Tips to Help You Choose a Great Niche Market

Tips to Help You Choose a Great Niche Market

Earning money online has become a trend, and more and more people have quit their day jobs so they can focus on their new moneymaking endeavor.  You’ve probably read several stories on the Web about how ordinary people have turned into millionaires in just a short time. It’s good to be able to follow in their footsteps but how exactly does a person earn a fortune online? The answer: find the right niche market.

Niche Market Overview

First things first…what is a niche market? Unless you have been hiding in a cave somewhere for the last ten years then for sure, you have heard about the term, “niche market” before. Essentially, it is a division of a mainstream market; it is a small market that addresses that needs of a specific group of people. One good example of a mainstream market would be cars. It is an overwhelmingly huge market, and there are dozens of auto companies selling many different car types and models in the US alone. But there are people who are only looking for SUVs, and if you create a website about SUVs then you are likely to get more buyers than if you built a site about cars in general.

3 Tips to Keep in Mind When Choosing a Niche Market

Now that you already have an idea of what a niche market is and why it is better to tap one, the next step is for you to find a great niche market. Many people would probably tell you to choose a niche that you are passionate about, one that you are very familiar with, but while this may work for some people, it will not work for everyone. This is especially true now that a lot of niche markets are quite saturated, and the big players make it extremely difficult for newbies to earn a decent income from their sites.

So, without keeping you in suspense any longer, here are some invaluable tips that you ought to follow if you want to succeed in the niche market:

Tip #1: Find a niche market that will enable you to target many different keywords.

This means that the niche should have many topics that you can write articles on. The more keywords that it has, the more traffic you will get.  Additionally, the more keywords you have, the more likely you will be able to build an authority site for your niche and Google loves authority sites.

Tip #2: Choose an evergreen niche.

There are many “trending” niches that you can choose from and while it will be easier to get lots of traffic from them, they are not good long-term options. If you want to build an online business that will earn you money for many years, go for an evergreen niche.

Tip #3: Pick out a profitable niche.

There are many unique niches out there, and if you can find one that has very little to no competition then you’re lucky. But before you spend all your money creating a website for this niche, do your homework and find out if there’s a fortune to be made from it. If the competition is low and there’s a high demand for this particular niche, then you’ve found yourself a gold mine.

How to Succeed in the Niche Market

There are young people who have become Internet millionaires even before reaching the age of 30, and anybody who has made the decision to earn money online would certainly like to know what these guys did to become so filthy rich.

Due to the vastness of the Internet, there are so many ways for people to earn a decent income from it. You can build a website (or websites) to sell a product or service, or monetize it through affiliate marketing, Adsense, lead generation, or even by selling advertising space. Once you have plenty of traffic going into your site, then you could very well start earning money from it.

If you want to become an Internet Marketer, it is best to focus your time and effort on a specific market. Studies show that niche marketing produces better results and is less costly compared to mass marketing.  Think of it this way. If a customer were to buy a Gibson guitar, and he had to choose between a store that sells all kinds of electric guitars and another store that sells only Gibson guitars, then he will most likely go to the latter because it offers exactly what he is looking for.

Undoubtedly, niche marketing has become one of the hottest money-making ideas today. But the thing is, becoming successful in niche marketing takes more than just realizing how effective it can be. Most of us know there’s a fortune to be had in this kind of market but the reason why most people never succeed in it is because they don’t know the first and most crucial step in niche marketing and that is—choosing the right market.

If you want to know how you can succeed in niche marketing, here are some strategies that you can follow: 

1. Find the right niche. The key is to be able to choose a topic based on any or all of the following requirements:

• It should not have too many competing sites.
• It should be something you know or care about.
• It should have a good monetizing potential.

2. Once you have chosen your niche, exert effort in knowing what the market’s needs are. Find out what your potential customers are looking for, and customize your site to meet their needs accordingly.

3. Strive to continuously improve. Testing your niche market will prove to be an invaluable strategy that will win you lots and lots of customers in the long run. Study your competitors’ websites and the techniques they use to win customers. Compare them to your own marketing efforts and make the necessary changes so you can stand out.

Niche marketing is extremely profitable but only if you know the right strategies to use. You will probably make a few mistakes now that you are still starting up, but the key is to never give up. Find out what your customers need and develop ways to cater to these needs, and in no time, you too will succeed.

Getting Started with Niche Marketing: What You Need to Know

Niche marketing is a business model that focuses on a specific market. But just because it is smaller in size does not mean it is going to be very easy for you to earn money online. On the contrary, this type of business model is quite complex and it would require a lot of time and effort on your part, for it to be effective. But if you know how to make it work, you could stand to earn tens of thousands of dollars every month or more.

Before you start researching about the best strategies to implement, it is important that you know the basics. You need to know how you can get started with niche marketing so you will have a solid foundation for your Internet business.

Step 1: Find a great niche. This is perhaps the single most important thing you need to do. If you don’t have a great niche then your chances of fulfilling your goal will be very slim. Conduct sufficient research on many different niches, and choose one that gets a lot of monthly searches but with very little competition.

Step 2: Build a website for your niche. It does not have to be fancy, and if you don’t have a lot of money to spend to hire someone to design your website, then you can do it on your own. A simple blogging platform like Wordpress is perfectly fine.

Step 3: Create interesting and informative content for your site. Content is what will drive people to your website so make sure you do a great job at it. If you don’t have a knack for writing articles, you can always outsource it.

Step 4: Decide on how you wan to monetize your site. If you opt for affiliate marketing, then choose products from Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, and others that match your niche and have high marketability. Pay-per-click is also a good way to earn money in a niche market, and Adsense is an excellent choice for newbie Internet marketers.

Step 5:  Work on search engine optimization. Participate in white hat SEO techniques such as guest blogging and article marketing so you can get backlinks to your site. Aside from this, work on your keyword campaign and make sure your website is properly optimized, too. There are many SEO techniques that work. The key here is to find the techniques that work for you, and once you have found them, “rinse and repeat.”

Step 6: Promote your site through Twitter, Facebook, Stumble Upon, and other social media platforms. These social networks can drive massive traffic to your site.

