My name is Nicholas Kemp and I am a local business marketing consultant.

I’ve been looking at your website and noticed a couple of small issues that are no doubt depressing the potential results of the site. I’ve also identified a number of overlooked opportunities I believe can quickly increase the number of clients you’re getting.

If you have a few minutes please watch this video critique of your site.

Video Critique – Click on screen to play

Call Me Anytime On: 0448 909 100

Or, fill in your email address and phone number in the form below and I’ll be in touch.

Niche marketing has never been easier thanks to Google’s keyword suggestion tool. Every time you type in the search box on Goole Web Search, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. You can use this suggest feature to your advantage to discover niche markets.

Find Niche Markets With Google Suggest

Video Transcription:

Google has returned four popular suggestions that people on the Internet are typing in. This is gold! We have potentially discovered several profitable niche markets. ‘Get rid of acne’ Now that’s a very competitive niche, because it’s very profitable. A lot of people make money referring acne creams and natural treatments or alternative acne cures.

We can now research this niche and look for products to promote, study the top ranking sites, build a list of keywords and determine how competitive the niche is with a niche research tool like Market Samurai

You can repeat this process and just go through the alphabet and see what suggestions Google offers and build a list of potential niches to research

So what we wanna do is we basically go through the alphabet using this problem phrase. So if  we use letter B, we’ve got ‘belly fat’ , ‘black heads’.

 Get Rid Of

So I’m sure you’re getting an idea that we targeting really specific health problems here, and they are usually very good niches.

What you can do is you can build a list of niches. And then later on you can research them. You can see if there is any advertisers or any people referring products with affiliate sites and build up a list.

You can also use different words.  The word ‘cure’ for example, and see what we get. So we got ‘cure sore throat’, or ‘yeast infection’, ‘bad breath’, ‘constipation’.

Cure

Let’s have a look at a word ‘eliminate’. Again  we can see ‘eliminate acne’, ‘eliminate anxiety’, ‘acne scars’, ‘eliminate belly fat’.

 

Eliminate

Now that might be an interesting niche to target. You can see advertises here. I’m actually in Melbourne, Australia. So there is probably less ad showing than what you see in America.

Then if we go down to bottom of the page we can see more suggestions.  So ‘eliminate lower belly fat’, ‘eliminate belly fat naturally, ‘eliminate belly fat fast’.

So I think you can see here.  There is a list of affiliates sites. And click one of banners I’m sure we’ll be taken to a product page. Fat Loss 4 Idiots. I know this is quite popular product. Then you can do further research in this niche and find out if you can enter the niche. It might be too competitive. But if you do keyword research and further niche research you might be able to build a website, get it ranking and start making commissions.

 

Download the mind map – Finding Niche Markets

Check out Market Samurai

 

Making money online really comes down to two things – traffic and conversions. If you can’t beat your competitors in ranking, you won’t get a sufficient amount of traffic. And without a sufficient amount of traffic you won’t be able to test offers, track results and improve conversions.

You must take the time investigate the strength of your competitors once you have identified a profitable niche market. The temptation to get started quickly is hard to resist with the excitement you feel when you have found a niche that looks like it can make you money, but you have got to find out who you are up against and if you have the resources to beat them.

Market Samurai SEO

My favorite piece of software, Market Samurai, now makes competitor research very easy with their SEO module. What used to take many hours of tedious work using a number of tools now can be determined in a number of seconds.

Look at the screen shot below. Recently, I have been looking into the natural health niche. While I wouldn’t target the keyword “natural health” for a number of reasons, Market Samurai can tell me at a glance what I am up against if I wanted to try and rank for that keyword. You’ll notice a lot of red – this means a high level of competition. So I would stay away from this word.

If we look at the keyword “JLPT” , an acronym for Japanese Language Proficiency Test, a sub-niche in the Japanese Language niche you can see quite a bit of red, but a lower level of competition. I managed to get top page ranking for site of mine called JapaneseProficiencyPower.com (highlighted). I sell a test guide on how to pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. JLPT gets 110,000 phrase match searched a month, some of which ends up on my site. As you can see my site has only 6 indexed pages, but I have had it rank on the top page of Google for a two years thanks to the help of Market Samurai.

Take a look at this video of Anthony who gives a tour of the Market Samurai SEO Competition module. He walks you through how Market Samurai gives you an easy but incredibly powerful way to assess the level of competition in any particular niche.

