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.

Stumped About Starting in Niche Marketing? is a post from: online marketing with smartzville

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If you do not find out what people want, or plunge blindly forward and create a products on a whim, you could end up with a dead duck product (a product that doesn’t make any money and yes, I’ve had a few).

Spying on your target niche markets’ hidden desires and needs isn’t all that hard…you just need to create a special report and run a survey. Here’s how…

You then not only have wasted your time and money but it can put you right off the entire entrepreneurial activity of making money online.

So do a little market research (in depth information can be found at What’s My Ebook Idea Worth? $9) or survey your market to find out what they want to buy, how much they want to pay, and what they are likely to purchase in the coming year.

1. You could go through all the pain and suffering of setting up a website or web pages, installing fancy scripts and testing like crazy to ensure everything worked perfectly, or you could sign up with a free survey service (many of them offer trial periods – long enough to collect the information you need) and they supply you with a url where visitors will go to fill out your survey. Over at questionpro.com they have a number of survey styles to choose from (you would alter one of the marketing templates to suit your needs) and a free trial.
2. Make your survey as simple as possible. You don’t want to ask 40-50 questions that your target market may not know or care to answer. If you do, they won’t answer your survey, or worse they will fill it out falsely. You want to keep it simple enough that anyone and everyone in your market is capable of responding, you’re not imposing on their time, and that you get enough information for your venture to be successful.

   Here are some sample ideas of questions you may ask:

   • In the next 3 months, what would you most likely purchase…
   • How much money are you willing to spend on…
   • What is the main problem that you have with “ABC”…
3. Create a free report on the topic that you feel your target market is most interested in. Do some quick research and write an essay, or summarize a certain subject. This free report is going to be the ‘hook’ or reason why people will take the time to fill out your survey in the first place. If you don’t give them a reason – or a gift of some kind – they most likely won’t participate.
4. Find an ezine or newsletter that offers solo mailings, ask busy blog owners if they’ll allow a link to your survey for a short time, or run a pay per click campaign on google and advertise for participants (Perry will show you how to do this cost effiiciently in his free course on google pay per click).
5. Your ad just needs to be about getting a free report if they click on your link. The link takes them to the survey page that gives a short explanation that all they need to do to get the free report is to fill out this short survey. Here is an example ad for a niche market acne product:

——-* EXAMPLE ONLY *——
FREE REPORT! Learn How to Clear Up Acne in 10
Days with this new Healthy and Holistic
System. If you’re sick and tired of
pimples, blackheads and other acne ruining
your life, you’ll love your reflection after
you’ve followed my methods for the next 10
days. This Free report reveals how you can
quickly start living acne free! Click here:
http://www.controlmyacne.com
——-* END OF EXAMPLE * ——

Of course that’s just a fast example, I have no idea how your ad will work, or read, but the point is to just get them to go to the page, and a free report is a simple way to do it.

A few tips with creating your niche market survey:

• Do not have any of the options already checked. This will create false results as people will just click the “submit” button quickly and not even change the “already checked” results.
• Make sure and have “None of the above” options for each question. All of your products ideas might not be bought by anybody, and if you do not have “none of the above” options, then you would never know and you could still possibly end up creating something that nobody wants.
• No fancy designs. Have your web page that hosts the poll on it, simply for hosting the poll. No need for fancy, flashy designs and links going to several different places. Just have your poll and that is it. After you have done the above, tally up the results and begin designing the product you are going to create. Usually, you will see the results are pretty one sided. The majority of people will have picked the same options, which is what you want.

If the results show that everything is pretty equal, then pick the option that you are most comfortable with creating. If the majority of the results show “None of the above” answers, then create different questions and survey more people in your target niche market.

Running an online target market survey for niches is really very simple to do. Don’t get in a panic and think you cannot do it. Just follow the instructions and learn all you can while you’re at it!

Survey Your Niche Market to Understand Buying Habits is a post from: online marketing with smartzville

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Okay, you’ve defined your niche market, you know there’s a lot of interest, some healthy competition, you have an idea of what type of money people in that niche are prepared to spend on their all-consuming interest – so, what then, can you make to sell to them?

Don’t Write A Book!

First off, don’t write a book. (Yes, I – an author and ebook writer – really did say that, read on to see why…).

A book tells about something. A course tells how to do something (how to make money, how to find success, how to…). A book has nowhere near the value that a course does. So before you even start writing a book, tell yourself that your writing a course, or creating a course, or any other non-book designation you can think of.

Hmmm, you’ve got the market pinned down and researched their needs, now what?

And, if you’re wondering what particular type of course is suggested, a step-by-step course is best for profits and positioning.

Teach Your Niche – You’ll Succeed on Two Counts

If you can show a potential customer that you can solve their problem, or ensure their success, by teaching them a technique that they can follow in a step-by-step process, then you will have a hot product for your market. Where you’ll find that you not only win financially but you also position yourself as an expert in the niche market – essentially ensuring your future success selling to that market.

How to Set Up A Course for Your Niche Market

You can set up an online course (behind password protection), an email course, or a downloadable ebook.

You know by now I’m sure that can sell nothing but e-books and be plenty successful. But there are times when other venues are more lucrative or are perceived
to have a higher value than a $20 ebook. It’s simply a matter of knowing how much your market is willing to pay, and defining how you want to work at your business – or on any one particular project.

