are very happy to have discovered a potentially hot niche with good under-exploited keyword phrases to target.

Although there are several costly and difficult to master programs available that can help you discover unique target markets, the system above has proven to be an effective free method for uncovering niches to profit from. Apply it today and be on your way to niche marketing success.

About The Author

James Allen is a niche market researcher who provides his private high-end Internet marketing clients with valuable information on untapped niche audiences. He has just released a brand new compilation of his latest niche market research that you can use to profit from right now at http://www.NichesExposed.com.

Google AdSense is a money maker for an untold number of individuals. Are you one of them? Changing a few words on your site can take you from generating no or a small amount of AdSense revenue to a significant amount.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/arg.htm

How to Build A Niche Web Site in 9 Simple Steps

2006-04-23T02:04:00.000-07:00

Maybe you've been wondernig how to go about setting up a niche web site. Well, here's a quick little article that will show you how to create your very own affiliate web site. Please note: this is the cheat sheet version. There is a lot more information you should learn about this subject before you get started.

Step 1. Pick a Niche Subject

This may be the hardest part of your web site project. There's literally tons of subjects to choose from. People are interested in a variety of things - from parrots to pilots. You don't have to necessarily pick something you're interested in, but it helps.

You're more likely to do a better job at building your site when you have some interest in the subject matter. It's like taking a high school or college class. Some subjects are more interesting than others. Make sure you choose something that a reasonable amount of people are actually searching for online and want to find out more information about.

Here's a free tool that will help you check the popularity of specific subjects: (http://www.nichebot.com)

Step 2. Do Keyword Research

This is a part that many people skip. I've made that mistake myself and suffered the consequences - a failed web site. Even though it's nice to think that you can write anything you want and have total creative freedom, not using keyword rich content is a BIG mistake.

I'd rather lose some creative freedom and attract visitors to my site, than have a lot of flowery prose that zero people will see. You MUST include targeted keywords in your web site copy. Also, make sure you use your targeted keywords in the upper third portion of your web site pages. This is also called optimizing your web site for the search engines. Use the Overture Keyword Tool for research:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion
Note: keywords must be relevant to the THEME (subject) of your site. Be careful not to over use them. Search engines don't like keyword SPAM.

Step 3. Get A Domain Name

Having a unique domain name is important, although some don't agree. However, a unique domain name makes your site look more professional and trustworthy to visitors. I use BuyDomains (http://www.buydomains.com). They are not the cheapest, but I stick with them because I like their easy interface and good customer service. Nameboy (http://www.nameboy.com) is also good.

Step 4. Write Keyword Rich Content

This may be a hard step for those of you who don't consider yourselves writers. But, writing web site copy is not as hard as it seems. Just think of it as having a conversation with a friend about a product or service you're really enthusiastic about.

Don't think you can extol the benefits of your subject? Tune your TV into QVC or one of the other shopping networks to see how they can spend several minutes talking about the benefits of all kinds of mundane products. This is what you'll be doing for your web site.

Your copy should feature a good balance of friendliness and professionalism. Remember, you're passing along useful information to your visitor. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you want to know about xyz subject if you were them? Now, write that down. Don't forger to sprinkle targeted keywords throughout your copy. I print out a list of them to use for my sites.

If you simply can't put words onto the page and find yourself staring at a blank screen, then visit Internet marketing forums like Willie Crawford's (http://www.williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi) for suggestions on finding writers. Or, visit Elance (http://www.elance.com).

Step 5. Build Your Web Site

Ok. You've created your copy. Now it's time to build the actual physical web site. I use Homestead (http://www.homestead.com), but there are many good point and click web site builders out there.

You have a lot of creative freedom on how you want your site to look (I prefer black copy on white backgrounds with photos), but remember that people are looking for attractive, easy-to-navigate sites with useful information.

Step 6. Sign Up for Matching Affiliate Programs

You've created a web site about xyz subject. Now look for affiliate vendors who perfectly match the theme of your site. Integrate your affiliates attractively into your web site copy. Don't confuse your visitors by giving them too many choices. If you want to list a lot of affiliates on the same page, you can create a helpful "resource guide" page.

