There is a nice list found here
http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies
Friday 24 July 2015
Link Campaign
There are two paths you can take when conducting a campaign. The first is
competitor research, or reverse engineering, and the second is starting from
scratch by link prospecting.
Competitor Research
One place to start your campaign is from competitor research. Go to Google and
type in your head keywords. The different sites that show up are your
competitors. Throw the URL of one of these sites into Open Site Explorer.
Next, look at the 4 drop down menus in the middle of your screen. In this
particular campaign, I’m looking for links that pass value, so let’s exclude nofollow
links from our reports by selecting “followed + 301”. Go to the next drop down
menu and click “external link only”. We could choose to see all links to these
domains, but in this case, I’m just looking to obtain links to my homepage. Here’s
what it should end up looking like:
Now hit filter.
Next, you want to export these results to Excel, so click “download as CSV” on the
right of the screen. Do this for each competitor. Once you’re done, go to the top
of your screen and click on Recent CSV Reports. You can now download all of the
CSVs individually, and once you do so, combine them all into one spreadsheet in
Excel.
You’ve now got a list of all your competitor’s top links.
Prospecting
Competitor research can only take you so far. You’re going to eventually have to
find new opportunities on your own. This is where that list of prospecting tools, as
well as Google, comes in handy.
Prospecting with Google deals with constructing search queries to narrow down a
list of sites to those that you can get links from. You’re going to be using a combination of your keywords and operators (qualifiers). For example, if I wanted
to find guest blogging opportunities in the home improvement vertical, here’s a
query I might use when prospecting:
Home improvement “write for us”
This would find home improvement pages that include the phrase “write for us”.
When I type it in quotations it means that the page needs to include this exact
phrase, and not just those 3 words scattered on the page, otherwise it doesn’t
qualify for my query.
Here are some other helpful operators:
Site:ehow.com – only show results from the eHow website
Site:.edu – only show sites that are on .edu domains
-website.com – don’t show any results from website.com
gold OR silver – include results that are about gold or silver, and not
necessarily both
allintitle:“chicken soup” – The phrase “chicken soup” has to be in the title
filetype:pdf – only show results that are PDF files
ext:html – only show HTML web pages (i.e. abc.com/example.html)
inurl:links – the word “links” has to be somewhere in the URL of the page
link:competitor.com – show pages that link to competitor.com. Note
however Google never shows more than a small percentage of
competitor.com’s links.
~food – searches for the word “food” as well as any synonyms of “food”,
such as “nutrition”.
These are the main operators you’ll be using, although there are a few others.
Before you start prospecting, you have to understand what type of campaign
you’re conducting. Are you looking for directories to submit to? Links pages?
Guest blogging opportunities?
This is because different campaigns require different queries. Here are a list of
queries for different types of campaigns (replace keyword with your
keyword/niche/vertical):
Directories
Keyword “submit”
Keyword inurl:submit.php
Keyword “add url”
Keyword “suggest website”
Keyword “suggest site”
Keyword “submit website”
Keyword “add website”
Keyword “listing”
Keyword “add site”
Keyword “recommended sites”
Keyword “favorite sites”
Keyword “favorite links”
Keyword “recommended links”
Keyword “favorite websites”
Keyword directory
Keyword * directory
directory * Keyword
Resource Pages
Keyword inurl:links inurl:lib*
Keyword inurl:resources site:.gov
Keyword inurl:links library
site:.edu
Keyword inurl:resources site:.edu
Keyword inurl:resources inurl:lib*
recommended sites Keyword
Keyword inurl:links site:.gov
Keyword inurl:links site:.edu
Keyword favorite links
Keyword “related sites”
favorite sites Keyword
Keyword inurl:links
list * Keyword sites
Keyword related urls
Keyword links
Keyword inurl:resources site:.org
Forums
Keyword forum
“Keyword forum”
intitle:Keyword forum
inurl:Keyword forum
Guest blogging
Keyword guest blogger wanted
Keyword guest writer
Keyword guest blog post writer
Keyword “write for us” OR “write for me”
Keyword “Submit a blog post”
Keyword “Become a contributor”
Keyword “guest blogger”
Keyword “Add blog post”
Keyword “guest post”
Keyword “Write for us”
Keyword submit blog post
Keyword “guest column”
Keyword “contributing author”
Keyword “Submit post”
Keyword “submit one guest post”
Keyword “write for us”
Keyword “Suggest a guest post”
Keyword “Send a guest post”
Keyword “contributing writer”
Keyword “Submit blog post”
Keyword inurl:contributors
Keyword “guest article OR post”
Keyword add blog post
Keyword “submit a guest post”
Keyword “Become an author”
Keyword submit post
Keyword “submit your own guest post”
Keyword “Contribute to our site”
Keyword magazines
Keyword “Submit an article”
Keyword “Add a blog post”
Keyword “Submit a guest post”
Keyword “Guest bloggers wanted”
Keyword “guest column”
Keyword “submit your guest post”
Keyword “guest article”
Keyword inurl:guest*posts
Keyword Become guest writer
Content Submission
Keyword submit content
Keyword submit article
Keyword submit post
Keyword submit blog post
Keyword add article
Keyword add blog post
Keyword add content
There are two tools that can help with this process. Just input your keyword, then
they creates links to each of the different Google results pages for each query. The
first is SoloSEO’s, and the second is Ontolo’s.
