Monday, March 29, 2010

The Real Magic Bullet to Find Hot Niches With Hungry Buyers

I'm about to tell you why some people make money hand over fist easily and every day...

Is it because they're marketing geniuses? NO Is it because they're born with a natural gift for copywriting? NO Is it because they've learned some really cool BlackHat SEO tricks? NO

The #1 rule for marketing success anywhere in the world is to sell stuff that people want to....

BUY

1. Don't try to sell ice to an eskimo.
2. Don't try to sell lighter fluid to El Diablo...
3. Don't try to sell MLM types some guides on how to start their own infoproduct business.


The real Magic Bullet is to Niche Affiliate Marketing Success is to find hot niches with hungry buyers waiting for you to present your offer to them

Don't sell stuff people want to read, or get for free, or request instant refunds on, or buy from their own affiliate links a la ClickBank. Sell stuff that people want to buy and the money will come in hand over fist for you. When people typically think about Finding Hot Niches full of hungry buyers the "IM" niche and the adult industry are two niches that come to mind. However those are only 2 mega-niches out of millions of possible micro and mega-niches you could be selling to.

Do you want to know how to find hot niches getting a recent upward surges in traffic volume?

Then go to ebaypulse, google trends, use the free wordtracker tool, and google's external KW tool and many other trend-icators. Trend-icators are trend indicators showing you what is hot right now based on what people are buying and searching for. These can be good tools fo rthe niche affiliate markter because it can tell you what sells often although it can change. Sometimes you can see a trend and decide to jmp on the bandwagon and get disappointing results. The reason for that is you tried to build a new site write some new articles, get some link-love, link-juice whatever.... and then go find some products to sell to that niche. However, if the trends goes away quickly and you're still busy building these sites after the traffic starts to decrease, that's like chasing the tail end of a hurricane hoping it swings back your way and notices you. OK maybe nobody wants to chase a hurricane or have it coming straight at them, but if you think of traffic and buyers heading to you in droves as a good thing, then you don't want to be chasing the tail end of it and want to be standing in fornt of it. And if you build a site, get some links and find some products only to give up once the traffic goes away, that's like closing the barn door after the horse ran way. A big waste of time only if you stop working on the site. So why would you want to to quit working on a site if the trend has decreased? Because it's likely to repeat itself is some horizontally relevant way once the next clebrity scandal hits, or the next video game version 8 comes out. If you kept working on a site based on trendy niches, then your site could develop into a trends niche, ever think of that? If you think of your site as an asset that you're constantly building up with backlinks and site content, the search engines will love you and this will make it easier for you to capitalize on the next trend that hits. But this time you're ready! Ready to NOT build another site, but add new pages and posts and affiliate links to your site that you never stopped working on. Obviously the next latest hot niche trend would have to be related to your current site but then again, you could simply make a new category of pages and posts and split the site focus, too. You can follow the trends and easily capitlaize on them via free blogs and lenses and hub pages and some social bookmarking tactics. However, there's plenty of hot niches coming out each and every day that leave web surfers disappointed that there's no really useful information out there for them about their latest medical malady or latest video game cheats guide. It's up to you to find these hot niches and exploit them

What is a Hot Niche?

What most people mean by Hot Niches is a niche that's getting a lot of attention now like Yeast Infections and Hypermiling... Those are hot niches because searches for those terms are increasing in number and more people are looking for information on the relevant product. Therefore many niche affiliate marketers are jumping into those niches. However, those "HOT" niches aren't really what you're after... Not really... What you want is to find hot niches with hungry buyers looking for a solution and not finding it easily (yet). That's where you come in. You get eyeballs (traffic) to view your "solutions" via the myriad methods that are readily available to you. Getting traffic to your sites is as easy as optimizing a web page and getting links to those pages to attain good rankings for the words people are searching for in the search engines, ie. organic traffic volume. Once again though it comes to the audience that sees your offer. People with medical ailments are suffering and in desperate need for solutions, as are the avid hobbyists like rose gardeners and car enthusiasts. Getting out of debt can be a great niche to get into, but do people with money problems have the inclination to spend even more money on debt relief products? I don' t know the asnwer to that, but there's a ton of searches for those terms and plenty of people in those niches. That makes debt relief a "hot niche" but does that mean it's still worth getting into?

How can you find out if your target audience is full of buyers or cheapskates?

A client of mine ranks on page 1, position 1 for a term related to a hobby (won't give away the niche here) that has thousands of enthusiasts flocking to his site, and his site and services are THE place to go to for quality products. However, the market is one of low-end products that are frequently given away or cost close to $2.00 a piece. He OWNS this niche full of enthusiasts and it's the go-to site for the avid hobbyists, but it's not making him a millionaire, not yet anyways. He's selling advertising space, making money off people submititng their products to his authority site, and is well-respected by his customers and clients. Look, you don't want to own the niche you're getting interested in, you just want to make a good chunk of affiliate income from your niche marketing endeavors. The best way to do that is not just to find out where the easy traffic is.... NO, you want to find out where the easy sales are, too. If you find a niche with a lot of hungry buyers, very little traffic and very little competition, then that is the best kind of niche to get into for the beginning niche affiliate marketer.

