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Tags: bookmarks, market research

If you don’t know what a niche is or why you should pick a niche, please refer to the niche marketing articles on the main site for more information. When you understand the principle, you’ll often find that either you know exactly what topic you want to start a blogging business in or you face the difficult decision of picking a niche that you can be successful in.

Some people feel picking a niche market is the hardest decision to make when starting a blogging business . It can certainly be a frustrating process of trial and error before you get the right mix in the complex recipe that needs to incorporate demand, products and a playing field at a level you can compete on. If you pick a highly competitive field with experienced players while you yourself are a mere beginner you are unlikely to succeed. If you pick a low demand niche with only a few products to promote then your results may be insufficient to warrant the time spent on developing a blogging business around it.

Don’t pick too competitive niches to start with

Although high demand niches in topics such as golf, dog training, pharmacy, forex, insurance, gambling, dating, real estate and marketing products have a lot of promotable products and PLR and MRR material to use, unless you have insider knowledge (ie you play golf, you have worked in real estate) then these topics may be just too competitive for a beginner.

Having an inside knowledge of a topic is the best place to start when picking a niche market and you may be surprised to know just how much inside knowledge you already have about a niche that can turn out to be very profitable.

As an example, many people, especially since the release of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” film and book have an avid interest in being more proactive about reducing their carbon footprint and making “green” decisions regarding their waste, their appliances, their heating and water usage and cleaning products – to mention just a few issues. So within the wide topic of environmental conservation there are many small green pastures where someone new can place a toe in the water and get a feel for the potential in a specific niche.

Do pick a niche that you may have some insider knowledge of

Let’s imagine that solar panels are something that this new marketer has either installed (to heat their swimming pool) or is considering using to do so. They make a note of sites they visit and get product brochures as they research for themselves what brand to get and how it can be used. In the process they learn a great deal about the topic so that they can make an informed and economical decision. If that research is expanded somewhat, then the information that has been collected can help someone else reach a faster decision, especially if you draw up a few charts with comparisons. (example: for energy saved, capacity, price, location, installation, weight, modifications to existing structures, solutions for problems that may occur etc.)

So the first place to go looking for a niche to pick is in the topics you may already have done some research or had some education in already. Being an “expert” on a topic is so much easier when you really do know what you are talking about! Making a list of your job descriptions and home improvement skills is a start. It is highly likely that if you have spent time researching a topic, that other people will also have done so, and therefore new people will be starting to. This may be a good niche for a blogging business.

Get new ideas for niches by visiting bookstores

The next step, if this avenue doesn’t throw up something you want to use, is to visit a library, a bookshop or a magazine area in a large newsagency. Wherever there is a large range of books or magazines on a topic, there is likely to be a high demand for niche information within the topic. Make notes about large topics that you might be interested in but don’t leave the store without narrowing down five possible niche sub topics to do some further research on.

Unfortunately, research is somewhat addictive and you will need to be extremely firm with yourself to overcome the mind numbing procrastination that can occur when there is too much to choose from. Imagine Mary Poppins ( or even better the teacher at school that didn’t take sh** from you or the boss who is always looking at his watch) standing over you and commit to decide on five possible niches before you leave the store.

It is preferable to pick one topic with five niches – (example: “native [to specific area] flowers for rock gardens” – succulents, perennials, bushes, rockery landscaping and water features) than to pick five topics with one niche each (example:  “collecting” – [your country's] stamps, “cooking” – bread recipes, “work at home ” – selling brick a brack on ebay, “cars” – how to avoid buying a lemon, “finance”- setting up a trust fund for your granchildren.)

You can also niche market research to pick a niche using various “analysis” or authority internet sites for inspiration. The page link above has several links to sites that will help you with more advanced niche choices by displaying trends and high search topics.

Keep a niche ideas notepad for future blogging business projects

By all means keep a “niche ideas notepad” with these new great ideas in them but when you are just beginning, diversifying too soon will give you insufficient time on each project to develop it into a business that will make an income for you. Try to pick 5 niches within one related topic at first, so that your site can really offer benefit and diversity to a reader. You will gain by being able to cross promote related niches and also have more approval from search engines for your main topic when you can add internal linking to your promotional efforts.

When you have built your mini “book” made up of niche chapters around a sub topic and monetized it with products or advertising and have spent some time promoting it and building rank and links, only then move on to the next topic to start the process again. You will still continue to promote and maintain your first sites but at a lower level of activity so you will then have time to start and develop the new project. Doing several projects at one time can work for some people, but in general, most people will merely end up with several never finished projects.

The last piece of advice I have is to start as soon as possible to treat your hobby as a business. It is normal to try this and that, and dilly daddle about experimenting while you are learning and it’s a good thing to do, but each new thing you try eats into your time. Incorporating adsense, affiliate products, your own product, a membership site, a forum …. all these things take time. You cannot know if this is how you want to make money until you try it .