Finding contact information
Once you’ve built up a list of prospects, you need to start looking for contact
information. Your goal is to find as many email addresses as possible. If you can’t
find an email address for a prospect, then a contact form is fine. Phone numbers
are also OK if you’re willing to call them.
When looking for email addresses, always avoid catch-alls if possible, and always
try to find the person that can actually put up a link to you. For example, avoid
emails like links@website.com or contact@website.com. Instead, look for the
webmaster or the blogger’s personal email address (webmaster@website.com is
OK).
One last thing to note is that your success rate will be much higher if you do
outreach by phone. I personally haven’t tried it, but the numbers some agencies
have shared with me on this is staggering.
Here are some of the different ways you can find that info:
Look for a Contact Us page – Most reputable sites will have a Contact Us page
somewhere in their navigation. Look at the top, bottom, and each side of the site
for a link to their contact page. If you’ve found one, look for an email.
Look for contact info in the sidebar or footer – Some blogs put their emails in
the sidebar, and websites like universities put the webmaster’s email in the footer.
Look for an About Us page – If you can’t find a Contact Us page, then there’s a
good chance their contact info will be on their About Us page.
Use Google – If you can find the name of the person you’d like to contact, use
name queries life “John Doe”, “John Doe profile”, or “John Doe email”.
Outreach
Now it’s time to actually contact these people.
Names are important
One of the first things you should do is to find any names that are associated with
the email addresses. Starting an email off with their name makes it more personal,
and as result, your response rate is much higher.
The subject line
Just like a headline on a newspaper, the subject line is essential to getting your
email opened in an overcrowded inbox.
Because the subject line determines whether or not the email is opened, it has a
direct impact on the success of your campaign. That’s why it’s worth taking at least
a few minutes to come up with the perfect one.
You want to grab their attention, because since you’re emailing them personally
for the first time, they might automatically trash your email. Here are some tips to
do so:
Avoid promotional, cheesy, and sales-like phrases – if it looks like an
email sent out to 10,000 other people, it probably won’t get opened.
Avoid words like “reminder”, “free,” and “help” – they tend to trigger spam
filters, thus losing the battle to get it opened before it even begun.
Consider using their name – In certain cases, starting the subject line off
with their name & a comma can have a huge, positive impact.
What’s in it for them? – try & show how the email will benefit them. For
example, “New tool to help you fight comment spam”.
Urgency plays a role – give them a reason to open your email before the
20 or 30 others. For example, “Here are some broken links you need to fix
ASAP”.
Keep it simple – You don’t have many characters, so keep it simple and get
to the point.
Creating a subject line from scratch can only take you so far. You need to be able
to test them. If you’re doing bulk outreach, I recommend you split test the first
25% of prospects. Send one subject line to half and the other to the other half. Use
the one that got the most responses for the final 75%.
As you do more outreach, you’ll start to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Always make sure you’re keeping track of response rates. These are essential to
helping you continuously improve.
One last thing to note is that be careful of your word choice. For example, “I found
a few broken links” sounds like you were searching for them; rather, say
something like “I stumbled across a few broken links”.
The content
Before I say anything else, understand that the goal of the content of your
opening email is to get an engaged response, not a link.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s decide what the content of the email is going to be.
You can personalize each one, use a template for all of them, or go somewhere in
between.
For some campaigns I use the same template for each opening email, while for
others I personalize each one. It really comes down to what you’re trying to do.
Acquisition
If you’ve just shipped out a product for review, or if you’re waiting for the
webmaster to put the link up, make sure you keep track of this final step. Links can
be lost if you don’t check back in with your prospect in a timely manner.
Once the link is acquired, there are a number of tools that you can use to keep
track of any changes to the link or page.
competitor research, or reverse engineering, and the second is starting from
scratch by link prospecting.
Competitor Research
One place to start your campaign is from competitor research. Go to Google and
type in your head keywords. The different sites that show up are your
competitors. Throw the URL of one of these sites into Open Site Explorer.
Next, look at the 4 drop down menus in the middle of your screen. In this
particular campaign, I’m looking for links that pass value, so let’s exclude nofollow
links from our reports by selecting “followed + 301”. Go to the next drop down
menu and click “external link only”. We could choose to see all links to these
domains, but in this case, I’m just looking to obtain links to my homepage. Here’s
what it should end up looking like:
Now hit filter.
