The screenshot below should give you some idea of of what is involved.

Looks like a backlinking nightmare, doesn’t it?

James Scharmko is an Australia Internet Marketer who is causing quite stir in the Internet marketing world. What I like about him is he one of the most ethical and transparent marketers you’ll find on the Internet. And he certainly practices what he preaches. If you Google “Internet marketing” or “Internet marketer” his website InternetMarketingSpeed.com will appear in the top 3 search results. And you know that “Internet marketing” is one of the most competitive keyword phrases on the Internet.

I am actually using this blog, PrimeNicneMarketing.com as a case study to test the TrafficGrab. And I have decided to go through the course myself and not outsource any of the work…..yet. I may at some stage because there is so much to do. My wife is helping me out here and there, but the majority of work is being done by myself as part of a personal challenge more than anything else.

The results I’ve had so far have been impressive. If you found this site through a search on Goolge, then it is probably a result of me implementing some of the SEO and traffic strategies outlined in TrafficGrab.

Take look at these results. I have had a lot of improvement with several targeted keywords.

On November 29th I was ranked 209 for the keyword “what is niche marketing” and today I am ranked 27, after only a few weeks of implementing several of the TrafficGrab methods.

The methods and strategies in TrafficGrab work. You just have to make an effort and do the work. I recommend you outsource as much of it as you can. There is a tonne of strategies to implement so doing it yourself is quite a challenge as I have discovered.

So, what is covered in TrafficGrab?

In James own words:

“I went through the last five years worth of traffic strategies I have tested. Next I mapped out and sytstemized the process my own team use. What was left was the trafficGrab system. Just the information you need and nothing else.”

The course is big and I am struggling to find the time to get through it – 24 videos of traffic strategies adding up to about 9 hours of content. I have been watching some of the videos two or three times because I don’t want to miss anything.

The course shows you how to: get targeted traffic from scratch, build a list of qualified buyers and best of all scale campaigns once you start getting conversions.

The Traffic Grab Videos

Research: Discover how to gather the hottest buying terms to target your campaigns for effective

Content: James explains how to Put together multi media rich content for attracting high quality targeted traffic

Site: putting together a well structured site for your content will increase traffic and conversion

Article Traffic: Create a foundation of keyword related backlinks pointing back to your money pages.

Web 2.0 and PDF Traffic: Build up your link diversity using strong independent websites to put links to your site

Video Traffic: Distribute your viceos across the Internet for rich traffic opportunities.

Affiliate Traffic: When you get a whle bunch of affiliates promoting for you traffic will spike

Bookmark traffic: Lock in your new web properties with a strong bookmarking campaign

Press Release Traffic: Make your own reputation and and get a massive amount of backlinks instantly

Blog traffic: Turn the power in the search results using blog power

RSS Traffic: Aggregate and syndicate your content way further using RSS services and automation

Facebook Traffic: Tap into the Facebook powerhouse with both free and paid traffic strategies

List traffic: Collect a database and then maximize your traffic opportunities from email marketing

Twitter Traffic: Twitter is the traffic boost you can use to extend your market reach

PPC Traffic: Pay per click traffic is scalable and measurable. Paid traffic increases your reach

CPV Traffic: Buy instant traffic for 1 cent per impression using cost per view networks

Forum traffic: Connect with highly targeted communities and create traffic streams from them to you

Ezine traffic: Buy traffic from targeted newsletters for instant conversions

Media Buys Traffic: By media from high traffic networks for banner domination

Podcast Traffic: Utilize MP# and portable devices for audio channels

Classifieds: Target product and geo specific buyers with specific listings and permanent links

Webinar Traffic: Build a list, increase authority and improve conversions with webinars

Word of Mouth Traffic: Nothing converts better than face to face selling. Discover how you can leverage this

Ping Traffic: Make sure the search engines know about your web properties

So far I have only completed Article Traffic and Wed2.0 traffic. Soon, I am going to start working video traffic, but before I do that I need to watch a few videos.

If you want see the first three videos of  TrafficGrab for absolutely nothing, you can.

GO and Watch The First Traffi GrabVideo Now

Last night I watched a live webinar presented by James Schramko and Andy G, both Internet marketers of integrity in my book who spend a great deal of their time at SuperFastResults.com - a special members only forum on Internet Marketing. Joining this forum some months ago has had a huge impact on the way I think about and run my Internet businesses.

The webinar was about their learnings in 2011 and their plans for 2012. The webinar  was inspiring, insightful and worth every second of my time. I thought I would share some of the things I learnt from James and Andy.

