Online Business Startup Costs

The biggest advantage online businesses have over regular, offline businesses, is that you can set up an online business with zero cost. Of course, your business stands a much greater chance of being successful if you invest some money into it, but it’s not really a necessity, especially when you’re just starting out.

It’s even easier when you’re looking to make niche marketing your primary business strategy. You can simply take advantage of all the free website tools and services out there to set up small, niche websites.

Blogger, WordPress, Squidoo, Hubpages, Weebly, Wixx… take your pick. In fact, use all of them. Be careful though, as WordPress.com doesn’t like their platform being used for affiliate marketing and you might just find your account deleted if you’re using it to promote affilate products!

Promoting Your Online Business

Once again, promotion and advertising doesn’t have to cost you anything. In fact, even if your business has been running for a while, the best forms of promotion are free.

Be sure and study search engine optimization so you know how to make your site search engine friendly. Include relevant keywords and descriptions to make sure you show up when a prospective customer is looking for what you’re offering.

Set out to build as many links to your site as possible. These will help your site rank higher in the search engines, but they are also a valuable source of direct, targeted traffic back to your site.

With niche marketing, related forums are a great way to get targeted traffic. But you can also comment on blogs, submit articles, upload videos, etc. All free and all great ways to promote your business.

Moving Forward

Of course, as you start earning money from a few niches, you need to invest that profit back into your business. Get your own domains, create professional sites, invest in an autoresponder so you can start building a list of interested clients.

Don’t be put off starting an online business (whether you opt for the niche marketing model or a completely different model) by fear of the costs involved. Yes, you will have to devote some time to it, yes you will have to learn some new skills, and yes, you will have to be prepared to keep going when things are tough.

But the potential rewards far outweigh any possible short term sacrifices you have to make. And with niche marketing, if one particular niche doesn’t work out, you can simply move on and try another one.

Listen, if you’re looking for a simple way to generate income online, then
you need to understand that niche marketing is the quickest and simplest way to do so.

And a couple of the most successful Niche Marketers out there – Adam Short, and Alen Sultanic – who regularly generate 5 figures per month online from their “part-time” niche businesses, are the guys who originally broke the silence and revealed niche marketing to the masses.

But do you want to know what is the absolute best part about Niche Profit Classroom?  Niche Profit Classroom  isn’t your typical membership site.

Video Training

They have literally hundreds of hours of videos to show you everything step by step in the most microscopic detail. You can’t go wrong when you’re watching over someone’s shoulder. If there’s something you didn’t quite ‘get’, just hit the rewind button!

Software

They have all the software you need built right into the site so you can be up and running as soon as you’ve learned something. Instant application at your fingertips. Forget about all the time and money you’ll save, just think how much quicker you’ll see the profits!

Forum

But best of all, is the Niche Profit forum. Folks that are always there for you when you need help with a quick question and can’t wait for the next training webinar.

There’s a reason why membership training sites work better than any others. When you’ve got access to not only the trainers, but also the folks who are learning the same steps at the same time, you’re never short of a friendly ear to bend when you have a question or someone to give you a gentle push when you’re feeling less than optimistic.

The biggest reason 99% of people fail to generate income online, is because
they run around getting everything from 100′s of different sources and try to piece it all together.  Can you think of a quicker way to contract the dreaded information overload?

It really is much quicker and a helluva lot less frustrating if you can just find one good system that works.

But even for the folks who do find a good system, they don’t always have
anyone around to help answer their questions (and there will always be questions).

With Niche Profit Classroom, the entire site is laser-focused on helping you succeed at niche marketing.  All of the software, tools and training are there to help you reach your goals fast.

Anyhow, don’t take my word for it (I expect you to make your own judgements  on what’s good and what’s not). Like everything else online or offline, you need to check stuff out for yourself to determine if it’s a good fit for you or not.

Warning

I might think it’s the greatest training of all time, but you have to realize it is training. Niche Profit Classroom is not a ‘done for you‘ deal. If you don’t like the idea of learning and applying the skills needed to make a killing online, then this probably isn’t for you.

If you want someone to do all the work on your behalf, or if you’re looking for a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, then, let me repeat, Niche Profit Classroom is not for you.

On the other hand, if you’ve already tried all the get rich quick schemes (scams?) out there and are ready to knuckle down and start building a real, passive income business, then give it a look. At the very least signup to get the free training. Bonus

If you enrol in Niche Profit Classroom, through the above link (my affiliate link), then shoot me an email with your transaction ID, and you can get a free copy of my ultimate, article marketing guide  “Article Explosion” to seriously ramp up your backlinking efforts and drive even more traffic to your niche sites. Check out the sales page here to see what’s included.