Next, you want to export these results to Excel, so click “download as CSV” on the
right of the screen. Do this for each competitor. Once you’re done, go to the top
of your screen and click on Recent CSV Reports. You can now download all of the
CSVs individually, and once you do so, combine them all into one spreadsheet in
Excel.
You’ve now got a list of all your competitor’s top links.
Prospecting
Competitor research can only take you so far. You’re going to eventually have to
find new opportunities on your own. This is where that list of prospecting tools, as
well as Google, comes in handy.
Prospecting with Google deals with constructing search queries to narrow down a
list of sites to those that you can get links from. You’re going to be using a combination of your keywords and operators (qualifiers). For example, if I wanted
to find guest blogging opportunities in the home improvement vertical, here’s a
query I might use when prospecting:
Home improvement “write for us”
This would find home improvement pages that include the phrase “write for us”.
When I type it in quotations it means that the page needs to include this exact
phrase, and not just those 3 words scattered on the page, otherwise it doesn’t
qualify for my query.
Here are some other helpful operators:
Site:ehow.com – only show results from the eHow website
Site:.edu – only show sites that are on .edu domains
-website.com – don’t show any results from website.com
gold OR silver – include results that are about gold or silver, and not
necessarily both
allintitle:“chicken soup” – The phrase “chicken soup” has to be in the title
filetype:pdf – only show results that are PDF files
ext:html – only show HTML web pages (i.e. abc.com/example.html)
inurl:links – the word “links” has to be somewhere in the URL of the page
link:competitor.com – show pages that link to competitor.com. Note
however Google never shows more than a small percentage of
competitor.com’s links.
~food – searches for the word “food” as well as any synonyms of “food”,
such as “nutrition”.
These are the main operators you’ll be using, although there are a few others.
Before you start prospecting, you have to understand what type of campaign
you’re conducting. Are you looking for directories to submit to? Links pages?
Guest blogging opportunities?
This is because different campaigns require different queries. Here are a list of
queries for different types of campaigns (replace keyword with your
keyword/niche/vertical):
Directories
Keyword “submit”
Keyword inurl:submit.php
Keyword “add url”
Keyword “suggest website”
Keyword “suggest site”
Keyword “submit website”
Keyword “add website”
Keyword “listing”
Keyword “add site”
Keyword “recommended sites”
Keyword “favorite sites”
Keyword “favorite links”
Keyword “recommended links”
Keyword “favorite websites”
Keyword directory
Keyword * directory
directory * Keyword
Resource Pages
Keyword inurl:links inurl:lib*
Keyword inurl:resources site:.gov
Keyword inurl:links library
site:.edu
Keyword inurl:resources site:.edu
Keyword inurl:resources inurl:lib*
recommended sites Keyword
Keyword inurl:links site:.gov
Keyword inurl:links site:.edu
Keyword favorite links
Keyword “related sites”
favorite sites Keyword
Keyword inurl:links
list * Keyword sites
Keyword related urls
Keyword links
Keyword inurl:resources site:.org
Forums
Keyword forum
“Keyword forum”
intitle:Keyword forum
inurl:Keyword forum
Guest blogging
Keyword guest blogger wanted
Keyword guest writer
Keyword guest blog post writer
Keyword “write for us” OR “write for me”
Keyword “Submit a blog post”
Keyword “Become a contributor”
Keyword “guest blogger”
Keyword “Add blog post”
Keyword “guest post”
Keyword “Write for us”
Keyword submit blog post
Keyword “guest column”
Keyword “contributing author”
Keyword “Submit post”
Keyword “submit one guest post”
Keyword “write for us”
Keyword “Suggest a guest post”
Keyword “Send a guest post”
Keyword “contributing writer”
Keyword “Submit blog post”
Keyword inurl:contributors
Keyword “guest article OR post”
Keyword add blog post
Keyword “submit a guest post”
Keyword “Become an author”
Keyword submit post
Keyword “submit your own guest post”
Keyword “Contribute to our site”
Keyword magazines
Keyword “Submit an article”
Keyword “Add a blog post”
Keyword “Submit a guest post”
Keyword “Guest bloggers wanted”
Keyword “guest column”
Keyword “submit your guest post”
Keyword “guest article”
Keyword inurl:guest*posts
Keyword Become guest writer
Content Submission
Keyword submit content
Keyword submit article
Keyword submit post
Keyword submit blog post
Keyword add article
Keyword add blog post
Keyword add content
There are two tools that can help with this process. Just input your keyword, then
they creates links to each of the different Google results pages for each query. The
first is SoloSEO’s, and the second is Ontolo’s.