There you have it—six steps to building your niche empire. Success does not happen overnight, and you will soon realize that things will get more difficult and complicated as you go along. But this is part of the learning process, and you must not give up even when the going gets tough. Keep learning new things and acquiring new skills, and then apply them to your business. Eventually, all that hard work will pay off.

Niche Marketing: Targeted and Cost-Effective

Any business owner knows that to succeed, it’s important to look at the overall marketing strategy and how products and services eventually reach the right people. The world of consumers is a complicated one, especially these days when there are just too many options. A typical visit to any supermarket will expose you to so many brands on the shelves, all wanting to stand out and get a share of the consumer’s basket. With the prevalence of online shopping, things are even more competitive and complicated. This is why marketers have been forced to rethink their strategies and really come up with ideas that will make an impact in the market. 

The Cost Issue

While companies really prioritize trying to find the right marketing strategy and capturing the attention and loyalty of target consumers, cost is always an issue when it comes to marketing campaigns. Some campaigns cost millions, especially if you’re targeting the mainstream market. Imagine how much all those TV and radio commercials will cost, not to mention the billboards, the posters, and all the other promotions you can think of. Of course, everything that goes into making the product itself also costs money – research and development, packaging, and many others. Niche marketing is a good strategy because of how cost-effective it is. This means that it wouldn’t cost you as much as it would cost to capture the mainstream market, but its effectiveness is right on the money.

Why It Works

Niche marketing is the most cost-effective solution because you will be able to focus on a specific target market. As a niche marketer, you really have to spend time understanding how this target market works – what appeals to them, how they make decisions, and how exactly they behave as consumers. Knowing all of these details will help you craft a strategy that’s solely targeted towards this niche market. For example, if you find a target that’s based on a particular demographic or ethnic group, such as the Asian market or the Hispanic market, then reaching these markets will require you to target very specific locations and strategies. Instead of putting out a radio commercial in all radio stations in the country, for instance, you just have to put out the radio commercial in the specific station that your chosen ethnic group tunes into regularly.

                                                                                                         

Finding the Right Market

A big part of the success of niche marketing is choosing the right target market. Even if you’re not employing the niche strategy, Marketing is really about finding the right target market and understanding that market in order to serve it best. This applies to niche marketing especially, because once you find your niche you have to make sure that you really understand your consumers. Niche marketing is very specialized in the sense that you really need to craft your strategies specifically for that small audience, so you have to know your target consumers inside out. This makes it a bit challenging, but it’s very rewarding as well.

Niche Marketing Tips You Need to Know

With the variety of products and services that are available these days, the typical consumer can have a hard time deciding which one to choose. As a consumer, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with everything that’s thrown at you – whether these are the hundreds of products lining up the supermarket shelves or the many billboards and posters you encounter on a typical walk or drive to the city. Consumers are becoming more wary about advertisements as well, especially now that they’re already more knowledgeable about how some marketers do it. With the increased intelligence and wariness of consumers, the best marketers have tried shifting their mainstream strategy into something that’s more focused, direct and sincere. Niche marketing has become the buzz in the consumer world for quite some time, and here are some of the best tips that marketers can employ.

Don’t Be Afraid to Celebrate Uniqueness

When it comes to niche marketing, uniqueness is something to be celebrated, instead of being feared. Normal marketing strategies look at the market and try to find the things that these subgroups have in common. They seed out the commonalities and try to form strategies based on these. This is why you have a TV commercial or a promo that can be blasted to a large audience. These marketing materials were crafted based on the common needs and desires of a particular target group. With niche marketing, uniqueness is celebrated, and the more defined a certain subgroup is, the better. To succeed in niche marketing therefore, you should look at each differentiating factor as something that you can use to your advantage.

Speak their Language

It starts with not being afraid to speak to a certain niche market, but speaking to that market effectively is another story altogether. If you want to succeed in your strategies as a niche marketer, you have to know how to understand your target market best. You have to find out how they communicate and react to certain things, and you have to speak the same language that they speak. Even if you’ve already targeted the right niche market, if you don’t communicate the way that they do, it will be very hard for you to reach out to them. For a niche marketing strategy to be effective, you have to be armed not only with the right message but also with the right way of sharing that message.

Constantly Innovate

         

Say you’ve managed to get the right tone of voice in the way you communicate to a particular niche. It doesn’t end there. Marketing exists to drive goodwill, as much as profits, so you have to ensure that your Marketing strategies are sustainable. This means you have to recognize that yes, your strategy may be applicable at the moment, but the world changes ever so rapidly and you have to constantly innovate in order to keep your consumers interested. Innovation is the key to sustainability, and even when you’re targeting a specific niche market, this is just as applicable.

         

An Easy Guide to Help You Find the Perfect Niche Market

Get rich quick schemes are just that—schemes. You can’t expect to start earning tens of thousands of dollars within a couple of weeks by simply buying an e-book that a lot of self-proclaimed Internet marketing “gurus” say will earn you a fortune overnight. Earning your place on the Internet takes time and effort because there are no shortcuts to success, and if you want to make it big online, you have to be willing to go through the hardships until you discover your very own gold mine.

One of the best moneymaking methods used by many successful individuals is niche marketing, and when you have discovered the perfect topic then you can build a website around it that will either directly sell products/services, or promote them. Niche marketing has made a lot of people rich, simply because it offers high conversion rates and thus give you higher returns on your investment.

So, if you are still trying to figure out what the perfect niche for you would be, then this very simple niche selection guide will be able to help you.

The first step is to make a list of at least 5 topics. These topics could be any random things that come out of your head. For example: dog, kitchen, cell phone, bed, and children.

Then, using a keyword analysis tool, type these words in the search box one at a time. The topics we’ve chosen above are too broad so we want to be able to break them down into smaller topics, and these are what are referred to as niches. With the help of a keyword analysis tool like Google Adword’s keyword tool, for example, you will get the following terms for the “dog” topic:

• Dog breeds
• Dog grooming
• Dog supplies
• Dog training

These are still quite broad topics to be considered a niche, though if you want to build a big authority website then it might be all right to go for any of them. However, if you want a more targeted niche, you can continue to dig deeper into each of these topics. So, if you are interested in “dog training” then do a keyword search on it. You will likely get the following topics:

• Acoma dog training
• Adult dog training
• Adult dog potty training
• Aggressive dog behavior training

And so on…

If you think any of the topics on this list appeals to you based on factors such as high monthly search volume and low competition, then you can proceed to find a list of keywords for this niche that you can create content on.  You should choose a niche that has a large list of keywords or related keywords so that you can build more content for your site. The bigger your site, the better.

