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Money making

7 Steps On How to Pick the Right Niche

by shedders November 29, 2023

written by shedders

Understanding this chapter is crucial if you want to make money as an affiliate marketer on the internet. If you blow off this chapter don’t be surprised if your business goes belly up! That’s how crucial it is.

Things often go seriously wrong when sellers pick the wrong niche. Unfortunately, you will only become aware of your mistake when it’s too late to rectify it. You will know you picked the wrong niche when you have spent a tremendous amount of time, effort, emotional energy, and money only to find that you have very little, if anything, to show for it.

Remember, never trade your time for money! One of the most common mistakes that new sellers make is to sink money, effort, and time into a resource that simply does not provide a real service or, if it does provide a service, provides it at too high a cost to justify it’s use.

I simply can’t emphasize enough that niche choice is crucial to your affiliate marketing success. A Quick Rundown of What Can Go Wrong? First, there may be low or no demand for your product or service. When you pick the wrong niche, the demand may not be there. You might think that it’s the hottest thing since sliced bread, but people really could care less about it – what they care about is whether you produce the kind of results that they would pay dollars for.

Another problem with picking the wrong niche is that you may pick trendy niches. This may seem really hot right now, but they may be “here today, gone tomorrow.”

A good example is fidget spinners. These spinners created a rage in 2016. Now, nobody wants to have anything to do with them. A lot of people made money selling these fidget spinners but a lot of people also lost money because they entered into the niche too late. Trendy niches can mean the end of your affiliate marketing investment. Avoid trendy niches and instead pick niches with tried and true long-standing sales histories.

Another problem that you can avoid by picking the right niche involves low return on effort. A lot of people confuse this with return on investment. These are two totally different concepts. Return on effort is the amount of time you personally invest something. The iron rule of return on effort is to put in as little effort and time as possible, while getting as many dollars as possible.

If you don’t stick by the iron rule and pick the wrong niche, you could end up making some money but only at the expense of your time, mental energy, and emotional resources. Pouring your life into that activity is simply not going to be worth the return on effort. Of course, there is always the possibility that you would pick a niche that has really no return on investment. This speaks more to the amount of dollars that you’re going to be putting into your affiliate marketing business. Maybe you put in this money up front or at a later stage in the development process.

Whatever the case may be, whatever profit your business produces does not in any way, shape, or form come close to justifying the amount of dollars needed to put up the business in the first place. Sadly, people commit this mistake all the time. Another danger with picking the wrong niche involves competition. People routinely pick niches that are too competitive.

As a result, there are just so many of these niche websites out there that the competition becomes a washout altogether. In other words, the competition is so great that essentially no one wins. This is a serious problem because if the typical consumer interested in that niche gets the impression that your website is just like everyone else’s website, there’s really no compelling reason for them to go to your site instead of the thousands of other websites that share your niche. It simply is too saturated. Another danger that you need to avoid involves your mindset.

You may be making money off your business. Things may be looking great on the surface, but somehow, some way, you lost interest. You just don’t have the heart for it anymore. This pitfall is often the true reason that your business is unsuccessful. If you truly lose interest in your niche or your business you will not have the level of passion you need to solve problems as they present themselves.

That is the essence of successful business. Successful business people solve problems. That’s their job. That’s their calling. Unfortunately, if you lose interest in whatever it is you’re doing for money, you’re not going to be excited to solve issues. You’re probably not going to be in a hurry to put out fires as they appear. As a result, your business starts to die slowly.

In other words, you find yourself in the pitiful situation of putting in all this time, effort and money creating a website that pulls in a nice chunk of traffic, only to end up completely empty handed because you have nothing to sell or promote. Sounds ridiculous, right? Unfortunately, you can suffer any one or even a combination of all of the problems listed above if you do not pay close attention to the niche selection process.

You have to know how to select your affiliate marketing niche in a systematic and methodical way. Otherwise, you may end up creating the wrong business.

