Monday, August 17, 2009

How to Find Profitable Niche Markets/Sites






BWMagic's Internet Marketing News!






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Contents:

o How to Find Profitable Niche Markets/Sites
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Perhaps one of the hardest tasks in actually earning a living
from the web is finding good niche markets/products that will
return a profit. It's not that hard to do, but you do have to
do a lot of research unless you want to waste all your time
and money promoting a product or site that's just not viable.


Been there, done that.


Around 10 years ago, when I first started exploring how to make
an income from the web - I wasted two or three years promoting
one "get-rich-quick" scheme after another. You have probably seen
these opportunities which promises immediate riches by sponsoring
and selling a miracle product. You get your own branded template
site and you spend your time recruiting new prospects into selling
the same miracle product you're selling, these recruits are placed
under you in some kind of silly matrix... please stay away
from such foolishness.

And be extremely careful of what products you promote or market on
the web. Unless you already have your OWN products; choosing the
right products and services to promote and market will make all
the difference to your bottom line. So you have to choose wisely.

But how do you find profitable niches?


First, keep you eyes and ears open, what are the popular products
your friends and colleagues are all buying? What are the hot
products? What products are people buying online right now?

Take for example - Netbooks!

They have only been around for a couple of years, introduced by
Asustek in the fall of 2007 and now all the major laptop makers
Dell, HP, MSI, Lenovo... are all making netbooks.

Why?

Because netbooks are hot products and it can be a very lucrative
market even for affiliate marketers like myself. Now I have gone
and broken one of the unwritten rules of online marketing. Never
tell anyone what products you're promoting and which ones are
bringing in the revenue because it just creates competition and
thousands of people will start selling the same products.

However, I love competition. Some of the keywords I target have
over a 100 million pages competing for the same keywords. Getting
on that first page of results in Google keeps you on your game.
It keeps you on your SEO toes!

Besides it doesn't take a genius to realize the best netbooks are selling like hotcakes right now.

But the real trick is to find niche markets/keywords that have
little competition and then it is much easier to get your site and
keywords ranked high in all the search engines. Do some serious
keyword research in a niche market before you start building a
site around it.

Many obscure products and niche markets are still virtually
untouched. You have to find these and develop an authority site
on them. But how do you find these profitable niches?

Again, keep your eyes open, what do you buy online? What would
you find comfortable selling online? It's best to pick something
you already have an interest in - take your favorite hobby and
find products to sell or promote. Whether it be handy gardening
tools, wine making kits, cooking utensils and the list goes on.

There are many places to find niche products - try newspapers,
magazines, even your TV... what's being sold in the advertisements?
In other words, what products are companies spending their
advertising money on?

This is also one of the most important keys I use for finding
profitable niche products online. What are individuals spending
their advertising dollars on - month after month? If people are
consistently spending money on advertising (even Pay Per Click)
more than likely this is a profitable niche.

Then I check out their sites - if it's mostly affiliate products
they're promoting and selling - then I know this is probably a
viable niche market.

Next I thoroughly research the keyword competition related to
this market. I personally use Keyword Elite but there are
many keyword research programs and software on the market.
If the competition is not too stiff, then this would be the
major factor whether or not I enter this niche.

Another consideration, I thoroughly check out the top sites
which are ranked in Google for this niche. How well are they
designed? Are they unique? How old are they? How many backlinks
do they have? Can I do better? Can I compete?

Next, you have to be careful when checking out the affiliate
commissions you can earn from promoting any niche market?
Are these products featured in Amazon? Are they offered thru
Commission Junction or the other major affiliate networks?

Is there a possibility of getting an exclusive private affiliate
deal with the maker of the products or services? Don't laugh,
this is one of the keys to earning the huge incomes on the web.
Many companies, especially small start-ups will give you lucrative
deals if you promote their products, some will even give you
residual income for the life of the client you have referred.

Don't leave this area unexplored because it can be the key to
finding really lucrative profitable niche markets on the web. Many
times once you or your site has a dominant presence in a niche
market (your site is ranked high for all the important keywords)
companies will approach you to sell their products. Keep these
private deals on the table and you might be surprised at the
response you get.

Besides the affiliate route, a more profitable way to proceed
is to sell the products yourself thru a "drop ship" company or
service. Or you can buy the resell rights to a product and sell
it yourself on your site. I personally stay away from "actually"
selling stuff on the web because that usually brings in a whole
lot of other issues such as customer support, refunds, etc.
I like affiliate marketing because all the buying and selling
are done for me. All I have to do is supply the traffic and
potential customers to my affiliate links and let them do the rest.

