Research

How to Pick a Niche

This is normally the biggest stumbling block for new Internet Marketers. The number of products you can market is so vast; it's hard to know where to start and whether your campaign will be profitable.

You may or may not take comfort from the fact that many people's first campaign isn't profitable because you are still finding your feet or you've simply picked something that's either too competitive or not in demand.

Many say that you should pick a niche you are interested in and already knowledgeable about. This will make it easier for you to write about the subject on your web pages or articles and it also means you shouldn't have to do quite as much research as you are already in the mind of the buyer.

Even if your first outing isn't profitable, you will learn a LOT from your efforts which you will be able to apply to the next campaign. Be prepared also to make some mistakes along the way, it's almost unavoidable but it is unlikely you will make those mistakes again.

If you are going to be an affiliate marketer promoting other people's products, then you will be relying on lots of sales to cover your costs if you are going to use paid advertising methods. If you are using free methods however, it's not as important unless you want to make a living from it.

Here's the big secret, although you can make money from any niche, to make the big bucks, you first need to find a crowd of PEOPLE who are desperate for a solution to their problem or are fanatical about a product.

Take two subjects, someone who has an interest in basket weaving and another person who has just lost their job. Which one do you think is more desperate for a solution? The answer of course is the second one.

How about somebody who wants to buy a new TV and somebody who thinks their partner might be cheating on them? You can guarantee that although we would all like a nice new TV, the person who's worried they are being cheated on will THINK about this many more times in the day. This is the key. There are Clickbank products that can help solve these problems.

Tip: Next time you go shopping, look around at all the different products available and think to yourself, could that product solve somebody's problem? If it can, then how desperate a problem do you think that is for that person or crowd? It could be obscure like a product that happens to help keep a travelling salesman stay alert when driving long distance in the car.

If on the other hand you are running a Google Adsense campaign, then you are simply looking for a niche where lots of people are searching for a term so you get lots of hits to your site. The more hits, the more advert clicks you will get for which you get paid. Just make sure your term isn't too competitive which you will learn more about later.

How to Research a Niche

If you are going to be selling your own product or promoting somebody else's product through an affiliate scheme then please read this section carefully as it is VERY important.

The biggest mistake many marketers make is they don't do enough research about the people they are trying to market to. What they then do is they try and guess what it is their audience wants and the result is normally they make little or no sales.

Think about it; if you don't know what the problems are that people are having or what specifically they are in demand of, then how are you going to provide the correct solution or product?

Here's a big tip, the more research you do about the people, the easier your sales pages will be to write and the more money you will make. It's a simple as that.

The easiest way achieve this is to hang out with these people on the forums. Go to a search engine and type the name of your niche followed by the word forum i.e. gardening forum, lose weight forum, World of Warcraft forum etc. You might want to sign up to a few in that field so that you get a cross section of people.

If you don't find any forums on that subject then there might be cause for concern. It's possible the niche is too small or doesn't have enough online presence to which you can sell. Later in the game you will want to promote your material through forums so this could be a stumbling block.

However, it could be that it is a thriving niche but it's just not a topic people discuss on forums, so do your research to see where they are buying their items. For a beginner though, I would advise you look for a niche with an active forum, ideally which is posted to daily by the visitors.

Keyword Research - Broad or Targeted?

This is where it all begins, without targeting the correct keywords, you are not going to make any money, that's quite a bold statement but I really believe it's true. It will largely depend on the type of site you are creating as to how specific your keywords should be.

For example, if you want to make money from people clicking on Google Adsense adverts then your term should be broad so that you get as many visits as possible, an example would be "video games". It doesn't matter that your keyword isn't targeted because you're probably not trying to sell a product on this type of site.

However, if you are selling a specific product, your keyword phrase should be targeted so that the visitors see exactly what they were searching for when they reach your site. So staying on the video games theme, a targeted keyword phrase would be "halo 3 baseball cap".

If this is the main product you are selling, you can see how the visitor is going to see exactly what they were looking for when they come to your site and is much more likely to result in a sale, especially if you are the only site to be found selling halo 3 baseball caps!