But his course is aimed at people who have an abundance of money, and also an abundance of time and dedication in order to learn the intricacies of creating aweseome videos. If, like most people, you don’t have the money, the time, or the inclination to learn video in that much depth, then here’s a real treat for you.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Don’t rush off and buy this. It’s included in the free, Beta version of Microsoft Office 2010. Yours truly has downloaded it and believe me, you won’t be disappointed. Initially, it takes a while to download, but once it’s done, just restart your computer and you should be good to go.

Then just fire up powerpoint and get ready to make amazing videos, cool designs, graphics, templates, animations, slide transitions…. everything is just right there at the top of your screen. Just waiting for you to add it into your presentation. You can even add a video. So if you’ve made a video with your little flip camera you simply insert it into your presentation and then record the whole thing using screen capture software. Think of the possibilities just of this one feature alone.

Check out the video below, then head over to www.office.microsoft.com and download the beta version for yourself. You get this till October 2010 so you have no reason not to be making great looking, totally rocking videos to wow your vieweres between now and then. Once the free period is up, you can either buy it, or not. It’ll deactivate though and then you’ll either have to go back to your old version or hope there’s a new beta version available.

Video is definitely a great way to make your niche sites stand out from your competitors. And with this free beta version from Microsoft you can make sure your videos are up to the mark.

Naming your website comes back to the first step in niche marketing and that is ‘research’. If you go into the wrong niche because you didn’t bother checking it out in the first place you won’t make any money. But by the same token, if you don’t get the name of your site right, you still won’t make any money because the search engines and the visitors won’t associate that name with what they’re looking for.

And you absolutely have to get your keywords into your title, and as much as possible into the actual url of your domain. Admittedly getting the domain url you want can sometimes be tough. But there’s no point in having a domain that says ‘www.redglovesforsale.com’ if you’re going to be selling blue shoes!

Domains are like less than $10 to buy so there’s no excuse for not finding a good one. If you’re in a highly competitive market, you may have to pay more for a really good one. But this is money well spent if it’s going to get you to the top of the search engines when someone is looking for what you’re offering. If your keyword is the same as your url, you pretty much have it made before you even begin to have to think about SEO and optimising your site to get the traffic.

Getting the right domain that fits your niche is crucial and if you’re just thinking about what sort of niche market you want to get into, the availability of domains may very well be something you want to consider before you go diving in and then finding out you can’t get anything that suits.

Always, always, always get the dotcom version of your domain. Take it from someone who knows. This site is a perfect example of opting for the wrong domain. (with a little laziness thrown in too of course, lol). Luckily, the lesson was well learned so just make sure you don’t make the same mistake. If you can’t get the dotcom, keep looking. If needs be, pay more for it. It’ll be worth it in the end.

Once you have your domain, complete with your chosen keyword in the url, you’ll find that ranking is much easier. Plus it gives you an added edge over your competitors. You are automatically percieved as the ‘best’ in that niche because you have the actual domain. You don’t even have to give out the url. It’s what interested searchers would be typing in anyway.

But that still doesn’t really qualify as niche marketing. If you want to be really successful, your niche needs to be as focused as possible. So you need to  break your ‘televisions’ down into particular brands of price ranges, size, features, etc. The more focused your niche, the more likely you are to be able to dominate that niche and make some money from it.

Check out any of niche finder tools available and they all will give you very specific niches to target. There’s a reason all of the tools out there tell you to get focused. It’s because being focused is the main consideration when going into a niche market.

Once you’ve dominated the smaller segment, then you can think about widening your reach. But not before. If you start out big, its a sure fire recipe for failure. There will just be too many competitors and even if you can get the traffic, it will be so untargeted you’re not likely to convert any of it into paying customers.

Niche Marketing Example

We head over to Google and type in ‘cell phones’ as our main keyword. Here’s the results.

Now there’s a whole lot more of them, but these are just the top 20 results for that niche. Instead of going after just ‘cell phones’, your next step is to look at a few more of these keywords and drill them down even further.

So maybe you decide to check out ‘cell phone accessories’. Do you go for ‘cheap’ cell phone accessories? Or maybe you want to target Samsung owners, or Motorola users? This is niche marketing. Finding a targeted group of people who you can sell to.

So maybe you opt for Samsung, and maybe you opt for just Samsung accessories? The more focused your market, the greater chance there is that those people are willing to spend money. And these are the people you want. You don’t want people who are just searching for cell phones because the chances are they’re not yet decided which phone they want to buy. But if they’re looking for ‘samsung’ accessories, then they already have a samsung phone and you can bet your bottom dollar they’re willing to spend money to get it.

