Bora's 30 DC Basic & Adv. Tips and Tricks

Find a Niche Idea

1. How to be creative
   Here some great tips from one of the best books I have ever read on the topic. This link will bring you directly to 15 example Creativity methods from the book.
   
   Most important:
   Logical thinking (e.g. Market Samurai stuff) and creativity don't work well together. You need to take a break, because your brain is in a logical thinking pattern and will try to solve each problem in a logical way. And that just doesn't help coming up with new ideas.
   
   a.) Pick up a random set of articles and news etc. from e.g. ezine.com (really random is important). That helps to stimulate your brain with new stuff.
   
   b.) Oh yeah, a clean tidy desk doesn't help (honestly) .
   Get all kind of stuff together to stimulate your brain (e.g. take out all your magazines & newspapers you have flying around, throw them on the ground around you and randomly skip through them. Even magazine ads can do wonders for creative idea's.
   
   PS: Everybody can be creative. Some people just naturally use these techniques and others need a little help. Check out the website for more tips. There is a youtube video and a few podcasts.
2. Step away from the computer and take a piece of paper and ask yourself following questions:
   - What hobbies do you have or ever wanted to follow?
   (include all hobbies you had during childhood and your teenage times)
   - If you had a million dollars and a week off - what would you do?
   - When you just "surf around"online which sites do you visit? What topics do they cover?
   - List all the courses you have ever taken and write down what you wish they would have taught as well.
   - List all the awards you have ever received.
   - Where have you ever volunteered?
   - List all the pets you ever had or wanted to have (yes, maybe Ant Farms are an awesome niche).
   - Do you collect anything at all? Even if it is the most silly thing?
   - What do other people ask or call you for?
3. Send the questions just listed above to a not-so-close friend or total stranger.
   Or catch up with them and ask if they could help you out by answering the questions.
   Not so close friend, because most of you closest friends are in the same circle of information you have. People outside of that circle bring in fresh ideas.
4. Get out of the house and in to the next big news agency (don't forget something to scribble on those millions of markets).
   Even if Amazon has a wide range of magazines and you can check them out online - real paper magazines all around you are still the far better inspiration (I can even scientifically prove that to you). You'll find so many wacko topics and bizarre niche hobbies that you can nearly guarantee to find something.
5. Check out the local town hall for all the different clubs or trainings that are available.
6. Check Yahoo Answers what is questions are being asked.
   You'll find a number of different topics.
7. Use Google Sets to find different keywords for niches you have found.
8. 8 Great Resources from a fellow 30 Day Challenger for more ideas.
   8 Great Niche Idea Resources
9. And here a personal list of niches I will l never follow so maybe the help you out: How to repair furniture/tables/etc., Cooking Equipment like Ceramic knives or steam pots, Environmental Marketing, professional sailors and these ant farms

Advanced Niche Selection Tips

1. Separate market from topics/products
   A market is the over arching theme like cooking recipes. A product is a cook book or the shopping list or spices etc. You need an idea for both or you have nothing to sell to a non existing market/crowd.
2. Check the 'commerciality' of your market
   1.) Is there an affiliate product
   Be creative. It can be a book in amazon or a product in clickbank. If you can't find anything than seriously consider to move on.
   Search: xxx affiliate, associate, partner program to find something
   2.) Market reliability
   Is your audience either desperate or really passionate? If there isn't even one blog or one forum than you should be wondering about that market.
   3.) Proven markets
   If your niche idea doesn't fit in any of those it is probably going to get tough.
   - Health, Diet and Fitness
   - Business Opportunities
   - Money topics (Savings, investement, credit etc.)
   - Love and Relationships
   - Hobbies
3. Analyze the growth and seasonality of your market
   Use Google Insight to find out more about your market like: is it going up or down, related hot keywords, seasonality
4. Hard core Niche checks:
   Top Internet Marketers use these 2 tricks to check a market before they start building a real site.
   1.) Use Google Ads to drive traffic to an affiliate product.
   If people buy it, than you got a guaranteed buying market.
   2.) Use Google Ads to drive traffic to a squeeze page with a freebie and a survey. In that survey you ask people what they look for and what they want. And then you create a product to deliver just that.

Domain And WPD Blog Setup

• Domain Trademark Trap
  In short - don't get a trademark in your domain name. Companies are really picky about this and the US trademark regulations require them to do so. The 30 DC recommendation is, that if you need to use a trademark use it in the category.
  Additional tip - if your keyword phrase is e.g. Nike shoes, than use the word shoes in your domain name and Nike in the categories.
  If you want to risk it check out first the 30 DC forum about some other people who went down that horror trip.
• Find the right Domain Name
  Obviously you want your keyword phrase in it. Mostly it is taken. Here is a good website on naming.
  Here 2 bot which give some good idea's
  - DomainsBot
  - Dot-o-mator
• Pick the Domain extension
  Google doesn't care about your extension, but people do.
  But a good domain name and page title description can counter it. And if you can't get a good domain name in .com check out the alternatives.
  .com is the most trusted (or the local version for it)
  .net is alright
  .info should be alright if your title clearly describes it as a blog (in the title text of your blog)
• Check Domain history
  Before you buy your awesome domain name check the history of the domain name. You don't want it to have a bad history and been banned by Google (because that is seriously going to mess up any plans for ranking).
  Check here - Internet Archive
• Check Domain name spelling before registering
  Trust me you wouldn't be the first. Check first that you 100% for sure have the right traffic keyword phrase. And then check you spelled it correctly.
• Domain WhoIsGuard
  Namecheap.com offers you to protect your contact details in the whois register and you want to take this option. Otherwise your personal contact details will be directly available for everyone.
  But you have to configure this after the registration process, so don't forget it.
• Blog Theme selection
  Personal tip - Pretty sites often don't sell. Most sites of the best internet marketers are certainly not pretty, but the sell really well. Just keep it simple, good to read and not to distracting. You want the visitor to click on your ad and not be mesmerized by your top logo.
• Update your Admin name
  After you added your first post you will notice that is says posted by Admin. You can change the description in the wordpress admin panel.

Sales Conversion Improvement

• Most important - clickable image
  Your product picture has to be a link to the product sales page! That is what web surfers expect. It's the norm and you have to provide it.
• Link to a post first
  After all my clicking visitors going to Amazon didn't buy I looked at it from a buyers perspective and Amazon is most of the time shocking with it's product description (especially for niche products). And most other affiliate pages are not better.
  My tip: Link from your ad (mostly top right hand corner) first to a post in which you use some sales copy writing. Then drive the visitors from there to the affiliate offer or even to a second post before it goes to the offer.
  Search on Google for examples on short and long sales copy.
• Get a good Product Picture
  The picture is the number one seller. If it doesn't display the product well, search for another one. (e.g. Google Image search)
• Bold for Benefits
  Allow the visitors eye to focus on the benefits by making them bold.

Product Tips

1. Test different offers
   Try out different affiliate offers. From information products to physical products to test to what the market responds best. Amazon (and I think ebay as well) have rotating banners.
   (Amazon is better because they actually tell you exactly which product was sold).
2. Affiliate Program tip - persistence
   Be persistent when an affiliate program doesn't except you immediately. Tell them that you got xx visitors exactly looking for product yy they offer. Make sure they understand you will bring sales.
3. Not always info products
   After your 30 DC blog was successful you might find yourself stuck and wanting to sell a physical product but don't have an affiliate shop for it.
   You can build your own shop and use so called drop shipping to sell the products.