Step 7. Include Google AdSense Ads

Google has a great program for web site owners who wish to make a little extra money for simply displaying Google ads on their web site. It's easy to sign up and free. Just visit Google (http://www.google.com/ads) and sign up for their AdSense program. They'll give you some html code to copy and paste on your site.

While Google decides which ads will actually appear on your site, you can decide how the Google ads will look - choose colors, borders, etc. and where to put them on your pages.

Step 8. Find Link Partners

I fuond out that exchanging links with other web site owners is a MUST if you want to improve your search engine rankings. Google especially will consider your site more relevant if your site has other sites linking to it. Also the ad copy from other sites, if relevant, can add more valuable keyword content to your own site.

I use Linkmarket (http://www.linkmarket.net) to find credible web sites to exchange links with. It's free to join.

Step 9. Write Articles to Promote Your Site

Oh oh. Here's that writing thing again. Well, you better get used to it, because writing articles like this one (normally your articles will be about the subject matter of your web site) will help give your affiliate web site much needed exposure. It doesn't matter if you write them yourself or hire others (ghostwriters) to write them for you.

You'll find that the best Internet marketers all write articles to promote themselves, their newsletters, and products and services. Remember, there's a reason the Internet is called the "information" super highway.

After writing your articles, you can post them to an article directory site like Article City (http://www.articlecity.com). People can easily find your articles to use as free content for their sites.

Now, I suggest that you print this article out and refer to it often as you go about creating the next great affiliate web site. Good luck!

About The Author

Copyright 2004 Donna Monday
Here's an example of a niche site I set up for job seekers:
http://www.get-a-job-interview-quick-tips.com
More on niche marketing here: http://url123.com/mn6dk

Is Your Niche Site A Real Lemon?

2006-04-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

By now many of you have heard about the advantages of building niche web sites to promote the selling of products and services online. Indeed, building a targeted niche site is a very smart idea.

Because of the huge amount of competition from larger company sites and thousands of smaller competitors, building a general mall type sites or "catch all" sites is a waste of time. It will be extremely difficult to get even one visitor to your site if you're trying to reach everybody.

Therefore, some smart Internet savvy marketers figured out that if they picked a niche area and focused only on that niche, then they have a much better chance of finding targeted visitors looking for very specific information on products and services.

But figuring out what a niche is and exactly how to go about promoting that niche is very puzzling to a lot of people looking to use the Internet to grow rich, or at least make a comfortable living. Yes, you can make serious money on the Internet with a niche site.

First, though, you've got to find a good niche.

Well, I've found the perfect example of a niche web site that is attractive, informational, and shows a real love for it's subject. Would you believe that a love of lemons could grow into a moneymaking niche site?

That's right. Someone has turned a common fruit into a wonderful site that is devoted only to the enjoyment of - lemons.

You can visit it here: http://www.lemonflower.com

Now if someone can make "lemonade" out of the vast wasteland of all those millions of loser (lemon) web sites, then this tells you that there must be something to all this talk about niche web sites.

Before you build one, however, you need to do your research and see if your subject is something that enough people are interested in. Then you need to write keyword rich web copy that will attract visitors. Finally, you'll need to learn all you can about strategic Internet marketing, and how to target your niche market.

Sometimes you may find that there's less competition if you pick a niche within a niche. Let's look at our lemon site again.

General Category = Fruit
Niche = Citrus Fruit
Niche within a Niche = Lemons

I hope this information makes your quest to find a niche for your web site a little bit clearer. Now I think I'll take a break and have a nice cold glass of lemonade.

About The Author

Copyright 2004 Donna Monday
Here's an example of a niche site I set up for smoothie lovers:
http://www.1st-milkshake-n-smoothie-recipes.com
More on niche marketing here: http://url123.com/mn6dk

There is plenty of opportunity to make money with Google Adwords. Learn to set up campaigns and how to succeed with Adwords.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/gc.htm

In Depth Analysis of a Successful Niche Product

2006-04-23T01:24:00.000-07:00

The product is about teaching your parrot how to talk. Now that is a niche!
http://www.yourparrotwilltalk.com

There are a few niche information products targeting pet owners. Creating a product for pet owners is a very sound idea. People love their pets more than anything else they own.