Finding contact information
Once you’ve built up a list of prospects, you need to start looking for contact
information. Your goal is to find as many email addresses as possible. If you can’t
find an email address for a prospect, then a contact form is fine. Phone numbers
are also OK if you’re willing to call them.
When looking for email addresses, always avoid catch-alls if possible, and always
try to find the person that can actually put up a link to you. For example, avoid
emails like links@website.com or contact@website.com. Instead, look for the
webmaster or the blogger’s personal email address (webmaster@website.com is
OK).
One last thing to note is that your success rate will be much higher if you do
outreach by phone. I personally haven’t tried it, but the numbers some agencies
have shared with me on this is staggering.
Here are some of the different ways you can find that info:
Look for a Contact Us page – Most reputable sites will have a Contact Us page
somewhere in their navigation. Look at the top, bottom, and each side of the site
for a link to their contact page. If you’ve found one, look for an email.
Look for contact info in the sidebar or footer – Some blogs put their emails in
the sidebar, and websites like universities put the webmaster’s email in the footer.
Look for an About Us page – If you can’t find a Contact Us page, then there’s a
good chance their contact info will be on their About Us page.
Use Google – If you can find the name of the person you’d like to contact, use
name queries life “John Doe”, “John Doe profile”, or “John Doe email”.
Outreach
Now it’s time to actually contact these people.
Names are important
One of the first things you should do is to find any names that are associated with
the email addresses. Starting an email off with their name makes it more personal,
and as result, your response rate is much higher.
The subject line
Just like a headline on a newspaper, the subject line is essential to getting your
email opened in an overcrowded inbox.
Because the subject line determines whether or not the email is opened, it has a
direct impact on the success of your campaign. That’s why it’s worth taking at least
a few minutes to come up with the perfect one.
You want to grab their attention, because since you’re emailing them personally
for the first time, they might automatically trash your email. Here are some tips to
do so:
Avoid promotional, cheesy, and sales-like phrases – if it looks like an
email sent out to 10,000 other people, it probably won’t get opened.
Avoid words like “reminder”, “free,” and “help” – they tend to trigger spam
filters, thus losing the battle to get it opened before it even begun.
Consider using their name – In certain cases, starting the subject line off
with their name & a comma can have a huge, positive impact.
What’s in it for them? – try & show how the email will benefit them. For
example, “New tool to help you fight comment spam”.
Urgency plays a role – give them a reason to open your email before the
20 or 30 others. For example, “Here are some broken links you need to fix
ASAP”.
Keep it simple – You don’t have many characters, so keep it simple and get
to the point.
Creating a subject line from scratch can only take you so far. You need to be able
to test them. If you’re doing bulk outreach, I recommend you split test the first
25% of prospects. Send one subject line to half and the other to the other half. Use
the one that got the most responses for the final 75%.
As you do more outreach, you’ll start to figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Always make sure you’re keeping track of response rates. These are essential to
helping you continuously improve.
One last thing to note is that be careful of your word choice. For example, “I found
a few broken links” sounds like you were searching for them; rather, say
something like “I stumbled across a few broken links”.
The content
Before I say anything else, understand that the goal of the content of your
opening email is to get an engaged response, not a link.
Now that’s out of the way, let’s decide what the content of the email is going to be.
You can personalize each one, use a template for all of them, or go somewhere in
between.
For some campaigns I use the same template for each opening email, while for
others I personalize each one. It really comes down to what you’re trying to do.
Acquisition
If you’ve just shipped out a product for review, or if you’re waiting for the
webmaster to put the link up, make sure you keep track of this final step. Links can
be lost if you don’t check back in with your prospect in a timely manner.
Once the link is acquired, there are a number of tools that you can use to keep
track of any changes to the link or page.
How to find any image for my content
The following steps will find any image you might want to get.
How to get istock Photo for FREE1. Go to any photo site from the list below and select the image that you like
http://www.istockphoto.com/http://www.dreamstime.com/http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/http://www.pond5.com/or any off this list http://www.themarketingagents.com/blog-photos 2. Right click the image and copy the photo URL
3. Then go to http://www.tineye.com/ and paste the image URL into the search box
Thursday 23 July 2015
Rewrite/Spinners
So if there is an occasion when I might not want unique content then I could consider the following spinners
http://codecanyon.net/item/turbo-spinner-article-rewriter/full_screen_preview/8467415Monday 20 July 2015
Buy Your Domain
So we now have the niche decided. Lets look at picking the domain. Namecheap is the go to provider for me.
If you plan on using your blog to sell a service you provide or if you hope to speak or become a published writer, your name might be perfect.
If you have a really difficult name to say or spell, consider using your first and middle, or a nickname, or make up a new name altogether (yes, people really do that).
