In the previous lesson, I talked about some important things to keep in mind as you choose a niche market.
I ended the lesson by asking you to brainstorm some possible topics for your information product.
Today we’re going to do some research to help you determine whether your topic has good potential for success…
(Watch this video…)
Main points:
– How many results?
– How many paid ads?
– What kind of sites are in the top 10?
(This shows you how hard it will be to compete with their listings from an SEO standpoint)
If you plan on launching many niche sites, you should consider investing in a tool that will help you automate most of the above processes. I recommend Keyword Elite
Look at:
– How many advertisers?
– How much traffic they are getting?
– How much they are spending daily?
– What are they advertising?
– Do any related advertisers have an affiliate program? (potential back end promotions)
UPDATE: The CB site has changed, and now you have to be signed in to see the marketplace. You can sign up for a free CB account here:
https://accounts.clickbank.com/public/#/signup/form/key//cid/AffiliatesDIY
Action step:
1) Go through the research process I used in this lesson, and answer these 4 questions for each topic that you are considering.
– How big is the niche?
– How competitive is the niche?
– How potentially profitable is the niche?
– Is there potential for back end products?
2) Choose a niche that seems to have a good balance; one that you want to pursue. We will be further refining it in the next lesson.
Once you’ve identified a potentially lucrative niche, you need to go the extra mile and dig deeper. You need to zoom in on the market and find out EXACTLY what they want.
There are some simple ways of surveying the market and focusing your topic to give it the best chance of success, and I’ll be detailing those strategies in the next lesson.
As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂
Have a great day!
Eric,
I respect the fact that you are providing so much valuable information for FREE. Your video tutorials are great. It is refreshing to find an internet marketer and guru who is willing to provide informative content that we can all use.
Eric, I agree with you 100%. You have to do your research when you are deciding to choose a particular niche. I know that you should direct your efforts toward niches that have interest and traffic. I would also suggest that people take a look at niches that they might have some interest in. If someone picks a niche that they really don’t like, then they probably will get tired of it real fast and won’t want to promote it.
If you can find a niche that you have passion for and has a lot of interest, this would be a perfect match.
Tom Curran
Hi Eric,
I’m Nicolas from Costa Rica, I have been following your lessons for a while and well I didn´t have any idea of how to make my own web page or anything related with internet, by coincidence I found out like 1 month ago a site who host domains etc, the thing is that I design my own web page by myself, and started my online bussines that is linked with my physical bussines, I got more exposure in my country and my brand is getting more value.
My site is in spanish so I don’t know if you are going to understand it.
Have you heard about the spiderweb system, I would like to know if it is a scam, the thing is that is related with the company that is hosting my domain and it seems very interesting but as you have said we don’t know what is out there…
this is the link
http://nicovelz.ws/spiderweb/
Saludes Pura Vida!!
RE: LESSON #20 (Choose a niche Part II)
This is so, so important. After much research, I chose to get involved with a company that sells products with an 80% market penetration and profit margins of 50% to 100%. The products are better quality AND cheaper than the best mainstream product in its industry, even when sold at full retail! You can’t beat that!
hi eric. i’m puzzled that you would spend 34 minutes rehashing old news about keyword research using anything but googles new keyword free tool which gives you word counts. i assume you’re getting commissions from the callen brothers for keyword elite and also from wordtracker. i’m amazed at all the people out there that do a research on a product that has no audience at all. like area 51. you would think the person would at least do a research on a paying product that does make money for affiliates through clickbank, amazon, ebay etc. now that google has in a way replaced yahoo’s keyword tool overture with their own version, which is free, why would anyone use a keyword tool that costs as much as $80.00 a month? i’m constantly looking for more information on the keyword tool at google. it will probably be perry marshall who comes out with a step by step guide for using this tool in the near future just like he did with adwords.i’ve deleted most of my keyword tools since google came out with this tool. i really enjoy your articles so keep on writing i read them all.
