My goal this month is to earn $100 online (from the 30 Day Challenge), so if I want to hit that mark I’m going to have to utilize the power of the 30DC to its full potential.

After my complete failure yesterday I have a handful of fresh niches to work with. I’m still noticing a lot of “low traffic-low search results” phrases, but since listening to the latest podcast, I’m going to keep them and utilize them.

In one case I have four very similar phrases for a single niche. Individually they would bring less than 40 visitors a day, but combined - that is, if I could get to the top of the SERPs for all of them - I could get over 120 visitors. Two of the four phrases have less than 1000 search results, and the rest have less than 20000 pages to compete with. I think I could pull it off.

But I’m not aiming for one or two niches. My plan is to have six niches ready for Monday, and I want to have a nice, juicy umbrella phrase for at least one of them (>120 searches a day). The first power of the 30DC is speed. I can quickly start over and get to where I was faster in the event that I get stuck or screw up. The second power of the 30DC is that I can run several “challenges” concurrently, which I’m going to do this month. It’s not as difficult as it sounds… unless I have to create an info product for all of them!

As an example of the advantage of using multiple niches, if I make a single sale in each of those niches by the end of August, earning say $15 per sale, I’ll have $90. One more sale would get me to $100. Not too shabby if I can get a 1:200 ratio.

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

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I’ve mentioned before that I may use the techniques or strategies taught in the 30 Day Challenge in other developing or ongoing internet marketing projects that I’m working on. I’ve already started.

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the Day 3 materials, which have been held back until they get another dedicated server up and whatever else they need to do to deal with the increased load. Anyhow, I’ve been working on other projects but nothing is getting me nearly as hyped than the 30DC. I got impatient and started working on some rudimentary market research. Up until now all we have done is use various resources to brainstorm ideas, niches.

What I am starting to do, and what I hope Ed goes into greater detail today, is see which niches are good and which ones are duds. I’m going to take one of these niches and use them in an upcoming blog project that I’ll run parallel to the 30DC (assuming we won’t be focusing on blogging in the 30DC). Essentially, I want to build a blog that will dominate the SERPs for a certain keyword phrase. Not necessarily make huge earnings, but actually get some SE traffic. I’ve been using a combination of Wordtracker and SEO Book’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to see how often related keywords are searched, and how many other sites I’d be competing with. I’ve found some really nice keywords that have little competition, two of which actually have no competition whatsoever.

The problem with the latter is the tool at SEO Book doesn’t show anybody searching for these keywords. Also, the potential traffic is so low (but I’m guaranteed to get it it all) and I’m not sure how I would actually go about making money with these keywords that previously turned up zero results. What would you do in a situation like this? In this case these are physical products that a few people are searching for but there are literally no SE results for them. I can’t really sell these products because when I search for them, nothing turns up! I may be able to use the keywords on a more general blog in this niche, so I can at least catch this little bit of traffic and they get a website that is related to their search (i.e. they search for “Louisiana apple pies” and find a website about apple pies).

The point is, some of my smallest niches, if I choose to build some kind of web presence, shouldn’t be too difficult to get on the first page of SE results. I’ve inadvertently done it with other blogs in broader niches for short periods of time, there’s no reason why I can’t intentionally do it in a focused microniche.

I hope Ed goes through how to test niches today so I can start working through my list and actually use them!

Technorati Tags: SEO, Search Engine Optimization, 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, TDC, Thirty Day Challenge, Niche, Keywords, Market Research

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This post was inspired by Jasper Pangilinan, a fellow 30 Day Challenge participant. He wanted to know how I got my microniches. I explained in my response that microniche is really a misnomer in my case, as many of my “niches” were really narrowed down to product ideas. But I still have many, many microniches to work with.
Here’s an example of how I took eBay, Google, Amazon, etc. categories and broke them down into smaller and smaller niches. This is a little cross-section taken straight from my pile of niches that I brainstormed. I don’t actually draw it out like this. This is just to show you how I go from major categories like toys, education, and games, into small niches.

I took larger categories and broke them down like this. I noticed part way through my brainstorming session that educational games and toys was really a subcategory of these three major ones. You could further break that down into age groups  (6-12 mos, 1-2 years, 3-4 years, 5-8 years, etc.), or split it into online and offline games. One microniche I came up with was educational online games for toddlers. Is this a viable market? Can I take advantage of it? We’ll see what Ed tells us in the next few days!

I’ve been blogging all day! I should take a break and post on my other blogs. :-p

Technorati Tags: 30 Day Challenge, 30DC, Thirty Day Challenge, TDC, Niche Marketing, Niches, Microniches

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