1. Go with .com
Most of the time internet users assume .com when browsing. Having a .net, .info, .tv or any other extension puts another potential roadblock in the process of finding you. Having said that, there are plenty of successful sites that use a .net extension (or something else), but a .com is ideal.2. Short and sweet
The shorter the better. Enough said.3. Easy to say and spell
The goal is for your domain name to be passed along easily by you and by others. This is more likely to happen if people don’t have to stop and think about how to say or spell it.4. No hyphens
It’s not very smooth or punchy to specify a hyphen. (“Hi my name is Jane and my domain is fly hyphen fishing dot com.”)5. Use keywords
Have you read my post What is SEO? (And Why It Matters)? Your domain is one of the best places to use a keyword or two. And the more compact and closer to the beginning of your domain, the better. For example, if “fly fishing” is your keyword, FlyFishingAdventures.com is better than AdventuresInFlyFishing.com.6. Consider using your name
I highly recommend registering your name as a domain even if you have no plans to do anything with it. Why? Because you never know if you just might become a household name in the future. And then you’ll be glad you have it.If you plan on using your blog to sell a service you provide or if you hope to speak or become a published writer, your name might be perfect.
If you have a really difficult name to say or spell, consider using your first and middle, or a nickname, or make up a new name altogether (yes, people really do that).
7. Make it expandable
You never know how your business might expand, so avoid names that box you in. For example, FlyFishingLures.com is nice, but what if you want to sell fishing poles down the line too? I also recommend avoiding life-stage-specific names like AllAboutMyWildAndCrazyToddlers.com. (It’s good now, but they’re toddler years will be over so fast!)8. Avoid strings of words
If you have a wide range of interests and you also want to incorporate keywords in your domain, you might be tempted to string them all together. I recommend against this simply because it’s confusing. LuresRodsLinesPoles.com is a recipe for major confusion when a visitor is trying to remember the correct order.9. Avoid obscure terms
If you are trying to appeal to a wide audience, avoid using niche-specific terms in your domain that someone outside your niche would be unfamiliar with.10. But all the good names are taken!
Be creative. It’s very possible (and in many cases probable) that you’ll come up with the perfect domain only to find it’s already taken when you try to register it. Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing board. Try looking up similar words in the thesaurus. Ask others for ideas. Mix words up or around. Use a tagline, a nickname or a phrase you say all the time.11. Make sure the name is available on other social media sites
When picking your domain, check other social media sites to make sure it’s available on those sites too. If you use the same name on your blog and on Twitter, Facebook, etc., it solidifies your brand and makes it more memorable. Kikolani alerted me to this cool tool that helps you do just that: knowem?12. Don’t overthink it
I hear from a lot of people who get stuck at this point because they’re afraid of making the wrong choice. The most common problem is that they can’t find an available .com. If this is you, just make your best guess and move on. A not-quite-perfect domain name is better than no domain name at all. Just do your best and own it!EVALUATING YOUR NICHE FOR PROFITABILITY
So at this point we have a selection of niche ideas and we know they have
potential.
Now we need to really open a google doc and start to gather this info.
are searching for your niche idea every month.
At this point you’re not looking to find low competition keywords simply
how many people are searching for your core niche keyword every
month.
Personally I’d like to see at LEAST 3,000 local EXACT MATCH
searches per month for the main keyword.
However I’d prefer it to be much higher, 10,000 + as this shows a huge
market with lots of potential and these in my experience are easier to
make money in.
Summary of what you want to see on
the Google Keyword Planner
■ Use Google Keyword planner to find how many people are
searching Google every month for your niche.
■ Look for big markets with over 10,000 searches because these
show big demand.
■ Use Google Suggest to get related keyword ideas to see what
else people are searching for..
A quick check on Google Trends to make sure it’s not a dying off trend
is a good idea.
It’s better to focus on evergreen niches than trends that come and go.
Just enter your keyword or niche idea in the search bar at:
http://www.google.com/trends
You’re looking for niches that are growing or stable and not on a
downwards decline.
available on sale and lots of them.
Though many niches will only be one or the other and that isn’t a problem
as long as there’s a good selection of products and a demand for them.
Check Amazon and Ebay first are these are the 2 biggest online retailers
online and if anywhere sells products in the niches these will.
Check the Kindle market place for ebooks too.
For digital products check Clickbank.
To find out if there are retailers other than Amazon and Ebay stocking
products check CJ.com and ShareASale
These are affiliate networks who run the affiliate programs for many
retailers big and small.
Look for niche specific ecommerce stores – this is a sign of a very
prosperous market,
You can also use Google to find other products on sale.
Googling the niche name and checking out websites in the rankings to
see what they are selling.
Or searching for “niche + affiliate program” (change ‘niche’ to your
niche of choice) may bring up some products not on any of the big
marketplaces.