So, how do you find a niche market? Well, first you must understand that you don’t choose a niche. You discover them or uncover them. Finding  a profitableniche is a process that requires reseach and an understanding of what motivates people purchase something online. It is actually an easy and uncomplicated process. The thing is most people don’t like to do it becasue it is time consumming and a tad on the boring side. When people are motivated or excited by the prospect of making money online, they want to jump right in and get started on building a website or creating a product. They end up not doing the most important part of the process……..due deligence.

How To Find A Niche

Getting started on uncovering a niche is pretty easy. The first step is to brainstorm! Brainstorm problems or needs you have or have had in the past. If you have read my post on profitable niches you’ll know that people are motivated by pain or irrational desire. Think about your own life exeprience and the problems you have paid to have sloved. Then think about family members or friends who have problems.

One activity I use and share with my private students involves the Seven Deadly Sins. They make the perfect categories for niche ideas. I get my students to list problems, desires and products related to each dealy sin.

Wrath – Anger managment, stress management,

Greed – Making money online, Forex trading

Sloth – Gaming, satellite TV

Pride – Penis enlargement, grow taller

Lust – Dating, sexual performance

Envy -Career, love, money

Gluttony – Weight loss, diet pills

Look At What Is Already Selling

If you are really struggling to find a niche stop and take a look at what is already selling. There are many market places where you can find out what products are popular and making people money. Check out ebay pulse and the clickbank market place. Also, certain affiliate network sites such as www.moreniche.com will tell you what niches and products make affiliates thousands of dollars every year.

Researching a Niche Market

Once you think you have uncovered a niche you need to validate that niche. You need to find absolute proof that you can make money in that niche. The easiest way to do this is to see if other people are already making money in the niche you have uncovered. You just Google a number of keywords related to your niche market and see how many advertisers on on Google or Bing.

If you a find a few pages of advertisers then you know you are on to something. If you find no Google ads for your keywords then can safely assume that there is no money in that niche. The next step is too see what these advertisors are selling. Visit these advertisor’s sites and see what they are selling. If you find several advertisor’s selling information products or products you could be an affiliate of then you know there is a market.

The next step is to study what your newly found and already established competitors are doing. If they offer a newsletter get on it. Analysie their site and work out what keywords they are targeting. Look ate the call to actions on their site. Find out how well they rank organically on Google.  The niche keyword tool Market Samurai can help you do this.

It is important that you document everything so can update your findingd and refer to it

Competative Analysis

Once you have discovered what looks to be a profitable niche you then need to work out how competative that niche is. It is important that you don’t see competition as a bad thing. It is quite the opposite. Competition is a good thing. With competition  is assurance that you can make money and  the opportunity to joint venture with your competitors.

However, you need to establish if there is room for you in your target  and what the level of competition. Strong competition will require more resources, time and money. You need to budget and plan to beat your competition.  Ambition alone won’t do it. I do all my compeative analysis with Market Samurai.

Market Samurai can tell you the rank of your competor sites, analize their on-page factors and tell you the number and quality of their backlinks.  This information is vital as it will indicate how easy or how hard it will be to outrank and beat your competitors.

Take Advantage Of Market Samurai’s Free Download Offer

Niche Market Examples- Distressed Niches

The best niches to market in are ones commonly referred to as “distressed niches”. Embarrassing health problems are what this niche is all about. A great example is the acne niche. Those yucky puss-filled pimples cause a lot of embarrassment and distress. Some people will go to the extreme to hide or cure their acne. There are many products being promoted online . It is very easy to sell in this niche because in most causes your target customer is looking to buy a solution. You don’t need to educate them or convenience them to but. You just need to make the right offer. The pain of having acne motivates them to buy.

These kind of niches are popular with affiliate marketers who usually create product review websites. They make money from commissions every time they refer someone to a merchant’s website who buys. Some affiliate marketers will build a website to exclusively promote just one product.

The Irrational Passion Niche

Do you know someone who is crazy about a hobby, pastime or sport? And I mean really crazy. Crazy to the point it consumes most of their free time. My brother is keen cyclist. He rides everyday, went to Samoa for bike riding holiday recently, dreams of riding the Tour de France, hangs on every tweet from Lance Armstrong and spends heaps of money on bike gear, those expensive lycra riding outfits, DVDs, books and magazines.