Great Video. Justin Brookes SiteFlipAcademy.com goes by all these same processes that you are going over. Which means both of you use the same process. I like your video, because you go into more depth into gravity and information products. Outstanding. I enjoy all your videos and look forward to listen to all of them. Once you have your website up create a toolbar on Conduit.com, Download Pad Gen, and then go to software directories and post your toolbar. This is an effective technique to get back links. I know this is off subject. But just sharing information with the other internet marketers out there.
Feel free and leave me a comment on my blog at:
http://ebooksforsale.blogspot.com
Take Care,
Ray.
Hi Eric –
Yeah – there is a fine line between a niche that is too competitive and not competitive enough. The ultimate find is when you come across a niche that gets great traffic but where there aren’t too many competitors. Those are the niches that you should “mine”.
My website host is sitesell.com (and it’s website building system called SiteBuildIt, or SBI for short). They have a GREAT feature that tells you how much traffic a keyword gets, how much competition there is, PLUS a formula for combining those 2 to tell you how PROFITABLE the keword/niche is.
I highly recommend it!
Hi Eric
I am enjoying your lessons.
It is funny that your niche you picked was invention’s because i have a paten on a toy and made a lot of mistakes. If I had it all to do over again I would just hire a paten attorney and just go from there. The big money is in the service’s that the marketing companies provide.
If you need any information on your product just ask. Thanks for the lesson’s.
Charles
Hi Eric,
I was like watching your videos and your advice is great. I became interested in the Keyword elite after you recommended it and went to check it out. Im interested in getting it, but they are also offering SEO elite. Thats where I get confuse cause Im still very new to IM and especially to SEO. Its better to get both products or just stick to Keyword elite since Im wanna stick to article marketing first. Is it as good as they say it is? I hope you can help me out. Looing forward to your next video!!! CHEERS!!! 🙂
Hi Eric thanks for the great information on niche marketing your insights on research is on point you been a great help. Until next time Successful Trader
Hey Eric,
You’ve put together a great one page reference for research. (Everybody, heads up -this is a “Bookmark This / Add to Favorites” lesson.)
Some of these best practices I do routinely when evaluating new ideas. But I’d never thought of looking through Clickbank, Ebay and Amazon to evaluate revenue potential. It’s a piece of the puzzle to projecting profitability.
You’re worth your weight in gold Eric. (All 130 pounds of you 🙂 Keep up the good work.
Sabrina
I totally agree Eric. I myself went into a niche that gets promoted almost everywhere you go but I actually personally knew nothing about the niche. I had great intentions because I felt very strongly about promoting that niche but in the end I finally had success when I did something fun then taught others how I did it!
I agree Tom, Not only pick the right niche, but the right methods of promoting as well. If you do not like to write then outsource article marketing, same with video or audio, I did a post recently on Knowing your reality. What you want to do and what you actually get done.
Eric,
You’re providing a great systematic approach to venturing into an online business.
I agree with your 4 step approach and encourage any and all to go about it in this way.
I only wish that I would have known to do this BEFORE jumping into things over a year ago with several “ideas” I had. I have become familiar with all the tools you are recommending, unfortunately I didn’t know of them back when I jumped into the pipe dream of becomming an internet marketer.
You see, I took you up on a great offer, long ago it seems, on a domain/hosting acct. It was and still is and has been a great deal.
At that time I purchased what I thought and still think is a killer domain name. I thought I’d create a one all stop/shop portal for new and even seasoned marketers and business success seekers.
I worked day after day creating web pages from scratch. Created articles, played the article marketing game, included ads and affiliate products on all pages of the site, bought a spoken word audiobook site, custom-built it and included links to it for specific business and internet related audio products, and I monetized the site and all pages with adsense.
Man did I think I was on a roll especially when I got the site indexed fairly quickly, got my S.E.O. cooking and got top ranking in Google, Yahoo and MSM out of over 20M searches which I’ve held this position now for close to a year. Plus I’ve actually obtained some decent page rank.
All sounds good right?
