How to carry out a detailed research on a niche

In my last post , I discussed how you can find a profitable niche quickly. Here I will talk about how you can carry out a detailed research on a niche before going into a full blown paid marketing campaign.

Once you have quickly discovered a proven niche and find it profitable , you may want to go deeper into the niche by setting up a paid campaign for the product. But to make sure that you aren't wasting your advertising bucks on a product that is already saturated or has a high refund rate , you should learn how the product has been performing.

For this , you will need to know exactly what people think about the product or other products in that niche. A good way to get honest opinions about a product in any niche is to be among the people who are using it. This way , you get to hear reviews directly from your consumers. Where to find them ? Do a google search with the niche + forum to discover the forums under that niche. For example , if you are researching a weight loss product , then do a search for weightloss+forums and you will find the top forums talking about weight loss.

Join the top five forums and take notes on what people are saying after buying the product. You can also get to know which products are being recommended in the forums and find out if they have any affiliate program. This way , you already have a market ready to consume the product .All you have to do is place your link before them.

If you have questions about the product , then ask these people as a consumer interested in the product. Once your questions are answered , you will not just know which products to promote , you'd also know why they are liked and you can use those benefits when you write an article to promote the product or create an ad for it.

Thus, by researching a niche you don't just get to know the best products in the niche , but you also know how to reach out to the consumers so that they will convert into buyers. You can apply this strategy to research absolutely any niche out there to extract the most profitable ones without spending a dime on your research.

How to find a profitable niche quickly ?

A constant question that keeps coming back from people in the affiliate marketing business is how to find a profitable niche ? I am going to tell you exactly how you can quickly find a profitable niche that too without too much hard work. Some of the tactics might seem a little too easy , but don't be fooled by the simplicity of the process because they do generate sales.

Let's start with the most popular method.Do you visit Myspace or other web 2 sites like Facebook and Slashdot ? You might have noticed that most of the pages show ads. If you click on them , then you will see many of them leading you to merchant websites that have products that sell like crazy. They have associate programs or affiliate programs that you can join and earn from. These are proven products and convert well on websites with related content or similar niches.

The second method involves the internet company that introduced the concept of affiliate marketing - Amazon. If you login to an amazon account , you will find a link with the best selling products at the top , but amazon doesn't pay more than 10% profit when you get sales through their links. So a better idea is to collect the name of the brands or products and to become a direct affiliate for that company and earn more profits as an affiliate.


When searching on Google , do you keep an eye on the right side bar that shows the Google adwords advertisements ? Well, I have picked up several products from various niches just by monitoring those advertisements and how long they run. Obviously, if the ads are running for some time , say a month or more , then the advertisers are in profit .Otherwise,why would they waste time and money with that ad ?

You can pick up the products from there and write a Squidoo lens on that product. That way, even if you don't get any sales when beginning with the product , you don't lose money , but if you get enough sales to grap your attention , then you can create a google adwords campaign for the same product and profit more. But it's up to you whether you stick to free advertising or a paid one.

Now that you know some cool techniques you can use to discover niches and products that are already converting well, you need to take action. Go out and do a few searches on any niche around which your site is built or you may want to write a lens about it. Once you have picked the product write a quick article or a good lens depending on the time you want to devote to the experiment. The trick is not in finding the profitable niche or a magic product , but in taking action as soon as you find one. When you see some profits , you will get into a habit of entering new niches and profiting from products that are already in demand.

Google's very own Squidoo-Knol

There is not a single soul who will contradict the fact that Google has changed the way we obtain information by making it easily accessible , but even Google admits that not everything that happens on the internet is as organized as they would want it to be. Google is about to change that with Knol.

Knol, as Google puts it , stands for a unit of Knowledge.Google plans to bring together a group of people who have expertise in their field and want to share their knowledge with others for free. Knol will be like any other web page hosted by Google and written by authors. The idea is to disseminate knowledge to the masses for free . If you are good at something and want to share it , then you won't have to hold yourself back because you aren't good at promoting what you know.Your work ends with creating your knol.

