Making Money With Niches

Mining gold has the potential to make you a lot of money, maybe even a fortune... but the odds are you'll never make any money.

Selling shovels to miners may be boring, with only a residual slow steady income... but the odds are almost certain you'll make money.

Again in the interest of saving you time and money, if you want to mine gold on the Internet by continually trying to get lucky with the next great Internet get-rich-quick-scheme, then this lens is not for you!

Now the question that comes to mind is, "How can everybody sell shovels?"

It's a lot like negotiation, if everybody wants the exact same thing, then negotiations can only fail. Only when it is realized that everyone wants different things out of the negotiation, can a win-win solution be found.

The tools for one niche are likely to be vastly different from another niche. In this way, you'll use your own set of tools to market an entirely different set of tools to another niche.

On the Internet, there is almost an unlimited number of Niches. The possibilities are really only limited by your imagination.

So let's get started! First we cover...

The most critical resource your online Internet business must have is access to a keyword research tool. For that, I can only suggest NicheBot v2.0 by Jim Morris.

NicheBot v2.0 Membership Tour

The link above is my affiliate link, as are all the links on this lens. Please be kind and click on them as they help support this lens. While you are probably aware you can do keyword research with NicheBot v2.0, what you may not know, is that it also has a tool called the Find Niche Products tool. It is located under the Search Engine Tools (Step 5) menu. This tool will help you find niche-related affiliate products that you can sell. We will be using this tool in our next section.

You can join NicheBot v2.0 for just $1 for a two weeks subscription. After 2 weeks your subscription charge will then become $19.97 per month, which is a steal either way. Seriously, if NicheBot seems too expensive for you, then so are the $97 to $297 standalone software tools out there for sale, which don't do half of what NicheBot v2.0 does.

Free tools such as the Overture Keyword Tool don't cut it, as they are only good for quick digging due to their limited number of results. You need to be able to do deep digging to find the premium keyword phrases in the "meaty middle" where all the action is, not to mention have the automatic ability to filter out all the thousands of undesirable keyword phrases. We will be getting into keyword phrase selection in the next section.

For now, use the NicheBot Find Niche Products tool in the Search Engine Tools (Step 5) menu to locate some products for whatever niche you are interested in pursuing. Be creative, take your time with this tool, brainstorm with it. It's value becomes more apparent the more you use it.

Hint: At the bottom of the NicheBot Niche Product Locator page is a link to watch a video to see how it works. It is short and will familiarize you with how to use the tool very quickly. Highly recommended.

In general, you will build your online niche business around your niche web sites. You build your niche web sites around your offers. And you use Nichebot's Find Niche Products tool to find niche products that you can offer. Simple, isn't it?

There are a lot of books, courses and gurus out there trying to teach keyword research. Let's simplify it right now. The kinds of keywords you will want to use are based the types of customers you are trying to target. There are 3 kinds of potential customers performing searches on the Internet.

1. Window shoppers who are in a buying mood, but not really sure what they want, but are usually willing to look at buying anything of value as long as they find the offer interesting. This is the kind of buyer that uses one and two keyword phrases. Usually this kind of buyer is easily swayed by emotional appeals and is an impulse shopper. A "fun" buying experience is critical.

2. Comparison shoppers that have a specific need for a class of product, but are looking for the best deal. Typically not impulsive in nature, these people are very price sensitive and are typically buying a commodity either for themselves or their company and don't usually have a strong emotional attachment to the product or any particular brand. Searches are typically done with two to five keywords. Important is a professional and secure buying experience offering price comparisons, fast delivery, product reviews and a money back guarantee.

3. Brand shoppers who know the exact brand, make, model and features they want. Immediate availability and fast delivery are important, while price is usually secondary. Building value in the minds of these shoppers is not all that important as they have already sold themselves on the brand. Searches are usually performed with three to nine keywords usually including the brand, make and model of the product they want to buy. Important is a secure purchase experience with a decent picture and full feature-rich description of the product.

Keeping your customer type in mind should help you in choosing the keyphrases you will need to target for your search engine promotion. Notice that the keyword selection process is essentially the same for organic (free) as well as for pay-per-click (PPC) search engines. People usually trust the organic search results more, but use it more often with intent for just doing research. Paid search results are not as trusted, since they are paid ads, but once a person decides to click on one, you can be pretty confident they will be willing to give your offer due consideration.

Inside NicheBot, read the 5-Step QuickStart Guide in the Support (Step 6) Menu and follow it faithfully to select your niche keyphrases. Use the Video Training Library in the same menu to figure out how each tool works as you go. When you are done, you will have a highly relevant and targeted list of keywords ready for filtering.

Now let's get to the juicy meaty middle keyphrases.

First, if you haven't already done so, inside your NicheBot keyword basket, click on the Folder Management link and create a new folder named like "2007-04-acne". Next click on the number of results to list all your keywords. Finally, click on the "[click here to filter]" link.

This will open up a filter criteria section.

Fill in the Count Min for 2000 searches per month in Overture. Note you may have to adjust your count number if you are using Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery counts. See NicheBot support pages for more information.

Next, fill out the Competition Min with 2000 if using Yahoo results. Next fill out the Competition Max with 50000. You may have to adjust this if using Google results, but probably not.

It is very likely you only get a few, if any at all, keyphrases if you used the Wordtracker 4-in-1 deep-digging tool. Let me suggest you stick with the Keyword Discovery 9-in-1 tool. Start with 1,000 keyphrases but take it to the max of 10,000 keywords if you have to. This is that critical. Don't stop until you have at least 20 relevant keyword phrases that matches the above filtering criteria.

