Yesterday I wrote a post about internet marketing and I realized I wasn’t able to give a definition to the term and so forgive but in my opinion internet marketing is simply the process of using the internet to advertise and sell products and services over the internet. I think it can’t get any simpler than that.
Further I received a few questions over email from some friends asking “how to find what to sell”. That is equally interesting, so let us talk about that now.
In the real world, before we get into business and spend a lot of money in capital and maybe investing in a business, we need information to base our decisions upon, that is where feasibility studies and business plans come into the equation. You would be surprised how easier it is online.
Keep in mind that the internet is one vast library of information, with people searching for information and people providing it. People go online to find information mostly, and knowing what people were looking for, and knowing how many people were providing it can be a powerful knowledge that would spell success for your online business.
I am assuming now that you are interested in selling something online, what it is you do not know yet and so you have to first go through a process called “niche mining”. Finding what people are looking for, searching for hot marketing, and then if not too competitive… you jumping in to provide the product or information that the searchees are searching for.
When you are first starting out, it is best to stick to what you know or are familiar with, knowing about a certain subject will be helpful, especially if you have valuable information which you have acquired through personal experience, or because of your profession or activities. It is not rocket science really. Go first with your interests or your profession. This is not an absolute rule, but it would b good for beginners.
Here are the steps to take:
1. Make a list of your areas of interest or expertise, and come up with a list of the top 5 that you are most interested in.
2. Once you have that list, go to a website that shows you how many people are searching for these keywords or related keywords. There are several sites that provide information on this matter, some are even expensive subscriber based sites, but let us get you started first with this free site which is quite reliable too. Go to the Overture Keyword Tool by clicking that link or type this url in your browser, inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion.
Once there, in the space provided type in the word or the subject that you feel you are most interested in. Let us say you are interested in starting an online business that has something to do with “fishing” since it is a hobby of yours, so type fishing into the space provided and click the search button beside the box. What happens next is, you will get a tally of keywords and a corresponding number of searches conducted during a specific month. Open an excel file and put in those keywords and the figures.
You now know what keywords or phrases people are searching for and their numbers. The next step is find out how much competition there is out there, and to do that you have to go to Yahoo.com and type in each of those results.
For example: There are 75,452 searches conducted in a month for the word “fly fishing”, and after performing a search on Yahoo we find that there are 24,000,000 pages on the internet that talk about “fly fishing”; a very competitive market. The key is to find a niche based on a keyword or a key phrase, based on a good number of searches and not too stiff competition.
A specific example I can give you is the key phrase “fishing live bait” that has 16,959 searches in a month and only 7,920 webpages that have that exact phrase. It is best to identify a niche that is not too competitive to give your site a chance to outrank and find your self in the top 20 search results page for that specific keyword.
Your next step once you find a good niche is to find a product to sell. I believe you probably do not have one, and the quickest way is to find some other people’s products to sell. Go do a search on yahoo or google, and in the search box type the following text with the quotations, “affiliate program”+fishing live bait.
You will find products that can be sold online and are related to the niche. I have done this work for you and look what I found, this site www.abebooks.com, which is selling several books with titles that have “fishing live bait” in the title. What next? Check their affiliate program and if they do, sign up for it. Affiliate programs are usually free and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, business or product owners view their affiliates as business partners responsible for the success of their product. Once you have signed up for their affiliate program, you will be given a specific URL link with your affiliate number or ID included in it.
The ideas is to drive traffic you receive on your site, to the website selling these books, and that is done through your unique affiliate link. The merchant is able to track traffic coming from your site or your link and each time that traffic converts into a sale, they give you credit for it and pay you a commission.
And that is how money is made online as an affiliate.
The next step is to build a site optimized for the good keywords or phrases you have found; and with some good search engine optimization, you will be getting a significant number of targeted traffic to your site. A bunch of visitors who are looking for that specific keyword, and your site providing them the information they need.
Of course, there is more work to be done because you have to fill your site with good quality content and most importantly prepare an array of products that is related to your site. One such products are the fishing live bait ebooks, you can display images of the book with your link embedded in it that when clicked delivers the clicker to the merchant/seller’s site. Or you can create links using specific text within your posts.
Do this for all of the keyword results in each of the 5 areas of interests or expertise that you have listed down.
Identify good niches, find products to sell, build your site.
But wait, it doesn’t stop there… you have to promote your site as well to get traffic. There are many ways to promote your site; you can submit the site to directories, submit articles related to your theme to article directories with your article containing a link back to your site, or do link exchanges with other similar themed sites, or even drive instant traffic through pay per click advertising. There are many ways, however I wouldn’t want to get into details because that is one huge topic to cover.
So that is how to do it. You are probably thinking, wow that is a lot of work. Of course, there is some work involved, any business does entail some work. It is not manual labor, yet work nonetheless.
That is why there are tools to help you, like for example in niche research I use a combination of several tools, but one such handy tool I could recommend is Niche Inspector you can go and click that link to take you to the product and download a free guide there.
I hope you found this post helpful, good luck mining for niches!
cforms contact form by delicious:days
March 5th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
the insurance companies don’t want you to know…
Information on the life insurance industry…