It is very important that you realise the main difference between the two and that is; "video games" is a browsing keyword whereas "halo 3 baseball cap" is a buying keyword. You will get less traffic with this broad phrase but you will convert more visitors in to sales with the targeted model.

If you are using a broad phrase for Adsense purposes, then make sure the phrase isn't so broad that it is too competitive. In order to make decent money from an Adsense campaign, you will need to be on the first or second page of Google. Normally a 2 word phrase will be too difficult to compete with but there are 3 word phrases that you can receive lots of hits but still rank well.

How to Pick Your Keyword Phrases

Next time you buy a product or subscribe to a service online, make a note of the keyword phrase you typed to find that product. Many Internet Marketers forget that behind keyword searches are REAL people searching for those terms. Many people will actually type their phrase as a question such as "where can I find the latest DVDs" or "how can I potty train my kid".

A keyword generator that only suggests combinations of phrases is great for giving you ideas but it won't tell you how many people are searching for those terms, unless you use something like Keyword Elite which we'll look at in more detail later.

Don't forget to use one of the best keyword generators which you have for FREE.. .your brain! This should be your starting point for your phrases which can then be plugged into a keyword generator to give you all the variations you wouldn't normally have thought of.

Once you have the statistics on which keywords are profitable and are not too competitive, then you can start building your campaign around these phrases.

Tip: I know you are keen to just get stuck in, but the more research you do into your niche and keywords, the less time you will waste. Also you will make less mistakes and the campaign will be more profitable!

How to Find Out How Competitive a Keyword Is

There are people who use the following technique but few seem to understand how or why it works. If we type in a phrase into Google like how to bake a cake then we get 3,250,000 results. This seems like an awful lot but luckily this isn't your true competition, this is simply the number of websites that have all of those words but in ANY order. For example, "I thought I would bake if I stayed out in the sun too long, so I came inside and ate a cake".

Instead, type the phrase in to Google with quotes, "how to bake a cake", now we get 18,700 results. These sites have that specific phrase in that order within the title or web site, this is your true competition.

Although people won't type the phrase in quotes when searching, the websites that have that phrase in that specific order will be positioned above all of the other web sites.

You can find an insider tip about this which less than 1% of Internet Marketers know about. You can subscribe to my newsletter and receive a re-brandable version of this Ebook and learn unpublished secrets. To join please visit Internet Marketing Complete.

The higher the number of results from your targeted search, the longer and more difficult it's going to be to rank for that keyword. It can literally be the difference between taking days or months to get onto the first page of Google. If the number is in the millions then you may never get onto the first page unless you devote your life to that site.

In contrast, if the number is 10,000 results or less then you can appear on the first page of Google within a day or two, sometimes in minutes! Of course, this may not be suitable for somebody running an Adsense campaign so you would need to go for sites which receive lots of searches, which will probably mean more competition. It's not impossible as I've done it before but you will have to be aggressive with your SEO techniques.

So don't dismiss keywords over 3 words, there are many people who search using 4, 5, 6 or even more words in their searches, especially if they search is written as a question "how can I fix ford mustang engine". These long-tail phrases can often unearth little goldmines.

Less than 20,000 results is always going to be easy to rank well for, and then as it climbs above this, it simply means you will have to do a bit more work such as getting other sites to link to your page, more about this later.

Using Keyword Elite

Part 1

Scenarios

At this point, you are probably in one of three situations which we will call scenarios; using Keyword Elite.

Scenario 1: You have an existing business and website (or about to create a website) and you want to find out which keywords are going to be profitable for promoting your business and products.

Scenario 2: You have read somewhere that you can build a website around profitable keywords which people are bidding for within Google's Advertising program called Google Adsense. Therefore, when people click on your adverts, you will get paid a percentage.

Scenario 3: You have heard of Affiliate Marketing which is where you can promote other people's products on your site and you will get a percentage of the sale that is made.

For the first example, we will look at Scenario 1. Don't worry if you don't actually have your own business, the techniques I'm going to show you is relevant to ALL keyword searching.

