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Making Money Tips Finding a Niche Solutions e-commerce News Web Designer Tips Money Back

Firstly you will need to do a little brainstorming to find those areas of your life that are possible ideas to build your business around. The few hours or so that you spend here, in preparation, will determine exactly how big your success will be. One of Site Sells statements about this stage of preparation is PREpare, Not REpair. Don't rush with process, you are not in a race, there is no stop watch ticking. Some careful planning and fine-tuning will pay you big dividends down the road. Ken Evoy (Director of Site Sell) has some excellent advice on how to find your subject niche! Ready? Good... lets continue and find your...

Passion

Passion makes work fun and easy…

Don’t forget to look right under your nose...

Think about what you do in a typical day, and what you’ve learned from it…

What activities do you enjoy most about your current occupation?...

Problems are also a good source for ideas because problems need solutions!…

We all encounter obstacles, problems, and difficult people in the course of whatever it is that we do every day. What are the three biggest problems in your work place? What are your biggest pains as a parent, or as a stepparent, or as a gardener, etc.?

Now repeat all the questions above, except pretend that you are in a “five years ago” time warp. Yes, ask yourself the same questions, except place yourself where you were five years ago. Next, repeat for ten years ago. To paraphrase an old saying...

“You’ve forgotten more about some things than other folks will ever know.” Call friends. Ask your kids. Phone your parents or your siblings… or anyone else who can jog your memory. It’s so easy to miss what others see. As I've already said... Your mission, should you decide to accept it (!), and it is not as easy as it sounds, is to find a subject that you really know and like. Click here to see a list of starter ideas to get your neurons firing. Consider getting Site Build It!’s Brainstorm It! to do it all for you. It can build, research, and help you analyze an endless stream of HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords. What a time-saver!

By now you should have a list of ideas which are all possible subjects to build your online business around. The next stage of our brainstorming stage is to prune that list to dig out the most profitable - high demand - low supply keywords.

To do this there are several tools you can use like wordtracker.com or Google's Keyword Research Tool. One of the tools I use is Search It!, a free tool from Site Build It which is linked and works together with wordtracker, yahoo overture and major search engines to bring you search statistics for keyword analysis. Ok that all sounds good and well but how do they work? and most importantly how can you use them to find your own profitable niche?

For this exercise we will use Search It by Site Sell.

Open Search It! (Site Build Its free keyword analysis tool) by clicking here (If you are running a pop-up blocker, please be sure to click on the pop-up blocker help link for important information.)

STEP 1 - Select “Brainstorming” from the Search Category menu.

Site Build It

STEP 2 - Select ether “US Yahoo! Keyword Selector Tool ” or "UK Yahoo! Keyword Assistant Tool" from the Search Type menu. (these tool now owned by Yahoo was previously call "Overture")

Site Build It

STEP 3 - Here you will enter a topic or keyword you want to research. Lets say for for this example you want to know how many people are looking for health topics on the internet (DEMAND). Go ahead and type health into the "1st Search Term" "SETP 3" .

Lets recap on what you should now have in the search tool

Now hit the "Search It" button.

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The number in the left column illustrates the amount of time that keyword was searched for in the proceeding month. This gives you an indication of the DEMAND (by your potential visitors) for each keyword that contains the word “health.”

We have now got a good idea of what your potential visitors are looking for and what's in DEMAND and also by how much, for a variety of keywords (some of which will become your HIGHPROFITABILITY, Keyword-Focused topics) that contain the word “health.” If our results at this stage only returned a very small number, lets say under 100, then already you should probably consider trying another subject from our list due to its lack of demand.

Time for some pruning!
Ever seen someone gardening and cutting back branches that were not baring fruit? You are ready to cut out the LOW-PROFITABILITY topics from the list of searched health topic keywords you found in the previous step.

Open up the Search It by Site Sell and enter the following into the search fields:

Now hit the "Search It" button to view the current SUPPLY.

Google Research Tool Image

Repeat the same process for each of the “fashion”-containing keywords that you found in your DEMAND WINDOW. Yes, seriously, do a search for each keyword. It is a bit tedious, but the research will pay off in spades.

Before you do those searches, create a MASTER KEYWORD LIST. I recommend that you do this either in a simple text file or via a database or spreadsheet program. A database or a spreadsheet will speed things up and
provide you with extra functionality. Here is an example

KEYWORD DEMAND SUPPLY SITE INFORMATION
health 1053522 841,000,000  
health club 308025 172,000,000  
mental health 261241 182,000,000  
health food 224123 568,000,000  
health care 186042 754,000,000  

The Process
1) Enter the keyword itself into the column labeled KEYWORD -- copy-and-paste to avoid typos.
2) Enter how many times it is searched (info that you found in the DEMAND WINDOW) into the DEMAND column.
3) Enter how many sites Search It! finds (in your SUPPLY WINDOW) in your column labeled SUPPLY.
4) Read the listings for the Top 20 sites that Search It! returns for each keyword. Make brief notes in the fourth column, SUPPLY SITE INFO -- no need to visit the sites yet (perhaps just a quick click to the home page if you need a bit more info). Just get a flavor for the kinds of sites that each KEYWORD search delivers.