Google will be adding these knols to their search results very quickly as they do not have to go out and spider the content on other websites for it because they will have it saved internally. When someone searches on Google or it's content networks with those keywords , your Knol is likely to show up. Once the beta testing process is completed , participation in knols will be completely open. So it might be a good idea to create your own Knols , much like creating your own Squidoo lenses. One doesn't need to look too far to know what Knol would mean to an advertiser or an internet marketer who is ready to adapt and learn. To learn more about Knol , Click here

How to beat your competition by spying on them for free

Here's how you can spy on your competition without their knowledge and use that knowledge to beat them in their own niche. SEO for Firefox is a free plugin that gives you information on any website you want to analyze. After installation it sits at the bottom of your browser and automatically generates information about any website that you search on Google or Yahoo.

Every time you search for a keyword , you can see details about the site under the search results for that website. The information includes set up date of a website, pagerank , traffic for the site, sites linking back to the website , number of pages indexed in Google and much more. If you study the results , you can understand why a page ranks so highly on Google for that search term. Once you know what keeps it at the top of Google , you can use the information to improve the position of your own website for those key words.

There are two ways the plugin lets you obtain the data.You can either use the manual mode where you have to click on the question mark beside the data generated for each website during the searches or you can generate them automatically.

It's important that you keep the plugin switched on every time you do a search.Otherwise, you could be missing out on valuable information on your competition. When doing the searches , check the seo for firefox icon at the bottom of your browser is colored .If it's not colored ,then it's off.You would have to right click on it to switch it on to get the results to show for the search results. Download your SEO for Firefox from here

How to add rss feeds to squidoo lenses

Adding RSS feeds to your squidoo lenses is a good way to keep the lens content fresh.This is a big help when managing several lenses and having to update the content almost everyday. So how to add rss feeds to your Squidoo lens ?

It's a simple process. When creating the lens , add an RSS module to it. Rearrange it's layout on the lens by using the drag and drop buttons. Give your RSS module a title.It could be anything relevant to the feeds you are generating , for example if your lens is on staying fit , you can title the rss module as "Health News from around the world". Give the module a subtitle if you want , this is optional .You can go back and edit it anytime. If you want the feeds from your blog or another site you are familiar with , then you may want to use the description box as well.

Now it's time to add the Rss feeds url to the lens. For this , visit the site you want to collect the rss feeds from and locate the RSS feed icon. When you click on the icon it will take you to the RSS feed page from where you can copy the correct rss feed url. Type or paste this url in the url box of the RSS module.

You can choose the number of headlines you want to show on your lens. I usually allow 3 feeds and an excerpt of 100 characters. Choose how frequently you want the module to be updated and whether you want them to use html. Once you are done , click save. Now the module should automatically collect RSS feeds from the feed url.

You can now make any changes to the title and subtitle by clicking on edit. Once you have prepared the lens and added the rss feed, click on the Publish button. The rss module will always keep adding fresh content to your lens without you having to worry about it.

How to Make Money with Squidoo

There are several ways to make money with Squidoo , but the one I am going to focus on is getting sales through your Squidoo lenses. Unlike several article directories , Squidoo lets you embed your affiliate links in your lenses. This helps in increasing your sales because you don't have to direct the traffic to a landing page as squidoo itself becomes your landing page.But for the traffic to convert into sales you have to understand the psychology of your target customer.

Most of the traffic on Squidoo lenses comes from Google. If you search for a popular product on Google , then chances are that you will get at least one Squidoo lens for that product in the search results on the first page of Google. If not, then it's an open invitation to build a lens around that product and let google make you money with Squidoo.

When building a lens , always start with an introduction to what you will discuss in your article. This should be followed by the text boxes. Often customers search for a particular product or a definite brand because they have heard positive reviews about the product. In that case, your work becomes easier as you will only have to drive them to the sales page. Keeping in mind the psyche of the customer, try to write short paragraphs instead of giving out too much unrelated information that might put off the customer.

Squidoo allows you to use images and videos on your lenses. Take advantage of these features and upload related videos or images for the product you are promoting. Many people are the visual kind and a video or image can sometimes make you more money with squidoo lenses than a bunch of text does.

Another important aspect about driving more target traffic is to add new content to your lens at regular intervals.A good way to do this is to add an RSS module to your lens.You can do this by typing your keyword in the " find rss" box.This will keep your content fresh and Google spiders will crawl your lens often and keep you listed on the first page for your product. Thus, you can expect Google to send traffic searching for your product in the search term to your lens thereby helping you make more money with Squidoo.