His passion for riding borders on being irrational. He spends a lot of money on bike gear he already has. He enjoys the experience of getting new bike stuff and using it. The two bikes he owns cost more than you average family car and still he wants more. If I owned I a bike shop I would be making a few hundred dollars a month from him alone. Yet, there are people more passionate about their hobbies and interest than my brother.

This niche is great if your own hobby or pastime has thousands of irrationally passionate fans. You can create you own products, promote other products, blog about your hobby and build a list you can sell to over and over again. Examples of hugely successful niches are dog training and golf. What’s your hobby?

The Information Niche

Where is the first place you would go to find information about a personal legal matter? If you wanted to find out about university grants or home loans where would you seek answers to your questions? The Internet, right? In this niche people are looking for specific advice or answers, but without the intention of buying something. The questions people search online for are usually one they can’t ask family or friends because they are of a personal matter.

So, how do you make money from this niche? With AdSense contextual advertising. AdSense is Google’s affiliate advertising program . You have probably clicked on several hundreds of Google adds while searching for information online. Advertisers will pay anything from a few cents up to $10 a click. You can earn 70% to 80% of each click as an affiliate. If you build a quality content rich site and rank it high in the search engines then AdSense is a great way to generate a passive income. I love making money in AdSense niches. I outsource all the content creation, build the site on WordPress and just work on SEO and ad placements.

One key learning I hope you takeaway from reading this post about niche examples is that not all niches are equal. Some niches will only make you a few dollars a month while others can earn you thousands of dollars a month. The money is in the well researched niche. Research is where you’ll make your money. Without it you’ll most likely market in a dead niche and make very little money.

• Understanding the keyword research process
• The Four Golden Rules of keyword research
• How to use Market Samurai to generate a list of relevant keywords

httpv://youtu.be/qNatH5hBiqw

I love Anthony’s analogy of keyword research being like panning for gold, with gold nuggets being profitable keywords. The process of keyword research is very similar. Hopefully, you’ll know that niches aren’t really “chosen”, but discovered with both a combination of niche and keyword research. A profitable niche can be defined as an unfulfilled need usually driven by pain or irrational desire.

As Anthony describes in the video you begin by selecting a niche to explore which is the equivalent of choosing a river to prospect. You then generate a large number of keywords relating to your niche which is like scooping up a collection of rocks, dirt and sand. Then you can use a tool such as Market Samurai to filter out the good keywords from the bad. At the end of this process you will hopefully be left with a few ‘gold nugget’ keywords.

What makes a keyword profitable?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the four golden rules for identifying profitable keywords developed by the Market Samurai team.

The four Golden Rules are:

Relevance – profitable keywords must be highly relevant to the content on your website.

Traffic – they have good levels of targeted traffic.

Competition – they have acceptable levels of competition. Competition is a good thing, but you want to know that you’ll be able to reach top page ranking of Google.

Commerciality – they have a high level of commerciality. Remember, you are in this to make money.

Go and grab your free trial of Market Samurai now.

The video is titled “Understanding Keyword Research” and looks at  concepts such as

• Understanding what online markets really are
• Understanding niches and how they relate to markets
• Understanding the role of keywords and why they are so important

httpv://youtu.be/5LaCuxui5kw

The biggest takeaway is this: ‘It takes the same amount of time and effort to build an unsuccessful online business as it does to build a successful business’.

The key factors that determine whether you succeed or fail online are:

(1) The niche market you select or discover
(2) The keyword phrases you target

It is essential  that you get both of these right. If you do, your online business will have the potential to produce an income stream that can completely transform your life. Likewise, if you get one or both of these factors wrong, you’ll probably become one of the many people who make little or no income online.

Anthony hits the nail on the head when he explains that the main reason people fail is that they do not spend the time up front to do the market research necessary to check if their business idea is viable. Most would-be Internet markers rush in, select a niche that appeals to them ( and not to a market), do little or no  keyword research and expect money to roll in once they have a product made and a site up. This is failure in the making.

To succeed online you need to research markets carefully and they identify profitable niches before you make any product creation decisions. Making money online can be easy if you target specific keywords in a profitable niche and follow a proven plan.

To learn more from Anthony or to take a 12 day trail of the software visit the Market Samurai Dojo.