Now it’s time to pick the keywords with the best PROFITABILITY. These will be the keywords with high DEMAND (i.e., tons of searches) and low SUPPLY (i.e., not too many sites found). Eliminate any words that appear too competitive (i.e., SUPPLY is too high in WINDOW #2 or bidding competition is too intense), especially if they are not searched upon very often (i.e., DEMAND is low in WINDOW #1). Also take into consideration the SUPPLY SITE INFO. Is this information related to the topic you want your site to be about? If not then you wouldn't want your search engine link to be lost in a list of sites irrelevant to your topic.

If all of this process seems a little too tedious for you then you should consider getting Site Build It!’s Brainstorm It! to do it all for you. It can build, research, and help you analyze an endless stream of HIGH-PROFITABILITY keywords in a snap. What a time-saver!

Another good tip while doing this research is to browse some of the sites brought up from the google Single Keyword SUPPLY results, to see what ideas you can get from the competition. The first 10 - 20 sites listed are ranked high for a reason. There is a learning curve to getting high rankings like this but the goods news is that by scanning through these sites you can see how they communicate there message and get some good ideas for content for your own site. Apart from content you can also find out who their merchants are by drilling down into the content. Click on the banner ads and text links, following these links out to their destinations to see what kind of merchants they have chosen as affiliate-partners. Or perhaps it’s a straight advertising deal -- make a note of these merchants as potential advertisers, too. If a given merchant fits your concept and has an affiliate program, enter the kind of merchandise it sells, and the “join page” URL, into another column in your list headed PARTNERS. More to come about how to find your trading partners later.

Plow through your MASTER KEYWORD LIST until you have completed all columns for all of your HIGH-PROFITABILITY “health”-containing keywords.

I can’t over-emphasize the importance of your MASTER KEYWORD LIST. Your entire site, including its most profitable directions, lies in this blueprint. Please do this.

Quick TIP
If you find creating your own list (with a database or spreadsheet program) to be too daunting, and if a text list is too awkward, let Site Build It!’s server-side Brainstorm It! do your work for you!

  1. Brainstormer -- Enter a “seed word” and use one of the Brainstormer Tools to generate hundreds of related words! Save yourself time and energy.
  2. Master Keyword List (MKL) -- This is where you search, manipulate, analyze and delete your keywords.

If you want a flavor of the power of SBI's Brainstormer, then check out wordtracker at www.wordtracker.com. Brainstormer which comes as part of the Site Build It package, uses the power of wordtracker's (professional version) to make this process of finding profitable niches so much faster.

Time for a little recap:

Create Value Where There is Demand & The Money Will Come

Again the key to success for selling online is to create high quality content that your viewers will be interested in. People are not looking for a sales pitch, they want relevant content. Say you are into Concrete, Yes Cement! You've done all the research described in the previous section and found the most profitable keywords. Next you go out and purchase a domain name, lets say concrete-advise.com, then you go ahead and start writing about concrete. If you know enough about it and all the benefits it can bring, you will be able to write highly interesting content that will keep your visitor reading. By the time they come across an affiliate link you have already PREsold your product, this key to increasing your clickthrough and your conversion rates. What I have just told you will multiply the amount of sales you generate many times over! The main advantage of talking about something that interests you is that you are way ahead of all those people just trying to make money from your niche by writing about something they know little about. Readers can often tell the difference and will be drawn to true enthusiasm! You are already an expert and people are looking for what you know! Just taking the idea of “concrete” alone, lets look at how you could expand on that one subject - concrete painting - decorative concrete - concrete in the garden - repairing concrete - things to do with cement blocks - concrete trade shows - concrete swimming pools - concrete molds - cleaning concrete. Here’s what I’m getting at… by placing excellent affiliate links into your highly profitable, keyword rich content, you have the magic formula you need to developing multiple streams of income from just one site or page. All by talking about something you enjoy!

Find Your Niche Product

Everyone has a passion or interest. We have all had experiences in life, some good, some not so good. Which ever it is, you have within yourself something that is of great value and benefit to others. This page will help you tap into those areas of your life and show you how to channel that passion and motivation to making a successful home online business.

The key to success for selling online is to create valued content where there is demand. Your visitor doesn't want a sales pitch, they are not looking for hype or media excellence, they are looking for relevant up-to-date content that is of value to them.

You are embarking upon a truly rewarding journey. Have no doubts -- this is “winnable” e-commerce. It’s totally under your control.