How to Pick Your Niche the Expert Way

By following the steps I lay out below, you increase your chances of affiliate marketing success tremendously. Instead of coming up with a “hot” idea and wasting a tremendous amount of time, effort and money on it, if you follow the steps that I lay out below, you go through a tried and proven niche selection process that dramatically increases your likelihood of success. Now, this is not a guarantee that if you just follow these steps riches await you in your bank account. Still, it will give you enough of a competitive advantage that your chances of success are much higher than if you were to fly by the seat of your pants.

You need to go through these steps. Don’t skip any of them if you want to make sure that you are targeting the right niche.

Step #1: List out all your interests

List your personal interests and hobbies. Really think about what you personally like to learn about, see, do, collect, or spend time on. Apply the following test: Ask yourself, as you go through each of the interests line by line, if you would talk about those topics even if you were not getting paid. This should narrow your list substantially. Once you have cleaned up your list, go on to the next step.

Step #2: Filter by commercial interests on Google Keyword Planner tool

If you haven’t already done so, create an account at Google Adwords. Using its Google Keyword Planner tool, enter some keywords related to the topics on your list. If you don’t know how this works, just type in the interest and you would be able to find keywords related to it. Group these keywords based on the topics they’re related to.

When you look at each keyword, Google Keyword Planner tool will show the estimated cost per click for that keyword term. This should give you a rough dollar value of the overall demand for each niche. Now, simply eliminate any listed niches that have very low commercial value.

Step #3: Filter by consumer demand on Google Keyword Planner tool

Now that you’re entering keywords related to your niches on Google Keyword Planner tool, the next step is to pay attention to the average monthly search volume projected for those keyword clusters. A certain pattern should emerge from topic to topic. It should be fairly clear which topics have more searches. Now, delete listed niches that do not have enough demand in terms of projected search volume, as well as those that have too much demand. Again, think of this concept as the previously mentioned competition for competition. If a topic generates too many searches, the competition is too great to allow any one or two particular websites to flourish at all. The pool is too full! Now you will see a list of niches that are considered “middle of the road” as far as monthly average search volume is concerned.

Step #4: Filter by competition level

Take the keywords related to each of the niches remaining on your list and search theose keywords on Google’s main search engine. Take note of how many websites are returned by Google. Usually, Google will show a number figure of how many websites are related to the keyword you entered. Write these numbers down. After you’ve done this with all the keywords related to all your remaining niches, compare them with each other. You should wipe out niches on your list that have too many websites targeting them. You should focus on a fairly manageable level of competition.

Step #5: Filter by consumer trend

At this stage, your list of niches should be growing shorter and shorter. Now, apply two more filters to your search so that you can zero in on the niche you should target. This is the expert way of picking niches. If you follow this process, there is a high chance you will be more successful with your affiliate marketing business. For this step, you’re going to type in the keywords related to each of the niches on your list into Google Trends. Pay attention to the chart. Is it flat or does it show a decline over time? If it shows any of these two patterns, delete that niche from your list. Chances are, the demand level for that niche is dying over time. If you need a good example of this, look at the search pattern for the keyword phrase “fidget spinner.” There were many previously hot products and hot niches, that have dropped like a rock. You don’t want to be stuck with those. Filter from your list any niche with a declining or flat lining trend line.

Step #6: Filter by social media demand

For this step, I need you to go to Twitter or Facebook. I need you to enter keywords related to your niche on those platforms and see if there are hashtags on Twitter or really big accounts that target those keywords. On Facebook, see if there are any big pages or Facebook groups that tend to talk about those topics. If a niche isn’t already being talked about on these two platforms, you might want to take it off your list. If you pick a niche that already has some sort of demand on social media, you’re making your job much easier. You know that there are already platforms and groups as well as promotional spaces on social media. You only need to go to those existing places to promote whatever it is you’re promoting. Do you see how this works?

You don’t want to have to create social media demand. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re going to have to reinvent the wheel, as far as your niche is concerned. You have to ask yourself, “Are there enough people already talking about the niche that I’m thinking of promoting?” Similarly, “Are there areas on social media dedicated to this niche already?”