It is part of the learning process we all go through, generally on our own without anyone to guide us. Only the written words of prior travellors – most of whom are hoping to be sent a cut of the cost of your education.

Take nothing as given until it has proven itself to you by you doing it.

When it has been proven a good strategy continue your education by investing in better tools and organizing a schedule of work that moves your business forward in the proven direction. When you know something already, stop researching for more information and use your knowledge to improve your business. Further free products are a distraction from your goal and a waste of time that could be spent doing a task that will improve your business. Never forget your goal, whatever it is. Playing the field won’t win the game.

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Tags: , find a niche, niche market, niche market research

There are now a number of sites that aim to give a value to your blog. These can be worth a visit to get an idea about what to charge for text links if you aim to use these for monetization of your blog. They can also give you a picture that will lend your blog some credibility by indicating to your visitors that an independent site has assessed your effort and put a monetary value on it. For example the one link says my blog is worth 105,800!!!

105,800
How much money is your blog worth?

Honestly, this is really an exercise in ego stroking but it is still rather fun and it is also an indication of improvement even if the value that is given is quite probably far less than they say. These are two sites I discovered but there are probably many more. If you really want people to be impressed visit

http://www.myblogvalue.com

You need to fill out a survey for this. I suggest the first time, you fill it out as honestly as you can so that you can see how it works. You’ll still get the ego stroke at a fairly high level and then (if you don’t mind lying), do it again to get a more impressive sticker for your blog that says that you are worth far more. It’s a silly game after all and you yourself should not be too impressed and start banking the money!

This was my first and honest result, I didn’t go back for a second run as I’m not so easily impressed but I don’t mind displaying the result and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was happy to see I didn’t bomb out!

For a more realistic result visit the following url, type in your url at the top and click CHECK

http://www.dnscoop.com/

A page will pop up that analyses your backlinks, alexa rank. page rank etc and offer more conservative estimates about what your blog is worth. This site does the work for you using an algorithm so you can’t fudge the result and big note your blog. Your best option for comparative analyses here is to enter several urls to sites that you know. Perhaps you have a blog or two that has barely any content, compare their result to the blog you are working to promote, then put in Pro Blogger or a similar very popular blog and compare their results with yours. Then you have a benchmark so you know how far you have come and much further you have to go.

 

My Site is worth
$1,524

How much is
your site worth?

If you feel that your blog needs a jazzy sticky image to show it’s worth something – go for it. Your knowledgeable customers won’t be impressed but less experienced bloggers and readers will have more respect if you can show them that you know what you are doing enough to create a sticker showing a high value.For myself, as I build more links and continue to promote, I will return to keep checking progress for my own research, to make sure I’m still progressing upwards in the value stakes.

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Best Blogs on Blogging _ Pro Blogger

I have been reading Pro Blogger for some time now and I always enjoy the posts. It is a high readership blog and has contributions from many other people, as well as from its owner Darren Rowse. This really is a top of the line Pro blog on blogging. It’s fast to load and change pages, the related posts and links to other content is outstanding and frankly – I have to say that I’m outright envious and know this is the standard of blog I’m aspiring to create and as yet don’t have the time or resources to do.

I just finished reading this post about targeted readers
Targeting Your Readers
and as with all tricky questions it always seems to come back to – market research.

Rather than give specific strategies he returns the question to us all and asks us.

What type of readers do you want?

Knowing what you are blogging for and assessing who may want to read what you write is hard. Our heads are full of info and send us off in many different directions and pinning down specific goals is like trying to keep a tablecloth on an outside patio table on a windy day. If you want to keep it there you can peg it down or weight the edges but simply putting a bowl on the table is not enough.

Pinning down your objectives is something worth doing. Similar to nicheing it requires that you cut something into bite sized bits. I have a feeling this is some advice I’ll have difficulty following. Stubborn as I am, I will come around because I can see results when I follow good advice.

So, are you wanting beginners, intermediates or advanced readers? he asks.

I know it to be true that beginners can’t understand advanced information because they have no clear picture yet about the concepts. Just as a toddler may guess “dog?” when it sees a goat for the first time, beginners will make mistaken assumptions about what advanced users take for granted. Likewise advanced users will skim a beginners article and dismiss it because they already know that and don’t want to waste their time on it.

Short of having three blogs however, how can you assess where the intermediate lies. The extremes are obvious. If you have no domain name or host and the only html you know is a text link – you are a beginner. If you can ftp and go straight to a page in the blog template and change some php, then you are fairly advanced.

In the middle are all the intermediate shades of grey in between.

Although ProBlogger is by name on pro blogging he has this post there for beginners.
Blogging For Beginners

Most people writing blogs on blogging are not experts, they are just taking turns in passing on information (me included). I fall into the intermediate range and claim no advanced expertise but to people who don’t know what a blog is I’m an expert – so point of view or perspective is also a factor.

