Google has lots of excellent tools to help you research your niche – including Google Trends,  Google Reader – and now Google Blog Search.

And they’ve just added RSS and Atom feeds to the Blog Search, to make it evn easier for you to get fresh information from your Target Market.

Simply click on the links under “Subscribe” in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader, like Google Reader. Google also offer an iGoogle gadget that lets you embed the Blog Search front page right inside of your iGoogle page or any other page where iGoogle gadgets are accepted. You can browse topics and drill into stories from within the widget, and you can customize the gadget to choose which topics you want to follow.

And Google have added two new features to the Blog Search homepage to better help you discover what people are talking about right now on the web: Hot Queries and Latest Posts.

Hot Queries lists searches currently popular in Blog Search — it’s an easy way to quickly dive into the trending points of conversation on the web.

Latest Posts, on the other hand, shows new posts from popular blogs. While Hot Queries highlights what people are looking for, Latest Posts lets you find out about stories even before people start searching for them.

There’s a lot of great, fresh content being published in blogs every day.

So use these tools to help you research your markets and plumb new depths of your inch-wide, mile-deep niche!

Happy researching!
John

What a reminder that the Internet world is constantly changing!

Google announced it’s new on-line communication and collaboration platform – Google Wave – on the same day as Microsoft unveiled it’s new search engine ‘Bing’ (it’s replacement for ‘Live Search’).

And just preceding this was Wolfram Alpha, the new search engine that’s reputed to actually answer your queries with useful results!

While many see Bing as being an attempt by Microsoft to catch up with Google and Yahoo, and they’ll be spending a reputed $100M on advertising in the coming year, it is unlikely to do more than dent Google’s lead.

Microsoft Search continues to struggle to gain market share from Google, who last month secured 64.2 per cent of all search queries in the US, compared to Live Search’s paltry 8.2 per cent.

And Google continues to enhance it’s own search engine with capabilities that include the ‘Wonder Wheel’! It’s a great tool to help you with your niche research – see my blog post Find Untapped Niches With Google’s New “Wonder Wheel”!

As well as looking rather like Google Search, some of the results options in Bing are similar to Googles’ new Search Options – although in Microsoft’s overview of Bing, they say that it’s supposed to provide much more fulfilling search responses.

But what does this all mean for you?

Well, in addition to using these new tools to help you find new niches, pull in more prospects and communicate better with your customers, just stop a moment and imagine how on-line search, interaction and meetings are likely to evolve – and the host of extensions and applications that will be available very shortly – with these enhancements and platforms!

I’ll be posting further articles on these developments, and how you can use each to enhance your own marketing, on the Internet-Tycoons Blog and Forum.

Spin the Wheel, cry ‘Bing’ and join the Wave!

Hi Masterminders!

Thank you to all of you who made it to this special BONUS event for Mastermind Members!

Urmil and I had fun – hope you did too! And I hope you found that it gave you both further training with the Program materials and also additional impetus to take your Web Business forward!

At the Mastermind Workshop, we covered:

* Refresh of the Mastermind Program & Material

* Website building tools – Gimp, Kompozer, Filezilla, Blog Themes/Headers, etc

* Niche Selection – Physical Products + Information Products

* Outsourcing – how to specify and source what you need

* Your Business Plan

* Q & As

* Individual Consultations

Please let us have your feedback on the day and what you would like to help you move forward rapidly with your business by posting your ideas on the Forum – click here.

PLEASE WOULD YOU ALSO HELP US TO HELP YOU BY COMPLETING OUR Mastermind Program Feedback Questionnaire – Click Here . We will also review the format and frequency of training in the light of your responses.
(PS: This is also an example of how YOU can use free online surveys, too!)

So that we can help YOU become successful with your Affiliate Marketing, please would you also respond to the Affiliate Support Questionnaire on that page.

Thank You!

All the best!

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

The more visitors you get to come to your website the better your business will do – that’s kind of obvious, isn’t it?

But I’m sure you appreciate that you can’t just put up a single website and expect customers to find it amongst all the other billions of websites out there! Unless you can afford high-budget advertising, you’ll need to be optimize your website for both visitors and search engines and use a variety of lower-cost methods to direct traffic to your site – much as you would do for traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses.

And your Linking strategy is a vital element in this.

To maximize the number of visitors to your site, you need your site to rank well with search engines – and make them use-friendly for the ‘spiders’ and ‘bots’ the search engines use to analyse your web pages.