I'm deliberately going to choose a topic I know NOTHING about so that I am researching this as I type! The reason for this is:

A) To show you the actual steps I would take myself with my research and

B) To demonstrate that despite knowing nothing about the subject, Keyword Elite will do all the work for me!

So, I'm going to pretend I own a pet shop which I want to promote via my website. I will need to know what keywords are being searched for so I can drive them to my site and make sales.

Project 1

1)Open Keyword Elite and make sure it says project 1 from the drop down list at the top.

2)I'm concentrating on Google so select the Google suggestion tool check box.

3)Use the slider bar to show results up to 300 (you can have more if you like but this is enough for now).

4)In the "Enter main keyword or phrase" section, type "dog food" )without quotes) and click OK. I want to see which words I can use relating to that phrase I can target.

5)Once it says 100% complete or ;looks like it's finished searching, click on the report view Tab at the top and it will show you your first list.

6)This is just the first 100 keywords it produced for me

all natural dog food	alpo dog food
alpo dog food recall	bad dog food
bad pet food	beneful dog food
best dog food	bird feeders
blue buffalo dog food	blue dog food
buy dog food	california natural dog food
canidae dog food	canned dog food
Canned dogs	cat toys
cesar dog food	cheap dog food
chiwawa food	contaminated dog food
Contaminated pet food	del monte pet food
diabetic dog food	diamond dog food
diamond pet food	dog
dog and cat food recall	dog bed
dog beds	dog biscuits
dog care	dog clothes
dog collars	dog feed
dog food	dog food brands
dog food contamination	dog food coupons

dog food delivery	dog food ingredients
dog food list	dog food nutrition
dog food online	dog food pet store
dog food poisoning	dog food products
dog food ratings	dog food recal
dog food recall	dog food recall 2007
dog food recall list	dog food recalls
dog food recipe	dog food recipes
dog food review	dog food reviews
dog food scare	dog food secrets
dog food wholesale	dog foods
dog gifts	dog grooming
dog health	dog nutrition
dog obedience	dog products
dog sausages	dog supplies
dog toys	dog training
dog treat	dog treats
Dogfood	doggie food
doggie treats	dogs
dogs foods	dogs treats
dry dog food	dry dog food recall
dry pet food recall	eagle pack dog food
eukanuba dog food	evo dog food
fda pet food	fda pet food recall
find dog food	free dog food
gog food	gourmet dog treats
healthy dog food	healthy pet food
high fiber dog food	hill's pet food
hills dog food	hills pet food
holistic dog food	home made dog food
homemade dog food	homemade dog food recipesETC

Believe me, there are many phrases here I wouldn't have thought of! It's possible some of them don't even have the exactly words dog food in them but relate to dog food.

Now rather than going to Google and typing each of these in individually to see what you get, Keyword Elite will do all of these for you in one automatic operation!

1)To select all of the phrases in the list, you can just hold down CTRL on your keyword and tap the A key on the keyboard. (If you just want to select a chunk of the list then click on the first word you want, then hold down the SHIFT key, then click on the last keyword you want from your list with the mouse.

Alternatively, you can select non-consecutive words by clicking the words while holding down the CTRL key.)

2)Now click with your RIGHT mouse button on any of the highlighted keywords and choose (with left mouse button) Send to Project 2.

3) In the dialog box, for step 3 just tick Google at this point. Step 4 you can tick all of them and step 5, choose Google Broad match so we can see other related phrases

Click OK.

4)You could wait until the progress is 100% but I always click on the Report View tab at the top so I can see the statistics as they generate. This is where it gets exciting as you watch all the keywords appearing with the data telling you how many sites use those words, how often they are searched for each month and the range of prices people are bidding for Google Adverts for each phrase.

NOTE: When your list is complete, you can sort the column by clicking on the heading. You will probably be interested in having the highest searches at the top. Also, look at Ratio, a low ratio means there are lots of searches but not many web sites provided a service for that key phrase. This is good as it means high demand, low competition.. .a niche in other words!