Frank Kern created a product for parrot owners that is making him $20,000 a year on autopilot. A search for "parrots" in the Overture inventory tool at http://inventory.overture.com returned 88,000 results. That means 88,000 people searched for that term in February 2004.

Let's see how Frank is making money on autopilot with his product. By typing "parrots" without the quotes into Google's search box, I see that on the right side of the results page, Frank's parrot site is listed in the number one position. It's very likely that Frank pays only the minimum of five cents per click with his AdWords campaign because there are only three other ads on that page. Let's say that Frank gets two percent of people who search for "parrots" to click on his ad.

He probably gets more than that since it's a very good ad. The wording of the ad hasn't changed for weeks so it must work, I've checked.

At two percent click through rate (ctr) that means 1,760 people visit his parrot site. If just five percent of people order Frank's product at $37.77, he's making $2898.72 per month. That's really an exact figure and I'll show you how I came up with it.

Frank uses Clickbank as his payment processor. They charge $1 + 7.5% for each transaction, that means out of $37.77, Frank gets $33.94.

Five percent of peolpe ordered so that's 88 orders. 88x$33.94=$2986.72. Subtract the cost of pay per click advertising of $88 and that leaves Frank $2898.72 for the month. Multiply that by 12 months and Frank makes $34,784.64 a year. That's a nice income from a one page website using one source of advertising don't you think? Frank could spend an hour a week to monitor his Google ads and that's all the work he has to do for his site.

Frank could probably double his income by making a few changes to his business. Since he doesn't run an affiliate program, he could switch his payment processor to one that takes a lower percentage of his earnings.

Frank could also raise his prices. If he studies his market of parrot owners he'll probably figure out how much they spend on their parrots. Parrots aren't cheap pets. Also, pet owners WILL spend a lot of money on their pets. People send their dogs to obedience school, grooming services, and buy them all sorts of pricey things.

All Frank has to do is send his list of customers a survey asking them how much the information that they bought is worth to them. He could raise his price for the product or create a version 2 and sell more to his existing customers. He could also sell parrot supplies to his existing customers.

Another thing Frank could do is have a subscription box on his site to capture emails and then build credibility with visitors who don't buy on the first visit, and in the case study above, that's 95% of people!

Having listend to Frank talk on a bunch of Internet marketing teleseminars I know that his aim is not to fiddle around too much with any one site. His method is called the "Underachiever Method". His aim is to create 50 sites that generate money such as the parrot site. What a good idea. 50 streams of income that run on autopilot.

That got me to think. If he can create 50 sites like that, for me to create just one site is good enough. I started to research my own niches. I asked myself what other pets could people be interested in that would create that kind of income? I searched for the following terms and found how many people searched for those terms.

Rabbits - 139,995 Humming Birds - 110, 692 Ferrets - 76,820 Tropical Fish - 155,579 Hunting Dog - 30,725

Woh! Excellent potential - bling bling. I searched on Google and didn't find anyone selling information products on rabbits or hunting dogs. I did find one on ferrets and tropical fish. That shouldn't stop me from creating a product on ferrets and tropical fish. There's always room for improvement or joint ventures.

I looked at "hunting dog" more closely and saw that some related keywords are: "rabbit hunting dog" "hog hunting dog" "squirrel hunting dog" "deer hunting dog" and a lot more.

There are so many niches yet untapped it's unbelievable. I think I'm going to create an information product for hunters and use all those little niches for the chapters. I don't mind revealing all this to you because I've got a bag full of niches that I've researched.

One method I use to find niches is to type in just a single keyword into the Overture tool and look at all the related keyword phrases. Those related keyword phrases are your niche markets.

If you're going to create a niche product, set up a Google campaign to survey the market to see the potential success. Once you're certain it's going to be successful, go to a bookstore like Barnes and Noble and look up a book or magazine about your niche. IF there isn't a book about your niche then you really should look for another niche.

Look through the book to see what kind of content it contains. Now go to a freelance site such as http://www.elance.com and hire freelances to write your ebook for you.