Best I can say is try to be consistent and honest. I don’t mean brutally honest or nakedly honest – both are embarrassing to the audience. I just mean sincere.

If you have a sense of humour and tell a story, embellishing the truth, then let people know (subtly) that this is you. People will not need it spelled out if all your posts have a similar flavour. Don’t change track from post to post and be earnest in one and flippent in another, unless the topic itself is an obvious cause for the change. Remember when you write that people have no facial expressions to use as clues to your meanings.

Finding your blogging voice is important and it will take you a few tries. I started writing my blogs quite stiltedly as an educator or teacher, couching the articles in personality less business speak but my own voice wanted to be heard and it came through in the end.

I have a quirky love of double entendre, or in other words of saying things in a way where two meanings may be taken from a phrase or sentence. It comes out in my poetry and it shows in the types of quotes I use. It usually goes right over the head of my kids (luckily, but they are learning) and is often not picked up by many readers, but that’s ok.

The same advice goes for staying on topic. Your targeted readers are coming to your blog because of your blog description. In my case here, they are probably arriving because I have monetize your blog in the title. To be honest, as yet,  I have failed to give them what they are looking for here. This is mainly because my time is too divided between too many other projects.

I have articles on all aspects of blogging because its blogging I really have an interest in. But if I want to please the targeted readers I am getting, I’ll need to get my act together! Peripherally these readers may also be interested in traffic and readers ( what this post is about ) about plagiarism, about other blogs, about niche research, ( what the last few posts have been about ) but their main interest, reasonably,  is making money.

So unless I have some recent posts on making money I have failed to satisfy the impulse that brought these targeted readers to my blog.

So just a few more things to things to think about while we’re in the market research methods weeks of the launch. The above pro blogger article recommends you hang out where your targeted readers hang out and see what questions they are asking. Find out how they speak (technical babble or help me I’m a newbie screams), interact with people and start to build relationships and write about the niche topic you have set for your blog.

I wish applying what you learn was as easy as reading it!

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Press Release: Niche Market Research Methods for SEO Helps Bloggers Set Sound Foundations

I’m proud to announce that the first module of the Rich Niche Blogging Training Course is Now Available.

Niche Market Research Methods for SEO

The five modules of the course are designed to help people start a niche blogging business.

First and foremost of the skills you’ll need are neither blogging or promotion but the firm foundations of market research. When in Rome, as the saying goes, do as the Romans. The Internet is a vast library collection of multi media files indexed by search engines. The clients you want for your business, search inexpertly through the index to find what they want. You are aiming to be the specialist librarian that helps them find just the thing.
Your first task in this module is to choose ( no easy task) a topic you can write on, that can be attached to a product with advanced information or capabilities. The second task is to explore the words that searchers will use to describe it. Using keyword tools and other market research tools you’ll analyse phrases until you have a few that will…

1. Be relevant choices that people may use to search for information
2. Checked against various parameters to ascertain

a) that there are not too many competing sites
b) but there are sites targeting the topic
b) that there are sufficient searchers looking
c) and that the searchers are likely to be purchasers

This information tells you whether or not your niche may be viable niche. When you have the key phrases, that’s half the seo work done.

You can then go about building your blog the right way – by setting foundation posts with sound search engine optimized niche keywords and phrases.

People often ask “Can you can really make money blogging?”, but the answer is not a simple yes or no. For any kind of web venture, business owners will need to understand how the web works and be able to use this knowledge, before their business website can be successful.

Much of the success of a blog or website depends on two factors. The choice of a viable business product or saleable service and the knowledge to format and display it on the web so that people can find your useful needle (in the haystack) and be so attracted to it that they click the links and interact with your site.

Highlights from Niche Market Research Methods for SEO include:
- Choosing highly searched for topics for niches
- Following trends and targeting hot topics and niches
- Understanding SEO to optimize each page for a key phrase

This first module of a five module set about starting a blogging business, introduces people to the many market research methods they can use to find a good niche and brand their site in a way that will make it visible to searchers.

How to use the phrases comes into the writing and blogging modules, how to choose a product or publish advertising is in affiliations and the final step comes with promotion. All these steps require a little knowledge of seo. People make better choices when they are informed of all the facts.

I know that this is not a strict market research method. Such would require demographics regarding the X,Y and baby boom generations, gender, racial and social status differences etc, so if you choose a niche that is specifically attractive to only one demographic then you’ll need to use common sense or get more information.

This is niche market research and we’re doing it for seo. Why? Because over 51% of sites on the Internet are found with natural search – and its free.

The sales page, is a sales page. Copy writing is not one of my major talents, but the package is good value and I write my books like I blog. Also your purchase is satisfaction guaranteed for 90 days. So to take a look at my new book click here.

Niche Market Research Methods for SEO

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