In fact, if you drill down even further to ‘samsung car kits’, look at the results.

Do you see that last result there? ‘Samsung f480′ gets over 673,000 searches every month. And that’s an exact search term! Do you think you could make some money focusing on just that keyphrase? It’s not a car kit, it’s just one model of Samsung phone. This is niche marketing. Finding something that enough people want, that you can provide to them.

Now when you check the results for car kits and f480, you’ll notice a huge difference. There are less ads for car kits than for f480, meaning there’s more money to be made from targeting the phone model. And the organic results for the phone model would be much easier to rank for because the first few results are so much weaker than their counterparts for the car kits.

However, going after a particular model of phone is short term. Sure, if there’s a new phone coming out and you can get in there quick, you can make a killing. But bear in mind new phones are coming out all the time so what’s hot today won’t be hot tomorrow. Not that it’s a problem. You just move on to the next one.

Get your strategy right and you’ll make money with niche marketing. Get it wrong and you won’t. Simple.

It’s a never ending problem when you’re just starting out online. A vicious cycle of jumping from one thing to another and never really taking any action with any of them. Niche marketing isn’t exempt from the problem. Even if you stick with the principle of niche marketing itself, there’s the problem of sticking with a particular niche long enough to actually start earning money from it.

So moving quickly is essential if you don’t want to lose momentum and enthusiasm. And that’s where making use of PLR (private label rights) products comes in. PLR really is the quickest way to get started when you don’t have the skills, the time, or the money to come up with your own content, graphics, copy, articles, etc.

To be honest, I don’t understand why anyone would choose to go through the hassle of creating their own websites, writing their own articles, producing their own products… all from scratch, when there are just so many great PLR products out there that you can use as your base.

It also means you can move into niche markets you might not otherwise consider. It’s all well and good moving into a niche that you’re passionate about, but if that niche isn’t profitable, then your passion isn’t going to give you the dream lifestyle you’re after.

Niche marketing requires you to work in markets that you may or may not know anything about, and you have to be able to put up a site just as quickly and that looks just as good as a site dedicated to something you’ve been passionate about for years.

Using PLR products for your niche means you can get up and running a damn site quicker than having to start from scratch. Once you’re up and running, and you have money coming in, then use it to have custom graphics, unique articles, etc created if you wish.

But in the beginning, don’t be afraid to use PLR products. Some of my greatest successes have come from sites built using nothing but these products. There is no way in hell I could create a niche website from scratch. But I can edit an image, rewrite an ebook, record it to audio, spin articles to submit to article directories… all little differences that make the PLR product unique.

The only difficulty is choosing good products to start with. The better your initial PLR product is, the easier it will be to change it into your own unique product for your website.

So what’s so great about Amazon’s site?

Easy Navigation

Amazon makes it as easy as possible to find what you’re looking for. You can search by departments, categories, brands, bestsellers, etc.

Visual Display

One thing Amazon isn’t short of is images. Every product has a clear image so you can see exactly what you’re getting before you get it. And visual imagery is one of the most important factors in anyone’s decision making process.

Product Description

No crappy, one liner descriptions at Amazon. They tell you everything you need to know about a particular product. Technical information as well as product description is clearly shown.

Upsells

Now Amazon might not call it upselling, but the fact that they show you what other purchasers of a product also bought, is there for a reason. It’s to interest the customer in perhaps buying the additional items also. Notice that they are always related to the initial choice of product so it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to get you to spend more money. They’re just letting you know that there are other products that can make your initial choice even better.

Customer Reviews

One of the most important aspects of shopping on Amazon and the one every potential customer will check out is the customer reviews for a product. While Amazon may be a trusted household name, we trust the opinions of other consumers more.

Take a few tips from Amazon when setting up your niche website and you’ll definitely have more visitors and more customers.

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No doubt because, like the rest of us, you’ve been going about it all wrong. Not your fault. After all, the way the experts tell you to do it makes sense in a funny kind of way.

Head over to Google, type in your keyword, set the match filter to exact and find keywords that have a decent amount of monthly searches. Then go do a search in Google to determine the competition. Remember to put your keyword in quotes to find out the true number of competing sites! Always less than searching without quotes and so means your keywords aren’t as hard to rank for as you might have orginally thought.

Great. Simple. What could be easier?

Except it does seem a little strange to search using quotes don’t ya think? After all, that’s not how your customers are going to search. In fact, the only people who are going to search like that are other marketers trying to figure out how many competitors they’re up against.