Let’s jump in and see how we can manage our finances better.

1. Spend less than you earn. OK, this is almost the only lesson you need, but it’s so important I’m going to break it down further. The biggest reason people get into financial problems is they spend money they don’t really have. Then you end up in the hole, and it’s hard to get out of the hole, and you work crazy hours to keep up with your spending, and you end up with a life that’s about nothing but trying to pay for all the spending on crap you don’t really need.So spend less, work less, worry less, be happier.

2. Don’t get into debt. If you spend less than you earn, you won’t be in debt, obviously. It’s easy, though, to get a student credit card and put things on there if you don’t have the money right now. You can pay for it next week when you get your check, right? That’s a slippery slope. Student loans are another tool for getting over your head in debt. They’re not the worst debt if you’re paying for a degree that’s going to earn a lot of money, but most of us English majors aren’t going to get an $80K per year job and shouldn’t take out $80K in student loans.

3. Savings is your first bill to pay. If you spend less than you earn, save the rest. Make the savings an automatic payment that happens every payday, and make it the first and most important bill you pay. Not optional. You’ll be glad as the savings grows, and especially when emergencies come up.

4. If you don’t have the money, go without. This is a lesson most people (young or old) forget. You don’t actually need a car, so if you can’t afford to pay cash, don’t get a loan. You don’t need nice clothes, or a smart phone, or a fancy laptop or iPad or Kindle, you don’t need to go to nice restaurants or the movies or bars. If you don’t have the money, find free ways to have fun or get things done you need to get done.

5. Make a very very simple budget. It’s a scary thing for people who’ve never done a budget, but it’s not hard. List your income, then list your bills (and savings). If the bills add up to more than the income, eliminate some bills. Use a simple spreadsheet to do the adding for you. This helps you to know what’s coming in and going out.

6. Pay bills right away. If you have the money, pay the bill as soon as it comes in. You can usually do this online, but if not, it’s just a matter of writing a check, putting it in an envelope, and writing out an address — two minutes. Do this two-minute action immediately, so you don’t have to worry about it later. If you let the bill-paying get pushed back, it becomes a dreaded thing, and your bills start to become overdue, and then it’s much worse.That’s all you need to know.

- Lea Babauta, Zen Habits

With niche sites the idea is to choose a name that is or contains your most import keyword – a keyword that people search that is not too competitive. Ideally, you want to get an exact match domain. For example, one of my sites targets the Japanese language niche. My target keyword for the site was “Speak Japanese Fluently”. Luckily, I was able to get SpeakJapaneseFluently.com. This is an exact match domain name. On this site I sell an intermediate Japanese language learning program which I decided to name “Speak Japanese Fluently” as well. So I branded both my site and product with a relevant keyword phrase. Currently, my site ranks number 1 on Google for the keyword phrase “Speak Japanese Fluently”. As you have probably guessed having a keyword as a domain name will help with the ranking on Google of your site for that keyword.

Unfortunately, in most cases you will find that exact match keyword .com domains  are very difficult to come by. If you find that the .com of your keyword is taken, see if .org or .net are available. Other than these three, .com, .org and .net, I wouldn’t use any other domain name suffixes.

If you can’t find an exact match domain name with .com, .org or .net then there are a number of things you can consider. You could add a modifier such as a letter. For example, if SpeakJapaneseFluently.com had been taken I could have choosen something like ispeakjapanesefluently.com or speakJapanesefluentlyx.com. It is important to note that while an exact match domain name with a modifier is search engine friendly it won’t always be user/visitor friendly. Remember, you are building your website and business for people, so you should find a balance between the SEO benefit of a keyword or keyword phrase in the domain and how people will interpret the domain name. Instead of a modifier, I recommend you add a relevant word to the domain name

For example this site’s main target keyword is niche marketing. I was unable to get this as a domain name. So I decided on “PrimeNicheMarketing.com” As this site is about helping people find one lucrative niche I feel the domain make sense and appeals to visitors as well as having some SEO value

If you are wanting to build a large site or a blog then you need to be a lttile more creative, but still include your target keyword. Your domain name should really spell out what your site, blog or business is about, but also be unique to make it easy to remember.