Step #7: Filter by content ease

This is an optional step. You don’t have to delete items from your niche list if it doesn’t fit this criteria. However, if you are operating on a tight budget, you might want to do just that. The question you need to ask yourself is, “How easy is it to come up with content for this niche?” For example, among the three remaining niches on your list, one involves really complicated robotics technology, this might be an issue. You better have the time to properly research content for that niche and do things yourself, or you better get ready to hire somebody. If you’re going to be outsourcing content creation, it may be very expensive because the niche is so specialized or involves some sort of cutting edge technology. Since you’re going to be spending money for this content, it may prove to be too costly or, in the case of you writing stuff yourself, too time intensive. You may be better off sticking with a niche that is easier or cheaper to produce content for.

November 29, 2023 0 comment

Money making

Pinterest Profits – Training Guide

by shedders November 29, 2023

written by shedders

Introduction To Pinterest

Pinterest is a fast growing image-based social networking site that not only offers a unique approach to the way that people communicate, but it offers incredible potential to maximize your business exposure and brand awareness.

Even those who held no interest in other types of social media sites have jumped on board Pinterest simply because it offers a very innovative method to share and communicate with others who hold the same interests.

With more than 10 million visitor’s monthly and over 2 million visitor’s hitting the site each day, Pinterest is an extremely valuable resource for spreading your business message, connecting with potential customers, and furthering your brand.

But how exactly does Pinterest work?

Pinterest is similar to the bulletin boards that you’ve seen located in shopping malls, local grocery stories, and perhaps convenience stories, but on a global scale.

Similar to the way that corkboards and bulletin boards work in local shops, where people can pin up announcements, news, items for sale and of interest, Pinterest’s foundation is based on providing users with the opportunity to “pin” the things that interest them.

Imagine being able to create a virtual “sticky note” for your business that is seen by thousands of visitors a day. Now consider the branding opportunity that is now at your fingertips, just by utilizing the popularity of a virtual “corkboard”.

It’s no surprise that hundreds of businesses, entrepreneur’s and marketer’s have begun to develop creative marketing campaigns based around the ever-growing Pinterest community.

Exploiting The Popularity of Pinterest

In order to create an effective marketing campaign within the Pinterest community, you need to understand the features and extended options when creating pins.

Image Showcase

One of the most powerful components of a successful pin is in your ability to create, collect and display various images from your websites, resources, and even other website’s in your niche market.

Visitor’s to Pinterest are interested in exploring relevant content pertaining to their interests, and while many of Pinterest pages are designed around specific brands, physical products and collectibles, you can easily create popular Pinterest pages around your offers, just by helping members discover your very own “themed” image collections.

For example, if you are in the business of selling physical products, such as t-shirts, mouse pads, books, DVD’s or anything in which you can usual visual marketing components to sell your items, you can easily create a Pinterest page that includes a full collection of product images from your inventory.

But even if you sell digital products, you can still take advantage of image themed pins by creating a visual library of everything associated to your brand, including your logo, ebook covers, and other image-based marketing materials.

And don’t just stop there. With Pinterest you can also create visual-marketing campaigns around other image types including spreadsheets, graphs, charts, and even mindmaps!

Examples of Successful Pinterest Campaigns

Consider the image-based training tools that you use within your products. All of these can be used to create Pinterest based pages that provide a visual illustration of the services and products that you offer.

Drawing from a couple of examples of successful Pinterest marketing, let’s take a closer look at Etsy – their Pinterest page vailable at http://pinterest.com/etsy/pins

Etsy has developed a presence within Pinterest just by showcasing handmade crafts, clothing, vintage collections and designs from their community.

But Etsy is only one of many online businesses who have taken advantage of Pinterests global community. Sony Music, Pepsi, clothing designers, interior decorators, and many other big-brand companies have established Pinterest accounts in order to futher connect with their target audience.