And the truth is that the results aren’t always less with quotes than without quotes. Funnily enough, just because someone is targeting a particular keyword, doesn’t guarantee they’ll rank over someone who isn’t.

Face it, when you’re researching niche markets, you’re not after seeing who your competition is in the IM world. You need to know who outranks you on the first page of Google. They’re your competition, whether they’re targeting the same keyword as you or not. If they’re ranking for it, they’re the ones you have to beat. Beat them and you automatically beat the others.

But the great thing about it is the relative ease with which you can get started and once you’re up and running in one niche, setting up the next niche site is a breeze.

Figuring out the basics is really the most effort you have to put in. Once you know how to research a niche, get your keywords, and set up a simple site, you can just rinse and repeat as many times as you like. And it doesnt matter whether the year is 2010 or 3010,  or any year in between. There will always be a new niche market to uncover and start taking over.

So if you haven’t done niche marketing before, let 2010 be the year you start. Check back over some of the other posts to see what you need to do. Don’t get too caught up in all the technical stuff. Just do your research and then get your sites created. Worry about making them look pretty afterwards.

Amazon is still one of the best ways to research your niche. Why give yourself a hard time with it when its already been done for you? Googles keyword tool will help you drill down to find the right keywords. WordPress isn’t looking like going anywhere as the best and easiest website builder. And as far as traffic goes, there’s more than enough written about that already.

Don’t beat yourself up over finding the ‘right’ niche. As long as you’re prepared to put in a little time and effort in the research phases, the rest of the process can be done in a couple of hours max once you know what you’re doing.

EVen if you’re not sure if niche marketing is for you, how hard can it be to at least give it a try? Sheesh, spend 10 minutes doing some keyword research on something you already know about, pets, houses, kids, computers, etc. Narrow it down and throw up a free blog over at Blogger. com to test it out.

If it doesn’t pan out, you’ve lost a couple of hours out of your day. Big deal.

If it does pay off however, then it really can be a big deal!

Nowadays, there are so many ways to drive traffic you’re really spoilt for choice. If one of them seems too difficult or too time consuming, move on to another one. Having said that, if you’re really serious about earning a living with niche marketing, then traffic generation shouldn’t be something that you think of as ‘hard’ or ‘time consuming’. Getting visitors to your site is what’s going to make you the cash. Without them it’s all a waste of time.

Pay Per Click

Using PPC advertising is the quickest way to get traffic to your site. It allows you to go after highly targeted visitors and have them land on your site right at the exact page they’re looking for. But depending on your niche, you could be paying a lot of money for each click from those visitors so you best be damn certain that they’re going to buy from you.

Make sure you only target ‘buying’ keywords. You don’t want to spend your money on folks who are only looking for more information.

Social Media

Using the social networks to drive traffic to your site is becoming more and more common. And Google is sure as hell paying a lot of attention to ‘social proof’ as far as relevancy is concerned. Share your stuff on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Get your customers to bookmark it and share it with their friends. This will not only increase your social standing in the eyes of Google, it’ll also help you make more sales.

Make use of Google’s new ‘social’ search results to keep up to date with what’s happening in your niche.

Blogging

No doubt about it, blogging is a great way to drive extra traffic to your site, especially when it comes to niche marketing. By constantly updating your website with fresh, relevant content you’re catching the attention of the search engines as well as your visitors.

Article Marketing

Article marketing is still one of the best ways to gain extra traffic. By submitting relevant articles to the already popular article directories you’re leveraging their search engine power to gain additional backlinks to your own site. And you can get your articles ranked much more easily than your own site.

Video Marketing

If you’re not using videos in your marketing campaigns, you’re leaving a lot of potential traffic for your competitors to snap up. What better way to show off your niche products than with a short, sharp, informative video? If you’re wary of putting your face in front of a camera, dont’ be. You don’t ever have to appear in the videos yourself. Remember, you’re using the videos to show off your niche not your good looks.

Search Engine Optimization

People still think this is hard. SEO isn’t hard. It’s just about making sure you optimize your website so the search engines know what it’s about. Put your keywords in the title, in the description, and most importantly in any backlinks you create through article marketing, blog commenting, forum signatures, etc.

RSS

The beauty of RSS is that it’s ‘set and forget’. You submit the RSS feed of your site, articles, videos, etc to the most popular RSS directories and then they simply update every time you create a new article, video, etc.   You get hundreds of views to your articles, videos, etc from a one time action. Definitely one of the easiest and quickest marketing methods out there. Check out the video below.

Remember, once you’ve researched your niche, got your keywords and set up your site, you can’t just leave it sitting there. You have to get the visitors. Your main goal is getting your website targeted traffic. Once you’ve got the traffic, then you can tweak and test to increase the conversions from visitor to customer.