When you have chosen your niche, the next step is to start building your website and deciding on how you intend to monetize it.

Succeeding in Niche Marketing—Know What It Takes

When it comes to Marketing, many people think that the best strategy to employ is to go where the rest of the world goes and fight it out until the end. There are a lot of marketing trends that come and go, and the popularity of certain products and services tend to rise and fall occasionally as well. Some people even think that to be successful in Marketing, you have to find a way to capture the biggest share of the market possible. By targeting a wide audience, they think that this will lead to more sales and more successes. While there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that strategy, the problem is, the wider the audience you target, the more competitors you will get. Your role is to shift the consumer’s focus and preferences towards you, but this isn’t always so easy to do, and this is where Niche Marketing comes in.

Targeting the Best Prospects

Niche marketing recognizes that a big part of succeeding in any Marketing strategy is choosing the right target. Niche marketing focuses on a very specialized section of a wider consumer base, and this means their needs and preferences are a lot more defined and concrete. Niche marketing is all about targeting the best prospects that you can serve and the strategies it uses are very specialized. To succeed in this venue you really have to do your market research and find out what your targeted niche wants. Market research is of utmost importance here, because you can’t come up with the right strategy if you don’t understand your target market fully. On the other hand, if you have a full understanding of how your target market behaves, it will be easier to address their needs.

Focused Spending

The success of niche marketing lies on its cost-effectiveness. When companies look at how much they’re spending for Marketing strategies and campaigns, they also look at how effective these campaigns are and whether or not the money they spent on them is actually worth it. With niche marketing, it’s easier to do focused spending because it will be easier for the company to pick a particular focus and stick there. Because the target market tends to be smaller and more defined, you don’t spend a huge marketing budget on something you can’t define specifically. This means that even if you have a limited budget, since you can target it properly, success will be a lot easier to reach.

Sustainability

The last thing you have to remember when you truly want to succeed in niche marketing is the fact that you have to ensure your efforts are sustainable. All marketing efforts tend to be based on what the current trends are and what the target market is thinking of at the moment. However, when you want every cent you spend to be truly worth it, you also have to keep reviewing your marketing strategies and how your target market is taking these strategies right now. You don’t want your target market to be saturated either, so you have to constantly spice things up a little.

How to Serve the Needs of Your Target Market

Any marketing guru will tell you that choosing the right target market is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Before you even think of how effective your campaigns and slogans will be, before you even think about how much you should spend on above-the-line or even below-the-line tactics, you have to first ensure that you have the right target market in mind. All of your marketing strategies won’t count for much if you don’t have the right target market, because choosing and understanding your target market is where it all begins.

Making sure you have the right target market is of even more importance when you choose to employ niche marketing. A niche marketing strategy relies heavily on the unique characteristics of a specific target market, and this is why you should make sure it’s properly defined.

Options in Niche Marketing

To choose the right target market when it comes to niche marketing, you have several options:

• Choosing based on demographics

Demographics are perhaps the easiest things to look at when pinpointing a particular market to serve. You can narrow down the age group to something very specific, or you can even base your strategies on something like ethnicity, location and even gender.

• Choosing based on lifestyle

Another option that a lot of people look into these days is lifestyle. There are so many differences in lifestyle that marketers can tap, and choosing a group based on lifestyle is something that a lot of niche marketers have used over the years. For instance, you can look at what hobbies they’re fond of doing in their free time. What motivates their decisions? What are their dreams and goals in life? These are the questions that will be very useful in finding the right niche, and having a thorough understanding of these things will help you craft the right strategy.

• Choosing based on attitude and personality

The attitudes and personalities of people can also be used to identify certain niche markets. People differ in their personalities a lot, and this is actually a very interesting way to segment a market.

• Choosing based on technology

You can also ask questions that are based on technology, because this will help you identify their traits. For instance, it’s probably worth asking whether or not they are receptive to online channels. What kind of media channels do they respond to best? Do they go on the Internet often?

Serving the Needs of Your Target Market

Once you’ve chosen your target market, a very important thing to do is to keep them interested. You need to understand the needs of this target market fully in order to serve those needs best. Even if you already have a defined target market, your market research shouldn’t end there. This means that you have to keep yourself informed about what your target market is doing and what their current situation is. When things change, you also have to respond accordingly and change your strategies to go with the times.

Understanding Why Niche Marketing Could Be the Best Solution

Marketing is a very important tool that companies use in order to reach their target audience in the best way possible. There are many ways to engage a target audience, but the tools and methods used in Marketing are very important in this regard. When faced with a lot of competition for the attention of a certain target market, companies need to employ certain strategies that can capture this market. Niche Marketing is one strategy that companies can employ, although it’s something that doesn’t necessarily apply at all times. The important thing here is to assess the situation and really review whether or not niche marketing is the best solution.

Standing Out from the Clutter

To understand niche marketing better, it starts with looking at the motivation behind employing this strategy. In a world that’s laden with competition, one of the most important goals of any marketer is really to stand out from the clutter and just capture the target market’s attention. Since there are so many competitors all clamoring for the attention of the same target market, it’s sometimes very difficult to create a strategy that’s applicable to all. This is why finding a niche market is sometimes the best solution. For companies with minimal resources and for those that don’t want the stress and the struggle of competing with a broader market, niche marketing is the best solution. Instead of going mainstream, sometimes the best solution is to assess all the opportunities for a target market and pick one to focus on.

Finding a Niche and Sticking to It

Finding a niche and sticking to it is sometimes the best solution that marketers can employ. Going mainstream takes a lot of bullishness; you have to be willing to compete with all the other products and services that are already out there, and this is difficult to do especially if you’re new and your target market isn’t even aware of you yet. This is when niche marketing becomes a winning strategy. With niche marketing, you break away from the mainstream and just find a niche that you can work on. To stick to it, you need to take note of their spending habits as well as the price range that they’re willing to patronize.