What's the best way to build a niche site, a lens a hub page, a free wordpress site?

Well, I can't take credit for being the perosn who came up with this information, but I can take credit for reading, absorbing and assimilating the information and sharing it with you. When you build a niche site, you can use the method Andrew Hansen mention in his Niche Marketing On Crack products, which was to build one site based around one product you're selling. That's good advice, but what most people think of first when they're building a site is what it's going to look like and that's where the whole idea of a hot niche site starts to go astray. Word sells, pictures don't, but if your site can give the visitors the feeling that they're at a site that wasn't thrown up in a fe wminutes, they'll "dial in" to the information more and be more receptive to your content. So, if you had a site about ADHD that means parents and educators and even doctors (if they had time) would come across in their web searches. Parents are ocming to find out information about ADHD for their children, but would also be interested in a parenting tips newsletter or magazine or something like that. Educators would want to know about how best to teach to their target audience (if they had students with ADHD) so some material targetting the educators is needed here as well. The doctors have a pharmaceutical interest in the site's information and would want to know more aobut the alleged side ffects or benefits or latest rpeorts about certain new drugs. So point them towards those authority sites and you got a happy visitor there. Let's pull it all together now... You visited a site about ADHD and saw information on medicine, education material for teachers, and information for parents, too. either one of the three type sof visitors woul dbe impressed with your site as a good site for qualit yinformation and your site content woul dbe respecte dmore by what it said, without saying anything at all. And this ocul dbe accomplsihed by having the right content and categorie son your site, not just a flashy header graphic you worke don for a few days. In a few days you ocul dhave created the content that owul dmake your visitors happiest. I DO think that graphics are important, but it's best to get the content on the site first, then get it noticed by the search engines, then play around with the aesthetics of the site afterwards, once you've written your articles, got your site indexed, and starting building up some backlinks. To build a good site that sells, you need to create an amosphere that shows the visitors that the information they're reading is created by someone who knows their stuff. You're reading my blog now... does any of this interest you? If not, then I haven't exactly narrowed down my target audience have I? So what good is it for me to write this blog post and get someone who isn' t interested in reading it to come see it?

Which brings me to the next part of this post on How To Find Hot Niches: The Niche Research and Keyword Research Tools.

The one major problem I have with niche research and keyword research tools is this... Some Niche and KW research guides tell you to look at Google's external tool for KW research to see if a niche is profitable or not. The way to use this tool for assessing possible competiton is to look at their PPC competition bar which tells you how competitve the PPC ads are for this niche. First of all, these numbers are based on pay-per-click advertisers, and not SEO. Some companies throw money into PPC advertising for branding purposes and don't have to realize an income from those ads to stay in business. But you do... This is a catch-22 that is misleading and can screw you up in a number of ways.

1- If a KW research tools is using PPC competition as a barometer for assessing competition, that's a half-way decent guideline to go by, but there's not really any sure-fire way for a software tool to tell you exactly how competitive a niche is. Little to NO PPC competition doesn't always means there's no potential to the niche. It could mean there's an un-tapped gold mine waiting to happen right there, or it could mean the obvious, that it's not worth getting into because a lot of PPC competition means a lot of SEO competition, too. But you don't know that for sure until you do some real digging around yourself. The tools you're given to use aren't always going to tell you the real story, but can give you "educated guesses" and good indications most of the time.

2- The number of competing sites doesn't really mean anything and I hate it when the tools display this as an end-all be-all predictor of the niche competition. Again, it's just an indicator of how many other sites have those KWs on indexed pages. Google the term, "frustrated with internet marketing" without the quotes to see an example of a blog post with ZERO backlinks ranking #1 out of hundreds of thousands of other pages. What really matters is the number of sites that have devoted some time to get links to their sites and spent time optimizing their pages properly so the search engines find them easier. This is your real competition.