Yes, you will be looking for different types of keywords depending on how you plan on making money from your particular niche, but researching those keywords still holds true to some pretty basic principles. Don’t be fooled by the razzle dazzle of the experts spouting off on their latest, spiffy looking video.

And if you’re wondering why they seem to move so quickly through their keyword research, while you spend hours over it, it’s because they’re hoping you won’t have time to spot the glaringly obvious mistakes they’re making while they’re doing it.

Keyword Research Mistakes

Let me give you an example. I recently invested in a course around article marketing. ( It was actually a great course. ) And of course, one of the modules was on keyword research. But the guy was signed in to his Google account. And if you think this doesn’t make a difference, think again. Go ahead and try it.

If you want ‘real’ results make sure you’re signed out of your Google account, and have cleared out your cookies.

Free Keyword Research

If you want to find the best keywords for your niche, you have to make sure your keyword research is done right. You don’t have to invest in any fancy software if you can’t afford it. There are loads of free keyword research tools and services available to you right from your computer screen.

Wordtracker is a great resource. Sure the free tool is limited, but it gives good results.

Overture is Yahoo’s keyword suggestion tool. Has a few little quirks but overall is pretty simple to use.

Google Trends is great for identifying where your niche is heading. Don’t get into a niche market if it’s on a downward spiral.

Google Adwords is, of course, the daddy of all the free keyword tools out there.

Finding the best keywords might take you a bit of time, but if you’re wanting to dominate your niche, then you have to just suck it up and get on with it.

But if you’re just starting out and wondering whether niche marketing is the way you want to go, then you probably don’t have the money to invest in a decent niche finding software. And that’s ok. Just remember, that you can’t find a niche that’s worth targeting if you don’t do the research first.

Before getting hold of Niche Horde, the quickest way I had of finding niche markets was by using Amazon and Google.

• Both totally free to use so no upfront costs to worry about.
• Both market leaders so you know the info is spot on.
• Both easy enough for anyone to use straight away without any steep learning curves.

Using Amazon as Your Niche Finder

You already know that millions of folks are shopping online at Amazon, so it stands to reason that Amazon knows what people are looking for and also how to sell to them.  All you have to do is tap into that information and you can find great niche ideas that you can then go ahead and research using

Google Keyword Tool

You can’t do any form of research without using Google’s keyword tool. If you’re using keyword software then don’t worry. Every keyword tool out there pulls from Google’s so you’re on the right track.

How Long Does it Take to Find A Niche

Finding a niche using Amazon literally can be done in a matter of seconds if you already have a general idea. If not, and you are going to start from absolute ground zero, then it might take you a few minutes to search through all the different categories. But let’s face it, those few minutes spent on finding niches where folks are spending money is well worth it. Much better to spend that time than end up targeting a niche where there’s no money to be made.

But when you realise just how many untapped niches are out there, how the hell do you choose just one?

The answer of course, is that you don’t. You get into as many profitable niches as you can. When the competition is really low, it doesn’t take a whole lot of work to get ranked. You don’t need to get a zillion backlinks and you don’t need to put up a whole lot of content.

A simple blog on Blogger.com with a few well chosen keyword phrases, and a couple of backlinks with the right anchor text and you’re good to start pulling in the traffic.

For instance, here’s an example pulled from Niche Horde:

Now, how hard do you think it’s going to be to get a first place ranking on the search engines when the first five results really only have one competitor? Is it profitable? Hell yes!

According to Google there are over 60,000 searches every single month for the keyword.

The estimated CPC is over $22.

That’s a pretty good earner in anyone’s book.

Unfortunately, NicheHorde is full of these untapped niche ideas. So you really will have to accept the fact that if you get it, you’re going to be spending a hell of a lot of time, getting into new niches and that means doing a bit of work. Of course, setting up a Blogger blog or putting up a few Squidoo lenses hardly constitutes ‘work’ in any real sense of the word.

Nevertheless, don’t think you can get into niche marketing and find just one niche that will make you rich. Sure you might hit lucky. But as with most things related to making money online, it’s all about testing. Some will make you money, some won’t.

But with so many niche ideas to choose from, you’ll never be short of knowing what to test next.

Whether you are new to internet marketing or already advanced, learning the correct way to find a niche market and turn it into cash is all a matter of understanding them. There are only two components to a market:

1. the specific product
2. the specific group of people who are searching for the product

Understanding audiences is key to building a successful income in niche marketing. The best way to grasp who your audience is is by lots of extensive research. Research is vital. If you skip it, not only will you not know how to build the right campaign but you’ll quite possibly target the wrong audience as well.