When it comes to online businesses, Mashable has had great success with their Pinterest page, available at http://pinterest.com/mashable/pins

Mashable is the perfect example of how online businesses can begin to generate high targeted traffic to their websites instantly, while maximizing exposure with very little work involved.

The basis of Mashable’s Pinterest page is to simply take traditional blog posts and create a simple image-based overview or summary of each content piece.

For example, if you were writing a blog post about the “Top 10 Traffic Sources For This Year”, you could easily create an image that represents ‘traffic’, with 10 headlines outlining the different traffic sources.

You could then link that image to the full article on your blog, directing viewers from Pinterest to your website!

When someone clicks on your image, they would be directed to a full article on your website or blog – or perhaps you may lead them to another social networking account such as Facebook or Twitter.

You can direct people anywhere you choose from sales pages, squeeze pages, download pages (lead capture) – or to another one of your Pinterest pages.

Viral Marketing With Pinterest

There’s another powerful component to the way that Pinterest has been created – your pins can easily go viral!

If people like your pins, they can choose to “re-pin” your content, maximizing exposure and carrying your message throughout countless Pinterest pages.

If you take a closer look at a popular pin page, you can see the number of re-pins that took place for each update. In some cases, a single pin has been re-pinned hundreds of times!

People can also “like” your pin, and the number of likes will appear at the bottom of your Pinterest pages.

Creating images for your Pinterest pages is also extremely easy to do. You don’t have to have fancy graphics, nor do you have to outsource the work to a graphic designer. Quite often, the best pin based images are those that are simple, direct and to the point.

Your image could simply be your product cover, with a direct link to your sales page. Or, for a more effective Pinterest campaign, you could create an image based around a current news headline, capturing attention from a larger audience, with your image leading them to a full article on your site that ties in with the current event.

You want to focus on creative Pinterest campaigns that will reach a broader audience, and capture a browser’s attention quickly.

Most of the images used by successful marketer’s are very simple and clear, while others create more elaborate graphics that include charts, full article content in image-form, and even cartoons that help carry their marketing message.

Just get creative and start pinning every bit of content you can that will help to build awareness of your brand. There is nothing that can’t be pinned with a bit of imagination and creativity!

Quick Start Ideas

Post comical or funny images that tie into your niche market, and lead people to a full article on your website.

Create Pinterest based contests and giveaway events encouraging other members to repin your pages.

Take advantage of visual “stimulators” and create pins that offer colorful images to attract attention. High resolution images from stock photo sites (providing you with a valid license to distribute) work well at capturing attention quickly.

Include training based images in your pins. If you are involved in social marketing, you could create a simple graph that illustrates the top social marketing websites based on traffic stats and outreach. If you are involved in the weight loss market, you could create an image that offers the average weight loss.

Maximizing Exposure For Unlimited Free Traffic

Pinterest offers a great way for business owners and even affiliates to connect with potential customers and generate fresh, new leads as well!

Here are just a few ways that you can take advantage of the popularity of Pinterest to maximize your affiliate profits.

Create images around current events and then tie that into an article on your website. Make money from affiliate offers that are somehow connected to the topic. Your content doesn’t have to be about the event, but should lead in with it.

For example, you could create a pin with an image and headline that reads “Apple’s New iPhone Failure” – which directs people to your website that features an article on Apple’s inability to keep up with market demand, and how it’s almost impossible to get your hands on one.

You could follow up with an overview of other mobile phones that are similar to the iPhone, leading visitor’s to distributors through your affiliate link. Think about how much money you can make just by exploiting current news and events!

Features include the ability to collect and display images that you find on the Internet. You can browse boards from other members to discover new items as well as create your very own themed collections.

Pinterest is truly the most visual-oriented social networking site, making it easy to create attractive pin boards that will attract attention from potential customers.

Pinterest will work for your marketing campaign if your business is focused on fashion, photography, travel or design based offers, but with a bit of creativity, you can take advantage of the popularity of Pinterest to promote nearly any other business type.