Focused Marketing

The beauty of niche marketing is that it allows you to focus on your small place in the mainstream market. When you target the mainstream market, the tendency is that you really have to spend a lot of money when it comes to promos and marketing materials. To capture the mainstream, you have to be willing to compete with the biggest players in the market. On the other hand, focusing on a certain niche market allows you to attend to their specific needs better and will really get to meet those needs head on. Because the marketing here is much more focused, you don’t even have to spend so much on your strategies for as long as you have the right niche.

Top 5 Most Profitable Niches

It’s tough to decide on a niche, and many people would always tell you to choose one that you are genuinely interested about. While these people undoubtedly have good intentions, following your heart is not always the best move. You could be passionate about “cleaning dog poop, “ for example, but is there a profitable market for it? Probably not. If you want to make a decent income online, you have to choose a niche market with a lot of earning potential. Once you have discovered it, put your heart in it, and the money will soon follow.

If you are new to Internet marketing, then knowing what the most profitable niches are would certainly help you make a good decision when it comes to choosing the market you are going to tap. There are so many possible niches you could choose from and as a newbie, you might be overwhelmed with all the choices available. Getting an idea on which markets are very lucrative can give you a head start in your new endeavor.

Here are the top five most profitable markets right now:

1. Insurance—The insurance niche is the most profitable today; there is a high demand for insurance products, and insurance companies would pay top dollar for every single click.
2. Attorney/Lawyer—Attorneys offering their services online face a very stiff competition and in order to bring in more clients, they invest a lot of money in advertising.
3. Finance (Debt)—Many people go to the Internet to apply for loans or get information on how to get out of debt. This market is huge, and tapping a segment of it (loan, debt help, mortgage, etc) is an excellent idea.
4. Employment—Everyday, countless people go online to search for jobs. If you have a website that can help people find employment, then you are off to a great start.
5. Relationships—One of the most important aspect of people’s lives are the relationships they keep, and a niche on dating, marriage, or family is certainly very profitable considering the money people are willing to spend to make their relationships work.

Take note however that because these are highly profitable niches, you might have to deal with very stiff competition if you tap into any one of them. There are lots of big players in these niches so be prepared for a hard battle ahead. It would help if you dig deeper into these topics using a keyword analysis tool so that you can find keywords with significantly lesser competition, because you will fare better in those keywords considering that you still have to build a site and optimize it to get a good amount of organic traffic. It would be a mistake to fight against the top players who have already set up strong authority sites and also have the money to invest on them. Once you have acquired the necessary marketing skills, then by all means, challenge the big guys.

NICHE RICHES...1

NICHE RICHES….1

INTRODUCTION

When I first started on this report, it was only supposed to be a couple of pages long. The main reason was to give a little bit more detail into a method that I use to generate a nice income every month.

Since then however, I have been contacted more times than I can count asking to expand the scope of the methods used and get more in detail about the things I do.

What I quickly realized is that many people simply do not know where to start and that many of the products out there today assume that we all know everything already.

So, I have taken this a bit further and am going to go in detail and in depth about everything. When you finish this, you should have no doubt that you will be able to generate an income online.

It is going to take work and effort on your part however, anything in life that is worth having does.  

GETTING YOUR HEAD RIGHT!

A majority of the success that you will have in Internet Marketing will be derived from your mental toughness. This is important because many of the things that you read and many of the products that you buy online set you up for failure.

What do I mean?

If you go and find just about any sales letter that is selling a product that has to do with making money online a couple things should jump out at you.

The first thing is, the claims of instant income that pours into your bank account the minute you buy the product. Many of these claims are crap and the sooner that you realize that the better off you will be.

What happens is, you buy a product, read it, and start to implement what it teaches and if you are not rich overnight you somehow feel that you have failed, but hold on a minute....

In reality, the person that sold you the product has failed, for the simple fact that they have set your expectations in a way that they are impossible to meet.  Understand right off the bat that the people that make money online are the ones that stick it out, the ones that put in the extra hour, and the ones that fight through the days of no sales.

You have to decide right now, are you going to be one of the successes or are you going to be one of the people that gets stuck in a rut and throws in the hat only to try something else and fail too?

If you are looking for a quick fix or push button system to solve all of your financial problems, this guide is not for you.  If however, you are willing to put the work in and follow a system that has proven to be successful, read on and lets get to work.

PICKING A NICHE

One of the things that it seems like people struggle with the most is picking a niche to jump into. One of the main reasons is, many systems and guides tell you to pick something that you are passionate about or something you love....

There is a problem though!

If you are anything like me, you can't go to a website like Clickbank and find something that you love or even anything that you are passionate about.  

PICKING A NICHE

One of the things that it seems like people struggle with the most is picking a niche to jump into. One of the main reasons is, many systems and guides tell you to pick something that you are passionate about or something you love....

There is a problem though!

If you are anything like me, you can't go to a website like Clickbank and find something that you love or even anything that you are passionate about.  When deciding which product is right for you, there are a couple things that you can look at.

Gravity – This can be found in the product description at ClickBank. This number basically tells you how many affiliates have sold at least one unit. The higher the number, you can assume that the product is selling well and that the sales page is proving to convert.  

Sales Page – Take a look at the sales page for the product. Does it interest you? Does it look professional? If you were in the market, would it compel you to rip your credit card out of your wallet and make a purchase?

Information – How much information is readily available online? For instance, if you are in the dog training niche and type “dog training tips” into Google and the first thing you see is an extensive step by step system to train a dog, that is free. There is a good chance that people will not buy what they can get for nothing. This might be a sign that you should look at another niche. If however, there isn't a whole lot of free information, but enough for you to research and get information for articles and other advertising, you probably found a good product to market.

Affiliate Resources – Most of the time, for every product there are 3 or 4 vendors on ClickBank trying to sell the same thing.  