The content, whether pictures or text, depends on the results of the research that you will need to conduct for every niche. Targeting, knowing what people want or need will require a unique approach to each market audience. Research involves studying consumer habits online, including the reasons why they buy, when they buy, and where they buy…

Proper research, if done correctly, can take hundreds of man hours but it’s the single biggest factor in determining where a niche money maker comes from. Simply put, research is the foundation that ANY successful campaign originates from. It’s where all the facts are gathered, the facts that shape your content and that will be used on your web pages.

One of the very first things that should be determined is whether or not the niche is worth while pursuing. The absolute worst thing for any internet marketer to do is to waste valuable time building a niche market that isn’t going to be profitable for them. Not only are you going to waste valuable time but you are going to waste money as well. So how do you find a niche market that is going to be profitable. Put simply find things that people are already interested in buying!!

• Never start a niche on a whim. Use FACTS!
• Search for niches or products that are already sought after.
• Go to search engines and find out what the most popular searches for this month were for.
• Go to places like amazon.com and do a search for the most popular product.
• Take note of hot trends in the news papers and on T.V. etc.

The big key is to just find things that are popular and hot…things people are already hungry for and  really enthusiastic about buying. Then do some research and find out why the product is so popular? Why do they want it? What do they like about it? Who are they? What should your approach be like? What emotions trigger that desire or need?

Of course, you could just take the easy option and invest in a copy of NicheHorde. : )

Do your keyword research and pick 5 – 10 good keywords related to your niche. Use them in your posts and post titles. Throw up a few  backlinks to the site and see how well it does. If it brings in the visitors and the money, it’s worth going after with a proper domain and hosting. If not, it’s cost you a couple of hours of your time.

There really isn’t any need to complicate niche marketing. It just comes down to making sure you put in the research first. And if you’ve got the right tools then that part is pretty much taken care of anyway. Once you’ve found a niche, move on to finding the right keywords that your niche visitors are typing into the search engines. Then simply set up your site, targeting those keywords and you’re good to go.

If you’ve tested out the niche on Blogger then you’ve got a ready made site to use to link back to your authority niche site. Frankly, what continues to amaze me with NicheHorde is the number of sites that are ranking for niche keywords with virtually no backlinks at all. So your one simple little link from Blogger could actually be the only thing you need to push you to the number one result on Google within your niche market.

There are a number of free niche marketing tools that you can put to good use to get started. Once you start earning some money then you can invest in the paid versions which will automate a lot of the steps for you, as well as making sure you get the right information because they cut down on the risk of making a mistake.

By far the best place to start with any niche market research is Google. Sure there are other search engines that folks use when they’re looking for something. But none of them compare to Google’s share of the market. And even if they did, none of them offer the level of support that Google does when it comes to providing you with the tools to do your job.

Finding a niche market that is profitable and where you can easily rank on the front page of Google isn’t hard. And it can all be done using Google’s free tools.

Check out the video to see just how easy Google makes it for niche marketers.

So how do you go about coming up with niche marketing ideas in the first place? Thought I’d set you off with a couple of tips to help you get started. Note that coming up with niche ideas isn’t enough to go out and set them up. You will need to research them beforehand to make sure they’re profitable and that they’re not already overrun with high ranking competitors!

Watch T.V.

You probably do this anyway right? But I’m betting you go do something more useful when those adverts come on in the break. Well, if you’re looking to generate ideas for niche markets then stay glued to your T.V. while the ads are playing. If companies are paying money to advertise on T.V. you can bet your ass there’s money to be made from it.

And don’t think the big companies will have optimised all their websites to rank on the search engines. If they’d done that, they probably wouldn’t need to pay the exorbitant T.V. advertising prices.

Hit the Local Bookstore

You may not be much of a reader. And that’s ok. You don’t have to go read the books there. Just check out what’s hot at the moment. Look at the best sellers, check out the magazines, pay particular attention to the headlines, they can be awesome keywords for your chosen niche.

Google Trends

There’s no point in going into a niche just when everybody else has started leaving it. Your niche idea may have been popular back in the sixties, but if it’s not  being searched for today, then it’s of absolutely no use to you. Check out Google trends.

This is a really nifty little tool (as are most of Google’s tools). It not only shows you how your niche keyword is doing over time, it also shows you which countries you want to be targeting for your particular niche. If the only place on Earth interested in your particular niche market is India, then don’t bother trying to get traffic from the UK!

Yahoo Answers

One of the most under used resources in my book. Yahoo Answers is great for discovering what problems folks are looking to solve. And if you can solve it for them, you know you’ve got a profitable niche just waiting to be explored.

