Niche research can be challenging – but there’s a simple way to get ideas, whether it’s for an affiliate product or for your own information product.

One of the best ways to find a hot selling product is to look for a problem that lots of people are facing, and then offer them a solution.

But where do you find people talking about their problems? Well, wherever people ‘hang out’ to chat – particularly in online forums, especially if they are busy ones.

You can locate suitable Forums by browsing through directories listing online forums – such as www.big-boards.com.

Or you can search for them using search engines by typing in the search term: “(Your niche topic) + discussion forums” - using the inverted commas (“”) for a ‘Broad Match’ search.

You can tell if a forum is suitable for your niche research by looking at how often people post there, and how recent the latest post is. If there are few visitors in the last few days, the forum’s probably not suitable for your needs.

Check the quality of the discussion before you make your decision to use that forum or not – and then move on to the next one.

The best way to do your research will vary from forum to forum. But generally, you should look for ‘hot’ threads – discussion topics where there are a large number of page views or responses.

For example, if a discussion has over 400 views in a day, or over 1,000 views in 3 days, the topic is likely to have great potential, and will show you what are the ‘triggers’ that will get your target market’s attention – and the issues or problems they are seeking solutions to.

If you often see the same or similar questions being asked on forums, this can indicate an opportunity you can tap into.

So think of a topic and go and look at some forums!

Happy Niche research!

John

Have you spent any time recently looking at Google Books?

It’s amazing what you can find there… Anything from Shakespeare to the day’s ‘Random Category’ – be it Steam Engines, Confucianism, Housekeeping, Self-development, Political Psychology or Arboriculture!

And there are plenty of classics — from Francis Bacon to Napoleon Hill.

Sadly, they don’t yet have a category of ‘Internet Marketing’ or ‘Web Business’ – or even just ‘Business’ for that matter!

But you can search the millions of books already available — try searching for ‘copywriting‘ – there are some useful resources!

But there is a wealth of material and you can often pick up a lot of valuable information at no cost.

Not surprisingly, the whole site is geared to getting you to buy the books you look at—which you can do through a range of bookstores.

So, all in all, it has similarities to Amazon and some other online Bookstores that increasingly allow you to ‘see inside’ the books on offer.

Google Books does, however, allow you to look at much more of the material inside a book than other sources—and there are some where you can read quite a few chapters—even if the deliberate policy of missing alternate pages (or whole sections) in some chapters can spoil your fun a bit!

So go over and have a look at http://books.google.com/books

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

If you want to succeed online, you have to have a strategy (or theme, a purpose, or community) for your website, with a central focus on a specific WANT that your prospects have. Then, you find products which follow along the theme.

So, the three keys to creating income from ANY web site and ANY theme, according to Terry Dean, are:

1. Have a lead product that people WANT.

2. Have freebies at your site that follow the theme.

3. Have multiple backend or supporting products for the theme.

You can’t develop a business around a single product. Even if you are promoting a single product upfront, it is not the product that people want.

They want the BENEFITS they receive out of the product.

When designing your site, think about that ever abiding “WANT” or “GOALS” that your prospects have with them continually.

Things such as: more money, weight loss, online success, being sexually attractive, self-defense, etc.

These ultimate benefits are what your prospects are really seeking.

So, don’t base your business just on products.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Urmil and I had a another very interesting 2-on-1 consultancy call with one of the Mastermind Program Members recently, which covered a lot of great insights into how to get high rankings for a website!

And I thought you’d also like to share some of the ‘insider’ tips on linking strategies that emerged – so here goes…

As I mentioned in my recent blog post Linking Tips To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking, you can’t just put up a single website and expect customers to find it amongst all the other billions of websites out there! You need to build you own little net of interlinked websites to catch the traffic you seek – and with billions of searches a day there’s lots of traffic out there to catch!

The linked Hub and satellite Mini-Sites model is about catching free highly motivated and targeted search traffic from Google and the other search engines and driving it to niche product mini-sites and then channelling this traffic through affiliate links on your Hub sites to merchants such as Amazon, collecting a commission on all purchases.

Bear in mind also that there are two types of buyer that you’re looking to capture:
•    Those that know exactly the product they want to buy (eg a Samsung Digital Media Centre – YPK-5JZB)
•    Those that are still looking generically for a ‘Media Centre’

So you’re trying to get the first group to click through the links on your Mini-Site dedicated to a specific product and shepherd the latter group to your Hub Site, where they can compare various models and make a buying decision.

Now, your Hub Site is going to be positioned in a fairly competitive market – I looked at Google search and competition criteria for your Mini-Sites in an earlier Blog Post – Niche Product Strategies For Your Hub And Mini-Sites.

So your ‘web’ of Mini-Sites is there to trawl for traffic from lower-competition keyword searches and send this to your Hub-Site, as well as creating a ‘net’ of inbound links to your Hub sites to improve their ranking.