Some of them give you things like articles, graphics, free reports, and other information that will help you in marketing their product. The bigger head start you can get, the better. This is a resource that I think many people overlook. Some of the affiliate resources even go as far as to give you a list of profitable keywords that you can start your campaign with.

All of the things above combined can guide you to making the right decision when you're trying to come up with the right product for you to promote.

The most important things out of what was covered above are the

sales pages and the information sections.

You want to pay close attention to the sales page. If it makes you think that it was just quickly thrown together or if you look at the sales copy and think to yourself “ who in the world came up with this”? You might want to look at other similar products and skip over that particular vendor. Make sure that the process from beginning to end of the site is smooth. You want the headline to grab your attention and for there to be plenty of opportunities for the visitor to buy. Another thing to look for is to see if there are bonuses being given. Many times, the bonus that a product comes with make it a no brainer in and of itself.

Another very important thing to look for is “leaks”. This refers to the ability of the buyer to purchase the product through another payment processor. What you want to do is follow all of the links and make sure that your affiliate ID is still showing up at the bottom of the page. From what I understand, this is not as big of an issue anymore, but definitely something to watch out for.

One other important thing to keep an eye on is whether or not the vendor is collecting email addresses on a squeeze page. If they are, do yourself a favor and sign up. As you start to get emails from them, follow the links inside the emails and make sure that your affiliate ID is still intact and that they are not replacing yours with theirs. There has been some talk recently about vendors possibly stealing commission from affiliates in this manner.

Keep in mind that there is more than likely more than one person selling the same kind of product, so you do have options. Once you find a niche that you would like to get into take a look at all of the different vendors and see which one you think gives you the best opportunity to make a sale by sending visitors to the sales page.

The information portion is also going to play a huge part in your decision. As I said earlier, if someone is giving away for free what you are trying to sell, how many do you think you will sell?  Chances are, you might still get a couple sales, but not enough to make any type of long term passive income.

Our main goal is to find a niche that we can settle into, do the initial work, and then collect money from it for years to come. This is exactly the reason that it is so important to do thorough research. By doing so, we are making sure that we have set ourselves up for success.

DOING KEYWORD RESEARCH

Keyword research is one of the most important things that we do online. It can be very time consuming depending on how deep you need to go in order to get keywords that you are happy with, but it is well worth the effort and will pay a great return if done correctly.

The most important thing that we need in order to do effective keyword research is a keyword tool. For the purpose of this guide I am going to be using WordTracker's free tool, due to the fact that everyone has access to it.

Before we start though, it is important to understand that for the most part these tools make guesses at the results that they give. For example, in one niche that I am in, all of the keyword tools that I have used said that a particular keyword was only getting 1 search a day. This is funny

1 search a day. This is funny to me, because I currently get 30 visitors a day to one of my sites based on that keyword. The point I am trying to make is there is a little bit of wiggle room in the results that you get.

WordTracker reports results based on a daily search volume. This means that if it shows the number 5 after a keyword that it is searched for approximately 150 times a month.

Normally, a guide like this would go into a long drawn out ramble about how you should do keyword research and it would be really boring and you would lose interest.

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to show you how to cheat your way through keyword research.

This is by far the easiest way that I have found to research keywords and has helped me to expand out into different niches and even given me some great product ideas.

I'm going to give some examples here and try to make it as easy as possible for you to follow along. I want you to understand exactly what I am doing and how I come up with the numbers that I come up with.

Make sure that you have a web browser open and ready to go.

For example purposes we are going to be researching keywords that relate to the relationship niche. It will work for just about any niche though. As a matter of a fact, I have not found a single niche that I have not been able to do my keyword research in this manner with.

Open up www.ezinearticles.com in your browser. Now because we are using the relationship niche as an example I am just going to type in a random keyword in the search box. I am going to use “relationship problem advice”.

When I do that, the first article that shows up for me is this one:

http://ezinearticles.com/index.php?Some-Relationship-Problem-Advice-That-Can-Save-Your-Relationship&id=1252566

When that article opens, I really don't care what it says. Basically, I just want to take advantage of the fact that this person has probably spent hours researching the niche and keywords. So, what I am interested in is the keywords that they are going after.

To get that information you want  want to look at the source code. To do that, simply right click somewhere in the article and choose the option to “view source code”. When you do that, this is the part that we are concerned with:

<meta name="keywords" content="ways to end relationships, questions to ask before ending a relationship, get your ex back"

NOTE: YOU CAN ALSO GET THIS INFORMATION BY SIMPLY CLICKING THE EZINE PUBLISHER BUTTON ONCE INSIDE THE ARTICLE. HOWEVER, BY DOING THIS YOU ARE GIVING YOUR COMPETITION ANOTHER VOTE TO BE LISTED IN THE “MOST PUBLISHED” SECTION OF THAT category.

This tells us that the keywords that he is going after are “ways to end relationships, questions to ask before ending a relationship

and get your ex back”.

Lets take the first one of his keywords which is “ways to end relationships” and put it in keyword tracker. When we do that, we see that it is searched for 520 times a day.

Next, go to Google and enter the keyword with quotation marks. Surprise, only about 8,000 competing sites!

Now save that keyword and move onto the next one. When we put “questions to ask before ending a relationship” into WordTracker we are told that this term is searched for 324 times a day. When I check Google there are only 416 competing sites!

At this point we have 2 keywords with high daily searches and low competition. Now, you may have to go through a couple articles in

order to find good keywords, but it still only takes a couple of minutes and it is much easier than the way that the “gurus” tell you to do your keyword research.

You will want to continue looking at articles and checking the source code until you have somewhere between 10 -15 keywords that you are comfortable with. It should not take you long. One thing that I will say is, I'm not sure if this niche is profitable or not. I have never marketed to it so I have no idea how the niche converts or how much money you could make which these types of products. One thing that you can do to see what people are marketing when using these keywords is to simply follow the links in their resource boxes.

This will allow you to find out what kind of affiliate products are out there and give you some ideas about how you can monetize the keywords that you find.

Some people might find this method of keyword research unethical, I don't though. As a matter of fact, I think it is a very smart way to find keywords that we can use quickly without a ton of effort on our part.

The great thing about this method is, it will allow you to get involved with just about any niche that you want to enter.