Eavesdropping

It may not be polite to listen to other folks conversations, but even if you only take notice of what your family and mates are up to, you can get some great ideas for which niches might be worth exploring further. What sort of stuff do they do on the Internet, in particular what are they likely to buy online as opposed to shop for at the local store?

Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to just pay attention to what’s going on your own little corner of the world. You’ll probably understand it a whole lot better than some stranger and you’ll have a distinct advantage for precisely that reason.

It’s also very easy to be swayed into believing that the best niche to get into is the ‘make money online’ niche. Nothing could be further from the truth! I wasted months thinking that the only people who were willing to spend ‘real’ money on the Internet were those who were looking as hard as I was to earn it back. In fact, the vast majority of people looking to earn money on the Internet, want to do it because they have no money to spend in the first place.

Couple that with the fact that Internet Marketers tend to be very savvy and most of them probably know a helluva lot more than you do, and you can see why the IM niche is the one you should be avoiding at all costs. At least until you know what the hell you are doing and can compete with the big fish out there.

The great thing about niche marketing is that every single person using the Internet becomes a potential sale, or at the very least a potential Adwords click. Either way, you stand to get paid. Now, do you really want to limit your earning potential to only those folks looking to earn money online?

It doesn’t take a whole lot of time to learn what you need to know to be successful at Niche Marketing. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll find you’re wasting a whole lot of time on stuff that isn’t getting you anywhere. Plus, once you’ve learned the necessary skills, you can then go on to build as many niche websites as you like, and do it quickly and easily.

It’s only recently that I took the plunge into Niche Marketing and the first one was a bit of a disaster, (that’s putting it mildly) because I had no idea about keyword research, or checking out the competition, or knowing what the hell to put on a niche website anyway.

Trust me, I didn’t make the same mistake with the second one! Within 2 months it was earning money and generating signups. And that site will continue to earn money and generate signups way into the future.

Keywords

If you want to learn niche marketing, you have to learn about keywords. What they are, which ones you should be aiming for, which ones to leave alone, how to rank for them, how to beat the living daylights out of anyone competing against you for them. Once you know how to dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords, you can walk in and dominate your niche market.

Do you know if the folks searching in your niche are looking for information or a product? If you don’t, then you’d better find out pretty damn quick. Because there’s a whole different set of keywords depending on what it is they’re looking for.

Do you know how to figure out if the competition for your chosen keywords is tough or easy? Again, you need to know this or you could waste a whole lot of money trying to rank for a keyword that will take years, instead of going after keywords that you can rank for within days.

Do you know the difference between a ‘buying’ keyword and a ‘researching’ keyword? Let me tell you if you’re trying to sell a product and you’re ranking for keywords being used by researchers you sure as hell aren’t going to make many sales. And it’s just as true the other way around. If you’re trying to make money using Adsense, but you’re targeting buyers, they’ll just hit the back button because you don’t have what they’re looking for.

The Niche Marketing Secret

Successful niche marketing starts and ends with research. If you aren’t prepared to put in the time and effort beforehand to discover what and how it all works then maybe it’s not for you. Even with the awesome array of software and tools out there that can practically automate everything for you, you still have to put them to use. They don’t do any good gathering dust and taking up space on your hard drive.

You can target a niche as broad as ‘golf’ or you can choose to target a smaller niche within the golf niche, such as ‘golf clubs’. You could even target a much smaller group and focus your niche marketing on a particular brand of golf clubs.  The choice is entirely yours.

Obviously, the wider you swing your net, the more fish there are to catch. But you’ll also find yourself competing with a lot of other fishermen. That’s fine if you know what you’re doing and don’t mind the competition. But if you’re just starting out, it’s much easier to fish in a smaller pond. Not as many fish, but you stand to catch more of them because nobody else is fishing in that pond.

Unfortunately, unless you know which fish are likely to bite, you could be the only one there and still not catch anything. You could also find that no matter how hungry the fish are, they never take your bait. It’s not enough to just find the niches. You have to find the niches with the hungry fish, and then you have to know how to get them to grab onto your bait.

Without a doubt, the easiest money to be made comes from targeting a specific group of people. Find out what they are looking for, and give it to them. Once you get how easy this is, you can set up as many niches as you please. There just isn’t any limit.

It needs a little bit of research in the beginning. Remember, you don’t want to go into a niche only to find it too crowded or not hungry enough.  If you can’t afford Niche Horde, then you can do the research manually. It’ll take you a while, but that’s life. You can’t have it all. You either pay with your money or you pay with your time.

