Niche marketing is one of the most powerful marketing forms existent on the internet today. To be able to take advantage of it, it is important to understand what niche marketing is.
Niche is nothing but people who are interested in the same thing. Some may be interested in Golf while some others in Fly-fishing. Here Golf and Fly-fishing are niches. Niche marketing is a conception of getting involved in an area of marketing that interests you and making money from it. It also means targeting and attracting those groups of people that belong to your niche and making money selling them products. The idea is to find a niche that isn’t too populated. It takes a great deal of research to be able to find the market that has a lot of demand and yet less competition.
Finding a niche
First thing that needs to be done is finding a product. Before deciding upon a product or service that interests you, a ton of research needs to be done. There are so many niches on the internet, that it is certainly no mean task to find a good niche. So, picking a niche with little competition is the hardest part, but once you find it, things get easier.
Keyword research
After finding a niche, you will have to do some research and come up with keywords for that niche. There are several tools that suggest good keywords and keyword phrases. Not only the keywords, they also give you the number of searches made for that keyword and also the competition. Suppose your niche is “Golf”. Type in Golf in the keyword column and these tools will bring back several keywords for Golf, like “Golf Balls” and “Golf clubs” etc. Choose what exactly you are going to target. Never target a wide niche like Golf, always target sub niches like “Golf Balls”. Look for keywords that are in demand and have less competition. The reason for not wanting to target wide niches is because of the heavy competition and if you are new, you may not even stand a chance against the big wigs up there. Anyway, why would you want to take the difficult route when there is an easy way out?
Keyword rich domain
Once you settle on the niche, next step is to check if there is a keyword rich domain name available. Many people don’t think this is important, but having a domain with your keywords helps in the search engine ranking, thus sending heavy traffic your way, resulting in more sales, and finally our goal of more money.
Content site creation
You will then need to tackle this ‘Golf balls’ niche you have chosen. You will have to have a website. Nowadays, with all the free templates out there, creating a website is no big deal. But if you must, outsource the creation of website. Once the website is ready, since niche marketing is based on content, you will have to add content to your site. Write or outsource the work, but have at least ten articles written on the niche. Use the keywords in the articles.
Next comes the monetization of your website.
Monetization of the website
There are several ways this can be done. You can take the adsense route, go with the affiliate products, use PLR products, or create your own product.
Adsense: You can add adsense blobs to your website and earn a little money, but the money adsense brings in isn’t really much and not worth it in my opinion, if you are looking at the bigger picture.
Affiliate products: Having affiliate products related to your niche on your website is a great way of making money. Go to Clickbank and you will find many products. Look for the ones related to Golf balls, either Golf ball sets or ebooks on the latest golf balls or old ones. I suggest ebooks as they sell better, being digital in nature. Check for the products that are popular and pay at least 50% commission. Try and get more than two products and have them on your website. Another option is to buy PLR products and sell them on your website. You don’t have to write your own ebooks. Having said that, although it is not essential, there is nothing that can match your own product.
Submitting the website
Although, this point does not need to be mentioned, you need to submit your website to the search engines once it is ready.
Website promotion
The crucial thing to any marketing is advertising. Having the greatest site on earth is not going to help one bit, if there is no promotional plan. How will people know that your site even exists or that you have this product up for sale?
There are several methods of advertising. This in itself is another topic for research. There is Adwords or article marketing, and many other ways. If you have no experience with Adwords, stay away from it in the beginning until you learn the pros and cons of Adwords, and until after you have made some money on your website using free methods like article marketing. You need to spend money for Adwords and if you are not experienced, you may end up losing a lot of money. You wouldn’t want that in the beginning.
Write articles and submit them to article directories, like ezine articles and go articles, and make sure you give a link back to your website in the bio box of your article. Submit at least one per week. This way you will have many articles rotating and this increases the chance of attracting more traffic.
You can also join forums and make sensible posts with your link in the signature line. Don’t do blatant advertising in the forums, that will only attract negativity and some forums may even ban you. The main thing about forums is building trust and in the long run this form of advertising works wonders.
This is all there is to the ‘niche marketing’ giant that has been making the rounds on the internet, with its tentacles spread in all corners and scaring the people that don’t know anything about it. Now it is time for you to tackle it. Go on and make money!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
How To Make Money Online With Elance
Do you write? Can you string together words and sentences – like this? Would you like to make a few extra bucks (maybe more…) without the hassles of a traditional job? You would? Then welcome to the wonderful world of freelance writing on Elance.
-- What is Elance?
Elance is a website forum, a marketplace that allows people from all over the world to actively participate in buying and selling their products and services. As a freelance writer you can offer your writing services with very little effort on your part. If you can surf the web, use email and generally communicate in English (yup, it’s the principal language used on Elance) then you are pretty much good to go.
