Stumped About Starting in Niche Marketing?
There’s a nifty piece of software I’ve been using lately to uncover untapped niche markets based on popular keyword searches over on Google. Now before you click away thinking this is some pitch to purchase some new-fangled software that you’ll buy and never use, just hear me out, because I will talk about the software, but I will also show you why, if you’re stumped, you need to read this article.
Countless times a month I receive emails from people who want to start their own online business but don’t know what to do or how to do it, nor do they know what ‘type’ of business they want. All they do know is that they want to quit their jobs, quit their commutes and start working toward a better future – on their own terms.
New keyword and trend research tool tells you what's hot, which products are under-marketed, and how to promote them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Online business is like an offline business – not exactly, but similar enough to say so. You can’t gain skills, get loans, invest time, rent space and buy product to sell until you know what kind of business you want to open or run. Determination of a mission, goal, and business model is primary.
If you take a step back for a second and examine your desire to start an online business you may find that your goal is not really about running an business, it is about making money online. And to do that, you’ve got to gain some skills to pay the bills!
This is why I love the concept of niche marketing for newbies. It’s a good ‘in’. Newbie marketers can test the waters with free web pages (such as those found on Squidoo, Ezine articles, Blogger, etc.), learn how to get and add affiliate links, and over time learn how to promote their pages. To think you can just walk into the online marketing arena and make a bundle of money overnight is ludicros – could you do this in the real world without knowing how to promote your business? Could you do this in the real world without knowing with market to target? Which product to sell? (I have more questions to drive the point home, but I think you get my drift.)
Now here’s the kicker. The reason so many newbie marketers fail in their first year online (while they’re acquiring the skills needed) is that they don’t know the group of people they’re targeting and they don’t know how to choose a winning product. It’s basic, but we all miss it. Know your target market, get in front of them, and show them something they want, and you’ll make sales. If you aren’t making sales then you either have the wrong market or you have the wrong product.
This is where the software I’ve been testing the last week comes in to save the day. Yes, even a seasoned marketer like myself…
A Brief Look At The Software
It’s called MicroNiche and in a nutshell here are the bare bone basics of what it does:
- Shows you # of searches on your choice of keywords, plus related keywords. AND supplies current price other marketers are paying on Adwords (this is a big hint on how lucrative the market is). AND shows how strong the competition is (a big time saver and the closest you’ll get to a guarantee that you can quickly corner the market and make some money, so choose wisely for easy targets).
- Shows you the hottest trends in online searches. Particularly exciting for pre-Christmas marketers looking to make some fast cash with new products.
- Shows you random hot product searches. Can’t decide what to promote, which niche to enter? The brainstorm feature gives you ideas.
I’m purposely trying not to talk too much about the software. There is a lot more to it than those three points above, but seriously if you have any knowledge in either marketing or business, online or off, you know this is a ‘no-brainer’ – the software is worth ten times what they’re asking for it just in the time it will save. And, honestly, I don’t care whether you want to get into affiliate marketing (as the training videos suggest), or in writing and selling ebooks, or setting up a virtual shop — you need to perform some research first. This does not limit you to tiny, micro niches only. It’s just a name.
Other features include a fast link to the support desk, automatic saving of your past searches (which you can also delete if the market isn’t a winner), quick links per keyword to GoogleTrends, affiliate program searches, ClickBank and Amazon product searches, current Adwords campaigns, Ezine articles targeted to that keyword, and domain tools. (I’m probably missing some features here…)
Honestly once you have been marketing for a while you’ll know that you have to have six Explorer or FireFox windows open to do any market or keyword research – not now. Here it is all in one place. Software built by a marketer, for marketers.
Getting Back to Making Money
If knowning about the software doesn’t get you excited then you’re new and there’s nothing wrong with that, I promise. However my goal is to make the newness of you slip away as quickly as possible. You need to get busy creating products or promoting products as soon as possible. The easist way to gain the skills mentioned in the first part of this article is to create some pages on Squidoo or write some articles for Ezine articles, and link to products that earn you a decent commission on sale. I’m suggesting those two properties because they are easy to contrbute to and carry a lot of authority with Google (i.e. free visitors to your offers).
Below you should find a video on how to create pages on Squidoo. If it won’t load – while I work out the bugs – the direct link to the video is here.