Tip #1: Build your Net to catch Traffic and your Web to catch Spiders!

So – continuing the ‘Spider’, ‘Web’, ‘Net’ and ‘Fishing’ similes – you need a net to catch fish (traffic) and you’re trying to build a sticky ‘web’ to catch the SE ‘spiders’!

As a friend of mine said – “Don’t try to create traffic – just go and stand in the way of the traffic that’s already out there!” – and with billions of searches a day there’s lots of traffic out there to catch!

What you’re trying to do is to build your own little net of interlinked websites to catch the traffic you seek and to make it all attractive and easy to follow for the SE spiders.

Your Linking Strategy should be about catching free highly motivated and targeted search traffic from Google and the other search engines, driving it to your niche sites and then channelling this traffic to your sales pages.

Now, free traffic rarely comes quickly. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a waiting game… you need to put in the work then wait for your traffic and rankings to increase, tweaking things along the way and adding extra links to help things along.

Tip #2: Create lots of Links

There are three types of links: incoming links, outgoing links, and internal links. You need all three to build your ‘net’.

You want to create as many incoming links (also known as ‘backlinks’) as possible, as these ‘count’ highest in the eyes of the search engines.

When a SE ‘spider’ sees lots of inbound links to your site, it says “this must be an interesting site if so many other sites link to it” and gives you higher ranking – so your website is displayed higher up the ‘natural’ search results pages.

Backlinks are particularly helpful to search engine ranking, so you should try to get other relevant websites to link to yours, if possible. And you can use links from your other websites to do this too – more about this in upcoming posts.

Tip #3: Help the Spiders!

Now when the SE spider is looking around your website, you want it to find all the ‘goodies’ you’ve put on your website, and to visit every page – and then to go on and follow your links to your other websites.

So, make it easy for the spiders – put links on each page of your site pointing to other pages of your site, so that the spiders can find their way around easily!

Tip #4: Don’t use Reciprocal Links or Link Farms

Now, the more incoming links and internal links you have, and the easier it is for the spiders to follow out-bound links to your other websites, the better your sites will rank with the search engines.

But there are two traps to avoid here!

Reciprocal links don’t work. If you think about it, it’s a bit like you lending me $100 and me lending you $100 – neither of us is actually better off, we just exchanged $100.

And that’s just how the search engines see it too – there is no ‘added value’ in reciprocal links, so they don’t help your ranking.

And stay away from link farms. Don’t pay to have thousands of incoming links created for you. The search engines will see this as link spamming and they’ll stop ranking your site altogether.

So there you have 4 tips on using links to improve your search engine rankings. Follow these tips you will get a higher ranking for your site, bringing more traffic to your site and more money for you…

You can read more in my article Linking Strategies For Your Niche Sites.

Watch out for further linking tips in future blog articles.

Happy linking!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

Seasoned Marketer Larry Dotson offers these ideas for increasing your Web sales:

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. Follow-up every few weeks or months.

2. Upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. Cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you. You can do this very effectively on your ‘Thank You’ page.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include in the package/web page a coupon for other related products you sell. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Offer gift certificates for your products. You’ll not only make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, but when the recipient cashes it in they may buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ads embedded in/printed on them. If you’re giving physical products, such as bumper stickers, baseball caps, t-shirts etc, the ads printed on them will allow other people to see your ad and order.

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

Go to the Google Research Tool at www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en and type a single letter into the box.

As you type, Google shows you the most searched-for terms beginning with that letter!

Continue typing letters into the box and it shows you the most searched-for terms beginning with those letters.

AND it shows you how many results it found – giving you a measure of the competition for the keyword phrases shown!

Talk about presented on a plate! This is a brilliant tool for Keyword and Niche research!

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

Here’s how to do quick research on a market… and cutting your losses.

Set up ten different Affiliate campaigns in ten different markets:

· Sign up as an affiliate for suitable products at ClickBank.com or Amazon.

· They give you your affiliate link

· Use Google Adwords to drive traffic to your Link

· Check daily how you’re doing.

If you’re making sales and covering your ad costs—stick with it…

… and get out of the ones that don’t pay as soon as you’ve got some results.

Try it!

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

Ever spent a lot of money developing products and ideas that nobody wanted to buy? What a horrendous waste – there are so many ideas that people will spend money on!

With Google AdWords, you should never need to invest more than a few hundred dollars – or in the worst case a few thousand dollars – pursuing an idea that won’t work.