Niche Membership Sites

Here’s why online courses (in password protected directories), also called membership sites, are so popular with marketers right now:

1. With the right software, you can protect your course from people redistributing it freely across the net. I use ClikGate Pro which only allows people to access the membership area from a pre-designated number of IP addresses. If their username and password access the area from too many IP addresses, ClikGate Pro allows you to easily delete their username and password. But this isn’t something to fret too much over. It doesn’t happen that often (this sharing of userids), as most people interested in self-improvement and learning have high moral values and would never do that.
2. You can update the content easier. With an e-book, you have to update the page, create the new e-book, then send it to all of your customers and hope they re-download it again. With an online course, you just update the material as you would any other website page. It’s always a good idea to have your customers on file with a mailing list service for times like these so you can easily alert everyone to the new content. Once you become skilled as an online marketer you’ll discover that this type of ‘easy access’ to your customers opens up new income streams for you as you can promote new backend products to a rabid list of buyers as soon as you discover the product.

I truly believe that selling “how to” courses (whether in the form of an ebook or membership site), is simply the easiest way to make money online. If you can show people how to solve one of their most pressing problems – whatever it may be – you will be off to a powerful and lucrative start.

Creating Products for A Niche Market is a post from: online marketing with smartzville

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Don’t want to read all this? Listen to or download this free audio interview that walks you through membership website success!

On the other hand, managing a membership website can be a very lucrative online business (where you can make quite a lot of easy money) once you have the pieces in place of your membership based website.

All the initial work (defining a strategy, choosing a lucrative market, keeping an eye on competition) will be worth your trouble. And if you pick a topic you are passionate about the ‘work’ involved will be more fun than effort.

The main caveat is that many of the membership web sites are little more than a big pile of re-distributed content that can be found for free in many other places on the net. You don’t want that – you’ll want to offer your paid subscribers quality information, products and services that they simply can’t get elsewhere.

Finding Content, Products and Services for Your Membership Web Site

Anybody can spend a day online now finding a bunch of free reports and software to give away, and many of these types of web sites now exist for the internet marketing crowd. But you’ll be a step ahead of the trend if you steer away from the rabid ‘make money online’ surfers and dedicate your membership site and time into the wide variety of popular niches easily defined and discovered with some research.

On the other hand, if you do have an internet marketing related idea that is original or of phenomenal value to website owners and you can write a spectacular sales letter, you may just have begun your trek to fun and easy money.

How to Ensure Success with Your Subscription Based Site

The key is to find that unique edge that blows away any other subscription based sites available for your target market. If you look like just another site with the same info, you probably will not make many sales! Be one better than the current best and you’ll see sales, renewals for subscriptions and your income grow.

Most subscription based web sites are somewhat of a resource, which can be good. People don’t mind paying someone to save their valuable time. If you have all of the resources about a certain subject in an uncluttered fashion, and give some unique info about it (cheat sheets, strategies, reviews), then they won’t mind one bit paying you for it.

The Value Points of A Successful Membership Website

Let’s have a look at a very successful membership site to use as a guide – The Internet Marketing Warriors. When I first looked at the warriors it had a lot of mail order information and resources, a few software programs, and a few fresh and inspiring reports written by the owner Allen Says.

This paid membership web site originally had a 2 tier affiliate program, a great sales letter that was hard to say ‘no’ to, and a 2 page website that focused solely on one product -your subscription.

Since then Allen has added more reports, helpful software that he bought the rights to, insightful e-books that he bought the rights to, and a few other services helpful to the internet marketing crowd.

The point is, is that he had a few key elements in place that made his site successful.

1. It was unique because he was one of the first people online to come out with a site like this (there are hundreds now).
2. By the time there were hundreds of competitors for him, he already had a huge affiliate network, so he was getting much more exposure than any new ‘up-and-comer’.
3. His site was focused on one thing and one thing only. Allen calls the membership website a “Buy, Bookmark, or Leave” site. This means that those are the only three things a visitor could do. There is no clicking or surfing, reading free stuff, downloading reports, etc. without a membership. You either pay, bookmark to return later and pay, or leave.
4. Allen had an excellent sales letter that converted visitors into subscribers by the hundreds, day after day.
5. The price for the value was incredibly reasonable (at the time, it was $39).

So with all of these factors into play – uniqueness, a great sales letter, and a strong affiliate network – Allen’s membership web site grew to be an extremely successful website. He has since moved onto other ventures – the first of which was web hosting. He used his membership site affiliates to promote the hosting sales (a win-win for both the owner, the customers and the affiliates). It took off like gangbusters!

The only thing that was missing from his strategy back then was a strong back-end sale marketing system. He likely would have doubled his income if he sold a back-end product for twice the price of his membership product.

The Biggest Hurdle to Making Money With Membership Web Sites

In closing just let me reiterate here:

When creating a membership site, you have to be different than everybody else. Many new online money seekers who started out with a membership idea didn’t do the research or ground work before they started their subscription based web site. If you’re unique, serving a viable market with little competition, and you give great value for the price, you should do well. Just remember most of the work is in the beginning, get over that hump and the rest should be smooth sailing.

A big key to success is to learn from other people’s mistakes. Don’t re-create them.

At 123webs.com you will find an inexpensive membership website and marketing ebook available for sale. This will give you a head start in launching your own membership website.

Find it here: membership website setup, profit, and management.

Another facet to running a membership website you will have to consider is the software – the backend script that manages your users, payments. These scripts are often expensive. The less expensive ones are known for being full of scripting bugs and errors and light on the features.

Just recently a new script has been developed that is full featured, reasonably priced, and operates as a plug-in to WordPress. (WordPress is an easy to use content management script, widely known and supported by a variety of tutorial sites and marketers.)

Here is where you can view videos, read about, and discover all the features of the membership wordpress plugin.

Making Money with Membership Web Sites is a post from: online marketing with smartzville

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