Sites like www.offervault.com also allow you to search for affiliate
programs within your niche.
Check the following sites for
products
■ Amazon
■ Kindle Marketplace
■ Ebay
■ Clickbank.com (digital products)
■ ShareASale.com (ecommerce affiliate network for many major
brands)
■ CJ.com (same as ShareASale)
■ OfferVault.com (Finds affiliate offers and CPA)
■ Odigger.com (Affiliate offers and CPA)
If there’s a lot of authority sites, blogs, forums and social media pages
on your niche topic it’s a good sign.
Competition is healthy and if others are going to the effort to provide
people in the niche with information you’re on the right track.
You can use these sites to drive traffic back to your own, network with
them, spy on them to see what they do well and so on.
To find blogs you can use http://technorati.com/ which is a blog
aggregator by entering your niche topic into the search box and choosing
‘blogs’ and hitting enter.
Or go to https://www.google.com/blogsearch and type in your niche
ideas and hit enter.
Please note Google keeps changing how their blog search feature works
so apologies if this has changed by the time you try it.
You can choose to show posts or homepages and how recent they are,
if you use ‘past 24 hours’ it will show the most recent posts.
Check what these blogs are promoting and selling, what they are
advertising and sign up to their email lists and social media pages to
see what they are doing and how well they do it.
Sizeable forums with active members mean people are passionate
about the topic and willing to discuss it and ask questions in the niche.
Use FindAForum.net and Boardreader to find forums or simple Google
searches such as “niche + forum” or “niche + message board”.
If there’s lots of fan pages on Facebook and groups on Twitter then
you’ve got an interactive niche who like to connect.
Simply searching on either platform will bring up groups and fanpages
based on the niche keyword.
You can also check for groups and pages on Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr,
Squidoo, Google Plus, Scoop It, Youtube and Hub Pages.
These blogs, forums and social media groups can also play a vital role
in driving traffic to your niche project once live.
When you search for your niche on Google are there ads displaying at
the top and side of the search results?
If people are paying to advertise there it’s likely they are doing so
because there’s money to be made.
You don’t use paid advertising if you can’t make any money back.
Wherever there is a profitable niche there are affiliates promoting the
products. To find them you can use the affiliate target tool:
http://affiliate-target.com/
Or manually do the following
■ Go to Clickbank.com and choose ‘market place’
■ Select your niche from the menu on the side.
■ Choose to sort products by ‘gravity’ to show the most promoted
products.
■ Copy and paste the top product name.
■ Go to Google.com and type in “product name + review”
■ It will bring up results showing people who are reviewing these
products
■ Most will be affiliates.
■ If there’s plenty of people affiliated with the product then it’s
likely profitable.
■ You can repeat this process on Facebook, Twitter, and Google
Plus to find more.
If you see plenty evidence of affiliates promoting it’s likely a profitable
niche.
There are endless ways to get traffic to sites as I’m sure you know.
Including SEO, paid traffic, social media, forum marketing, content
marketing (guest posting & content syndication), blog commenting and
more.
You have to work out what your method will be and whether it’s
achievable.
I recommend that you should pick niches that allow you to drive traffic
from a number of different sources and not limited to search engines as
this is unpredictable and not guaranteed.
Earlier in the guide I showed you how to find a list of blogs, forums,
social media hubs and so on - these are potential traffic sources.
Presently I like to focus on this type of traffic for most of my sites as I
find it gives the best return on investment and converts well.
It also builds a relationship with my audience.
Examine the following to see if you
can get traffic
■ Do blogs in your niche allow guest posts?
■ Do they enable comments and let people link to their content
when done in an intelligent manner?
■ Do the forums allow signatures with clickable links or to post
your content?
■ Is there a Reddit sub-reddit on your topic of choice?
■ Are there lots of active social media groups where you can share
your content?
■ Are other blogs putting out good content, if not you can easily
better it but if yes can you still?
■ Are your SEO skills strong enough to outrank your competition?
■ Can you afford to pay for paid advertising and outbid your
competitor?
It’s a good idea to know how much money is being spent in a market
and what it’s worth.
■ Go to http://www.statisticbrain.com/ and enter your niche idea
into the search box.
■ This site has an impressive amount of statistics on a wide range
of topics
■ You can usually find out how much money is being spent on a
niche or what it’s worth here.
■ There’s no set number I look for but you’ll want it to be in the
millions.
■ Alternatively if Stastics Brain has no information you can usually
find through a manual search in Google, try “niche + market size”
and “niche + money spent.
■ You can also find a lot of good info on the demographics of your
niche so you better understand your target audience.
You want to see niches with influencers who share content on social
media.Some niches content just doesn’t get shared much making it
harder for your content to go viral.
