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 and other major Search Engines provide a huge range of services of direct value to those who do business online – most of them FREE of charge! In this post, I’m looking at:

The Google Home Page has separate links that allow you to search the Web, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, Mail, Video, Groups, Blogs, Books and many more. You can use all this functionality both to research your markets and to drive traffic to your websites—much of it free!

Google Apps features several web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including Gmail^TM, Google Calendar^TM, Google Talk^TM, Page Creator^TM and Google Docs^TM – all FREE!

Google Apps can provide your day-to-day office systems functionality—particularly if you travel a lot and need to log in from other people’s computers or cybercafés. It can also shorten the amount of time spent on business interactions between companies, by allowing sharing of information, such as negotiating contracts using shared documents and performance reporting.

Gmail and Google Docs have become helpful for communication and collaboration. Gmail can be used to manage marketing campaigns by importing contracts, lists and using tags to create mailing databases. The use of these systems together can help streamline business processes.

These processes save time by eliminating the need for emailing documents back and forth. Using shared spreadsheets, organisations are able to eliminate the need to send hard copy updates.

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

1. Search engines ‘like’ your website if it has good content. If it looks like spam, the search engines are smart enough to treat it like spam.

2. Don’t use duplicate content – all good search engines are smart enough to recognize this – but you can successfully use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and other automatic feeds to build your website content – and yes, Armand Morin does this to build his 9,000 blogs!

3. Get quality websites to link to you. The search engines like this and take notice. Don’t bother using link exchanges or just sign other blogs with your links. While this won’t penalize you, it doesn’t help you at all.

4. Use the keywords you are targeting strategically on your pages in the headlines, sub-headers and body text. The search engines give weighting accordingly.

5. Use the keywords you are targeting within the < TITLE > tags, as the search engines give this a lot of weight.

6. On both external links to your website and any internal links, use ‘anchor text’ with keywords you are targeting in the links.

7. Similarly, if you have images that click to pages, include your targeted keywords in the ALT parameter within the < IMG > tag.

8. Generally, use common sense and stay away from trying to trick search engines (cloaking tricks for example). It can get your site penalized or even banned from the search engines.

9. If you don’t know how, or don’t want to spend your time doing search engine optimization, just search Google for SEO – there are many excellent resources out there.

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

Try using these ‘Bucket-Brigade’ phrases in your copywriting to ‘refresh’ the reader’s attention and link your paragraphs together…

1. A word of caution:

2. Add this to…

3. After all,

4. Again,

5. Also,

6. Although,

7. Am I right about you so far?

8. And best of all…

9. And don’t forget

10. And get this…

11. And guess what?

12. And here’s some great news for you:

13. And in addition to that . . .

14. And just think,

15. And like I said:

16. And look at this:

17. And now you can…

18. And now,

19. And remember…

20. And that doesn’t take into account…

21. And that’s just the beginning…

22. And that’s not all…

23. And that’s why

24. And the result?

25. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

26. And to prove it, here is…

27. And we don’t stop there

28. And what if I could take…

29. And what’s worse…

30. And what’s more

Look out for more suggestions in future blog posts…

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

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

So, you have your business up and running… You’re ready for business. But, wait.

Where are all the people? You are all ready for them, but they have no idea who you are, let alone what you are offering. What do you do now?

You have to market your business. However, you need to be careful on how you do this. Advertising could be what helps your business soar, or it could be what brings it down. Take the time to research to find the most effective way to advertise your business.

Google Maps is growing more and more popular for businesses of any size. Whether you have a company that only delivers locally or one that delivers around the world, Google Maps can reach anyone on the internet.

People use Google Maps for many reasons. Sometimes they are looking for a place, while many times they are searching for a specific type of place in a specific area.

For example, someone might be moving to a new home, and needs information on daycare centers. If they go into Google Maps, they can type in daycare centers, and all of the daycare centers in that general area will pop up.

Or, if you are a business owner ready to take the advertising step, you can utilize Google Maps to target potential customers in a specific area. Listed below are tips on why and how you can use Google Maps to target potential customers and increase sales.

Tip # 1 – Reach new customers using Google Maps and Google AdWords

Google Maps offers Google AdWords. This service allows your ads to appear next to related map search results. You pick keywords that describe your business. When a person enters in one of your keywords, your ad will appear directly on the map. People will then click on your ad, and will be connected to your business.

This is a great service to those advertisers who want to market their products or services to a very specific location. You may have a service or product that you are only offering delivery to locally because you do not have the resources to deliver all around the world. Therefore, you will only want to target specific areas for advertisement.

Google Maps has made it very easy to customize a target audience. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can now define your location. All you have to do is click-and-drag the map, and zoom into find your location or target area. Then, enter in a distance of at least 20 miles around your location target. A circle will appear next to the areas you chose. Check to be sure the circle is near the neighborhoods you wish to reach for potential customers.

Advertising your products or services through Google Maps will reach those potential customers at the exact moment they are searching. Millions of people use the internet to find information at their fingertips. Many will be looking for products or services in their general area. Listing your business in Google Maps will generate traffic to your websites, and potentially increase sales significantly.

Tip #2 – Google Maps works for businesses of any size.

Google AdWords is an effective tool and offers excellent marketing opportunities for a business of any size. Through Google AdWords, you are able to control your budget, because you pay only when someone clicks on your advertisement. You do not have a minimum spending requirement, and you can set a daily budget of a few dollars or pounds. This works well for small businesses that only have a certain amount to spend on advertising or larger businesses that are able to spend a little more.

Regardless of whether a business has a lot or a little to spend, the benefits remain the same. You are able to target your advertising campaign to specific locations, demographics and a select market. Google AdWords offers real-time control. You are able to pause, resume, increase, decrease or change any of your advertising specifics, instantly. Your company will begin generating traffic immediately.

Tip #3 – How to Effectively Use Google Maps to increase your sales

The goal you have should be to reach as many people as possible that are searching for your ‘specific’ product or service. It should not be to reach as many visits as possible to your site, but to reach quality targeted clicks.

It is important to advertise cost-effectively. Many companies waste hundreds or thousands of dollars on “unwanted clicks” that do not generate business. You’ll want to target people that are truly looking for your product or service, and not pay for clicks that don’t generate sales.

In order to find these people searching for your specific product or service, you need to create a keyword list that is unique to what you are offering. Using specific keywords, rather than broad or generic keywords, will ensure those people are finding exactly what they are searching for.

This in turn, leads to ‘true’ potential customers, which leads to ‘potential’ sales. And, in the end, leaves your paying for less unwanted clicks.

Determine if your product or service will be local, national or global. Google AdWords allow you to specify the exact areas you would like to target. Analyze your product or service. Determine keywords that are unique to what you offer, and try to be as specific as you can about the description of your product or service.

Tip #4 – Update your listings at any time

Google allows you to update your listings at any time. It is imperative to carefully manage your account in order to reduce expenses for ineffective advertising and gain the maximum benefits Google Maps has to offer. Along with carefully considering your keywords, you should monitor them, too. And, you should continuously manage your cost per click.

Increasingly, Google is presenting maps on its everyday searches, so this can help your business!

So – Check out what Google Maps can do for you!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com

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