You’d think … but …
The site doesn’t make the cake and I’m drawing a blank as to why or as to what I should do besides give it up and start fresh with a new niche. I’m very familiar with and rtealize PPC is one avenue, I really don’t want to do that and would rather rely on organic traffic.
It’s just hard to give up on a site that you’ve worked on so long and so hard and one which seems to have such a position in the searches. Maybe I’m just missing a huge unseen opportunity here that I can’t seem to see … or maybe I’ve ventured into a dead end situation. I don’t know at this point and it’s become a frustrating situation which has lead to me doing nothing at all.
Any help would be much appreciated here.
I think I’m mainly writing this to support what you’re trying to teach here Eric and to save others from going the LONG route that I’ve now created for myself.
LISTEN … Fellow up and coming internet marketers: If you will do what Eric is suggesting here, you will shave and save SO much time off the learning curve.
Thanks Eric!
Best regards,
Net Business Ventures
Editor in Chief
David
Great work Eric,
Things are starting to come together. I did like the area 51 pictures. They were taken in Roswell NM at the UFO museum. I took several myself and have an entire library of pics from there. And you are right, no money to be made in aliens for the most part! See you on the next show!
Ron
I decided on a niche and I’m wondering if it is too broad. I decided on trying to help people earn extra money working from home. Would you tighten that down even more? It seems a majority of your readers are doing the same thing.
I’d like to find out what other people are choosing for their niche.
Thanks for the info Eric!
I am very leary of anything that sounds like mlm or grq (aka get rich quick). I’ve seen many safelist ads for the spiderweb system, and just looking at the sales page gives me the feeling that it’s some sort of get rich quick scheme. The reason I get that feeling is because the video (which is quite annoying) gives off the vibe that something is wrong with you just because you haven’t bought into their system yet. If you’ve given them any money, I would suggest finding their phone number and calling them to ask for it back because I don’t believe you’ll ever make it back by spamming your referral link in message boards and blog comments, which I’m not accusing you of doing in this case since you’re asking for advice, but most people I’ve seen promoting get rich quick schemes are spammers who spam their so-called opportunity everywhere and get upset when people don’t buy into them, to me, that seems like a pretty miserable form of marketing. It’s best to promote products of real value and the best way to determine if it has real value is to ask yourself if you would buy it as a consumer rather than a marketer (i.e. would you buy it if there was no money making opportunity attached to it?) In my opinion, the spiderweb system is nothing but a money making opportunity, no product attached to it at all, so if I were you, I’d stay as far away from it as I can.
Have you had a chance to review any of the MassControl stuff by Frank Kern? Did not know if you had any thoughts on it? He is doing the free thing as well to promote more continuity membership revenue.
Eric,
As both an indealist and a pragmatist, I appreciate the dual nature of your approach.
And am right now beginning the nuts-and-bolts that is a logical followup to the philosophy and strategy you’ve been promoting.
Thanks… immensely!
John
Author of the book “Radical Excellence”
Great resource and step-by-step guide to select niche market. Proper planning is vital to compete in the internet marketing arena.
To your success
Bryan Hee
Thanks Tom 🙂
Nicolas, glad to have you on board down there is CR 🙂
I am not familiar with Spiderweb. I took a quick look at it, and the thing that turns me off is the exaggerated claims. They say “we will do all the work for you.” and 1 minute into the video it says they “eliminate every problem that entrepreneurs face today.” They are claiming a zero percent chance of failure. That’s not possible if you really have your own business.
Pura vida!
Sounds like a good deal!
As always, constructive criticism is welcome 🙂
Technically anything I can possibly teach about business is “old” news, because someone has done it before, and someone has probably taught it somewhere. But that doesn’t negate the value of the information for people who are learning it for the first time.
As far as researching a product with “no audience”… Actually my example of “area 51” had a very big audience as I showed in the video. It just doesn’t seem to be a profitable audience.
I can guarantee you that there are profitable niches that have not yet been tapped into on clickbank, so if you go off of that alone, you could be missing out.
You are right, it is not essential to buy a keyword tool, and that’s why I focused on and used free resources throughout the video.