3- The real answers to your questions are readily available via the search engines and marketplaces.... If you use a KW tool to ascertain competition for a given niche, then you aren't really doing your homework. Go to Google and type in your new-found keywords to see what kinds of sites are being listed in the first-page results and how they're organized... What if the top 3 sites weren't relevant and were just placed high in the SERPs because they had a lot of links to their site for terms related to, but not targeted towards your keywords? Am I talking over your head? Sorry, here's an example of what I mean. Go see what the search engine google returns for the search query, "How to flip websites" without the quotes and you'll see that 2 of the top listings are for Flip video and Flip skateboards. Obviously, those are not relevant to your search query on how to flip websites, therefore these sites are NOT competing with you even though they might have a high ranking for those terms and great Page Rank as well. ,,,,and these are some of the sites that KW research tools show you in their queries... You need to do some real man-on-the-street research after using Niche and KW research tools to see what makes these niches tick, what terms the established sites are going after, and if you can beat them at their own game. But it all comes down to finding the hungry buyers in niche markets that are waiting for you to present to them a solution they want...to BUY One note: The Internet Marketing niche is one of the rare niches that does NOT get buying customers from the search engines as frequently as it does for other sources. In other words, search engine traffic to your sales pages doesn't convert as well as the recycled traffic via email marketing. As I've often stated, the highest quailty, highest-converting traffic is via email marketing from people on whose list you may be on, JV mailings and product launches getting a lot of publicity. Anyways, if you're an IM-er, you need to focus on Adswaps and JV mailings, but if you're a niche marketer, you need to know where your hungry markters are. And this is a product that shows you exactly how to do that...

Daniel McGonagle is an entrepreneur, marketing coach, and business consultant. His blog at http://danielmcgonagle.name is one of the most down-to-earth, non sales pitchy type of blog you will see today. It's pure content.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_McGonagle

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Friday, July 31, 2009

3 Ways to Promote Your Website For Higher Online Sales

When talking about how to promote your website in order to increase online sales, it is imperative to be creative and aggressive in terms of attracting new visitors. One has to think out of the box in order to improve website revenue. The following tips are worth considering if you are struggling to get more sales.
i) You can try to think of a way in order to get your site or business in the news. Some of the easier methods is to sponsor a fund raiser, or you can hold a major event. These methods are relatively cheap if compared to other paid methods such as pay per click or banner advertisements.
ii) Another good way to advertise your website is to contact national radio stations and see whether they are looking for guest speaker. It is important to tell them your background in particular your expertise areas, your experience as well as your achievement.
iii) Ask your customers or your site visitors for feed-backs on how you can improve your websites, services or products. You can ask them through email message, message board, chat rooms or even on your website. This is a relatively easier way to promote your websites without incurring any costs.
But you will find this method to be more effective if you offer some form of rewards to your site visitors for giving their valuable opinions.
Other equally useful ways to promote your websites include holding contest, offering discounts on your products and so on.
Jimmy Law is a regular writer for topics relating to affiliate marketing and website traffic. He also writes on subjects with regard to typing lessons for kids. Check it out more at typing for kids.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jimmy_Law

Niche Markets and Mini Sites Profits - The War Has Begun!