Then set up a one page website, hook it up to a payment processor such as ClickBank and then send some traffic to the site. This should take you no more than a month working part-time or two weeks working full-time. Good luck!

Copyright 2004 Gary Huynh
Gary Huynh is an independent Internet marketing consultant. He works full time researching and implementing new streams of profit for his existing business and for clients. View his Niche Marketing Power Zone at
http://www.onesourcebiz.com/niche-marketing
http://www.real-internet-marketing-reviews.com

About The Author

Gary Huynh makes a living buying and reselling other peolpe's information products for generous profits. His eBook "Resale Rights Secrets" which he co-authored with 19 other resell rights marketers, shows how to make money with resell rights.

How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

2006-04-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on. Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monetize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site. The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages. Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords. As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blogcan really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds. By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined. This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page. If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and setup your free account. Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit! Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy. You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day. At the end of a month, you'lll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with AdSense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once yuo've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

About The Author

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

Learn how to profit online in your own niche market.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/nm.htm

Selling Niche Items on Ebay

2006-04-23T00:35:00.000-07:00

A website is great to have for residual income, for presence, to have a place called home on the Internet. I admit I love it. Instead of hunting for sites to host my pictures and software for free, I have a place and it is all mine. But nothing beats eBay for instant, in your face sales.

Its like having a mall with millions of visitors a day built just for your. I mean, you could used vacuum cleaner bags and walk away with a bag full of money a week later if only you knew how to list your auctions with the right title, right ad, and right type of features or ven no features. For examples of what can and has been sold on eBay, check out these sites.

http://www.disturbingauctions.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebayweirdnesscollectorclub

No features? Yes, you can make a consistent weekly income by listing auctions with no features. I have done it. You just have to find a niche and your customers will hunt for you. No extras will be necessary.

What type of products would qualify as a niche item? Lets say your hobby is scrapbooking and you have just written the perfect ebook on the subject. You know it will sell, but how do you go about selling it. You could put up a website, spend weeks submitting it to search engines, and then, maybe months later watch sales start coming in. That's great for the long term. In fact its something you should do.

But, if you want to start getting sales sooner, list it on eBay. It takes some work to do it right though. You will need to figure out what search terms your customer will be using to find your auction. Then search both the current and completed auctions to find out what your competitors are doing to get their bids. Or download a tool to do it for you.

http://www.profit-ware.com/hotbid/

Okay, what if the search terms you entered comes up with few searches or none. Well, this is a sign that hell just froze over. But if it does happen, can you spell "jackpot." You will need to find closely related search terms that actually will come up and use them along with your rare terms. Think about what other items your ideal customers will also be buying and mention them in the body of your ad. Don't spam though. Write your ad like you are speaking face to face to your customers and you can't go wrong.

Check out your competitors features. Did they highlight? Did they choose Bold? Did they spend the extra money and category feature the auction? I did this once on a niche product that I was sellling and actually made less money that when I didn't choose to feature the item. But you will have to test your results. Why spend extra money that you don't have to?

Also, study the title of the auction and the ad itself. Remember that the default search on eBay is title only, so make sure you pack your title with keywords that you know people will be using. But don't go overboard. You can always tell when a seller is trying to spam the search engine instead of providing a descriptive title provides their customers with the information they need.

The days when you could put up a text ad and sell are over. Well, maybe not. But at least put in the extra effort and design an HTML ad. It lets your customer know that you are actually running a business and that the image your products present matter to you. Turbo Lister is great if you are just starting out. You can also find more free HTML editors on the resource page of my site.

http://www.profit-ware.com

Learn some ad writing techniques. If you are selling an info product or software, the mini-site model works great. It will provide your customer with all the information he or she needs to make a buying decision. Also learn hypnotic writing and NLP. I am not saying that you have to do all of this at once. Just pick up as you go along.

Just to get started, do your marketing research and list your ad and wait for sales. Yes, it will become addictive, especially after you get that first bid. You will set your homepage to your "My eBay" page and check it every few minutes. I did.