The major purpose of your Mini-Sites is thus to get high ranking in Google as ‘content-rich’ traffic-catching web pages. Each Mini-Site should thus focus on one product and each Mini-Site page should be focussed on, and optimised for, one keyword (or ‘long-tail’ keyword string) relating to that product.

The primary links on your Mini-Site pages should be contextual (keyword-based) and should link to the relevant product page on your Hub Site, providing in-bound links to your Hub site.

You should also include links on the bottom of your Mini-site pages to other Mini-sites, to spread your ‘web’ and get Google ranking ‘credit’. But make sure your links aren’t ‘reciprocal’ – site A should link to Site B, B to C, and C to A, etc – no two sites should just ‘swap’ links back to each other, as Google discounts these.

Your Hub Site is the portal to your suppliers, so the primary links on your individual Hub Site pages should link to your suppliers, through your affiliate links. Your Hub sites can also carry page-bottom links to other Hub sites, but should not link back to your Mini-Sites.

Other linking strategies you should use include:
•    your internal links between pages – you should particularly make sure that your ‘Site Map’ is properly set up and all the links work properly, so that the spiders can crawl through every page of your site and onward to your other sites using the links discussed above.
•    Your Useful Links page can be used to boost your search engine ranking by linking to other, unrelated websites. Again, the Useful Links on your Mini-site should link to other Mini-sites; those on your Hub-site should link to other Hub-sites. The linked sites need not be on related topics – your ‘media centre’ site can link to your ‘freezer’ site, etc – all you’re seeking to do is provide the conduit for the spiders to find each of your sites and to improve your search engine score by providing in-bound links. Again, no two sites should link reciprocally to each other – always link A to B to C, etc.

This can all get to sound a bit complicated but the underlying principle is Keep It Simple – think like your prospects when writing the text and setting up the purchasing process and think like a search engine when setting up the linking strategy.

Happy linking!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

Did you know that there’s a very simple way to get Amazon to find your Niche Products for you?

Go to www.Amazon.com or www.Amazon.co.uk and select a ‘Department’ from the drop-down menu at the top left of the main page or  the fixed menu on the left side. Let’s select ‘Camera, Photo & Video’ from the ‘Electronics’ Department (‘Camera & Photo’ on .co.uk).

As well as category listings and a search box, you’ll also see ‘Most Wanted’ and ‘Best Deals’ listings (we’ll come back to these a little later).

On the menu bar at the top, click on ‘Bestsellers’ and you’ll get a page listing all the hot products that are selling best at present. In other words, Amazon is telling you what products people are buying most of right now! And you can safely assume that people are searching for those products to buy (although the two things are not identical)!

Ideas on a Plate!

Now, did your competition in the ‘bricks and mortar’ world ever tell you straight out what was selling best? Talk about giving you ideas on a plate!

But it doesn’t stop there, there’s plenty more…!

In the top left corner, under ‘More in Camera and Photo’, you’ll see four more categories that are of distinct interest to you…
* Hot New Releases (or Hot Future Releases on .co.uk)
* Most Gifted
* Most Wished For
* Movers & Shakers

While there are some variations, these pages will display many of the same products, underlining what’s selling well. The ‘Movers & Shakers’ page also shows you how the rankings are changing – ie what’s ‘hotting up’ just now!

The only thing Amazon doesn’t tell you is how many of each product they sold and from which suppliers, but you can check out the top ranking sites just by clicking through the links on the Amazon pages!

Niche Ideas

Now, let’s put all of this together and think about what Amazon is telling us about your potential niche markets…

Go back to the ‘Bestsellers’ page. At the time of writing, Canon cameras occupied 10 of the top 15 spots, while Flip video cameras occupied 3. So you could set up a Hub site offering Canon cameras and a series of Mini-Sites for individual Canon camera models (and accessories for each, too of course).

Keep an eye on the Hot New Releases and Movers & Shakers pages and add new Mini-Sites and Hubsite pages for new products.

And don’t forget to target keywords and page titles, etc, to respond to the ‘Most Gifted’ and ‘Most Wanted’ items.

You’ll note that the top sellers on Amazon.com, which is aimed at the North American market, are different from what’s selling fastest in the UK on Amazon.co.uk. So think about which market you’re targeting with your niche sites and how to optimize for that market.

Don’t forget your Research!

And before you rush in and set up mini-sites galore, though, don’t forget to do your research and optimise your website for both longer-tail keywords – but don’t leave out the more competitive keywords from your pages, either.

Have a think about some of the criteria I discussed in ‘Niche Product Strategies For Your Hub And Mini-Sites‘.

Check the number of searches using Google’s keyword tool. So, for example, when I looked there were 450,000  searches a month in the UK for ‘Canon Powershot’ and 8,100 for ‘Canon PowerShot SD1100IS’ – a pretty healthy market!