Let’s say you’ve got a product idea. The product itself costs $5,000 to develop, and you’re sure it’s a good idea because it solves a really thorny problem.

So here’s what to do: You write a report, ebook or white paper about how to solve that problem. You create an opt-in page where people can get your report in exchange for their contact information.

Then you ‘buy’ keywords, send people to that page and see how many people you can get to opt in. That’ll give you a gauge of interest.

If you absolutely cannot get anybody to opt-in to your report – or if you can’t find keywords that anyone is searching for – then that’s a good sign you should abandon the project before you throw any more money at it.

When people do opt in, you can send them an email (or even call them on the phone) and ask them what they’re really looking for. If your report is any good, they’ll be happy to talk to you, and you’ll get LOTS of input about the kinds of problems they’re trying to solve.

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

Selecting a hot niche is all about finding Customers.

I like the fishing simile. In order to be able to catch fish, you have to work out where the fish (customers) are biting, what bait they’re going for (your ‘offer’) and what tackle to use (your website, marketing methods, etc).

But it’s no good just going and sitting by any old pond and using the wrong bait and tackle… if there are no fish, or you’ve got the wrong equipment, you won’t even get a bite!

One way to make sure you’re fishing in the right place is to look at the water and see where the fish are. But that can be a bit hit-and miss if you’re not sure where to look.

Better to watch those who know – by finding out where the other fishermen (your competitors) are and see what they’re catching and what bait and tackle they’re using.

So, you need to search the market to find where there are lots of ‘fish’ and see where they’re biting.

And don’t try to ’fish’ in a market where there are no other ‘fishermen’ – there’s probably a good reason why, and you’ll need to know exactly what you’re doing if you are to succeed!

This all sounds ‘old hat’ stuff, but it’s amazing just how few people do it right! I find I have to keep reminding myself!

Hot Tip: If you want to short-cut your own learning curve and minimize your costs, watch to see who is successful and what ‘bait and tackle’ they’re using. Then copy them!

Hot Tip: And if you talk to real fishermen, they’ll always speak about how to catch fish by describing what the fish do – where they swim, what they like to eat, what tackle works, etc. So, if you’re going fishing, you need to understand the fish and think like they do!

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

Your Business

Which comes first… …the product? …the web site? …the customers? …the marketing?

Many people put the cart before the horse. They have a product they want to sell and they’re looking for people to buy it. But that’s all the wrong way round! And just how hard can that be?

Do you know how easy it is if you start with the people who want to buy something first…and then offer them a product they WANT?

A Hungry Market…

Pick a ‘hungry’ targeted niche market first. Then build a site…build traffic…and then you can either find a product they already want, sell advertising space or sell the leads on to others. All you have to do is target a niche market with a specific subject and a good number of customers.

Hot Tip: We often try to make things so complicated. The simple truth of how to make money on the web, in one short sentence:

“Build a Site That Gives People What They Want!”

Burn that into your mind. I like to remind myself of this every time I want to go dashing off down some ‘rabbit hole’, chasing something more exotic!

Keep It Simple – Keep It Focussed

And KEEP IT SIMPLE! Complicated won’t work for you in this business and can be very expensive!

And KEEP IT FOCUSSED! The tighter your niche, the easier it is to dominate it. Once you’re king or queen of your niche, you can expand.

But you can’t just put up a sales letter and expect to profit. You’ll need to:

1. Find a market. There are many ways to do this. But as a starter, look at your local magazine rack. No matter what your hobbies, passions or interests are, there are going to be others with similar interests – you’ll be amazed at the selection!

2. Find out what they want. You do this by asking them. Look at magazines, message boards or newsgroups which already cover your subject or similar subjects. Do a search for your subject on Google^TM, or Google Groups^TM at www.groups.google.com.

Go and read the articles and posts and ask what people want or what they think is lacking in your market online. Don’t be shy – people love to discuss things they want!

Or set up a free on-line survey questionnaire using any of the free online survey sites, such as http://freeonlinesurveys.com or www.surveymonkey.com.

3. Give it to them. Once you figure out what people want, give it to them. Design a site which is exactly what they are looking for. Send out press releases, mention it in the newsgroups, write articles, trade links with other sites, and start growing – none of this is difficult and we can show you how to do it all!

OK, so how do I find a Niche that’s not already overcrowded? Enter ‘Mindset Marketing’… and we’ll look at that in a future blog post.

Until then—happy researching!

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