Remember to keep the type of customer you are targeting in mind as you select the relevant keyword phrases from your filtered keyphrase list. Keep it strictly relevant! If you're not sure, or if it can have unintended meanings (humorous or not), don't use it.

We'll be using these keywords later in our Squidoo promotion, but for now, we need to switch from first gear to second gear and start building our web site...

You can "work hard" to build your own site on the web, or you can "work smart" and let somebody else do the web site design and building for you by outsourcing it. If you are in the "work hard" camp, then this Squidoo lens is not for you.

Niches In A Box

You're not going to believe what you can get for only $97 a month... you can easily pay this to other "membership sites" that only tell you how to build your sites, or only give you lists of keywords, or only give you a few hundred PLR articles that you usually have to rewrite anyway.

Take a look:

- New Hot Seasonal Niche Researched and Ready on the 1st of Every Month
- Complete HTML and PHP Dynamic Website designed around Niche
- Customizable Sub-Domain or Sub-Folder Site Layout
- Micro-Niche Categories Already Included With Thousands of Keywords
- Thousands of Keyword Optimized Pages Supplied for each Micro-Niche
- Hundreds of PLR Articles Written and Installed for each Micro-Niche
- Hot JPEG Graphics Including PSD Formatted Originals You Can Modify
- Free Premium Autoresponder Account at EzContacter.com
- 2-Month Weekly Autoresponder Newsletter you send to your Prospects
- Free Report in PDF Format you give away to Prospects who sign up
- Free Expertly Written E-Book you can sell and keep 100% of the Profits
- Automatic RSS Feeds generated for each Micro-Niche you can post to your Blog
- Free WordPress Blog Template designed and customized around Niche
- Built-In Ad Placement for Google, Yahoo, Chitika, Amazon, Clickbank and more
- Automatic Installation Program Software Which Includes Site Upload
- Administrator Configuration Screens to Customize Each Micro-Niche
- 3 Months of Keyword Updates for each Micro-Niche
- Hours and hours of Niches In A Box Training Videos
- Professional Installation Service Available for only $20
- Much more not mentioned here...

I have been a member of Niches In A Box for many months, and I can tell you from experience that these sites are so well designed they are true traffic magnets! In just about 2 weeks, my first site had over 20,000 pages indexed by Google, and several months later they are still indexed just fine.

It takes me 2 to 4 days after a Niche is released for me to have my website up and running.

Next, let me show you how to get great Page Rank (PR) for your sites immediately by submitting your sites to Website Directories.

Search engines use a variety of factors to decide how to rank your site on the search engine results pages (SERPs). One of those is the number of backlinks, which are links from other sites to your site. Another one, at least for Google is pagerank (PR).

One of the simplest ways to enhance your new website's standings in the SERPs is to get quality high-PR backlinks to your site as quickly as possible.

And one of the simplest ways to get high-PR backlinks quickly is to submit your website to link directories.

There are literally thousands of link directories on the Web, and as you can imagine that can become very tedious if you try to do it manually the free way.

Link Directory Submitter

Link Directory Submitter is software that semi-automates the process for you. It contains over 2100 link directories in it's database, many of which are filtered into categories if you only want to link to directories that are in the same niche as your own site.

To use it, you first set up a profile for your site including site name, contact email address, home page URL, and a few titles and descriptions for your site. Next you then use the software to automatically load each site for you, which will then fill in all the site submission form fields for you. One field you may have to fill in yourself is a category for your site. Then you just click submit and you're on to the next site. I have been able to average less than 30 seconds per link directory site using this software.

This software costs $97 presently, but it is a one-time investment. All software upgrades are free. The latest version also will automatically create reciprocal links on your site for each link directory site you submit to by using a script that you install on your hosting account which Link Directory Submitter uses. You can even have your own custom link submission directory. The special features in this software are almost endless. The best thing I can say about it though, is that this software is of very high quality, that is, it does the job and doesn't crash or mess up unlike some of the lesser link submission software packages out there. Highly recommended.

Now, after you get your site announced to the search engines by submitting it to link directories, you will then want to post articles to article submission sites for even more high-PR backlinks...

Article Marketing is where you submit unique and original articles to article submission sites on the Web It can become a viral source of traffic for your website. You will need a source for your articles. You can use the articles that come with your Niches In A Box membership, or any other source of PLR articles that you may have available.

You will need to rewrite the articles in your own words. For your own sake, don't use a "content rewriter" software application! While seeming to do a good job using synonyms, it will actually create comical, if not nonsensical, sentences. This will make editors of articles submission sites reject your articles, and they might even delete your author account and all your existing articles. It's not worth it!

I suggest you completely rewrite 5 to 10 of the best articles that you have. Write them in your own words, and don't just rearrange the sentences. You can then start submitting articles once or twice a week to the article submission sites using Article Post Robot.

Article Post Robot

This software takes a little setting up, so be ready for it. However, after setting it up, it will run completely unattended! It even works great over dial-up Internet connections.

Setting up includes creating author accounts to all the article submission sites that require one. Try to use the same name, email address, login, password, etc. for all sites as it makes it easier to manage. Note that some sites choose and send your password to you via email. Some sites won't review your articles until you click on an activation link that they send you in email.

Once you have all your author accounts set up, to submit an article, just enter your author and article information and click "Go!". A few hours later, you will have submitted your article to hundreds, maybe even thousands of article submission sites!

Hint: Only send your articles to sites that are general sites, or better yet, article sites that match your own site's niche, and that require no reciprocal linking, and that offer free "regular" links.

The reward for all your work and persistence is that you will start getting high-quality and high-PR backlinks for your site that will appear randomly over time in the search engines. This works in your favor as it will look "natural" to the search engines, raising your site's page rank