Then you set up your site and get the traffic coming in.  If you can’t afford to buy and host a domain (are you sure you’re serious about earning money online?), then set up a free blog using WordPress or Blogger. Or put up a lens on Squidoo or a Hub on Hubpages.

Choose the right keywords to optimize and link back to your site and you should be able to knock the competition for six in a couple of months tops.

If you want to dig deeper with your keywords, get yourself a copy of Market Samurai, easily the best keyword research tool on the planet. Take the free trial at least. In fact, I think there’s a free version that you can keep but of course it means you’ll miss out on a lot of the most useful stuff it can do for you.

If you decide to delve into niche marketing, then you can choose to market your niches either with SEO free methods, or PPC, or blogging. If you can’t find a product within your niche, but folks are searching for information, then put up Adsense ads. Search engine traffic is great for generating money with Adsense.

Niche Marketing means you’re not stuck with any one product or only able to make money from one particular group of people. You can market to dog lovers, golfers, dieters, photographers, jewelry shoppers, in fact there isn’t anyone you can’t make money from. If they’re looking for something, there’s a niche market waiting to be profited from.

Niche Keyword = Fast Fold Projection Screen

Monthly Searches = 660

Average CPC = $3.68 – $5.15

Results

If you check out the first 4 results from Google, you’ll see that only position 4 is actually targeting the keyword in the title.

Ranking for this keyword on the first page of Google shouldn’t be too hard at all. Position 2 may have a PR of 4, but that’s because it has over 18,000 links pointing to the site. The actual page showing in the results has zero links pointing to it.

Get a domain (dotcom is taken, but others available), throw up a site and get a couple of targeted backlinks and you’re good to go. Hell, even if you don’t sell any screens, at between $3 and $5 a click, the adsense earnings alone will keep you going.

It really doesn’t get any easier than this. Niche Marketing isn’t hard. Don’t kid yourself that it is. Don’t make the excuse that finding a niche is hard, ranking in Google is hard, or that making money with niche marketing is hard.

None of it is hard. You find the right niche, you suss out the competition, and if it’s not too tough, you go for it.

Sure some will fail, but a lot of them won’t. It just depends on how much work you want to put into them. And when half of the top 4 or 5 positions are taken by pages that have zero backlinks pointing to them, you don’t have to try that hard to beat them do you?

There’s a whole lot of information on niche marketing available and if you’re wanting to earn some serious money from profitable markets, then you’re already aware of how much research is needed.

Finding a niche market isn’t enough!

You need to find markets that:

• are profitable – what’s the point in niche marketing that doesn’t make you a profit?
• enough people are actually searching for – note that just because your Uncle Joe is looking for it, doesn’t mean the rest of the world is!
• are easy to set up – if it’s going to take you months to research your niche market then forget it. Unless of course, you don’t want to be earning money quickly?
• are easy to rank on the first page of the SERPS – if your niche market is already flooded with hot niche websites, then you might want to choose another niche. With niche marketing, it’s first page or no page if you want to make money.

Now that might sound like a whole lot of work. And to be honest it is.

But it just got made a whole lot easier with a brand new niche marketing tool from Jonathan Leger. Be sure you watch the video before you read anything on the page. And yes, it really is as easy as it looks.

And if you’ve ever tried to do all the research needed to find a profitable, hot, money raking, niche market that you can simply walk into and start earning money, then Niche Horde is definitely the way to go.

Does it do absolutely everything? Hell no. But then there isn’t a single piece of software in the whole world that will do everything for you. If you think there is, you’re probably still afraid of that little word called ‘work’, and whether you like it or not, if you want to make money online, (either from niche marketing or any other method), then you will have to accept there’s a certain amount of work involved.

Luckily, most folks don’t want to do any work, which means for those who do, there’s more money to be made.

Why Niche Marketing

Because niche marketing is easy, that’s why.

The biggest problem with trying to make money online is that the competition is really way too heavy for those who are new to the game or don’t have the advanced technical and marketing skills. And because you’re new, you can’t afford to pay anyone to do the work for you. Vicious circle!

With niche marketing, you get to target highly focused markets that are usually populated only by Joe Bloggs who might be a world expert on building chicken sheds, but doesn’t know shit about how to make money from all that expertise. And the world is your oyster when it comes to niche marketing ideas. They’re everywhere.

And the even bigger beauty of niche marketing is that you can make the money without being the world expert.

Now if you’re not yet ready to indulge in Niche Horde for yourself, then be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed, because the intention is to provide you with some of the hot niches that have already been discovered. But if you’re slow, you’ll miss out because the members will obviously have access before you do.

You snooze, you lose folks. That’s business.