And make sure you check the product type numbers available in the market you are targeting before you optimise your page – you don’t want to set up to sell models that aren’t available in the country you’re targeting, do you!

Do a ‘broad match’ search for ‘Canon Powershot SD1100IS’ on Google and you’ll see there are around 27,000 competing sites. A ‘phrase match’ search – ie using “” marks around the phrase – indicates only 4,900 or so competing sites, so there’s surprisingly low competition for such an in-demand product.

And don’t forget you can see the keywords your competition are using and how they’re attracting customers by using tools like www.keywordspy.com and www.spyfoo.com!

Talk about giving it to you on a plate…!

Happy Niche-ing!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

Google added a new set of tools on it’s search pages last month that will help you find new untapped niches!

So go and check out the enhanced Search Options capabilities – including the ‘Wonder Wheel’!

First, go to Google and do a search – say for “lose weight”. On the results page, look just below the Google logo (in the light blue bar below the line), and click on ‘Show Options’.

Down the left side, you’ll see a menu of options. Click on ‘Wonder Wheel’ and you get a map of your search term and related search terms – the spokes.

Click on any of the spokes and you begin to dig into sub-niches – just keep repeating to find sub-sub-niches.

You can also get a list of similar results (spokes of the wheel) by clicking on the ‘Related Searches’ link in the menu on the left side.

At each step, check the number of results for the search (in the upper right hand corner) until you get to a ‘manageable niche’ (say <200k websites) where you’ll be able to compete effectively for the keyword… You can also use the phrase-match option by putting your search term in “inverted commas”.

And don’t forget to check the organic and paid search results being displayed on the right side of the page (your competitors).

Also, click on ‘Review Sites’ and ‘Forums’ to check out the opposition or find topics or material for your own pages!

Pretty useful and quick way of checking out niches – huh?

Oh, and the spokes of the Wonder Wheel should give you ideas for associated products and further pages for your website…

And don’t forget to check out the other Search Options – you can filter by time period and the Timeline gives a useful indication of interest in a topic (and is a bit faster to use than Google Trends for a ‘quick-and-dirty’ appraisal).

When you use the Search Options in conjunction with Google’s Keyword Tool (just type the niche term into the tool to check the number of searches for that and related terms) and Google Trends tool, you’ve got some of the fastest and most powerful free research tools available to internet marketers!

Click on the screen below to see Google’s summary of Search Options and the Wonder Wheel!

Happy niche-spotting!

Using Google to find HOT Niches!

Want to dominate the Web — but Stuck for ideas for niches?

Would you believe that Google will actually show you how you can make money on the Web? Sounds too good to be true?

Well, here are three ways that Google will show you exactly what’s hot just now — and what products sell on a seasonal basis!

What’s Hot Just Now, Mr Google?

Here’s a little trick using Google Products (formerly ‘Froogle^TM’), a focused search engine that allows you to search for products for sale on the internet.

But you can also use it to see what’s hot today and what people want right now!

Go to www.google.com/products and look at the list of products below the search box. They are stuff that people are searching for right now!

Now, press ‘refresh’ and you’ll see a new list come up — these are live searches on Google, so you can see the kind of things that people are currently searching for.

Look for the products that come up most frequently and find ways to turn them into

niche products you can offer!

Trendy Niches!

You can use Google Trends in a similar way, but it also lets you see seasonal trends and even compare different search topics on the same page — a very powerful research tool.

Go to www.google.com/trends and you’ll see two lists. The one just below the search box shows you what people are searching for just now. The numbered list below that shows you Today’s Hot Trends.

You can also see an expanded list of hot trends at www.google.com/trends/hottrends.

These are things that thousands of people are searching for now, so use some of the ideas on www.Internet-Tycoons.com to see how you can provide what they want!

‘Tis The Season!

You can even compare searches by entering several topics in the Trends search bar, separated by commas! Try looking at the seasonal trends for searches on Fishing, Cricket and Baseball.

Not surprisingly there are spikes around special events, such as the World Cup and so on.

Target Your City!

But there’s another very powerful tool to aid your Web domination strategy hidden away in Google Trends!

Below the trend graphs, you’ll see a list of the Countries and the Cities where the terms were searched for most often. You’ll also see the Languages that were used most frequently to search for the terms.

This is very powerful information — you can target particular countries where topics are particularly hot. And—just think about this— you can even target particular cities with your Adwords campaigns, to maximise their effectiveness and minimise your Awords costs by making your keywords location-specific!

You can even target Google searches in particular languages, where you’ll probably

find that there is little or no competition for very valuable keywords and dominate the market!

Where’s Your Zeitgeist?

Google Zeitgeist is a treasure trove of research and information for your Web Biz!