Andy G Wisdom – The Super Affiliate Guy

His big ideas and insight included:

• Getting geared up for January – it is the biggest month for the health and fitness niche
• Making sure you spend time out of the office/home to meet people face to face
• His productivity tools: Mail Plane to manage your gmail accounts, Dropbox and Basecamp
• Andy talked at length about Single Task Focus, and the importantance of working on one project at a time.
• Less is MORE – Focus on the right things and try to simplify everything you do.
• He said his business really started to grow when he built systems & outsourced the majority of his work
• Do one productive task each day that brings you closer to your goal. Andy talked about how it is important to break your long term goals down into smaller goals.
• Break your goals down: 1 year goal  >>  6 month goal  >>  1 month goal  >>  1 weeek goal  >> daily goals
• Don’t complicate things
• Understand your market by visiting forums and talking to people.
• Help people solve problems – Your best content should do this.

James Schramko

His big ideas and insight included:

• Use systems to simplify your life and business
• Invest in brand-able .com domains.
• Get a MAC, use Gmail and Evernote  -  James used photos of bullet points he had written on a whiteboard as the slides for his presentation. He did this by taking photos with this iPhone and organizing them in Evernote. He is a huge fan.
• What is Evernote? – “Evernote turns the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad into an extension of your brain, helping you remember anything and everything that happens in your brain.”
• James talked about the importance of education and reading. He said, forget the $2000 courses, instead read one book a week. I  really like this piece of advice.  I have spent quite a bit of money on courses that I could have done without.
• Look at your tools. Do they help your business or just complicate things and slow it down? If a tool is not the best of its kind, get rid of it. Get better at using tools, but use less of them
• Focus – Know what you want.  Focus on the long term and forget about the short term.
• Think more – take time out to just sit and think about your life and business.
• Use a mirror as a sounding board. Most of the time you know what you need to do.

The webinar has got me really inspired to take more control of my life and start focusing on what I want to create. Running an Internet business has its many challenges, but the rewards are indeed worth it. I think simplifying the way I do things will really help.

We have only 2 weeks until the 2012. What are your business and growth goals?

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.

I actually got my first sale before the completion of the 8 week master class. In the screen shot below you can see part of the post I wrote in the “Success Thread” inside the Super Affiliate Master class support forum. This comment is actually on the SuperFastAffiliate.com site – Go check it out!

Click Here To Check Out James Schramko’s Super Affiliates Master Class

Participating in a live webinar was a first for me, and it was a quite exciting. It was very engaging and many of my questions were answered during the series of 8 webinars. Knowing I had a week in between each webinar really motivated me to do each week’s homework tasks. I had to push myself and had a few late nights, but doing it all again now would be a piece of cake.

What I really valued most about the course was that it was a real live case study in progress. It wasn’t just all theory with no real examples. Andy built an affiliate website from scratch and we could visit his site and see how it grew from a site with a few pages of content to a super targeted affiliate site over the 8 weeks. This removed any uncertainty and scepticism about whether the course would help me make money. Seeing Andy’s live case study affiliate site make $1079.86 in sales after 4 weeks was a defining moment for me. I knew if I followed the exact same steps as him I would get similar results. What surprised me the most was how quickly I got my first sale.

What Does the Supper Affiliate Master Class Offer?

Much of the content deals with affiliate marketing concepts you have probably studied before:

• Market Research
• Keyword Research
• Content Creation
• Conversions and Call to actions
• Paid Traffic
• SEO and Link Building
• Tracking results

Where the course differs from all of the courses I have done before is the quality and transparency of content – no rehearsed spiels, cryptic language or “we’ll cover that later (because we don’t know the answer)” evasiveness . For me it was how James and Andy could explain affiliate marketing fundamentals in a way that resonated with me and motivated me to take action. At no point during the course did I feel overwhelmed or frustrated.

The teaching style of Andy and James was casual and at times “playful”.There was no sense of “We are the Gurus, so you should do as we say”. It was more like you were catching up with mates each week who were just giving you a helping hand with you business. Some of the best content were spur of the moment comments or reflections of experiences James and Andy had had in the past.

So, I if you have been struggling to make that first affiliate sale or even if you are making a steady income online I recommend you do the course. If you follow the course down to a T you might get your first sale within a few months that I did.

In short, the master class was a privilege to be a part of and well worth the $1000 investment I made. You can grab the course for $399 and get access to the support forum and learn from other’s who have completed the course.

Click Here To Check Out James Schramko’s Super Affiliates Master Class

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=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