■ Go to Topsy.com
■ Click on “influencers”
■ Enter your niche keyword and see if there are influential people
sharing content.
niche. People don’t spend money on creating Magazines on topics no
one spends money on.
■ Go to Magazines.com
■ Enter your topic and hit enter
■ If you find magazines on the subject you’ve picked a good niche
■ If there’s no magazines it doesn’t mean it’s NOT profitable but
it’s always a good sign.
What better way to know if your niche is profitable than if there are
already profitable websites on the topic.
■ Go to Flippa.com
■ Click “advanced search”
■ From “auction status” click “all”
■ Choose “websites” from “property type”
■ Click “search listings”
■ Then on the left hand side there’s a “refine your search” option
■ Choose “Revenue (USD/Month)” as $100 to $20,000
■ Record the top 10 results.
If you find websites that have already sold it’s a great sign.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember you should see the following:
■ Over 10,000 Google searches per month for main niche and lots
more for related keywords.
■ Growing or stable on Google Trends showing an evergreen niche.
■ Thousands of products on sale across a variety of retailers and
stores.
■ Lots of blogs and websites on the subject.
■ Lots of discussion forums and message boards.
■ Tons of social media hubs where people in the niche are hanging
out.
■ People advertising on Google.
■ Affiliates promoting products in the niche.
■ Can you easily get traffic.
If all those are present you’ve got a gold mine of a niche.
potential.
Now we need to really open a google doc and start to gather this info.
CHECK GOOGLE SEARCH VOLUME
Using the Google keyword planner tool you’ll look at how many people
are searching for your niche idea every month.
At this point you’re not looking to find low competition keywords simply
how many people are searching for your core niche keyword every
month.
Personally I’d like to see at LEAST 3,000 local EXACT MATCH
searches per month for the main keyword.
However I’d prefer it to be much higher, 10,000 + as this shows a huge
market with lots of potential and these in my experience are easier to
make money in.
Summary of what you want to see on
the Google Keyword Planner
■ Use Google Keyword planner to find how many people are
searching Google every month for your niche.
■ Look for big markets with over 10,000 searches because these
show big demand.
■ Use Google Suggest to get related keyword ideas to see what
else people are searching for..
CHECK GOOGLE TRENDS
is a good idea.
It’s better to focus on evergreen niches than trends that come and go.
Just enter your keyword or niche idea in the search bar at:
http://www.google.com/trends
You’re looking for niches that are growing or stable and not on a
downwards decline.
ARE THERE PRODUCTS ON SALE?
The best niches are ones with both physical and digital productsavailable on sale and lots of them.
Though many niches will only be one or the other and that isn’t a problem
as long as there’s a good selection of products and a demand for them.
Check Amazon and Ebay first are these are the 2 biggest online retailers
online and if anywhere sells products in the niches these will.
Check the Kindle market place for ebooks too.
For digital products check Clickbank.
To find out if there are retailers other than Amazon and Ebay stocking
products check CJ.com and ShareASale
These are affiliate networks who run the affiliate programs for many
retailers big and small.
Look for niche specific ecommerce stores – this is a sign of a very
prosperous market,
You can also use Google to find other products on sale.
Googling the niche name and checking out websites in the rankings to
see what they are selling.
Or searching for “niche + affiliate program” (change ‘niche’ to your
niche of choice) may bring up some products not on any of the big
marketplaces.
Sites like www.offervault.com also allow you to search for affiliate
programs within your niche.
Check the following sites for
products
■ Amazon
■ Kindle Marketplace
■ Ebay
■ Clickbank.com (digital products)
■ ShareASale.com (ecommerce affiliate network for many major
brands)
■ CJ.com (same as ShareASale)
■ OfferVault.com (Finds affiliate offers and CPA)
■ Odigger.com (Affiliate offers and CPA)
LOOK FOR BLOGS & WEBSITES
on your niche topic it’s a good sign.
Competition is healthy and if others are going to the effort to provide
people in the niche with information you’re on the right track.
You can use these sites to drive traffic back to your own, network with
them, spy on them to see what they do well and so on.
To find blogs you can use http://technorati.com/ which is a blog
aggregator by entering your niche topic into the search box and choosing
‘blogs’ and hitting enter.
Or go to https://www.google.com/blogsearch and type in your niche
ideas and hit enter.
Please note Google keeps changing how their blog search feature works
so apologies if this has changed by the time you try it.
You can choose to show posts or homepages and how recent they are,
if you use ‘past 24 hours’ it will show the most recent posts.
Check what these blogs are promoting and selling, what they are
advertising and sign up to their email lists and social media pages to
see what they are doing and how well they do it.
LOOK AT FORUMS & MESSAGE BOARDS
about the topic and willing to discuss it and ask questions in the niche.