Regardless, you have to pick a niche market that will return
enough of a profit to make it worth your while. I made this mistake
once by creating a site on How To Clean LCD Screens - the
site was somewhat successful, I did and do sell a couple of these
LCD cleaning kits a day but unfortunately I only get less than a
dollar for each one I sell thru my Amazon affiliate links.


http://www.cleanlcds.com/


The product price is simply not high enough to give me a good
return. I believe my major reason for designing the site
was to also sell a big ticket item like Big Screen LCD TVs
but I didn't sell many of these mainly because I believe
few people buy such a big item without actually seeing
the picture quality of the TV in person before buying it.

You really do have to find products people like buying online.

One simple way to do this is to only promote products that
are ONLY sold online, therefore people simply have to buy them
on the web. Another solution is to promote products which have
exclusive online coupons and deals for their affiliates. You would
be surprised how many major companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo...
offer these special online deals. Customers will seek out these
deals and buy online - hopefully from your affiliate links.

Finding popular products can be done, here are a couple of free
sites I like to use to help me find those niche products.


Google Trends

Google Trends



This site will show you which products are popular and getting
a lot of search traffic compared to others. It will also show
you how much news/buzz a certain product is receiving... all
important points to consider when choosing a product to promote.


Perhaps one of the best sites for finding profitable niche
products is from Microsoft:

Detecting Online Commercial Intention

http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/



Which tells you the Probability someone will buy when using
certain keywords or even a site. This is a good way to check
to see if your keywords have commercial value - will people
buy it? Use this tool consistently, and it will help you
find your profitable keywords and niche markets.


Now if you're are a complete novice at online marketing, then
you will need extra help at finding your own profitable niche
markets. One solution I always recommend is SBI. It is more
expensive than other hosting services but you get a tons of
marketing tools and programs along with your site building
system.

One of these is the whole "BrainstormIt" system which will
guide you step-by-step to finding a profitable niche market to
build your site around. I have not found any system more
comprehensive than this one - again, it's more expensive
but well worth the money.


Site Build It with BrainstormIt


Anyway hope this discussion has given you some help in finding
your own profitable niche products to promote on the web.
Find the right ones, and you will never look back!





Kind Regards,

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Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Learn How Using SPNbabble Can Help Web Professionals Save Time

Click Here For SPNbabble!





SiteProNews Launches SPNbabble, a Micro-Blog for Web Professionals
Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins


SiteProNews, a well established website geared towards webmasters,
has recently introduced a new micro-blogging service called SPNbabble.

Describing itself as "Micro-Blogging For Web Professionals" - SPNbabble.com lets you share your ideas with friends and colleagues. It also incorporates such popular services as Twitter and Facebook. To find out more about this interesting new platform, Bizwaremagic.com did an interview with Mel Strocen, CEO of the Jayde Online Network, which runs numerous websites, including SiteProNews and SPNbabble.


1. Lets cut to the chase, why should anyone use your micro-blogging program, SPNbabble?


The main reason, and the reason we created SPNBabble, is that it
provides social media marketers with a means to post to multiple
micro-blogging sites simultaneously. Currently, SPNbabble members
can configure their accounts so that a post on SPNbabble will also
appear on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Plurk, Tumblr and 5 other
micro-blogging sites. If time is a factor in your marketing endeavors,
then using SPNbabble is a no-brainer.


2. Not everyone is familiar with micro-blogging, could you go
into more detail and fully explain how your program works or
functions?


Well, anyone who uses Twitter will find SPNbabble very similar
in features and functionality. For those unfamiliar with micro-blogging,
it's basically a concise form of blogging. Most micro-blogging
sites, including SPNbabble, restrict blog posts to 140 characters.
It takes some practice to get your message across in shortened form,
but for busy web professionals less is more.

Micro-blogging is ideal for getting short snippets of useful information
out to a potential audience of millions of micro-bloggers. Short blog
posts can be about news, articles, products, services, programs, links
to interesting sites, what you happen to be doing at that moment,
or about almost anything else you care to share with others.


3. Can you elaborate on the SPNbabble Community Toolbar and how it works?


The SPNBabble toolbar was created using the Conduit.com custom
toolbar creation service. Conduit allows site owners to create
their own branded toolbars in minutes. We selected from some of
the standard components that Conduit offers, but component
choices literally number in the thousands.