Niche markets and mini sites are taking lately by storm the Internet marketing field. But despite of all kinds of free information you receive, there still plenty of tips couple of Netpreneurs "forget" to tell you about.
Now don't get me wrong, I would not go here into deeply analyses of niche marketing and mini sites strategies. The subject is too big to discuss it in one single article. Rather than this, I will try to outline couple of things which been overlooked and might influence in a good way your mini Net empire profits.
First time first, you have to understand WHY a niche market can be so profitable. Well, the answer is simple: just because people need to find quick answers to their SPECIQUE problems. And the fastest way today to reach information are the search engines. That's why niche markets, mini sites and the search engines cannot be considered separately.
A niche market offer the right kind of information to a crowded mass of searchers. It's TOTALLY focused around one subject, and ONLY ONE. This way searchers are coming "right to the point" and become highly targeted visitors to your web site. These overlooked niches represented huge business opportunities that could quickly change your life and put you on a path to Internet success.
So I'm not kidding when I'm saying that 90% from your mini site success reside in founding a very profitable niche market! A wrong niche market (or the topic of your web site) can mean a wasting of time (and money) on trying to (pre) sell something no one wants, or is even looking for.
The equation is simple:
good niche market + a nice mini site + top position on search engines = solid monthly profits!
But from where profits come? There are two ways: either you promote on the mini sites your own products or services, either you build them up around an affiliate program or a joint venture association. A short look around the Net life will tell us that we have a winner on the second one -- by far this is the most used method today.
Speaking on niche markets, let me confess a little bit. Couple of time ago, when I first started to build mini sites around profitable niches, I was hunted for three different markets. At that time, I first realize the outstanding help offered by an extraordinary powerful online service.
Wordtracker was invaluable for my searches and definitively influence my final decision on creating my mini site.
OK..., the KEI values for what I've been looking for was:
- keyphrase #1: 6.486
- keyphrase #2: 306962.112
- keyphrase #3: 3480.255
If you read my Wordtracker article you know that a KEI over 400 is a Good gift! For two of my keyphrases I was way above, but couldn't decided which one to choose it. K1 wasn't attractive, not at all. K2 and K3 had very good potential at that time.
K3 it wasn't so close to my expertise. As a matter of fact, I didn't know too much about this subject. And since I decided to build a mini site around an affiliate program, my expectations on K3 affiliate potential wasn't fulfilled.
What I found was 5 affiliate programs with very, very poor information, statistics, etc. I wasn't able to identify primer tools which makes an affiliate program workable. Not to mention what kind of customer/ affiliate service they had! Uugghhh... what a waste of time. I dump the idea of using K3 for my mini site.
What was left? K2 with his impressive KEI value. With a lot of luck I found 2 affiliate programs which best suit my affiliate needs and requirements. Even better, I was able to find the right kind of information for this topic (niche market), so I simply "reserve a spot" on building future search engine highly targeted web pages full of helpful information!
OK, but what other people hide from you?
Long-time mini site and niche marketing planning!
When it comes to mini sites, most folks think at a web site with 1-4 pages. This is totally wrong. It can works for some niche markets for a period, but on a long run I'm certain will not. That's because of the search engines and their continue improvements. And what would be a mini site without getting free traffic from them?
Let me explain!
It's all about your web site structure and your ability to build search engine friendly web pages. And you have to understand that your niche market will not live forever. Through the time, more and more people will come and build web sites around your niche market. Don't make the mistake of considering yourself the only smart guy on the Internet.
To assure always top 10 positions on your niche market, you have to build a proper web site, with a very flexible structure and compelling information.
By "flexible structure" I mean an internal web site dispossess so you can easily allow search engines to find your new web pages. Ideally would be to start with 5-12 pages and a maximum of 2-levels deep. This will allow spiders to index your site quickly and to score ALL your internal pages!
Even more, if you use an affiliate program on your mini site, consider that your merchant company will always try to build new products. Better will be to do businesses with a company which frequently create/improve new products related to your niche market. More products is equal to more separate web pages.
With multiple pages on your site, you'll concentrate each page on a different keyphrase, thus increasing the number of ways people could find your site!
Better yet, if you find more affiliate products for the same niche, consider to build multiple mini sites and link them together. Build a mini net empire around a niche market and watch how your profits will soar from the thin air.
Nothing beets your competitors more rather then your own mini site niche empire!
The great thing with mini sites: their running totally on autopilot. Even if you do nothing, it will continue to generate sales month after month using the search engines. Well, at least as you score well on the top 10 of major players. But could it be another way to generate profits faster using mini sites, since a good listing for a new web site can take up to 8 weeks?
Yes, by using the pay-per-click search engines, which by far are the most targeted ways of bringing prospects to your web site. In this case, just forget about search engine optimization and try to focus on compelling ways to pre-sell your merchant product('s). But PPC is a number game and if you use them from the start, you are half blind.
Why? Because PPC are unique in their way. You need to have certain results before you deep down into their traffic, unless you want to be left poor right from the beginning. The next article from this issue will cover exactly what information you'll gonna need to know if you want to run a PPC successful advertising campaign.
So if you want to play the niche marketing and mini site game, I would suggest first to start generating traffic from common free search engines. Once you'll know exactly how much a visitors will "worth" to your new mini site, you can go on PPC promotions or other profitable Internet marketing strategies. But never BEFORE!
Final Thoughts:
Mini sites build around a niche market has been and will be a successful financially from a poor numbers of visitors. It depend only on YOU to convert a higher percentage of them into buyers. And of course to get as many as you can of their personnel informational and to follow-up them later down the road (I bet you miss that!!)
Phil Wiley, the author of "Mini Site Profits" book, considered by many Netpreneurs (including me) to be the definitive work on mini sites, and a must-buy for anyone who wants to know more about the subject, explain into a recent interview:
"A mini site doesn't have to be made to sell a product, but the kind I build are designed to make sales... to make a profit! I think mini sites will survive as long as search engines survive in their current form.
If they all end up becoming pay per clicks you might not want the hassles of handling 20 to 100 sites, but that’s not to say they'd stop working. Even if you had to pay for all the traffic, that wouldn't really matter too much once you know that the site makes so many dollars for so much spent you can just leave it running on autopilot."
Great stuff Phil!
And speaking of niche profits, allow me to finish by telling you how my first mini site DIDN'T end-up on top 20(!!) on major search engines, but score in one month $6,045.65 in sales from 146 unique visitors, and $2,000.00 in one single day in the next month... from only 5 unique visitors!
Believe it or not, I DO NOTHING to deserve this -- I DO NOT invest a single dime into buying traffic, or posting ezine ads, or writing articles, or other stuffy promotions (excerpt registering my domain name and website hosting account, all together under $100). I DO NOT waste a single minute to promote it!!! Traffic came only from different search engines.
The bottom line: start building profitable niche mini sites right now. Take this article as a starting and referring point. Printed it, "learn" it and pass it to your closest friends (excerpt your competitors!) But please don't leave it into dust...the niche market and mini site war has begun!
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Attention Ezine Publishers/ Site Owners
Feel free to reprint this article is its entirety in your newsletter/ ezine or website as long as you leave all links in place, do not alterate the content and include our resource box as listed above. If you do use the material please send us a note so we can take a look. Thanks!
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Valeriu S Popescu is the owner of the Internet Marketing Profits Center, a specialized e-company that helps real Netpreneurs starting a new business online. Find inside the latest cutting-edge strategies about affiliate programs, email marketing, search engine optimization, and more. Visit today: http://www.internetmarketingprofitscenter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Valeriu_Popescu