-- How Does It Work?
It’s quite simple; Elance is a subscription based website that charges you a small fee to become a member. At the time of writing basic monthly subscriptions begin at $30. Once you’re registered you can browse all the active (open) projects and bid on the ones that interest you. As a member you can even set up a personal store front (profile) and showcase your products and services to potential buyers (and it’s not unusual to get direct enquiries from buyers this way.)
-- If Your Bid Is Chosen
If your bid is selected you will get the chance to decide if you want to proceed with the project or not. If you decide to go ahead then you and the buyer enter into an agreement (Elance provides templates and samples at no charge.) You provide the services to the buyer and the buyer pays you what they promised – simple.
Elance gets a small commission on all projects that are awarded. But don’t worry, there is no cost to you for winning projects – that’s the buyers responsibility and the buyer will be billed directly (it doesn’t even come out of the agreed project payments!)
-- So How Much Work Is Available To You?
That’s a good question; after all if you are going to spend at least $30 a month on a basic subscription, you really need to figure out if the subscription is worth it. The number of open projects varies, however it’s not unusual to find between 150 and 200 writing projects available at any given time.
-- And How Much Are These Projects Worth?
There are currently two types of project postings on Elance: BASIC and SELECT. If you have only chosen a basic membership then you can only bid on Basic projects. You will need a Select membership to bid on the select projects.
And the reason you would buy a select membership is simple – select projects pay more, are less likely to end without being awarded (yes there are people on Elance who post projects to “get a feel for the market” and have no intention of actually awarding the project!)
So back to the main question – how much are the projects really worth? Again, this data varies over time (I cover this and more in my new report on www.ElanceExposed.com), however here’s a quick ‘rule of thumb’ that I’ve found to be fairly accurate: If you multiply all the number of open projects by $250 and multiply that again by 70% you will get a fairly good idea. For example, 200 open projects X $250 X 70% = $35,000
-- But What About the “Big” Projects?
There are big projects on Elance, they get posted infrequently but they are available. As you might imagine these projects are usually posted by companies – not people – and they usually pay 5 to 10 times what a regular project pays. With this kind of payout you can imagine the competition is quite high, however pitching to a business is not the same as pitching to a person.
-- What About Gotchas And Other Issues?
There aren’t too many. The biggest one that springs to mind is that Elance currently does not offer a refund policy on their subscriptions. You actually have to get on board and sign up to get a feel for the Elance market. And to be quite frank, you really need to give yourself a fighting chance and sign up for three months.
If you signed up for a three month Select membership you would currently pay $150 USD. That’s not a huge amount of money, but it is a bit steep if you find out that Elance is not for you.
-- Here Are a Few Elance Quick Facts:
* 100,000+ potential buyers visit Elance Online every week
* Web's #1 consulting site and top 1,000 most visited site
* Awarded Best of the Web by Forbes (2003)
* Reliability Certified by the Better Business Bureau
-- And Here Are a Few Neat Benefits of Using Elance:
* Easily market yourself to a global pool of prospective clients.
* Pitch your services at prices you establish.
* Make a profit as an independent consultant.
It’s true, thousands of service firms and individuals take advantage of Elance as a marketing channel. And Elance actively supports your efforts with aggressive online and offline marketing delivering high volumes of traffic.
-- Remember, You Can Win Work 3 Different Ways:
(1) Answer the phone after people check out your online profile and work samples.
(2) Develop pre-priced ‘buy now’ packages that buyers can purchase instantly.
(3) Bid on projects – many buyers post their requirements directly online.
-- Conclusions
Before you dive into Elance you might want to do some digging on the Internet to get a feel for what others have experienced. For instance you might want to find out more about the bid success ratios, the real differences between Basic and Select projects, how many projects will pay you more than $1,500 and so forth.
You can make money on Elance if you know what you are doing, and quite frankly all it takes is a little time and patience. Good luck, and happy bidding!
JAMES BURCHILL is an experienced Internet Marketing & Business Development specialist providing strategic and tactical solutions to select clients seeking to architect their on and off line marketing success. James is a published author, a passionate advocate of technology and the Internet, as well as an avid study of classical advertising and marketing strategies. Prior to establishing his own unique consulting practice, he served as VP of Professional Services and VP of IT & Consulting and implemented multi-million dollar solutions for Oracle, the British and US Governments, Rolls Royce UK and many others. James taught Computer Science at one of Toronto's leading colleges and continues to coach private clients on a select basis. For more information visit James' Elance site at http://elance-exposed.jamesburchill.com or checkout his main website at http://www.jamesburchill.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Burchill |  |
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
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