Erich Stauffer

Tag: Niche Marketing

  • How to Survive the Summer Slump

    There’s an old saying, “You can plant a tree any month with an ‘r’ in it,” which means you’ll have the most success during the months with more naturally occurring rainfall. Of course you can plant trees any month of the year (as long as the ground is not frozen), but from May to August you’re going to have to water the trees to keep them alive. The same thing is true for building up an Internet business because if traffic is rain, then it ‘rains’ the least in months without an ‘r’ in them, which may explain why September traditionally sees the most traffic and is the most productive month. The correlation between traffic and productivity is thought to be because people are getting ‘back to work’ and feeling refreshed after the many events and vacations they took over the summer. Taken a step further, the reason for the down-turn in Internet traffic is probably due to those same events and vacations – and generally people are inside less. Yes, people browse the Internet on their phones, but most Internet (non app) purchases are made from a traditional computer browser.

    So what does that mean for Internet marketers?

    The first step is to recognise what is happening. You can’t and won’t change human behavior, but you can do two things to help keep your business from experiencing a summer slump:

    1. Build during the down time.
    2. Build for the down time.

    Build during the summer for fall, winter, and spring sales

    If most to all of your traffic is organic, you’re going to want to build and backlink before you expect the most sales. It doesn’t make sense to build and launch a new web site or product for Christmas in December. There is just not enough time to become a market leader. However, if you had built for Christmas during the summer, you would be poised for success come December.

    Build web sites or products specifically for the summer down times

    You may have heard of the Internet marketing term, “evergreen markets”, which means markets that are always in season. Commodities like food and energy are good examples, but evergreen markets are susceptible to downturns in overall traffic, so building a ‘summer niche’ during the winter months is recommended for riding out the summer slump. Some ideas include travel, outdoor sporting equipment, camping gear, or clothing.

  • 6 Steps to Making Money Online

    Using proven, repeatable techniques there is little risk and great rewards involved in marketing products for profit.

    When you use keywords that people are searching for, you naturally drive traffic to your site, which in turn makes you money online. But how do you find the right keywords and how do you know what people are searching for?

    There are six key steps to this process which will answer all of these questions:

    1. Find Micro-Niche Keywords – Identify a micro-niche inside a penetrable market that has profitable products that people are already selling. A micro-niche is a subset of a market niche.
    2. Verify Keyword Volume – Using WordTracker and/or the Google External Keyword Tool, make sure searches are over 80 per day and that there are under 30,000 search results overall.
    3. Verify Keyword Competition – Determine whether or not you will be able to penetrate the top 10 results in Google based on the number of top-level domains listed, their age, and number of backlinks.
    4. Produce Keyword-Rich Content – Write content for your primary landing page that also contains your primary keywords and links to sub-pages that contain longer keyword phrases.
    5. Promote Using Keywords – Write articles, blog posts, and lenses for posting on other web sites that link back to your sub-pages with your longer keyword phrases. Post at least two Youtube videos.
    6. Sell Products or the Web Site Itself – At this point, if you followed all of the steps, you should be making money online by selling products.  If not, then consider selling the domain for a profit online at Flippa or Sedo.

    The rate of success with this method is roughly 1 out of 8 and marketing and testing can take anywhere from 1 to 30 days.  Success is defined as more money coming in than is going out each month and that includes all opportunity costs (time that could have been spent making money in other activities).  Tracking is critical not only with the data of the results, but with the finances and time spent.

  • How to Find a Niche (and What to Do with it Once You Find It)

    Profit can be made from almost any niche – the key is knowing how to find it

    This is a simplified method for how to find a niche. Essentially we begin with the end in mind, knowing we’re going to need a product to sell that is currently being sold, but maybe not as well as it could be.  Maybe it’s hard to find or maybe the people who are selling it want help selling it.  That’s where you come in.  Here is an example:

    I like computer games so I use Google to search for “computer games” (without quotes, which is called a ‘broad search’), which gives me back 200 results. I then use the criteria (as mentioned in 6 Steps to Making Money Online and Research and Analysis Metrics) to narrow them down to one ‘keyword’ I’d like to use.  I then find 200 more keywords related to that one keyword and again narrow those down to 4.

    Now I have my micro-niche, which is identified by the keyword, “World of Warcraft Gold”.  I then have to see how much competition there is for that keyword and if it is a penetrable market (one that has low domain age, a small amount of back-links, and no or low directory listings). Only then can I move on to check whether or not there is something to sell.  If there is something to sell, then we ask ourselves if we would want to work for the amount of money it is offering.  If it is, then we build and start promoting.  If I don’t get traffic, I kill it and start over or sell the domain on Flippa or Sedo.