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Art Of Choosing A Niche Market

If there is one subject that is not nearly enjoying enough attention in online marketing, then it is the art of choosing a niche market. The niche market you choose to work in will make or break your online business. It's as simple as that. The real challenge however is in choosing a niche market. Although there are no real cold hard facts, there are some good guidelines that can really serve as a good guide when choosing a niche market for your online business.

There is nothing worse than spending months building a website or developing a product that was doomed from the start. What I mean by this is that if you start a website or a newsletter or a product in a niche that is not profitable, you simply won't make any money from it. A profitable niche does not only rely on the fact that there are customers who are willing to buy the products, but also on the fact that there is a demand for what you've got to offer.

Most affiliate marketers are after the 'golden nuggets' – those niches with high demand and very little competition, and although there is nothing wrong with this, it is not the only consideration when choosing a niche market. Here are some of the most important factors to consider when choosing a niche market and some suggestions for actually finding it.

- The niche must be profitable.

This means that there must be a big enough market of people willing to spend money on the products and services in that particular niche. You also want to make sure that there isn't too much competition in that particular niche as this makes it harder to turn out a profit. Ideally you want competition, but not too much. Competition is a sign of profitability in that particular niche and it is quite a healthy thing. A simple way to seek out a niche that fulfills this requirement is to do keyword research and to match the most profitable keywords to the most profitable products.

- The niche must interest you.

Although there is nothing wrong with jumping into a profitable niche on curing athlete's foot, the real challenge in any niche is longevity. In most niches your success will rely on your persistence and staying motivated for long enough to keep on keeping on until you succeed. Finding the inspiration to build a website on athlete's foot can proof to be more challenging than you think. When you are really interested in a subject, your enthusiasm is usually reflected in very subtle ways and building a business based on a subject you love seems almost effortless.

If you build a niche business based purely on profitability, it is only a matter of time before someone will come along that actually do love the subject and who will eventually kick you off the top spot. A very useful thing to do is to come up with five to ten things you really love; markets that you would love to work in and do this even before you start doing any of your keyword and profitability research. Start looking in these markets for profitable niches. You are bound to find something that's not just interesting, but also highly profitable.

- The niche must be scalable and have a decent lifespan.

As you do your niche research you will most certainly come across some hugely popular niches that, at first sight, would seem like ‘golden nuggets’. Before you jump in though, it's well worth a closer look at the lifetime of that particular niche. If you are building a niche about the Soccer World Cup in Germany, you should know that it is bound to loose popularity as soon as the event is over. Similarly, many niches based on specific products have a limited lifespan and even though they would do well for a while, they might die an early death and along with that your paychecks would die.

When choosing a niche market, look for something that at least has the potential of long term success. Similarly, you want to make sure that your niche has the potential of growing. Most niches do and there are always related products that you can add and attach to your niche. If you are in very competitive markets this might be quite difficult. It typically happens when you find a very tight niche with only a couple of keywords in a very busy market. If it's too tight you can really smother yourself and hamper your potential future growth.

Choosing a niche market really is an art and it takes experience to really anticipate which niches have real potential. There is no surefire way of knowing before hand whether a niche will be profitable, but you can get very close and at least make an educated guess. Many private label sites actually specialize in doing the market research for you and apart from sniffing out the profitable niche markets, they also give you the content with which you can easily build a website or even compose your own ebook. Not only does this take a lot of the guesswork out of it, but it also takes a lot of the work out of it. You can build a site in no time and even if the niche turns out to be a dud, at least you didn't spend weeks working on it.

Article by Sincere-Advice.com For more information on discovering highly profitable niches and getting all the research, product creation and website content done for you, please visit http://www.sincere-advice.com/nichemarkets.html for more information.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

6 Steps to Expand Your Prospect Base Through Niche Marketing

If you market to everyone, “your client will be no one." This is an old saying that is as true today as it was whenit was first spoken. Mortgage professionals waste an immense amount of their marketing dollars on ineffective advertising that blasts their general message to the entire marketplace. This is commonly referred to as "spraying and praying" in the marketing world.