As for google’s free keyword tool, you bring up a good point. The main reason I didn’t demo it is because I haven’t used it very much and I figured I’d teach what I already know.
But keep in mind the disclaimer I made at the very beginning of the video:
“My way is not the only way!”
So for anyone reading this, feel free to check out Google’s free keyword tool, and perhaps I will do a supplemental video about it in the future (hmmm, or maybe I can squeeze it into lesson 21). You can find it at:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Thanks Ray, glad to hear it 🙂
Thanks Charles, that’s good to know 🙂
Exactly!!
Thanks Chen. For article marketing, I would actually recommend SEO Elite over Keyword Elite if you had to choose one or the other. You can use the free keyword tools I talked about to do your keyword research for your articles, and then use SEO Elite to get search positions and back links. It also has a built-in article submitter.
Thanks Sabrina.
(Hey… I haven’t been 130 since high school. Heck I’m sure I’ve gained at least 30# since the last time you saw me 🙂 At this pace I could eclipse the 200 barrier for the 1st time in my life, LOL)
Eric,
Analytics, which lies at the heart of internet marketing, is still mysterious to me. However, I followed your “search” lesson and added a Google “allintitle” search to determine the actual number of pages using my keyword. (That reduced the number of results from 30 million to 23,600.
I searched on Clickbank and eBay as well as Amazon with good results. I first searched my primary keyword back in June and got real excited when I calculated the R/S ratio at .0007878 and found Google was unable to give me any Trend statistics. Likewise, SpyFu didn’t produce any results, even though there are a number of studies, white papers and pdfs on the subject.
I also have my keyword plugged into Google Alerts, and get oodles of fresh news articles and study analyses sent to my inbox daily.
I did not select a niche I am familiar with. Initially, I chose it because I wanted to learn about it. There were no pdfs on the subject when I first researched it around the beginning of June; now there are. Because of my background, I’m confident I can put together a book that other small business owners will find useful.
From this description, you can conclude I’ve targeted a “trend” market.
From the beginning I’ve wondered: how do I market it—what’s the best way to get it to the market (should I publish through Amazon, for example), how do I keep it from being stolen, and who will buy it from me–an internet unknown?
I’m wondering what the chances are of approaching other ebook publishers and getting them interested in forming an affiliation to market the book? I’ve also considered a product launch, interviewing a few leaders in the field. But I really don’t know any of the technical details of putting something like that together.
As you can tell, I’m extremely interested in your upcoming lessons.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom, and if you want to give us a link to your site (not sure if its the one linked from your name), I could take a quick look and see if I notice any blatant reasons for it not making money.
“no money to be made in aliens”
Yup, I think they’re going through a recession too. I can’t remember the last time an alien bought anything from me 😉 jk
Matt, the how to make money (HTMM) niche is one of the most profitable on the internet. It’s what I’m in primarily. I don’t think it’s too broad, but it is VERY competitive. I suggest focus on creating a unique selling point, and building credibility for yourself by establishing yourself as an authority.
It might be easier to become an authority if you specialize in a smaller facet of HTMM from home, but you wouldn’t necessarily have to.
Frank Kern is an excellent marketer, and you should watch WHAT he does. Like I said in my review of the original mass control, you can learn a lot of his techniques just by observing his methods. He’s doing it again. I’m personally not promoting it because I’m not promoting many launches these days, and because his stuff is relatively expensive (compared to say, Traffic Secrets 2.0). But do watch his videos (the 3 tips for selling in his new one are great), just be aware that your brain is being mass controlled 😉
Thanks John, I like the title of your book 🙂
Glad to hear about your progress. Google Alerts is a good idea, thanks for the tip.
As for approaching other publishers… it’s a great idea. The key there is to focus on what you can do for THEM, rather than pitching them your book. If they have an affiliate program, you could promote them in many ways…
-links within your ebook
-on your thank-you page
-emails to your customer list
Then they will be more likely to reciprocate, especially when you show them how they can increase their income by doing the same things that you’re doing for them.