    How to Find a Niche

    Sometimes coming up with ideas for a niche is hard.  One set of advice I heard was to look in the back of magazines to see what people are selling because it means there is already a niche market for it because people are buying it.  You can also use Google Trends or Twitter Search to see what is trending right now.

    Here are some examples from ads in the back of a magazine:

    • Logo Design
    • Web Design
    • Business Plans
    • Botta Solus Watches
    • Timeshares
    • Oranges as Holiday Gifts
    • Exercise Equipment
    • Employee Leasing
    • Business Services

    Here is what is currently trending on Google Trends:

    • tom delay
    • ashley turton
    • eftps
    • bcs championship game
    • liberal smear machine
    • todd graham
    • houston livestock show and rodeo 2011
    • eftps.gov
    • ron rivera
    • www.eftps.gov

    Here is what is currently trending on Twitter Search:

    • Wojtek Wolski
    • Lionel Andres Messi
    • María Elena Walsh
    • Beth Gouveia
    • Fernanda Vasconcelos
    • Sue Sylvester
    • Great Gatsby
    • Toni Ramos
    • CHAD CHAD
    • #palabrasquedanmiedo

  • Keyword Metrics for Success

    Research and Analysis Metrics

    Micro-niches are identified as the number one keyword receiving at least 80 searches per day and websites containing that keyword being less than 30,000 globally. The key is to find that sweet spot on the matrix of high traffic and low competition. To do this, find keywords which match the following criteria:

    At least three keywords other keywords within the micro-niche with similar criteria must also be identified, if not, start over.  Top ten competition for the top four keywords has to be penetrable within the time allowed (usually no more than 30 days). Once you find five total keyword phrases you can begin to create a website, market, and begin testing.

    Metrics to consider are:

    • Domain age
    • # of back-links to domain
    • # of back-links to page mentioning the keyword
    • # of back-links from .gov or .edu domains
    • Exists in Yahoo! Directory?
    • Exists in BOTW (Best of the Web) Directory?
    • Exists in DMOZ (ODP) Directory?

    Need more web directories?

    If the competition has a young domain age, a low number of back-links, and does not exist in any of these directories, then the market is penetrable.  If the opposite is true, stop and start over.

    Check to see that related products are both available to be sold and are being sold by others.  If either is not true, stop and start over.

    If both of those tests pass, then make sure the products are giving a referral amount that you deem acceptable.  If not, stop and start over. Otherwise, you now have products in a penetrable micro-niche that are profitable to sell.

    Marketing and Testing

    Begin by setting up a place to place your products.  This is where your marketing efforts will point back to.  It can be a Squidoo page, Blogger, or WordPress.com or WordPress running on your own domain.

    If you are using Blogspot or WordPress, install Google Analytics to track traffic.  If using Squidoo or Hubpages, there are tracking mechanisms built into the site. You can’t manage what you are aren’t measuring so track everything you can.

    Use the following chart to give you an idea of how to setup your web site for maximum keyword use and Google dominance.

    Once you have content on your primary landing pages and sub-pages, begin to create back-links to your site by placing links to the domain, the blog posts, and the the product pages on social bookmarking, social media, and in blog comments in your related market.  Be sure to add links from .edu and .gov domains. You can search Google specifically for blogs on those domains manually by using the following syntax:

    site:.edu “post a comment” –“comments are closed” “[enter your keyword here]”

    Track the incoming page hits.  Testing for viability can begin only after your product’s page is receiving at least 200 hits per day.  If you are not getting 200 hits per day, then try these things first:

    • Increase the number of blog posts on and off the site using other services like hubpages and squidoo – then promote all of the new posts again
    • Make sure you are promoting on at least 30 different sites for each post – you can use services like ping.fm or trafficbug to assist with this task
    • Pay to have your site listed in the Yahoo! Directory
    • Pay for Google Adwords or Bing (Microsoft) AdCenter
    • Add pictures with descriptive text to get hits from search engine’s image searches
    • Add video to Youtube with links and comment on other videos in your micro-niche
    • Make sure you are posting to Twitter and Facebook regularly and engaging in conversation, not just promoting

    If after 30 days or at your own set threshold, you are still not receiving 200 hits or more per day, your product is not viable.  Consider selling your website on Flippa or Sedo.  You have just found one of your 1 in 8 failures.

    If you do have over 200 hits per day, but are not getting conversions, first try changing out your ad copy, images of the products, and/or placement of the two on the page.  If after changing all three of these variables and still your conversion rate (revenue) is below your expenses, then sell your domain and start over.  If not, you have a profitable online business.