Your Solution: Find out how to narrow your marketing focus. The result is a more effective use of your precious marketing dollars and a much higher prospect to client conversion rate for your mortgage business called Niche Marketing.

Why Niche Marketing?

Niche marketing allocates a smaller portion of your marketing budget on building a list of likely prospects and then investing the rest on converting those prospects into clients. The result is a more effective use of your precious marketing dollars and a much higher prospect to client conversion rate. The end result is a significant increase in referrals.

By definition, niche marketing is narrowing your marketing efforts to a group(s) of prospects that have a high likelihood of being interested in purchasing your product or service.

Basically, there are three types of niches, (1) business occupations such as revenue property owners or general contractors and (2) "sub-cultures" such as people who love to play golf or people who love their Harley Davidson motorcycle and, finally, (3) credit scores such as A, B or C business.

Once you come to intimately know the niches you've selected to market to, your ability to convert prospects into clients becomes infinitely easier.

Your 6 Step Niche Marketing Program

Setting up your own mortgage niche marketing program is simple using the following six step process. Each step in the process is important to the ultimate success of your niche marketing program. There are no shortcuts to niche marketing success.

Step 1 - Choose a Niche

When choosing a profitable niche to market to make sure that it's one that you can easily contact by mail. A good choice would be a niche in which mailing lists are readily available. If at all possible, your niche should be one that communicates amongst itself through community groups or events. It helps if your niche suffers from problems that a mortgage professional can solve. Lastly, ensure that your niche has the money to purchase a home.

Perhaps the easiest method of choosing a niche is to review your client list and look for groups of people in the same occupation or subculture groups. The beauty of this method is that the niche you choose has already proven that they want a mortgage.

Potential niches that you might consider are self employed business owners, first-time home buyers or people with damaged credit. Each specific niche has a unique set of problems and aggravations that they have to deal with when trying to get a mortgage.

Step 2 - Develop your Brilliant Marketing Message

Once you've chosen your niche, your next step is to develop the marketing message that you will deliver to your prospects. To develop your message you'll need to know: What problems or issues they are facing? What results are they looking for? And what is it about your service or approach that is going to interest them and make them remember you?

Materials you should expect to develop are a lead generation special report or financing guide. The guide can be 5-10 pages in length and should, (1) identify your prospect's problem, (2) create a mental picture of the negative effects of the problem, and (3) talk about the benefits your financing solutions and how you will solve their problem. This financing guide can be in written form or better yet, a CD or video.

You'll also need to create two sales letters. One sales letter will be for promoting the free financing guide and the other for leading them to take the next step and complete their application. You should also create a "What People Are Saying…" testimonial book that contains endorsements from clients in your niche with accompanying pictures of them standing next to their newly purchased home.

Lastly, you'll need a brochure. But not a standard mortgage brochure -- one that is custom developed for your niche. So if you chose to market to renters and general contractors, you should develop two different brochures that include messages specifically targeted to the needs of your niches. The brochure doesn't have to be glossy and expensive. But it does need to talk directly to your niche and address their unique problems.

Step 3 - Obtain or Generate a List of Prospects

Your list of prospects is the most valuable element of your niche marketing program. First, look for existing lists of niche prospects. For example, if you're targeting business owners you might buy a membership list from your local Chamber of Commerce.

If you chose renters and couldn't find an existing list, consider doing a deal with a local financial planner to do mailings to each other's respective client lists.
To obtain a list of professions and subcultures to consider in your niche marketing program, send a blank email to nichelist @ mortgagemarketingcoach.com with the subject: ”Niche List”.

Step 4 - Contact your Niche

It's time to assemble your marketing message and send it to your niche market. This will be done in two steps. First, send your sales letter offering your free report or guide. Ask your prospects to respond by calling you to order their free financing guide. The next step is to send the guide to those who responded to your mail out and combine it with a note stating the benefits of taking the next step with an application.

WARNING: The next step is a common area where many mortgage professionals either cheat or skip altogether by just sending a one-step offer to the list. People are tired of one-step, "in your face" marketing. They want to be courted first. By sending good, non-sales type valuable information you'll be establishing a warm relationship, which will prepare your prospect for your offer.

Step 5 - Follow up

Following up with your prospects is key! 98% of all mortgage professionals rarely follow up after their first mailing yet studies have shown that a prospect needs to see you and your offer at least three times to make a decision.

To dramatically increase response to your direct mailings you should consider following up by phone, introduce yourself, ask if they received your guide, and ask if they had any further questions.

Step 6 - Develop a Niche Referral Program

Now that you've taken the effort to establish your niche marketing program you should leverage your efforts by implementing a systematic referral program. Remember when I mentioned that it was important to choose a niche that communicates amongst itself? This is why! If you've created a happy client they will begin to talk to others in your niche.

For example, if you've targeted business owners in your city, they will start to talk about you in their monthly meetings and informal get-togethers. You can multiply this by rewarding your clients in some way when they tell their friends.