The list is too big to show all but here were a few that caught my eye:

Example One

Dog Biscuits: Websites: 928 Searches: 5,925 Ratio: 16 (VERY LOW)

KEI: 37, 826 (VERY HIGH, unlike ratio, the Higher this is the better)

We can see that there are a very small number of sites advertising this compared to how many are searching, this is what you want to look for. By the way, the numbers of web sites and searches won't be 100% accurate but they do give you a good idea. I would say Ratio is the important one, as long as searches are quite high.

Example Two

All natural dog food: Websites 38 Searches 3,590

Ratio 0.01 (the lowest I've ever seen!)

Also, I saw the bidding price range is $2.46-$3.07 which would be good for somebody doing an Adsense campaign which you will learn about in the next lesson.

OK, let's compare this to a bad example so you can make a comparison

Dog supplies: Websites 250,000 Searches 11,699

Ratio: 21.37 (Very high which means there are a lot more websites than searches)

KEI: 547 (This is very low, so there will be a LOT of competition for this keyword)

From this project we can see which phrases would be good to have and target on a pet food shop which sells dog food, I'm no longer going to be promoting words which people aren't going to be searched for or make any money.

You will want to think about different broad searches you can type in and then follow the steps above so you can see the results. Note you can save your searches or even export them to Excel for future reference.

Stage 2

In the last scenario, we looked at how you could find related terms to your online business to see what people search for and how many times that phrase is searched for each month.

Now, we will look at scenario 2, just to remind you, here it is again;

Scenario 2: You can build a website around profitable keywords which people are bidding for within Google's Advertising program called Google Adsense. Therefore, when people click on your adverts, you will get paid a percentage.

With the pet shop example, I was a bit more specific by searching for dog food as that's something I would sell in a pet shop. However, if you are trying to find profitable Google Advertising (Google Ads / Adsense) keywords around which you will build your site, then at first, you will want to be as broad as possible so you can see a larger range of related phrases.

Now, I know that Pets is a massive industry, there are people that will spend all their spare cash on their animals so I'm thinking there must be people / vendors / affiliate marketers spending good money on Google Advertising for promotion. However, like I've said already, I know pretty much NOTHING

about pets (apart from owning a budgie and a couple of fish as a kid!) so this is a perfect example.

1)Open Keyword Elite and make sure it says project 1 from the drop down list at the top.

2)I'm concentrating on Google so select the Google suggestion tool check box.

3)Use the slider bar to show results up to 300 (you can have more if you like but this is enough for now).

4)In the text "Enter main text or keyword phrase" Type "pet" (without quotes) and click OK. I want to see which words I can use relating to the main word for Adsense use.

5)Once it says 100% complete, click on the Report View Tab at the top and it will show you your list.

6)Here are the results when I ran this..

Pet	pet accessories
pet adoption	pet adoptions
pet bed	pet beds
pet bird	pet boarding
pet care	pet carrier
pet carriers	pet classifieds
pet clothing	pet co
pet dog	pet door
pet doors	pet edge
pet finder	pet finder com
pet fish	pet food
pet food recall	pet food recall list
pet food recalls	pet for sale
pet friendly hotel	pet friendly hotels
pet games	pet gifts
pet grooming	pet health
pet hotel	pet insurance
pet kennel	pet medication
pet meds	pet names
pet product	pet products
pet recall	pet rescue
pet safe	pet scan
pet services	pet shop
pet shop boys	pet shops
pet sitter	pet sitters

pet sitting	pet sitting services
pet smart	pet store
pet stores	pet supermarket
pet supplies	pet supplies plus
pet supply	pet supply store
pet tags	pet toys
pet vet	pet world
Pets	pets com
pets for sale	pets mart
Petsafe	poop scoop
Portraits	prairie dog
Puppies	puppies for sale
Puppy	puppy for sale
recalled dog food	recalled pet food
rescue pets	rocket dog
salty dog	save a pet
sims 2 pets	sims 2 pets cheats
small dog	small dog clothes
snoop dog	store
tainted pet food	the dog
the sims 2 pets	three dog night
ugliest dog	vet
Veterinarian	veterinary
virtual pet	virtual pets
watch dog	wonder pets
yellow dog

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