Whether you are an affiliate marketer, a website designer or you
make your living creating and marketing infoproducts such as
ebooks, discovering profitable niche markets to exploit is
probably at the top of your "to-do" list. The following is a
four-step system you can apply anytime you need to find a new
niche audience to target and profit from.
1. Initial Brainstorming
This first step is best approached with a very open mind and a
notebook and pen handy. The idea is to seek topics that are
outside your current realm of knowledge. One of the best ways to
do this is by reading blogs.
Bloggers come from every walk of life, and you will find blogs
with information on almost any niche topic imaginable. Best of
all, bloggers provide fresh, timely information.
Start spending some time reading some random blogs. A good
starting place would be at blog directories such as Blogdex -
http://www.blogdex.net . As you are reading, you'll discover
many different topics being discussed. Many of these you may
have never heard of before. Start writing these down.
Example: You found yourself reading a blog post that described
the blogger's recent experience at a demolition derby. Maybe you
don't know much yourself about this niche, so you add
"demolition derby" to your list.
2. Keyword Research
Once you have a list of several possible niches, the next step
is to find out what keywords and keyword phrases people are
using to search for this and related information via the major
search engines. Good Keywords - http://www.goodkeywords.com for
example, is a free Windows software you can download that will
help you do just this. With this program, you can type-in a
topic from your list and the software will begin to uncover many
related keyword phrases being actively searched for.
It takes time to get the hang of this software, but once you
master it you will be able to generate large and valuable
keyword lists. After you uncover at least a few dozen related
keyword phrases, save your list and move onto the next step. If
you are not able to uncover many related keyword phrases,
chances are there is not much potential here and you should
start over with another topic from step one.
Example: Using Good Keywords or a similar tool, you enter the
term "demolition derby". You soon have a large list of related
keyword phrases people have been using to search for information
on this topic, such as "demolition derby video" and "demolition
derby car for sale".
3. Secondary Idea Creation
Read through the keyword list you generated. Some of your
keyword phrases are going to give you ideas for other target
audiences you may want to explore in the future. Take some time
now to write these new ideas down while they are still fresh in
your mind. Save this information for later reference. You can
never have enough fresh ideas to explore when trying to uncover
under-exploited niche markets.
Example: One of the keyword phrases in your "demolition derby"
list was "demolition derby game online" - you note that later
you should explore what other types of online games people are
searching for.
4. Niche Potential Analysis
If you used Good Keywords to mine for keyword phrases, you will
have also been provided with an approximate number of times each
of these terms was searched for during the past month. The next
thing you need to do is compare this number, representing
potential search engine traffic, with the number of websites
already catering directly to these searches.
To do this, start by taking your keyword phrases and do an exact
phrases search on each of them at Google, making certain to
surround your keyword phrase in quotes. Write down the number of
results google brings back for your search. Next, compare the
number of monthly searches for each phrase to the number of
Google results.
If you are lucky, you will discover that some of your keyword
phrases with good monthly traffic don't have many results in the
search engines yet. If you find that you have uncovered a niche
that has several keyword phrases with a high number of monthly
searches and at least a few of them have a low number of
results in Google, chances are you have found a very good niche
to exploit with your next online project. If not, go back to the
list you created in step one and repeat the process.
Example: You discover that the phrase "demolition derby car for
sale" is searched for around 700 times monthly, but brings back
only 486 results in Google and the term "demoliton derby pic"
receives several hundred searches a month but only returns 258
results in Google. You are very happy to have discovered a
potentially hot niche with good under-exploited keyword phrases
to target.
Although there are several costly and difficult to master
programs available that can help you discover unique target
markets, the system above has proven to be an effective free
method for uncovering niches to profit from. Apply it today and
be on your way to niche marketing success.
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