Here are some great domain names that are easy to remember:

http://www.problogger.net –  a site about blogging by a professional blogger.

http://www.zenhabits.net – a blog about about finding simplicity in the daily chaos of life.

http://www.searchengineguide.com – Latest news and tips on SEO

Domain Tips

• Consider your target audience when deciding on a domain name. Depending on your target market this could mean choosing names that sound professional, cool, current, active, cute and so on.
• Try to limit your domain name to three words. If you keep it short it will be easy to remember and type into a browser.
• Use pluralization when appropriate.  For example, container homes.com would better than containerhome.com for a blog about the environmental benefits of using shipping containers for building homes..
• Avoid using hyphens For example, http://www.pet-guinea-pig-care.com (one of my sites) doesn’t look very trustworthy does it?
• Avoid trademark names. You could find  yourself in some legal trouble.  It is also bad karma to
• Once you have decided on a domain name register it (buy it) as soon as possible
• Consider registering both .com and .net suffixes
• Get a second and third and forth opinion on your domain name. The idea you have may make sense to you, but not to everyone else
• Make an offer for a domain name you want. In most cases you are going to find the domain you want will already be take. However, there is nothing stopping you from making an offer to the owner of a domain.
• Avoid using words that are difficult to spell in your domain.
• Don’t choose domain names with words that join to form unintentional words such as “PenIsland.net” which can read “PenisLand.net”

The solution to this problem is simple, easy to perform and very insightful. And the solution is…..drumroll……crash of the cymbols…you simply ask your audience what they want. Now, there is some work involved, but in involves no more than a few hours of your time.

How can you find out what your niche market wants:

• A survey
• Email your readers
• Create or join a meetup group
• Speak to someone one on one

Lets take a look at each option

A survey

A survey is a great option if you have a large number of questions you want to ask your target audience. You can use a free service like Survey Monkey to survey an audience, ideally a list of at least 3000 email readers. I used Survey Monkey to help me put together a business plan for my Japanese Language niche. It also helped me work out what the difficulty level and format of my information product would be which I later created. If you don’t have a email list you could drive traffic to a survey with paid advertising. However, you would need to entice your visitors with a free offer of some sort to get them to participate in the survey.

Email Your List

Like a survey you need a list of at least 3000 readers to ensure you get a sufficient number of replies so that you can really understand the concerns and frustrations your niche audience has. If you have an email list and have been providing lots of value you should see at least 10% – 20% of people respond. Rather than yes or no questions, you want to asks open questions and have people reply in their own words. This will give you some insight to the conversation they are having in their head about their problems and concerns

The kind of questions you can ask are:

What is your greatest challenge with (your niche)?

What things hold you back from achieving (something) in/with (niche)?

What are your aspirations with learning how to (niche)?

What is the number one thing you would like to learn about (niche)?

Create a Meet Up Group

http://www.meetup.com/ you are starting from scratch then creating a meet up group based around your niche market  is a quick and easy way to finding out what your niche wants. Talking to people directly is the best way to discover all the challenges , frustraitons and aspirations people have in your niche. The great thing about hosting a Meet Up group is that people who join will come to see you as an authority on the subject. If you don’t have time to host a Meet Up group  you could just  join an exsisiting group and talk to members about their problems. Go to http://www.meetup.com and see if there is a Meet Up group on your niche

Speak to Someone One on One

If you are not building a list then you can interview people one on one. This is something you should be doing anyway.  Making the assumption that people have the same feelings, problems and expectations as you do with regard to your target niche is very unwise.  Everyone is unique  and often interpret problems and events differently. Engaging in a conversation about your target niche will provide you with valuable information and validate your niche. You need to talk to enough people until you hear the same questions and responses from a good percentage of the people you talk to. If you hear the same problems and frustrations over an over again then you know you have discovered a viable niche.

If you do one or a combination of the above niche research methods you will develop a strong understanding of what you niche audience is having trouble with and the type of soltution they are after. Discovering the mindset, type of language and thought process of your target audience will give you the opportunity to help them with their problem.

If you go to the effort to actually do any of the above make sure you record everything. The information you obtain from your niche audience is very valuable.  You’ll be able to use the results of your surveys and the notes from your conversations with people to create the framework of your niche product and in the copywriting of your sales page or in the content of your blog.

Now that you know how to find out what your niche market wants you need to take action. Go and join a Meet Up group in your local area now – http://www.meetup.com