Niche Research

Having trouble learning about your niche? You’re not alone. All Internet marketers – even the big boys with the large budgets – have trouble with their niche research at times. Luckily for you I’ve patched together 7 quick tips that will help you get over the hump and get to know your prospects.

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1. Read Magazines – Magazines may be going the way of the Dodo but they still offer a first hand look at what people in a particular niche are interested in. The advertisements are especially telling.

Get into the back of a trade or niche magazine and you’ll find local and national ads targeted at solving particular problems in that niche. Tap into those ads and you’ll usually find quite a few interesting product ideas. You will also learn more about what people need in that niche.

2. Use Amazon.com – Look for products on Amazon.com that have a solid number of reviews. Any book or product that has at least 20 reviews can honestly be said to have thousands of buyers. In fact, estimates put review rates at 1 in 1000 or worse.

Additionally, you can review table of contents in books through the “search in book” tool that Amazon offers. This will allow you learn more about what your target niche is interested in learning about from these books.

3. Use Clickbank.com and Other Affiliate Networks – On affiliate networks you can review the actual products that are selling. If you find a high gravity for a product, review the sales page and record the specific problems that seller outlines for their readers.

If a product sells well in a niche, you can bet that your target customer has those types of problems. Even if you’re not selling the same product, you can learn a lot about what sales strategies work well for these readers.

4. Interview Real Prospects – If you want to know about someone, just go ask them. This is doubly true for Internet marketing. There are a few ways to do this. You can contact people on Facebook or Twitter and ask them questions – a great way to use your social media accounts.

You can also contact people you already know that are interested in a niche. In many cases, you’ll probably know someone who has the problem you’re researching. Ask them where they turn for information, how they research their purchases and what they’d believe on a sales page.

5. Enter the Target Market – Delve into forums, social media groups, and email lists to learn more about the niche. You can troll the forums to learn more about what people are saying (and how they talk) in that niche, or you can actually interact to ask questions.

Subscribe to any online newsletters and trade publications as well to learn as much as you can about these prospective customers.

6. Quantcast and Compete – These sites will provide a bevy of valuable demographic data about niche websites. If you are interested in selling dog training guides, search for DogFancy or PetSmart and see who is on those sites.

This is a very important part of the research process. You want to rule out any niches with high proportions of teens under 18 years of age or with limited spread. A small demographic that doesn’t spend much is not ideal.

7. Checkout Your Competitors – Your competitors are important parts of your research process. You’ll want to learn what type of content they are posting, which keywords they’re using for SEO and what ads they run in PPC.

Use a tools to analyse your competitors and keep track of what they are targeting.

Market research is a fundamental aspect of any good online marketer. If you skip it, you’ll never know what your potential customers actually want out of your sites and products. Want to know why so many people fail in this business? They skip these foundation laying steps.

One thing that all successful internet marketers know is how to identify each keyword most relevant to driving targeted traffic to their blog or website. Keyword research is critical to determining which niches are profitable and which words are most important for search engine optimization and marketing purposes.

Learning to identify a profitable niche requires gathering information about the targeted traffic in comparison to the strength of the competition surrounding that niche. There are several free and paid tools available online to help your research. One of the most popular among online marketing gurus is the Google AdWords External Keyword tool. Just type in a word or phrase and it will provide a list of related words and phrases along with the number of monthly searches for each.

By typing the same keyword or phrase into the standard Google Search bar you will get the number of competing pages and the profitability of the niche. The ads going down the right side of the screen are referred to as paid ads or pay per Click Ads. Each time someone clicks on one of the ads the publisher is charged a fee whether or not a sale is made. Online marketers are willing to pay anywhere from 5 cents and up per click. The ads are specific to keywords or phrases and can costs 5, 10, or even 20 dollars per click if the niche is profitable enough.

If there are no pay per Click ads on the screen you need to find better keywords or another niche. No paid ads means the niche is likely not very profitable and should be avoided if you want to make money online.

Finding several keywords relative to your desired niche and placing them in the right places on your blog or site helps the search engine spiders find you and helps drive highly targeted traffic to your site which is more likely to convert to sales of your product.

Check out my other articles for more tips on having a successful Internet Marketing business.