The toolbar is available for the Internet Explorer, Firefox and
Safari web browsers and can be downloaded in seconds from

http://spnbabble.ourtoolbar.com/


In addition to common toolbar features like search, weather, radio,
pop-up blocking and a drop down link menu, the SPNBabble toolbar
also offers more unique features like online chat between
SPNbabble members, a RSS feed reader for SPNbabble posts, a
Twitter post reader, an email notifier that supports virtually all
webmail providers and most POP3 providers, and a Message Box
that enables us to send messages to members in real time to which
they can respond.


4. How much does it cost to use SPNbabble?


There is no cost. SPNBabble is FREE to use.


5. Seems like everyone has gone Twitter mad, can you give your
views on Twitter and how it is connected with your new program?
How is it different from using Twitter?

Twitter is an acquired taste. Either you immediately grasp its
value or you find it to be a total waste of time. For many
people, the latter view is based on their personal tastes and
preferences. They see no real benefit in reading about what
other Twitter users had for breakfast, where they are going or
what they are doing.

The trick, of course, is to follow the message posts of people
with whom you have something in common. Finding those people
on Twitter isn't that easy or intuitive, but there are Twitter
related services that can help you find people whose message
posts you might find interesting. I personally like Mr Tweet
(http://mrtweet.com), but there are a number of other similar
services that assist in pinpointing Twitter members with similar
interests.

Like Twitter, SPNbabble allows members to follow each other's
message posts, invite their friends, add custom promotional
backgrounds, direct message other members, search message
posts and setup groups devoted to specific interests.

Unlike Twitter, SPNbabble caters more specifically to business
professionals versus the general public, although no one is
prevented from using the service.


6. What types of Data or RSS feeds does your program support?
Do you have a Wordpress Plug-in?

SPNBabble supports RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 and Atom data feeds. If
you use a RSS feed enabled browser or one of the many available
RSS feed readers, you can browse and read message posts in the
SPNBabble public timeline without actually visiting the site.

SPNBabble also offers a Wordpress blog plug-in. Details can be
found at the Wordpress Plugin Directory:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/spnbabble/


In brief, the plugin, once installed on a Wordpress based blog, allows
a blogger to select the blog posts he/she wants converted to
micro-blog notices and automatically added to SPNbabble and
the other micro-blog services SPNBabble supports.

7. Spam is an ever constant problem for every site on the web,
but blogging sites with comments are especially vulnerable, what
measures have you put into place for SPNbabble or is this a
non-issue?


Spam notices are definitely an area of concern, for SPNbabble
and other micro-blog sites.

The question is how does one define spam on a micro-blogging
service. In our case, we define spam as notices that are
inappropriate (adult, inflammatory, illegal, etc.) or repetitive
and identical. We are looking at ways of automating the spam
monitoring process, but currently notices are manually scanned
and removed
as necessary. In extreme cases of abuse, members
are banned and all of their message posts removed.


8. In a slightly different vein, not everyone reading this will
be aware that you're the CEO of the Jayde Network, which has
many popular sites such as SiteProNews, GoArticles, ExactSeek...
Plus, you also co-founded the iEntry network, which also runs
some very popular sites on the web. How do you see SPNbabble
fitting into these comprehensive online networks?


My connection with iEntry ended 8 years ago. iEntry has thrown
its own hat into the micro-blogging ring with Twellow.com, a
comprehensive directory of Twitter users broken down into
hundreds of categories, and has been successful in popularizing
Twellow very quickly.

We chose to go in a different direction and provide our
core audience - webmasters and site owners - the
means to market and communicate across multiple
social media sites. It's a service that I personally
find useful as a marketer and entrepreneur and one that I
believe will strike a chord with other web professionals as
the micro-blogging phenomenon continues to grow.

Obviously, we plan to promote the service across all of our
websites and we are also approaching other companies in the
social media arena to form mutually beneficial partnerships.


9. What are your goals and objectives for SPNbabble? Where
would you like to see it in a few years?


My main goal for SPNBabble is to make it a one-stop destination
for anyone interested in effectively utilizing the social media
bandwagon for meaningful and profitable communication.

Specifically, I would like to improve, and add to, SPNbabble's
feature set. That might entail tying into additional micro-blogging
sites, providing additional search functions, adding a directory of
categorized users, notice ranking and/or voting, etc. I'd also like
to see SPNbabble eventually added to desktop social media
applications like TweetDeck, Twhirl, Twitteroo, Bitter, and others.

...

For more information and to join SPNbabble Click Here:

SPNbabble.com



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The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous
websites.

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