If you put any base keywords in the search box at Ezinearticles you are going to come up with a ton of articles and can easily see what keywords people are trying to rank for. How much more of a sure thing can you ask for?

PICKING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

Once you have your list of keywords together that you are going to be working with, list them in order of daily searches. Since we are going to be dealing with relatively low competition, the number of competing sites does not really matter that much.

When checking Google for the competition of the keywords, keep a careful note of how many Adwords campaigns are showing up. Obviously if you can find a keyword that is getting a couple hundred searches a day, low competition, and a decent amount of Adwords campaigns showing up, you very well could have found a jackpot.

There are many things that go into deciding which keywords are “the right ones.” One thing to keep an eye on is keywords that have negative value in them such as “free”. While you will surely find a ton of keywords with these types of words in them, often times they are simply not profitable.

Lets say that you do find some keywords that generate a ton of visitors, but no sales.  What do you do then?

Well, the first thing that I would recommend is to change the product that you are trying to sell them. It could just be that the sales page or the offer does not appeal to people the way that you thought it would.

If after changing the product you still don't see any sales coming in, you might want to consider a adding Adsense to either your own self hosted site or to a free platform like Blogger.

This will give you another revenue stream, even it if is only a couple of dollars a day, it still adds up over time.  

ANALYZING YOUR COMPETITION

I have already gone over this a little bit, but this is an important part of the process so, some of the things need to be gone over a little more thoroughly.

When you plug the keyword into Google using quotation marks, there are a couple of things that you want to take note of.

l  What kind of sites are ranking high (are they authority sites?)

l  How many Adwords campaigns are being run (pay attention)

l  How many competing sites without quotation marks

The first bullet point above is probably the most important. This is true because it is going to be our goal to take over their position if they are on the first page of Google. Therefore, we have to see exactly how strong they are. This will tell us how much work we will have to put in for us to rank well.

One of the best indicators to me can be found by using Yahoo Site Explorer. Basically, we will be able to find out exactly how many links the site has coming in and exactly where they are coming from.

For the purpose of an example lets go back and use the keywords from the relationship niche that we found earlier.  One of the first keywords we found was “relationship problem advice” so, lets take a look at exactly what Google will tell us so that we can analyze it a little bit further.

When you plug the keyword into Google with quotation marks it shows that there are 8,770 competing sites. Now, take a look at the Adwords Ads that are running. Not only is there a full front page of 10 ads, but there are 11 more under “more sponsored links”

So far, we are looking real good. We have low competition and 21 people are spending money to get traffic from this particular keyword.

Lets take it a step further though and analyze what the sites that already have top billing have going on. We are going to do this by analyzing what kind of links they have coming in and where they come from.

To do this, we are going to use Yahoo Site Explorer. So, open Yahoo up in a different tab. Make sure that Google is still open with the information regarding the keyword “relationship problem advice”

The first site you should see is www.links2love.com/advice go ahead and open that site up and you will see that the site does not really offer any good content. Honestly, it looks like it is set up to generate income through Adsense. So, we should be happy about that.  Copy the URL and click over to your Yahoo tab. Once there we are going to see how many links the site has by putting it in the Yahoo search bar in the following format:

link:http://www.links2love.com/advice.htm

Hit enter, what you see next usually is a bad sign. It is showing that the site has over 4,000 links pointing to it. However, in this case, if you look close enough they are all internal links. This means that pretty much all of the links are coming from other pages on the site. Usually when I see that, I take that as a good sign.

After evaluating the first site, I'm not too worried. I'm fairly confident with a little bit of work, that first spot is attainable and I could have it with some patience.  

Take a look at the second competing result in Google and lets analyze it the same way. The site you should be looking at is www.couplescompany.com when you plug it into Yahoo using the same format as the first site, you will see that it has over 2,000 links pointing to it. However, again most of the links are coming from within the site with the exception of a couple of directories.

Another site with a couple thousand links pointing to it is not exactly what I wanted to see. However, because of where the links are coming from, I'm not that worried about it either.  

Just to do a little more investigation, lets do the same thing with the third site on the front page of Google. The URL that you should see is a URL within www.askmen.com when you run it through site explorer you will see that there are only 9 links pointing to it.

The fourth competing site has about the same stats as the third.

From everything I have seen this is a keyword that I feel comfortable attacking with a fair amount of certainty that I can not only rank on

the first page of Google , but that I can rank high on the first page. Therefore, I am going to put it aside as a good keyword to go after.

You are going to want to go through this process for each of the keywords that you have compiled. Make sure that you do this! Incomplete or sloppy research very well could hurt you in the long run.

Once you get it down, it shouldn't take you any longer than a couple of minutes per keyword and you will be done a lot faster than you think. Even though it might seem tedious, this is part of the ground work that you lay down to ensure that your campaign is successful.

No matter what you do, do not skip what we have talked about in this section. If you do, you could end up wasting a ton of time on keywords that are unattainable or even worse spending time ranking well for a keyword that is not profitable.

INTERMISSION

Lets review what we have done so far. At this point we have done the following:

1.   Got our heads right

2.   Picked a niche

3.   Keyword research

4.   Decided which keywords were the “right keywords”

5.   Analyzed our competition

As it stands right now, we know exactly what we are going to market and which words we are going to use to do it.

It is important to understand though, that you can not skip steps. If you do, you will find yourself involved in a niche that you are not making any money in, wondering why.

The fact of the matter is, the people that are not making money in this business are the ones that refuse to have structure even when a step-by-step guide is put in front of them.

Do yourself a favor and make sure that you have done each of the 5 things listed above before going any further. The rest of the steps will still be there later, but the first 5 are the foundation that is going to determine whether you earn money or not.

COMING UP WITH CONTENT

Now that we have our niche selected and the keywords that we are going to attack picked out, the next step is to create some content to generate traffic for us.

This can be done in a couple of ways. Personally, I like to use Google to do a little bit of research. Chances are good that just by entering your keywords in Google you are going to come up with a ton of useful stuff to write about.

One thing that I like to do even before checking Google though is to go to Yahoo Answers and search for variations of my keyword. This will tell me what problems people are having and what kind of solutions are being given to them.