Interviews are great, and I’ll be talking about how to do product launches later on in the lessons.
Eric,
These lessons are great. I am a person who is stuck on the niche question. The niche I’m interested in would probably be considered too broad. There are also a huge amount of competitors. However, if I zoom in on a tighter niche I’ll lose volumes of content, all written from personal experience. Products I would review would all be things I own or would buy again. Almost all of my suppliers have affiliate programs. This has been a major part of my life for 30 years and I don’t have a clue what else I’d have a site about. Any comments would be appreciated.
Hi Eric:
This lesson was a godsend to me as I found out I wasnt’ using clickbank properly.Maybe now I might make some headway. Your lessons are always astounding, informative, and to the point. I can’t thank you enough for sharing your knowledge and support, you are truely an outstanding person.
Enjoy your day Eric,
Gus
Hi Eric,
I have to say (at least for me) that between lesson 19 & 20 and also trying to fully absorb the great ebook you made available…I’ve been a little overwhelmed(well…maybe anxious is a better term) trying to take everything in. It’s not so much that its hard to understand, I think it’s more just trying to get use to the research process and flip back and fourth between all the great tools you make available.Its like riding a bike before you really know how(I’ve seen all these website tools before but never really utilized them until now)
I just sat back and took a deep breath and remembered two things that you mentioned earlier!
1) You must think like a marketer
(even went back and reviewed your
video)
2)Whatever niche you choose.. it’s
not like your married to it!
I know that once I get use to the repetitive cycle of doing this with future info products it will get easier and easier. So, for now I will go with a niche I’ve chosen and if I make good money….GREAT! But if not, I realize that the experience learned from this starting point will carry over to the next and the next until I’ve achieved the ability to easily select a niche, research with better accuracy, and produce an info product that sells like crazy. I don’t give up easy 🙂
Best Regards,
Gary
Thanks, Eric
Yes it actually is the site in question.
That would be great and it might shed some light for others.
D S
Hi
Eric H. This fareed form pakistan iam so inspired from your all lession .Becouse i put they in my daily life . Thanku you Eric sir
Please update my skills with your extra ordenary tipos.
Have a good day….
yeah, that’s what turns me off too, that’s why I don’t feel bad about calling it a get rich quick scam
Hi Eric:
How are you doing today? would it be possible for you to direct me to where I can learn to build a website.I am trying to set up a nitch but don’t have a website to give.
Thanking you in advance,
Gus
Ray …
thanks for the idea … I think??
I went over to Conduit and messed around with it. I created a toolbar rather quickly. Here it is: http://audiobookdownloadsunlimited.MyStoreToolbar.com
Not sure what to do next and not sure what you meant by, “Download Pad Gen, and then go to software directories and post your toolbar.”
Also, visited your blog and didn’t see any further comments on this and didn’t notice if you were even using it there.
Love to hear more.
DS
Hi Eric,
Thank you for your video. It is very helpful for a beginnner. I have a question.
I searched freewordtracker.com for the keyword “above ground pool installation” and found 45 searches. Then I searched the same keyword in Spyfu.com and the top advertiser was shown to have a budget of $1K to $7K per day with total clicks being 3K to 5K.
It also shows that the keyword is pool installations which has a search volume of only 25 in freewordtracker.com. It is interesting that when I put the keyword “pool installation” into Spyfu that this advertiser does not even show up.
This does not seem to jive. How can there by 3000 to 5000 clicks when there are only 45 searches?
I don’t understand it.
Could you please explain a little.
Thanks,
Dave
Eric, thanks for the info. I think I have figured it out. I have narrowed it down to what I am offering specifically. I am trying to become an authority in unique niche that relates to HTMM@H.
Incredible information! Thank you for sharing.
David, I looked at your site and in my opinion the biggest reason your site is not making money is because it is not focused on achieving one primary action.
