Day 1 - The Battle of the Niche

After watching to today’s video and listening to today’s podcast for the 30 Day Challenge, I was reminded that August has 31 days, but my “30 day” goal is still to make $100 by the end of August. Today we’re supposed to take it easy, just watch the video, listen to the podcast and let the information stew in our minds to prepare for the first phase of the 30DC. I’ll be starting this phase in earnest today as I already know a bit about market research. So what did Ed cover today? The four movements of the symphony that is internet marketing.

First Movement - Market Research

This is where I have the most trouble with internet marketing, and it’s the most important part of the process. If there’s no market for whatever you’re pushing or if the market is saturated, you are going to have a really difficult time making any money, especially if you’re not that experienced like myself. I’m going to spend a while on this topic since this is where the 30DC is heading first. There is an immense wealth of information online and literally countless sources of finding niches. Ed will likely go over this in the 30DC, but here are some places that are great to get niche ideas:

• eBay Seller Central - In particular, the Category Tips and What’s Hot sections. In the former section, you can see what is in demand in various eBay categories. But the real showstopper is the What’s Hot section. In here there is an extensive monthly Hot Items report that shows you all the categories with the highest bids, highest bid growth from the previous month, and highest conversions (>50%) for that month. It’s concise, only 27 pages for July 2007, is a great idea generator. eBay Pulse is another great resource to see what people are searching for on eBay, giving you the top searches for each category and overall. A brand new tool you can use to your advantage is eBay Pop. This site provides top searches, popular items, and trends akin to big gainers and losers lists in the stock market.

• Search Results - Seeing what people are searching is a good way to gauge what niches are in demand. Google Trends is one of the first places I go to see what people are looking for. Not only can you track the search trends for individual keywords, but another Google service, formerly Zeitgeist, has been merged into a Hot Trends section. Now you can see the post popular searches for any particular day. Yahoo! has a similar service called Yahoo! Buzz. Another favourite of mine is the keyword suggestion tool at SEO Book. Take any keyword and it will give you an estimate of its monthly search volume, as well as those of similar keywords. As an example of how you can use this to find niches and subniches, I took the broad niche of “camping” and found similar keywords such as “camping gear,” “camping food,” “Florida camping,” and even “nude camping.”

• Amazon Top Sellers - Visit Amazon.com and you will find near the top of the page a link to the latest top sellers. You have overall top sellers, and you have categories on the side. You can further delve into subcategories. The top seller list is updated hourly. From there, you can also find your way to the Movers and Shakers page. This page is analogous to the Hot Trends section of Google Trends. It shows all the biggest gainers in the last 24 hours, and is also divided into categories and subcategories.

• Your Interests - Look at your own interests. Maybe you enjoy computer games or maybe you’re a coffee connoisseur. Look at your friends’ and family’s interests. Have a friend who is addicted to Pokemon? Have a relative who is a knitter? These are all niches you might have been exposed to and never realized it. And each niche can be subdivided into subniches. Then you can take those ideas and see if there is a group of people out there who are into those niches. The biggest advantage to being genuinely interested or experienced in your niche is that it will offer some intrinsic motivation to move forward with your IM projects, whether it’s building a niche blog, or writing a info product.

In the podcast, Ed mentioned that historically, the most successful participants of the 30 Day Challenge were those that worked in the smallest niches. In my experience, this is true. My most successful blog is in the smallest niche. The small, the obscure, that’s where the money is. Why? Because there is little competition. There are countless subniches and microniches that are still relatively untapped.

Second Movement - Traffic

Traffic is the most important aspect of online income generation, but we’re going to be looking at this after finding our niches. As an extension of market research, I suspect at this point we will be starting to actually test our niches by driving Web 2.0 traffic to our websites or blogs. If you find a niche that is getting you hits you can test to see how well it converts…

Third Movement - Conversion

For me, this is the second most difficult part of internet marketing. As an internet marketer, what’s the point of getting thousands of uniques a day if you’re not making any money? If you’re not getting conversions you’ll need to see why you’re not getting conversions. Tracking your stats every step of the way is crucial. In one affiliate program, they provide additional tracking codes to see differences in conversions with different marketing techniques. Are you getting clicks but few conversions? Maybe you could try a new sponsor (if you’re doing affiliate marketing).

I use StatCounter to track the traffic on all my blogs and sites. It shows additional information like visitor length, the path the visitors take throughout your website, where they came from, what search engine terms they used to find your page, etc. This gives you an idea of your typical visitor’s behaviour, and you can use it accordingly when tweaking your site and marketing a product.

It should be noted that in the podcast, Ed said that the actual process of selling or pitching a product will be different this year. He even mentioned in passing that you may not even have to sell anything. The product will sell itself. I’m already intrigued! But what made me particularly happy was when he said they won’t be focusing on the sales letter. He briefly mentioned in passing about using other media (audio and video) to market your products, insinuating that these could replace the role of the sales letter in this year’s 30DC. I’m excited!

Fourth Movement - Product

The fourth, last, and optional “phase” of the 30DC is to create and market your own product. I’ve never done this before. I literally have zero experience in this department, although one acquaintance of mine who started a successful niche community began marketing mini info products (e-books) to his viewers and used a paid service to deal with the sales and delivery. I might not need to do this as I could see success as an affiliate, but we’ll cross this road when we get to it.

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, TDC

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