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Home > News And Information > Newsletter > April 2008 Ystore News > Dominate Any Online Niche! by Scott Jason

Dominate Any Online Niche! by Scott Jason

Working in online niche markets is one of the most profitable business concepts available today. With about 1.4 billion people online in 2008 just about any imaginable niche has a good chance of succeeding. Better still; the need has never been stronger since most Website owners are using a "shotgun" approach that leaves visitors overwhelmed and craving a good niche site. That said; use these tips to get a jump start on the competition and quickly dominate any niche! Step 1: Get Small, But Not Too Small; Refine your niche to the smallest money making component. Some niches are smaller than others. The trick to finding a profitable niche is to break down your topic to its smallest profitable component. Let's say you want to sell music and music memorabilia. Well that's a pretty broad category so narrow it down a bit like this... Music > Mainstream > Top 40 > '80's > "Hair Bands" > One Hit Wonders Now, one hit wonders performed by "hair bands" in the 1980's might be too small a niche to be profitable but there was certainly no shortage of hair bands in the '80's. So your music niche might look like this... Music > Mainstream > Top 40 > '80's > "Hair Bands" Quick Profit Tip: If you want even quicker profits you can simply join a niche affiliate marketing program. The rest of this information still applies and is more important than ever. I just wanted to let you know you have plenty of options. Let's focus on the tips for now and I'll share a good reference at the end for finding a profitable niche affiliate marketing program. Step 2: Make Sure Your Niche is Really Right for You; OK, maybe this seems a little too "common sense" but make sure you really enjoy researching and working within the niche you choose. What's fun for a few hours a month now as a hobby might not be as much fun if it becomes a second job. Here are some tips to help with this... A.) Choose something you either know a lot about now or really want to learn about. This will help eliminate a lot of potential frustration later. B.) Try to find a niche where you genuinely like and can relate to the "typical visitor." You might find yourself spending a lot of time handholding them through buying decisions and the like. Step 3: Make Sure Your Niche is Primed for Profits; Try to find a niche that has a large enough target audience to keep you busy and plenty of things people are willing to pay for (such as 80's rock memorabilia in our example.) You can use Google's free keyword selection tool for this. The goal here is to find keywords people are searching for and seeing how much competition there is as well as how many people are looking for your niche keywords. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter any keyword or phrase that you think your target market is looking for. This free tool will give you tons of info on the word you entered plus any related keywords. The little partially filled boxes show you how popular the search term is and how much keyword bidding competition it has. If you go there and look up "80's hair bands" (no quotes) you will see there is not a ton of search volume but also not much bidding competition. Now if you type in "80's music" (no quotes) you'll see there is about the same search volume but much more competition. So far; so good. To find your real competition, go to Google and look up "80's hair bands" (no quotes). You'll find about 304,000 pages of future competition. Now search for "80's music" (no quotes) and you'll see there are about 1,450,000 pages, or nearly five times the competition. It looks like we made a good niche choice! We have about the same interest in the two but only have to deal with a fraction of the competition. The people doing these searches are likely to have interest in our site. And with even more targeted keywords we'll have more than enough for big profits. So, with our niche decided, let's move onto the details that will make you money. We'll start with Web design considerations. Step 4: Walk the Walk; Make your niche Website into a comfort zone. Design your site to reflect the mood or encompass the style of your niche. Here are some great places to start... A.) Web theme B.) Headline C.) Meaningful images D.) Color selection E.) Font usage (embed special "non Web standard" fonts as images if needed) Do a little research and have some fun with it. If your niche is "Music > Mainstream > Top 40 > '80's > Hair Bands" then look up old album covers, find images of Def Leppard and Bon Jovi posters, use some of the fonts found on albums in your own images, etc. Step 5: Talk the Talk; Add to the comfort zone and increase trust by speaking to your visitors in familiar terms such as... A.) The use of age appropriate slang. B.) The mention of well known, but niche specific acronyms. C.) Mention of specific and meaningful names. For our '80's music "hair bands" niche, "cassette singles" or "Cassingles" is real blast from the past. Just the mention of this near forgotten phenomenon is an instant credibility builder. Step 6: Build a Relationship; Your visitors want to buy from someone who knows them and can 'relate' to their needs. Give that to them by building a rapport on a (semi) personal level. This is easier than most people think. You already have a lot in common by virtue of the niche. Just build on that. For example; if your niche has anything to do with '80's' music, make reference to the first time you bought a CD and how it cost you $27. Talk about the special high definition metal cassette tapes and laser disks that lasted about as long as the "Pet Rock." You can also bring back memories of filling your '76 Chevy Nova with gas for 86 cents a gallon. Just have some fun with this and your audience will enjoy it. Step 7: Get Some Training; There is a fortune to be made in online niche business. Whether you use your niche site for lead generation or direct sales, it's worth it to read a book or two on the subject to speed up the profits. The following are my favorites and typically cost less than $25 each. They are all available at Amazon.com. A.) NicheCraft: Using Your Specialness to Focus Your Business, Corner Your Market, and Make Customers Seek You Out by Dr. Lynda Falkenstein B.) Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton Ph.D. C.) Internet Marketing for Dummies by Bud E. Smith Time Saving Tip: If you want to save a lot of time and don't mind spending $47, I recommend getting The Niche Annihilation Method training program (http://www.NicheAnnihilate.com). I would have saved years of trial and error if this had been available when I started out. Fortunately or unfortunately, the person that developed this (Rob Benwell) is one of the few I know who actually limits product sales to ensure he does not dilute the market. So if you happen to get a "sold out" notice, just send him an email asking to be notified if he comes out with another program in the future. Even if you have to wait, it's worth it. Quick Profit Tip: Joining a niche affiliate marketing program is easily the fastest way to start raking in the cash. The Niche Annihilation Method training program, mentioned above, has great information to jump start this effort. And if you decide to go for it, there is a piece of inexpensive software called Click Bank Elite (http://www.CBankElite.com) that will put your niche business in overdrive in minutes. Now go and dominate your niche. Good luck!

About the Author Scott Jason is a 10 year veteran niche marketing coach and search engine optimization specialist. He has been a guest "expert advice" author for several marketing books including 'Marketing Magic' and is the co-founder of http://BestSEOCopywriting.com .