About The Author

Stephan Miller is a ebay seller, freelance programmer, writer, and webmaster at http://www.profit-ware.com Home of Hotbid Auction Market Analyzer
support@profit-ware.com

How to Build Massive Keyword Lists

2006-04-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

As keyword marketing becomes more and more expensive and competitive, it has become essential when building your lists to focus on the maximum number of phrases and their variations that a surfer might enter into the search engines.

Why?

Because according to Amit Singhal, principal scientist at Google, a guy who really should know what he's talking about, over 50% of the 200 million searches performed a day have never been searched before. He also said: "When performing a search most surfers give a 2-4 word query".

So here are my top 18 recommended ways to build massive keyword lists:

1. Visit your competitor's web pages and look in the title and meta tags.

2. Search for brand names in Google's Sandbox. This will return additional keywords that searchers entered when using the brand name. You can also enter regular keyword phrases and get related keyword phrases that have been searched on Google.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/GSB.php

3. Look over your past customer testimonials, and see if there are any keywords you can use. This strategy lets you get inside your customer's mind to produce more market centric keywords.

4. Consider synonyms. A synonym is a word having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or other words in the language. Enter your keywords into Roget's Thesaurus for a list of related synonyms. Also visit LexFN. Links:
http://www.megastep.com/buzz/RT.php &
http://www.megastep.com/buzz/LFN.php

5. Think of singular and plurals keywords.

6. What about verbs? Example: Ride, rode, ridden, ridding, rides.

7. Use hyphenation and variations. Example: off-shore, offshore, off shoer

8. Consider domain names. Many people enter domain names into the search engines rather than their their browser address bar. Example: cnn.com. In July 2004 cnn.com was searched 633677 times on Overture.

9. Get books on your subject and use the terms in the index and glossaries to grow your keyword lists.

10. Download a free copy of Weblog Expert Lite. Then ask your web host how to download your raw stats files. Run them through the software and you will then discover every possible keyword combination that surfers have used to find your website.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/WLE.php

11. Use Wordtracker. What does Wordtracker do? "...helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service - many of which you might never have considered." Wordtracker is an essential tool to use.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/WT.php

12. Then go to the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool. Enter in a keyword and Overture returns all the prior month's searches that include your phrase. The problem with the Overture tool is that it doesn't give you the exact way that the search was entered. This is why it is essential to use a tool like Keyword tumble (see #18) to generate the maximum possible number of keyword combinations that a user might enter a search phrase into the engines.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/OST.php

13. Use abbreviations and misspellings. A good misspelling tool is Search Spell. Search Spell uses actual misspellings entered into the search engines.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/SS.php

14. Use acronyms. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters of a name. Example: due diligence becomes DD. A good acronym generator is Acronym Finder.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/ACF.php

15. Combine your keyword phrase into one word. Example:
strawbale houses => strawbalehouses

16. Use "space" and "+" with keywords. Example:
strawbale+houses
strawbale + houses

17. Visit Crossword Compiler and download their demo software. Plug in your keywords and discover a multitute of additional words.
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/CC.php

18. Once yu have your list compiled visit Keyword Tumbler and download the free software. Put your keywords into a text file and then let Keyword Tumbler generate multiple variations of each keyword phrase you have ... instantly!
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/KWT.php

It does this simply by mixing the words in each phrase around. Example: "horses for sales" generates a list like this...

horses for sale
horses sale for
for horses sale
for sale horses
sale horses for
sale for horses

As Perry Marshall, author of the Definitive Guide to Google Adwords said at a recent seminar: "Every combination of keywords that somebody could conceivably type in on Google is a market."
Link: http://www.megastep.com/buzz/PM.php

I hope you have found this advice useful? It's the exact same procedure I sue everyday when fighting the pay-per-click wars.

Copyright 2004 Rob Taylor

About The Author

Rob Taylor has been marketing online since 1996. He's sold anything from books, debit cards, security products to art prints. Take advantage of his battle tested marketing strategies that could quietly make you five figure cash profits every single month. Free newsletter at http://www.megastep.com

Get a collection of fresh and timely research on hot niches and related keyword phrases to be exploited. Grab these niches and profit from them.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/niche/ne.htm