Use FindAForum.net and Boardreader to find forums or simple Google
searches such as “niche + forum” or “niche + message board”.
CHECK FOR SOCIAL MEDIA HUBS
you’ve got an interactive niche who like to connect.
Simply searching on either platform will bring up groups and fanpages
based on the niche keyword.
You can also check for groups and pages on Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr,
Squidoo, Google Plus, Scoop It, Youtube and Hub Pages.
These blogs, forums and social media groups can also play a vital role
in driving traffic to your niche project once live.
ARE PEOPLE ADVERTISING ON GOOGLE
the top and side of the search results?
If people are paying to advertise there it’s likely they are doing so
because there’s money to be made.
You don’t use paid advertising if you can’t make any money back.
ARE THEIR AFFILIATES IN THE MARKET
products. To find them you can use the affiliate target tool:
http://affiliate-target.com/
Or manually do the following
■ Go to Clickbank.com and choose ‘market place’
■ Select your niche from the menu on the side.
■ Choose to sort products by ‘gravity’ to show the most promoted
products.
■ Copy and paste the top product name.
■ Go to Google.com and type in “product name + review”
■ It will bring up results showing people who are reviewing these
products
■ Most will be affiliates.
■ If there’s plenty of people affiliated with the product then it’s
likely profitable.
■ You can repeat this process on Facebook, Twitter, and Google
Plus to find more.
If you see plenty evidence of affiliates promoting it’s likely a profitable
niche.
CAN YOU GET TRAFFIC?
Including SEO, paid traffic, social media, forum marketing, content
marketing (guest posting & content syndication), blog commenting and
more.
You have to work out what your method will be and whether it’s
achievable.
I recommend that you should pick niches that allow you to drive traffic
from a number of different sources and not limited to search engines as
this is unpredictable and not guaranteed.
Earlier in the guide I showed you how to find a list of blogs, forums,
social media hubs and so on - these are potential traffic sources.
Presently I like to focus on this type of traffic for most of my sites as I
find it gives the best return on investment and converts well.
It also builds a relationship with my audience.
Examine the following to see if you
can get traffic
■ Do blogs in your niche allow guest posts?
■ Do they enable comments and let people link to their content
when done in an intelligent manner?
■ Do the forums allow signatures with clickable links or to post
your content?
■ Is there a Reddit sub-reddit on your topic of choice?
■ Are there lots of active social media groups where you can share
your content?
■ Are other blogs putting out good content, if not you can easily
better it but if yes can you still?
■ Are your SEO skills strong enough to outrank your competition?
■ Can you afford to pay for paid advertising and outbid your
competitor?
WHAT’S THE MARKET WORTH
and what it’s worth.
■ Go to http://www.statisticbrain.com/ and enter your niche idea
into the search box.
■ This site has an impressive amount of statistics on a wide range
of topics
■ You can usually find out how much money is being spent on a
niche or what it’s worth here.
■ There’s no set number I look for but you’ll want it to be in the
millions.
■ Alternatively if Stastics Brain has no information you can usually
find through a manual search in Google, try “niche + market size”
and “niche + money spent.
■ You can also find a lot of good info on the demographics of your
niche so you better understand your target audience.
ARE THEIR INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE NICHE
media.Some niches content just doesn’t get shared much making it
harder for your content to go viral.
■ Go to Topsy.com
■ Click on “influencers”
■ Enter your niche keyword and see if there are influential people
sharing content.
ARE THERE MAGAZINES ON THE SUBJECT
If there are magazines for sale on the subject this is definitely a profitableniche. People don’t spend money on creating Magazines on topics no
one spends money on.
■ Go to Magazines.com
■ Enter your topic and hit enter
■ If you find magazines on the subject you’ve picked a good niche
■ If there’s no magazines it doesn’t mean it’s NOT profitable but
it’s always a good sign.
HAVE WEBSITES ON THE TOPIC ALREADY SOLD?
already profitable websites on the topic.
■ Go to Flippa.com
■ Click “advanced search”
■ From “auction status” click “all”
■ Choose “websites” from “property type”
■ Click “search listings”
■ Then on the left hand side there’s a “refine your search” option
■ Choose “Revenue (USD/Month)” as $100 to $20,000
■ Record the top 10 results.
If you find websites that have already sold it’s a great sign.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember you should see the following:
■ Over 10,000 Google searches per month for main niche and lots
more for related keywords.
■ Growing or stable on Google Trends showing an evergreen niche.
■ Thousands of products on sale across a variety of retailers and
stores.
■ Lots of blogs and websites on the subject.
■ Lots of discussion forums and message boards.
■ Tons of social media hubs where people in the niche are hanging
out.
■ People advertising on Google.
■ Affiliates promoting products in the niche.
■ Can you easily get traffic.
If all those are present you’ve got a gold mine of a niche.
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