If you pay really close attention you will pick up a couple great titles for articles and a list of different things that you can write about. However, in this case because we have been using the keyword “relationship problem advice”  what we are going to do right now is head on over to http://answers.yahoo.com and type in a variation of our keyword , for now we will stick with “relationship problem”. One of the first threads I see is:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AjfoHesso6OOjY6FoiHn_40jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070818194709AAXJlYM

The title of the post is:

“How is ignoring someone ever a good solution to a relationship problem”

Just from the title of the post alone, I can come up with a couple of article titles right off the top of my head.

Relationship Problem Advice – Will Ignoring The problem Make It Go Away?

Relationship Problem Advice – Why Ignoring The Problem Will Not Help Your Relationship

Do you see what I am doing here? I am letting people that are having problems in this area of their life determine what my content is going to be.

Why?

I do it this way because there is not a whole lot of guess work. I do not have to wonder whether or not my content is something that people will want to read. People are already telling me that they are searching for this type of information to help them in their lives and their relationships

Lets take a look at the next question and do the same thing. Even though this might seem repetitious on my part, I want to be absolutely certain that by the time you are done reading this guide you will be able to put it aside and carry all of these steps out on your own easily and with confidence that you are doing it correctly.  

The next thread that I see is this one:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AlQMMtUPl.5kDStTIA7a92MjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20070621211850AAsZP0b

The title of the question is, “what can I do to resolve this distance relationship problem”

Again, right off the bat a couple of different article titles come to mind.

Relationship Problem Advice – Is A Long Distance Relationship For You?

Relationship Problem Advice – How To Make A Long Distance Relationship Seem Close

Do you see what is going on? I could literally spend hours in Yahoo Answers and come up with 100 article titles and different problems that need to be addressed in this niche.

Now that we have a couple article titles, the next thing we have to do is come up with content for the articles. This is what I like to use Google and my own life experiences for.

You can also read other articles that are in circulation and put your own spin on things. I know that when I read almost any article, when I am done, I have ideas for how I could expand that topic in three different directions. This does take a little bit of creativity on your part, but the more you do it, the easier it will come to you.

We now know how to come up with content to write about, so it is time to put it into action. A couple pages forward in this article we are going to set up our virtual real estate, but before we do that, we

are going to need some fresh and interesting content to put on it. The initial content that you have to create is kind of extensive, but keep in mind that you are opening up a new niche so there is some legwork involved. Don't let it scare you away, if you do, you will be stuck in the same ruts that you find yourself in now.

This is what you are going to need:

l  1 unique article of about 600 words

2 rewrites of your 1 unique article

So, what we are doing is writing a total of 3 unique articles and then rewriting each of them 3 times. If you are creative and can come up with all unique articles and do not have to rewrite anything, thats great! That is always an option, but what I am doing here is trying to make it as easy as possible to get started.

There are also other ways to come up with content. You can look for PLR material that relates to your niche or you can even outsource the article writing all together. If you decide to go the PLR route, make sure that you completely rewrite the entire article so that it is unique to only you.  Once you have all of your content ready to go, make sure that you save it. I recommend to start a new folder for each one of your niches. This will help you stay organized and allow you to find everything quickly and easily.

SETTING UP YOUR VIRTUAL REAL ESTATE

This is where everything starts to get fun. At least for me anyway. When I get to this point, I know that I am getting close to being able to get some traffic and make some money.

Since Bum Marketing is the strategy that I use and because I am a technological moron, I choose to set up and use all free sites. There are plenty of them out there and they are both easy to get going and easy to update.

These are the sites that I use:

1.      www.blogger.com

2.      www.hubpages.com

3.      www.wordpress.com

4.      www.squidoo.com

Now, if you are more technically inclined you can substitute Squidoo for your own site on your own hosting, or even better still set up your lens with Squidoo and use it for a little more linking power.

The first site that I set up is my Squidoo lens. This is because it is going to be my main landing page and also because I have found that for some reason it just ranks better in the search engines.

Setting up a site at squidoo is easy, it will walk you through the whole process and you should be done in a matter of a couple of minutes.

One thing to keep in mind though is you will want to title your Squidoo lens something that has to do with your keyword. So, if we stick with the “relationship problem advice” example then ultimately, relationship problem advice would be our first choice, but if it is not available you can try to put the word “review” at the end of it or even a word like “good” in front of it.

So, it might look something like this:

relationshipproblemadvice

relationshipproblemadvicereview

relationship-problem-advice

relationship-problem-advice-review

Those are just examples, it is important to have a keyword rich title. This makes it more attractive to not only the search engines, but also to people that might run across your URL in the search engines. It makes it look relevant to what they are looking for and that is what we want.

Make sure that when you set your page up at Squidoo that you include the bells and whistles.  

What I mean by this is, include a YouTube video, don't worry you don't have to make it, just select the option to let YouTube select it.  You will also want to use the guestbook, flickr, and amazon feeds. All of these things will make

your Lens look more alive and will help it rank better in the search engines.

Make sure that in the “about me” section, you do your best to make it interesting and to put yourself out there as someone who is generally interested and well versed in the niche you are in. The more you look like an “expert” the more likely it will be that people that visit your page will buy something.

Now, you are going to need the articles that you wrote earlier. What we are going to do is take one of the longer UNIQUE articles that you have written and put it in the first text module. Make sure that the spelling is correct and that everything looks up to par. Right above where the text starts, put a nice attractive link that the visitor is able to click out to get to the vendors page. If they just want to buy, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to do just that.

In the second text module, you want to come up with either reviews of several products that are in the niche or simply come up with a feature and benefit module on the one product that you are promoting. Make sure that

there are several links in this module that allow the visitor to make a purchase.

Just to make sure that I'm not taking anything for granted, you can make your anchor text in the following format:

a href="http://link you want them to go to/" target="_top">Anchor Text You Want To Use</a>

Simply replace “link you want them to go to” with your hoplink or site that you want your visitor to go and replace “Anchor Text You Want To Use” with just what it says, the anchor text you want to use.  