Be sure to make your referral program "systematic" so that it is an established process in your business that gets measured and for which people get rewarded for closed deals.

For instance, you might consider awarding a free dinner for two certificate or move tickets when your clients write a personal endorsement letter to two friends. You provide the endorsement letter template and they share their testimonial with two of their friends.

Conclusion

There is a misconception that if you narrow your target market that there will be fewer prospects to market to; however, you'll find the opposite to be true. Once you begin to tailor your message to the specific needs of your niche and you begin to receive word-of-mouth advertising within your niche, new clients will come out of the woodwork . In fact, your client base will actually expand.

To be competitive in today’s economy you need to consider new methods and marketing techniques to reach more high quality prospects. Niche marketing is a proven way to uncover new prospects, increase closing rates, and boost referrals.

Doren Aldana, the nation’s leading Mortgage Marketing Coach, is dedicated to helping mortgage professionals attract more clients with less effort. Aldana is also the author of a 21-part Audio Seminar, "21 Secrets of Superstar Mortgage Brokers and Loan Officers!"

To pick up your copy of this special free resource visit: http://www.mortgagemarketingcoach.com

Finding Your Niche: The Key To Internet Marketing Success.

A niche market is defined as a focused and targetable portion of a market in which a specific product or service need is being addressed. The problem with niche markets is finding them, but the reward is worth the effort.

A good, untapped niche is generally all that lies between an Internet marketer and an Internet millionaire. The world is full of niche marketing success stories, yet the untapped opportunities stretch as far and wide as the Internet itself.

Success stories range from giants like the Friendfinder Network to small-timers like your Aunt Polly, who's been selling homemade dreamcatchers on eBay at nice profits for a few years now.

Friendfinder's example is as good as any because it illustrates how a good niche just sometimes lands in our laps. When FriendFinder launched back in 1996, it was one of the first subscription-based social networking sites for adults that didn't feature "adult" content, if you know what I mean.

What Friendfinder did was really remarkable. Rather than putting all of its eggs in one basket, it protected its niche by reaching out with niche sites. Rather than addressing a very large subscription base with a single message, the network launched a series of sites that can each address a specific niche within its niche. In this way, Friendfinder is able to hold its own amid such hefty competition as MatchMaker.com and Match.com.

Finding a niche is something you can do, too. By following a series of important steps (and not skipping ahead), you will soon find your very own niche.

Do your homework

The key to finding a great untapped niche is research. You have to know where to look and what tools to use for the search. Start by brainstorming ideas. Try to think of things you are passionate about but don't really see online too often. Once you have a list of possible niche markets, it's time to do your homework. Remember - a niche is very specific. Dogs is not specific. Basset Hounds is more focused. Products or services that appeal to working professionals who own basset hounds (such as doggie day care) is better still.

Research the competition

Do a Google and Yahoo! search for the items that would fit into your niche. How many sites are involved? How many are relevant to your niche? If there are a lot, can the niche be narrowed to such an extent that there is no competition? Are there a lot of paid advertisements that already compete for the same ad space you'd expect to have? A good niche is like a good camp site - it should be inviting but not too crowded. Look for peace and quiet, then lay down your stakes and make camp.

Determine potential profitability

So, you think you have an untapped niche? Remembering that your ultimate goal is to make money, it is time to determine the potential profits that await you if you pursue your chosen niche. How much does the product or service cost? Is the price comparable to similar products or services? If not, consider whether the price is reasonable.

Remember, you have to sell the stuff. Can the product or service be sold in bulk quantities? In other words, are you going to encounter a supply problem when sales really start to pour in? Is there a limit to how much can be sold? Next, identify potential customers. Pull any available data about sales in this niche, or comparable niches.

How many sales can you reasonably expect? Go a step further. Ascertain the cost of doing business in this niche. How much will it cost to spend to advertise in niche publications? How much will it cost to be competitive with paid search bidding? Weigh potential gains against expenses and try to get a clear picture of the financial future that awaits you in this niche. Now, you have a decision to make.

Learn about tools and techniques that lead to profitability

The math you've just been doing may discourage you, and it's important to consider the financial picture as it comes into focus, but remember that with good marketing, you can often change the tide. Don't forget to factor in the potential marketing push that can lead to increased sales and profitability! The Internet is full of tools that can assist the resourceful e-commerce entrepreneur. The key is learning where to find them and how to use them.

Keyword research tools can help you build successful search engine marketing strategies that boost your site's visibility - and its profitability. Webmaster tools can provide the technical support you need to build a site that functions properly whether your audience is a potential customer or a search engine spider. Datafeed tools can help you create online stores in a matter of minutes.

Tools exist, and it's up to you to use them. Put all of the resources of the Internet behind you.