Also, if you’re sending any traffic to the home page, the home page is VERY slow to load. It was just a blank yellow screen for a full minute before anything appeared. I refreshed it several times, and the same thing happened each time, and sometimes it didn’t even load any content at all! It is not due to your hosting. It is because of something being loaded from elsewhere. It loads fine in Firefox, but is choking in IE (I have IE6). In FF it loads most of the page, but then at the bottom it continues to say “transferring data from googlesyndication”, while attempting to load the google search box, so I think there is a problem with the code of the search box or perhaps the ad above it.
I would test it in IE, and remove the search box to see if that fixes it. Or it might be the banner ad just above the search box. It’s being loaded from someone else’s site, so I would be suspicious of it.
Next, you need to decide, what is the primary objective of the site?
Based on the way it is now, I would have to assume the objective is to get people to click the Adsense ads and affiliate banners.
Maybe you’ve seen the “golden triangle” heat maps, of where people look when they look at a website. The first thing people will look at when they get to your site is the ads in the top left hand corner. When they see that on the home page, they may assume that this is another “made for Adsense” site with useless content on it, and leave the site.
If your goal is to be an AdSense driven site, that’s actually great placement of the ad block for the articles, but I wouldn’t put it on the home page.
Beyond the Adsense ads, you’ve got a mix of various “make money” banners for affiliate products. In my opinion, the combination of the Adsense ads and all these banners make the site look very spammy. I think a lot of new marketers think “hmmm… the more stuff I can cram onto my site, the more chances some of it will get clicked.” However, it has the opposite effect. Visitors get overwhelmed, and they don’t know where to click so they will leave the site.
There are some famous marketing bloggers who plaster their sites with ads and seem to get away with it (although I suspect it actually hurts them too), but unless you’re a famous blogger it’s probably not a good idea.
As you’ve learned, content is king. You’ve got some good content on your site, and that’s a big part of how you’ve been able to get some search rankings. Therefore, I think you need to make sure you are showcasing the content more than the ads.
Here are my recommendations…
1) Change your business model. Instead of trying to make money up front from visitors clicking on stuff, you should try to get them to subscribe to your newsletter and return to your site. If they find your site, and click on an ad they will probably never come back to your site (you make 10 cents or $10 or whatever). But if you can get them to opt-into a newsletter, and give them a high quality experience on your site, they will come back again and again (you make $100’s from them).
In other words, the PRIMARY objective of your site would be to get people to opt into your newsletter. The way you do it is by providing great content for free and making it a good experience for them.
It looks like maybe you are planning a newsletter? There is a place where it says “Sign Up Now – it’s FREE”, but there’s no opt-in box.
(I recommend using Aweber and I will be teaching about it in future lessons)
2) Take most of the ads off your site unless you’re making decent money from them.
3) Make sure there’s no dead links in your navigation. I found some, like the audio ebooks. If visitors click those, they will leave your site and never come back.
4) Consider switching over to WordPress (I’ll be teaching WP around lesson 33). It will make it a lot easier to grow your site and update your navigation. You can easily add new articles any time, and they can be instantly added to the navigation menu of every page. WP also will give you the interactive features of a blog (like comments, etc), which can improve repeat traffic.
5) Establish credibility, and give some personality to the site. Again, this is a very competitive niche. Why should anyone pay attention to your site? The intro letter on your home page is kind of the right idea. I wouldn’t break it into 2 pages. It’s a good overview, but who are you? You may be surprised to learn that most people would rather pay attention to someone who is a “real person” just like them.
Hope those tips help 🙂
If you are an authority in the field, I would not hesitate to recommend tackling the broader niche. It may take a lot longer to establish yourself as an authority online and make it profitable, but it will pay off in the long run. It may also be possible to build a business for the entire niche, but then create various micro-niche products within it.
Great comments as always 🙂
I will be teaching how to set up a website very soon (within the next 5 lessons)…
I’m not sure why Word Tracker is showing that. Try Google’s tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
If you type in “above ground pool installation” it won’t work, so just type in ‘swimming pool’ (no quotes).
Down the list you will find many related keywords like “pool installation” with 27k searches a month, etc.
My guess is that the Spyfu results are for a broad match, which includes related terms, not just “above ground pool installation”.