When it comes to anchor text, I have always found it better to use positive words. For example some good anchor text in the niche we have been talking about, the relationship niche might be <FIX YOUR RELATIONSHIP> or <FOR A BETTER RELATIONSHIP> all you have to do is <CLICK HERE>

Your anchor text is definitely something that you will want to test. Some niches respond to different words better than others.

As of right now, you should have your Squidoo Lens set up and ready to go. Make sure to copy the URL of your Lens because you are going to need it for the other sites that we are going to set up.

The last thing you are going to want to do is head over to www.pingomatic.com and ping your lens to let the search engines know that your site is up and ready for visitors.

Try to make it a habit to do the same every time that you add content, to let the search engines know that you have made an update.

When it comes to the sites that you are going to set up at blogger, hubpages, and wordpress it really does not matter in what order you set these up.

There are no special modules or anything at all complex whatsoever about setting these up. As a matter of a fact, if any of them takes you more than 10 minutes I would be very surprised.

The one thing that you are going to want to do with each one as you set them up is to link them back to your Squidoo lens. You are going

to do this by using anchor text, which we just went over, but this time make sure that the actual anchor text is the main keyword that you are targeting. By doing this you are going to give yourself some initial backlinks for the search engines to see. This is very important so, don't skip it.

With each one that you set up you are going to add one of the longer unique articles to it and send a ping to www.pingomatic.com to again let the search engines know that you are there and ready for visitors.  Keep in mind that you will want to name these sites similar to the same way you did your Squidoo Lens. If the same name is available take it, if it is not just make sure that it is “keyword rich” and similar to the keywords that you are going to be targeting.

Checklist time! As of right now as far as your virtual real estate goes, you should have the following set up with initial content and have already pinged them.

1.   Wordpress Blog

2.   Blogger Blog

3.   Hub at HubPag

  

4.   Squidoo Lens

Make sure that you copy down the URL to all of your sites and put them in a notepad file somewhere for easy reference. This will help you later.

NOTE: IF YOU ARE ABLE TO CREATE YOUR OWN SITE, ALL OF THE SITES ABOVE WOULD THEN LINK TO YOUR OWN SELF HOSTED SITE.  

GENERATING TRAFFIC

Initially, we are going to get some traffic by using a site that we have already used. Head on over to http://answers.yahoo.com and find some questions that relate to your niche. Make sure to answer the questions like you are genuinely concerned. Directly below where you answer the question there is a box for “resource” .

You are generally safe if you put 2 links in that box. So, make sure that your Squidoo lens is always one of them and then just alternate the others.

Chances are good that you will not see a ton of traffic by doing this, but you will get some trickles and maybe even a sale. This is especially true because you are putting your links in front of someone who needs what you are selling.

The main source of traffic will come through writing and publishing articles with sites like http://www.ezinearticles.com If you have already written articles and used them, then you already know that by far they are the best source of targeted free traffic that we have at our disposal.

As a rule, I recommend writing and publishing 3 articles per day for each niche you are in. You can scale that down to meet time constraints that you have, but 3 or more articles a day will give you a steady flow of traffic and allow you to start making sales sooner than later.

Don't let the article writing intimidate you. Earlier we went over how  to come up with article titles that will attract readers and how to come up with content. Just follow the same procedures and you will find it easy to come up with content daily.

While traffic is our main reason for writing the articles, there are other benefits. Remember earlier when we were “analyzing competition” we were paying close attention to the number of links that a site had coming in. Every time that you submit an article you are going to link it to your Squidoo lens which will give it another backlink for the search engines to consider when choosing where to rank your site. The more the better.

There are other ways of getting backlinks and traffic that you can do. This is kind of like extra credit though. You hear a lot of talk about generating traffic through the use of forums and other social sites and for good reason. These kind of sites are for the most part open forums where people can post whatever they want and then have a discussion about issues.

One of my favorite ways to find places that are pertinent to my niche is www.boardreader.com for example, I just went and typed in “relationship advice” because it is the niche we have talked about throughout this and it gave me over 37,000 results of forums and other social mediums that I can register to and include a signature linking back to my Squidoo Lens as well as talk about the subject.  

You can also take advantage of the social networking sites like www.digg.com and www.stumbledupon.com with these sites you can post a link to all of your virtual real estate as well as the articles

that you write. This is just one other way that you can put your name out there and lead people to your content and ultimately try to convert them into buyers.

One thing that is very important and I can't stress enough is that where the article writing is concerned you have to be CONSISTENT! If you aren't, you very well could see your traffic and sales dry up.

The great thing about articles though, especially when you are dealing with low competition keywords is you stand a great chance of landing a top ranking and getting hundreds of visitors a day because of it. Once this happens, you can make a decision on whether there are other keywords you can target or maybe move into another niche to give you an additional revenue .

MAKING YOUR VIRTUAL REAL ESTATE VALUABLE

Lets face it, if you have a site set up and it is sitting on the 10^th page of Google and nobody is finding you through the search engines, that site is not worth very much. Therefore, it is important to do what is necessary to get a good ranking.

The way that you do that is to update your sites. Earlier, you should have written a couple of extra articles. Every other day or so, update your sites with a little bit of content. It does not have to be a novel, even 100 words will do, just something to keep the site fresh and up to date. With each update you do, make sure to ping them at www.pingomatic.com

Another thing that I like to do is mass article submissions. If you are determined to keep your budget at $0 there is a ton of free article submission software out there for you to use. I have chosen to use a service that costs $47 a month called unique article wizard. They can be found at www.uniquearticlewizard.com basically, I can submit as many articles as I want a month and

they will distribute them to hundreds and in some cases thousands of other websites where my article will be published.

The fact is, I did not include this in the traffic part of the guide because most of the time you won't see much traffic from the sites where your articles get published.

The biggest reason that I do this is to get a large amount of backlinks in a small amount of time with little effort on my part.

It is “shortcuts” like this that allow us to rank better in a shorter amount of time than would normally be possible. This definitely is not required though.

As a matter of a fact, I recommend that if you are struggling financially that you DON'T SPEND ANY MONEY until the time comes that you are generating an income online. Once you start getting some checks you can start investing back into your business to automate the process more and more.

                                                                               BOBBY   GOWEN