Make the niche yours

Above all else, the niche you choose must be something that arouses passion in you. If you don't care about the product or service you're promoting, that will show in everything you do. Believe in what you're doing, and all good things will come from that.

About the Author:

Dan Moore is President of NicheFinderVideos.com with an expertise in helping others find profitable online niche markets. Moore's new five-hour video series, "Niche Finder Video Seminar To Create Profit-Avalanches By Selling To Little Known Niche Markets," is now available at http://www.NicheFinderVideos.com

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Monday, July 13, 2009

Niche Marketing: Tactics to Use To Make Money With Niche Marketing

Niche marketing has always been a key any success in marketing but lately it has become quite a prominent force in the online marketing world. Many books, manuals, courses, and web sites have been developed that focus on niche marketing. It is easy to find solid resources on the Internet that can teach you how to make money with niche marketing.

Niche marketing online is a distinct segment of Internet marketing and is the quickest way to get maximum exposure if you know how to leverage the search engines to draw attention to your niche web site.

There's many things to learn to be successful and profit from niche marketing and your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) will dictate exactly how to plan your attack to successfully market to customers in your niche.

If you plan to use niche marketing to draw visitors to your web site, here's a few tactics that you can use to make money:

Niche Marketing Tactic #1, "Research"

Fully utilize all of the research mechanisms that you can find in order to make sure that you truly understand your niche and all of its nuances.

This requires understanding what tools are best to use so you can understand what your target niche market does day to day, where they spend their time online, and what makes them tick from a personal and business perspective.

Niche Market Research (http://www.nichemarketresearch.com)offers free reports and articles to help you make the most of your research time.

Niche Marketing Tactic #2, "Define your paying niche"

Clearly define who will make up your niche market and make sure that the people in that niche market are willing to pay for the solution that you provide to their problems.

A niche is a clear subset of a larger category.

An example of what a niche market is not: "People who want to learn how to shoot better scores in golf."

In this example, there are far too many people within the main category (golf) to make this a true niche. Virtually everyone who plays golf will want to play better and shoot better scores so this wouldn't qualify as a niche, much less a category worth pursuing.

An example of a niche market: "Women who play golf who want to learn how to drive the ball longer and straighter."

This would be a niche because it clearly defines and segments who you'll cater to and why they would need your service.

After clearly defining your niche market, you should make sure that they are willing to pay for your services. The easiest way to determine this in the online world (other than using common sense) is to find web sites that may be close to, or even in your niche, and see if those web sites charge a fee for their services.

In addition, you should look to see if there is a reasonable level of competition between those web sites.

If you see more than a few sites listed on a SERP (Search Engine Result Page) that cater to female golfers for a fee, chances are the people who are your target customer will pay for your services for solving their problem - women who can't consistently hit long straight drives in golf.

Niche Marketing Strategy #3, "Choosing keywords and domain names"

Research and choose your keywords carefully so you can acquire the best domain name for your site. Niche marketing most often includes maximizing the way search engines work to make sure that your web site gets listed n the first page of the SERP's from your chosen keywords. Your domain name contributes to getting those first page results.

Go to Digitalpoint's keyword suggestion tool and type in keywords that you feel people would use to find the product or service that you offer within your niche. Look at the number of searches performed per day for those keywords and review the other keywords listed.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Type the keyword phrase that you think best suits your USP's target customer into Google and assess whether or not you can reasonably compete with the sites that are listed on page 1 of the SERPs.

Can you get a page 1 ranking knowing that you'll have to compete with the sites already listed?

Repeat the process until you have decided what your main keywords will be for your product or service within your niche.

Those keywords should be in your domain name and preferably, they should be your entire domain name.

Example: if you've concluded that 'blue widgets' best suits your USP and you feel that you can compete for page 1 listings on the SERPs with the sites that come up on page 1 for the keyword 'blue widgets', then a good domain name for your niche marketing site would be 'bluewidgets.com'.

Niche Marketing Tactic #4, "Posting keyword rich articles or reports throughout the web"

Niche marketing doesn't differ from any other online search engine marketing, posting relevant content is the best way (bar none) to get the right type of traffic to your niche site.

Writing keyword rich articles or reports and posting them to high traffic web sites is a great way to make sure that you get maximum exposure within your niche market. People will use your keywords to search for information about the topic that they have interest in, and they will come across your web site on the search engines results.

Niche marketing caters to a distinct and select group of people who need what you have to offer. If you define your niche properly and make sure that your ability to solve their problem is something that they will pay for, you will have established a "money maker".

Utilize the search engines to make it easy for your niche market to find your service or product. Niche marketing is the easiest way to be successful on the Internet if you do the proper research.

About The Author

Karl Augustine -Publisher, "Starting Smart!"

*Learn SEO - Top 10 listings

Niche Marketing


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