Anything from Google Trends, what’s behind the stories, and the most popular searches last year and by month.

You can actually do this for each country in the world. Try ‘Bodyboard’ in Brazil, ‘Rabbits’ in Canada or ‘Jack Russel’ (dogs) in Norway!

And Zeitgeist will also show you the headline gainers and losers this month, guiding you as to what’s hot and what’s not!

Go to www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html, open your mind and explore!

So, with this enormous research arsenal at your fingertips, what’s holding you back?

Get out there and get HOT!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Before you spend a lot of money setting up in your chosen niche, you’ll want to research it thoroughly and test it out, to see what traffic you get and the quality of this traffic – are they ‘hot buyers’ or just browsers?

Hot Tip: One of the ways that you test a niche, before you get started, is to send some traffic to an affiliate site (you sign up as an Affiliate to sell someone else’s product – they’ll generally set up a website for you). If you are getting sales as an affiliate, then you could make sales with your own product.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

A great way to find new niches is to use Google searches and Keyword tools to do all the hard work for you!

Hot Tip: Go to one of the keyword tools and type in short phrases like “How to”, “Where to”, “Make”, “Do It Yourself”, “Discount”, etc – you’ll get a list of the most searched items – and some ready-made ‘hot niche’ suggestions!

Most marketers recommend looking for markets where the total searches per month (the numbers on the left hand side) equal 15 to 20 thousand or higher.

But some people do really well in smaller markets (more than about 5,000 searches per month) – it depends on the niche and you can dominate in a small market.

When you work in niches with at least 20,000 searches a month, you can make yourself a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, on a weekly basis.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

One of the first questions that people have when looking to start up any web business is… “What niche should I choose?” – I’m sure you, like me, have been there too?

This question has surfaced several times recently, in talking to Mastermind Members, so I though it might be helpful to look at some of the criteria for selecting suitable products to promote with a Hub and Mini-site strategy.

As ever, the first thing to do is take off your ‘YOU’ goggles and put on your prospective customer’s shoes, hat and glasses – and see life as they see it and live it! As they say in marketing circles… ‘walk a mile in your customer’s shoes’ – see my blog post “The Anatomy of Great Copy”.

Next thing is search volume, of course… As a general rule, go for a product (range) that has good traffic – more than around 3,000 searches a month.

And the number of competing websites should, preferably, be less than 200,000 – that’s using ‘phrase match’ on Google by putting quotation marks (“ ”) around your search phrase. If you use ‘broad match’ for a term like ‘portable garden equipment’, Google will return ALL websites that have EITHER the term ‘portable’ OR ‘Garden’ OR ‘equipment’ – ie likely to be in the millions and not relevant to you.

Stiff Competition?

Now, 200k other websites would seem like stiff competition – but you can bet that most are not well optimised for the keywords you’re targeting and you’d be surprised how easy it is to get up in the top rankings, as a result. Especially if you focus on ‘long tail’ keywords (more on that in a moment).

And think how you would react, as a prospective customer, to the website you’re creating and the product you’re targeting…

Yes, you want to maximise the return you’ll earn from affiliate commissions by going for higher-priced products, rather than $2.50 toys (unless you can attract thousands of visitors a day).

But people looking for products online costing over say £100 will want to shop around much more than people buying lower-priced products, where the differences in price between different sites are likely to be rather less important.

And the higher the price, the more prospects will want to buy from a ‘professional’-looking website and the more pre-selling you’re going to have to do on your website, so the more effort will be required in setting up the website.

So it’s perhaps best to focus the Hub and Mini-site strategy at products in the range of £100 or so, rather than higher-priced products, where price differences between sites encourage shopping around.

Your Keywords

Now, back to Keywords… The trick is to focus on ‘long tail’ keywords, that include the primary (highly searched) keywords and have a reasonable search volume themselves, but on which you’re not competing with the whole world…

And each page of your Mini-site should be optimised for a different keyword. So your ‘Butterscotch Pony’ mini-site could have separate pages focussed on ‘Butterscotch Pony’, ‘Butterscotch Pony Saddles’, ‘Butterscotch Pony Gadgets’, ‘Butterscotch Pony Interactive’, etc. And you’d have one page of your ‘Toy Pony’ Hubsite focussed on the ‘Butterscotch Pony’.

Or your Mini-site might offer Flip video cameras, for example, and the individual pages might focus on ‘pink Flip cameras’, ‘silver Flip cameras’, etc. And your keywords would reflect the subject of the page. See for example www. flip-cameras .co.uk (Tip: check the keywords they’re using for each page by right-clicking on the page somewhere and selecting ‘View Page Source’). Your Hub site might offer hand-held video cameras, and the individual pages of the Hub site would include Flip and other cameras.

So I hope this helps with Niche ideas for your Hub and Mini-Sites!

Happy Niche-ing!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons