So let us quickly look at how you can select a niche that pays.

Choosing THE right product from a hot list of products is probably the most difficult thing for a marketer. Coming up with an idea that sells is something that gives jitters even to the experts. Here are a few things you can do to improve your chances.

Keep your eyes open: The first thing to do is to spend some time surfing the net. Look at ads on websites. What products are they selling? Visit blogs and look at the “paid sponsors” section. Watch the news and read papers. See what products are being offered on the market right now. Search for a keyword and see what comes up in the search engines. Visit websites like google.com/trends or wordtracker.com and look up the demand for keywords you like. Watch TV and find what products are selling hot. Market research is vital to finding the right niche.

Look inwards: What ideas do you have in your head? Are your ideas already on sale? Explore new ideas and new angles of old ideas. Can you come up with a better idea and beat your competition?

Turn to ClickBank: Just as their tag suggests, ClickBank is the world’s biggest marketplace. So, they have a finger on the pulse of the market. If it is selling hot, it will be on ClickBank. Visit their website and click on “Buy products”. This will open up a large category of products. Clicking on any of these categories will take you to the sub-categories of that category. Click on any of the sub-categories and see what kinds of products are selling in that niche. Read through the sales pages of these products and discover their USP. This will give you a good idea of what you should select.

Once you have identified your niche, half of your business structure is in place. But you need to build the other half too.

The power of niche marketing comes from the fact that the market consists of consumers looking for a particular product. Even if you develop a product, you can’t succeed till you shine a torch on the fact that you are the best in your field. You need to reach out to people.

For this, it is essential that you know your target audience. Knowing who you are marketing to, makes it easy for you to channel your energy and marketing $$ only on that section of people.

For example, take a car dealership. The first thing you have to decide is where the dealership is located. If it is in New York, chances of consumers coming from Seattle to buy from you are less. So, narrow your focus to people within a 50-mile radius. This increases your chances of clinching a sale.

Defining your target audience helps you to:

• Maximize your profit by targeting a defined market. Your efforts will no longer be like a shot in the dark.
• You can optimize your search engine accordingly, so your customers can easily find you.
• You can offer solutions specific to your niche.
• This makes it easy for you to develop new ideas for supporting products.
• It is easier for you to dominate the market if you know the dynamics of your niche.

This should give you a good idea of how to develop a niche and become the expert of your field.

Now that you have the product, it is time to market it. Niche marketing can be done in two ways: Membership websites and websites with no up front charges.

Membership websites obviously ask for a fee upfront, before they give members access to their site. This is a recurring income business model where members keep renewing their subscriptions if they are happy with the product you offer.

Websites without an up front charge are a little different. They offer the cake free of cost and tell members to pay up for the icing. If you like the cake well enough, you will pay for the icing.

Let’s understand that there’s no dearth of markets out there. The point is to choose a few that are highly popular and lucrative. Why not just one? Because in case it doesn’t work out for you, you can always find better ones.

Here’s the secret to finding that hungry market that’s waiting for you to sell to them. Find the right keywords. These are the magnets that will let you find your profitable markets. A keyword selector tool can help you with this activity. Finding the keywords will help you identify markets and product ideas as well as to use Google AdWords successfully. We’ll cover this in a later part of our training series.

Keywords are those words that people use to find your website. By finding the best ones that describe your business or product, you can also use them in your pay per click advertising campaign. Using these words, your hungry market finds your website in the search engine results and then comes to your site.

The keyword selector tool tells you the number of times these keywords or phrases were searched in a given month. You can also find out how competitive these keywords are. The most popular keywords are the ones that were searched the most number of times. From the information you get, you can gauge whether there’s a potential market in that niche area for related products. Now remember - just because a keyword is popular does not mean all those who searched it were customers.

However, it gives you a pretty good idea about whether there’s a market and you constantly need to monitor it. Internet markets tend to change and by keeping track of it, you can move with the profitable ones. That’s why I said - its better to identify a bunch of markets so that you have a lot of people to sell to.

To know how hot the market you have identified is, look at its demographics. Check out related forums and online discussion boards to see what these people are expecting. If what you intend offering is available for free somewhere else, then you can bet your market will go there to get it.

So analyze your market in detail. Split them into smaller categories -find niches within niches. You need to strike the balance where you want a market with a steady flow of customers, but not so intense in competition. Next comes finding those hot products. But you don’t have to wait to know - you can head over to Duvet Dollars and grab your entire package with bonuses to know everything about making money in your sleep. Go on - do it right away.

So let us quickly start the day with method #1: How to split your profit potential.

For quite some time now, the prevailing wisdom to make money online was that you had to identify your area of expertise and develop it into a niche market, so you could capitalize on the existing demand for expertise. While niche marketing is highly rewarding, it is not the only way you can make money online. By limiting yourself to a single stream of income, you are drastically limiting the amount of money you can earn. That is why the latest trend in Internet marketing is to develop multiple streams of income.

Building 10-20 or more tributaries of cash flow is any day better than sticking to a single source of income.

The main reasons for this are:

• Greater chances of success when the number of products you are selling is more.
• Greater ROI (Return on Investment).
• Higher profits for the same amount of work.
• Continuous inflow of cash.
• Wide variety of opportunities.

So let us explore some of the ways in which you can earn a decent income from online marketing.

1. Niche marketing: If you are really good at something and enjoy spending your time with it, you can easily convert it into a high paying niche. Just position yourself as an expert in the field and allow other people to profit from what you already know. Sell your knowledge through membership websites or products and services.
2. Affiliate marketing: affiliate marketing offers you two different means of making money. You can sell on either sides - become the owner of a product and get people to sign up as your affiliates or you can become an affiliate yourself and sell somebody else’s products. The amount of money you make depends on the percentage of commission and the web traffic you generate.
3. Online surveys: you can make money by taking advantage of programs that pay you for your opinion. Often, it is as simple as clicking links and taking surveys. These are very effective methods of turning fun Internet surfing time into money. However, you have to identify programs that allow you to make money quickly without it becoming too time-consuming.
4. Investing online: Not for the fainthearted, but an incredible source of online profit. This is the latest trend in investing real money online.

These are some of the methods in which you can use the internet to develop multiple streams of income.

Investing some time in each of these options will help you carve a financial portfolio that is cost effective and profit generating.

To become a big player in the internet marketing field, you simply MUST have a finger in different pies, so when one cools off, your business is still thriving.

• If you are running a particular promotional campaign do not group all the keywords in your list. For example if you short-listed fifty keywords for this promotion split them into smaller subgroups with related keywords. You could even have separate landing pages for each of these subgroups, enabling your focussed traffic to find it easier to navigate. The more specific you get, the more the chances of your niche market reaching you.
• Do not forget to use square brackets around your keywords and key phrases. By using square brackets you can get your ad noticed easily when this particular keyword is searched for.
• Do not set your keywords with Google AdWords and leave it at that. Constant tracking is necessary to know which keywords are profitable. This will help you drop the ones that are not. You can also reallocate your promotional dollar to focus on those that bring in results.
• Do not ignore grammatical errors, dead links and complex web pages. Just imagine visiting a sloppy website where links lead to a 404 error page - it’s the best way to lose a customer. No one has the time to browse around a website that is complicated and ill maintained. Links must point to the intended web pages, audio and video clips.
• Do not underestimate the importance of using reviews as a promotional method. Reviews make you appear as a fair unbiased marketer who prefers to be honest. As an Internet marketer you will obviously use forums and blogs - so make sure writing reviews is a regular activity. And enjoy the sales that pour in.
• If your traffic is not targeted, you cannot have consistent sales and you cannot track your activity. Be wary of traffic sources you did not target - like pop unders, free links etc.
• Not making an action plan is the worst mistake an Internet marketer can make. You cant set up a website, run a Google ad and relax hoping things will take care of themselves. When your customer places an order, they must be directed to your autoresponder. When your visitor asks a question, they must be directed to your frequently answered questions page.
• Do not analyze every how-to ebook or report you read too deeply. The time could be better spent on actual practice and experimentation. In many instances learning is better through action.
• Do not lose focus on the system you have set up after a lot of research. It is necessary to be organized and stay through with what you plan until it runs on autopilot.

It is not unnatural to want to respond to every new strategy that is promoted or launched in the market, but then there will never be an end to it. What is listed above is just a partial list.

Basically, getting the resell rights implies that you are just buying a ready to run business with probably a sales letter, promotional materials and graphics that work well. All that’s left for you to do is to think up a good domain name based on your niche keywords, get web hosting, a payment processing system and you are well on your way to internet profits. Buying resell rights is as good as selling your own products because you get to keep all the profit you earn, just as you would with your own product.

You can buy the resell rights to a variety of digital products based on your niche market. These are easy for you to deliver and easy for your customers to download through a link. Here’s a brief definition of the kinds of resell rights license you are likely to come across:

• Resell rights - where you have every right to resell the product, but your customers don’t get resell rights
• Master rights where you resell and profit, and sell the resell rights to your customers who can then sell the product as their own
• PLR or private label rights, which is what most online marketers prefer. Here you can tweak and change the product the way you want before you sell it. You can also sell resell rights and master resell rights while continuing to make your profits with the product.

You will probably also come across marketers who offer you the product at a price that is inclusive of the resell rights. Others might charge you extra for the resell rights. Whatever you go in for, make sure you know exactly what you can do with the product. Watch out for reseller rights that:

• Dictate the price at which you must offer the product
• Don’t allow you to bundle the product with other offers
• Don’t let you include it in membership sites
• Don’t allow you to sell it on online auction sites

You should consider getting the resell rights to a product based on your niche marketing needs.

Where do you look for resell rights products?
A search on Google for resell rights will give you a huge list of what is available. You can look on resell rights and private label membership sties that will list thousands of digital niche products you can consider. You can also ask the authors of products you are interested in to find out whether they will offer you resell rights to their products.

You can make huge profits by marketing resell rights products, as you must have realized by now. The crux is to select the right products for your niche.

Rather than go through the elaborate process of building an effective niche website, we have compiled some web design tips that will make your niche website very successful. Here they are:

• The best way to build a great niche website is one that is simple without irritating flash presentations and animations that take forever to load and drive your visitor away even before they know what you have to offer. The color scheme must also be kept pleasing, making the text clearly visible.
• One of the most annoying things about some web pages is when the visitor must scroll sideways to read the text. Ideally a screen resolution of 800×600 pixels so that the website fits into the viewer’s monitor should be okay.
• A website that loads quickly is the best website. Graphics on the niche website must be at a minimum. Ensure that any images have a succinct description - this means that someone who has graphics turned off will know what the image is about.
• Remember that many people use 56K modems, so don’t exceed 10K in terms of web page size. This will enable quicker loading.
• Another tip for quicker page loads is to link your HTML pages to CSS or cascading style sheets. These minimize the code on your page as well and help in a better looking website.
• Easy navigation is an essential. If a particular link shows up at different places on different pages, it will confuse your visitors and make them waste precious time looking for them.
• Here’s one of my favorites - a site map. Every website must have one. This site map must list every page on your site preferably with a brief description so that it can be linked back to the appropriate page. It makes for easy navigation as well, in addition to allowing search engines find you more easily.
• One of the worst things you could do is have a dark blue background with black text making it an ordeal for your visitors to decipher what is on the site. It is always best to have a light background with dark colored text and a font style that is easy to read. Font sizes must also be legible. Many sites give their visitors the option of choosing from different font sizes, particularly for the visually challenged.
• Make sure your website loads easily on different browsers. Even though a majority of people use Internet Explorer, there are a growing number of people who use Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape and so on. So test before you publish.
• Each page on your niche website must emphasize on a specific topic. Too many different topics can be confusing and dilute your message. Whatever content you post must be targeted to your niche market.

For people to visit your website AND pay for information, you have to be the expert. Why would anyone pay you otherwise?

The moment someone mentions your area of expertise, your name must pop up in people’s heads. Easier said than done, you say? Listen up, it is not that difficult.

Before you select your niche, there are certain things you can do to make it easier for you to become the expert.

• Evaluate your expertise. Why should people pay to listen to you?
• Who is your target audience? Students, businesspersons, executives, investors or work-at-home moms? Determine their gender, backgrounds, income level, interests, professional and educational backgrounds. This will tell you what unique angle you should explore in your website.
• How good is the competition? What areas are they exploring? Do they know more or less?

By the time you have answered these questions, you already know where you stand. Listed below are some things you can do to become THE expert in your field.

Read: Read all kinds of material - books, forums, blogs or magazines. Forums are a great place to find enthusiastic questions, diverse answers and innovative ideas. Sometimes, you can even pick up hot information on new products from various forums.

Narrow your focus: Suppose you picked self-improvement as your area of expertise. You know that this niche is simply too vast for one person to do full justice to it. So you narrow your scope and take up one aspect, say ’stop smoking’. Good. You are now targeting a specific group of people. But, how about narrowing it down to ’stop smoking using herbal supplements’? Haven’t you just chopped off more than half the competition and targeted an even more specific group of people? Can you begin to see how narrowing a field down to its sub-topic will make the subject manageable and not overly competitive? It is much easier to dominate a narrow field of interest.

Speak whenever you get the chance: More than 95% of the population develops nervous ticks when they stand up to speak. So, the moment you walk up to that microphone, you are already ahead of 95% of your competition! Speaking about your topic establishes you as the indisputable expert in your niche. The next best thing to do is to give interviews. This neat technique wins you the label of an expert, free advertisement and increased traffic.

Write: There’s a public perception that only an expert can write well. This is more so if you are writing a book. So, get busy and write a book on your niche. If you can’t do it yourself, go for second best: hire a ghostwriter. Write good, read-worthy, thought provoking articles and send it out to ezines and other websites. This is the easiest way to get free publicity. Submit press releases that pique people’s interest. In short, generate EXTRA-ordinary content. Only this can establish your expertise.

Network like your life depends on it: Create a bulletin board, start a blog and visit related forums. Attend networking events where your clients hang out. Remember, it’s not who you know that is important, it is who knows *you* that counts!

So, there you have it!

Formula for expertise = Consistent great content + continuous online presence.

Basically, a blog is like a simple website. You can start one with zero investment and publish your keyword rich content online. You’ve probably seen people use a blog as a personal diary or to just post news. The fact, however, is that you can use a blog as a niche site almost effortlessly. Blogs are the best way to keep adding fresh keyword rich content and making it available to your niche. It brings in heavy traffic much more quickly than your regular website - and blogs are perfect for niche marketing.

But don’t just set up a blog and keep posting content - also add categories and moveable type. Your category titles must preferably be your most important keywords. Remember the list of keywords you made when you researched your niche? Post relevant keyword rich content under each category. This is crucial because as you keep building the blog site, you’ll have hundreds of pages. Every page can be linked to the ten or so categories you’ve made. These links will be made of your best keywords and through these, your niche website will get a high ranking with the search engines since your category names are made of your keywords. It’s a fact that Google is partial to blogs in particular!

Niche blogs can be submitted to the special RSS and blog directories and start generating focused traffic right away. Interestingly, you’ll find that the kind of traffic you get from this source is a lot more than the search engines bring up. It is easy to find the top blog directories online and get yourself indexed. Each time a new post is added, you can ping these directories to alert them, inviting the search engine spiders to visit your site.

It is important at least initially to keep adding fresh content every day because this will make it attractive to the visitors as well as the largest search engines. Assuming you build a niche blog site that has at least thirty new entries by the time it is thirty days old, you can expect a big and steady flow of traffic.

Because of how easy it is and hardly costs anything, niche blog sites are the preferred way to reach the niche market since blogs are one of the vital places to find your niche site. You need not limit yourself to one blog. If you intend selling more than one product, you should set up a niche blog site for each of these products.

To find your niche, find what you enjoy doing most. Make a list of what you are interested in. Is there anything you would like to learn? This is a good time to think about what you find challenging. You can also conduct a research on what’s hot in the market right now. You would be amazed at what you can find in your local newspapers for what people want. Online forums and blogs are another source of niche ideas. If you are alert to what people complain about, you’ll probably find a great idea for a niche.

Yet another way to identify your niche is through keyword search. What words would your niche market use to find you? There are keyword research tools you can use online to get this information. You can also find out how many times these words were searched in a given month. When you search your short-listed words on Google, you will get an idea of what kind of competition exists for your niche market. Your keyword list will probably generate more ideas for other niche markets you didn’t think about before.

Step Two
You now know who your niche market is going to be, you must find the right products for them. First off, your products must be of high quality and relevant to your niche market. You will need to find out how much competition you have for this product and what kind of income you can expect to earn. You could create your own product or promote someone else’s as an affiliate. The idea is to offer information, products or services that your niche market can only get from you online.

You can actually test market to find out whether your niche market will be interested in what you have to offer. This is possible by setting up a web page where your visitors can complete a survey. You can make a useful report on the topic that you can offer free, as a thank you gesture to all those who fill out your survey. The results of the survey ought to give you a pretty good idea as to how successful your product will be. After all, you don’t want to spend time and money creating and promoting a product that wont sell.

Forums are not just a place to share your knowledge and views. Forums are goldmines, literally. You can effectively use these forums to generate focused traffic and establish your web presence. And you know the best thing about this? It is free!

People love to express their views on various subjects and head over to the relevant forums and sign up there to do so. This is why online communities exist - so that like-minded people can communicate freely. These forums or communities experience massive traffic and you too can tap into this traffic to grow your business.

The critical thing to remember here is - you just don’t go and advertise in a forum! You become a part of the community. Advertising on a forum is a total no-no because you’ll not only be banned, but also labeled a spammer. Nobody needs a bad reputation, now, do they?

Instead, you sign up with these forums and become a relevant contributor. This is what will bring you traffic. Forums are basically like message boards where members help each other with information. They are highly interactive places. As a feasible list-building strategy, forums are up there with the best. They are great places to build credibility and trust through good content.

Okay, so here’s how you can use forums to get that focused traffic rushing to your site:

• The first thing to do is identify a forum (or two), which gets massive traffic that is relevant to your site. A Google search can help you do this. See the number of members and posts to get an idea of its popularity.
• Become a member of the forum(s) you shortlist. Make a profile. Introduce yourself briefly, but NO hardsell promotional messages. It is quite likely that you will receive several welcome messages from existing members - so don’t forget to thank each one of them.
• Read previously posted messages to post useful content. This could be in the way of answering questions, asking relevant questions, and so on. Never advertise your website. However, you can include your website in your signature, but make sure this is allowed when you join.
• Spend at least a few minutes each day on the forum to be active. Forum members like someone who posts regularly and the best part is - they will recommend you to others who will not hesitate to click your link!

These steps can be followed with more than one forum. You will benefit by building your list, getting affiliates for your affiliate programs, subscribers to your newsletters, and a lot of new customers. Just make sure you diligently follow the forum rules.

Why not go out, find a couple of forums right now, and try what I’ve described above?