For example, one company created a “Twitter Cheat Sheet” that was a simple image outlining the different areas of the Twitter community site. This image was pinned thousands of time by new Twitter users and marketer’s.

Consider what you could create that would attract visitor’s to your website and create your own visually enhanced marketing campaign with Pinterest.

Ideas:

Create image based content around your niche. Consider graphics, spreadsheet images, or infographs.

Encourage others to pin your image content by opening up contests and events based around your customer base creating additional images involving your brand (logo, creatives, etc).

Tweet out links to your Pinterest collections, pushing traffic from one social media site to another.

Sell your products directly! If you add a $ sign to a number in your pin, Pinterest will automatically create a price tag for your pin. You could sell photographs, stock photos, logos, mascots and other creatives.

Think about the different image based training tools that you’ve used within your business, and consider how you can use similar images to create popular Pinterest pages. Visual tutorials or illustrations.

The key to success with Pinterest is to be proactive in marketing your pages. Add a “follow me on Pinterest” button or tag to your websites and blogs.

Pin other people’s pages rather than just your own content and provide value to existing and new followers by helping them discover new images.

November 29, 2023 0 comment

Money making

3 Ways to Make $10 an Hour

by shedders November 29, 2023

written by shedders

We didn’t start online businesses to make 10 bucks an hour, right? Our goals are obviously much bigger. But here’s what new comers need to know that only seasoned online pros can tell you – you’ve got to start somewhere.

There are three key components to that sentence – “You have got to start somewhere.”

First of course is “you,” because nobody is going to do it for you.

Second is “have got to start” – if you haven’t started to make money online, now is the time. Not tomorrow. Not next month. NOW.

And third is “somewhere.” Meaning you’re not going to start out making a thousand dollars an hour or a million dollars a year. It’s not going to happen. You start out making maybe 10 dollars an hour, and you move up from there.

I’m not saying you can’t move up fast – you can. But you have to START where ever it is that you’re able to start, and for nearly everybody it’s making a few dollars an hour and working from there.

For those who don’t want to work your way up, that’s no problem. Close this newsletter and go find a get rich quick scheme or 2 or 20. Then get back to me when you’re rich (should be next week sometime, right?)

You might even get lucky and find yourself a one hit wonder. You know, like those musicians who get a song on the charts – and then can never duplicate their success so they just fade away. It’s almost worse then never getting success at all because then people say,

5 minutes of fame and the rest of their life is a punch line.

I see that happen in online marketing. Some newbie makes a product that sells a few hundred copies, they get some money in their pocket, and then they just fade away, never to be heard from again.

Who the heck needs that? But it’s the get rich quick mentality that makes failure like that happen.

For the rest of us who have the common sense to know you don’t win a marathon by starting on the finish line, let’s get started.

And one more thing: As you begin making money online, a funny thing happens. You get addicted. You get to where you want to make more, and you do. You want to find ways to leverage yourself and your work, and you do. You want to find methods to make a lot more money in a shorter amount of time, and you do. But it all starts at the beginning – making a few dollars an hour and then working up from there.

Method #1 for making $10 an hour online – freelancing.

Maybe it’s freelancing writing articles or blogposts. Or building backlinks, or putting up websites, or whatever. Pick out that thing you do the best, and offer it as a service to others who either don’t do it as well as you, or would rather hire you than do it themselves.

What’s that? You don’t have a skill worthy of hiring out your services? Then get one. You’re going to need to master these skills to get good at online marketing anyway, so pick something that really appeals to you, then research the heck out of it for 10 hours. In 10 hours you can learn more about any topic than 99.9% of people know.

Then advertise your service on the Warrior forum or any website that lets you sell services. Start out working for cheap, get some clients and some testimonials, and gradually increase your pricing.

Find faster ways to perform your service, and even hire out the work to someone else. In other words, LEVERAGE what you’re doing to increase your hourly rate.

For example, if you’re getting paid $5 an article and you write 2 articles an hour, you’re making $10 an hour. Get faster to where you can write 4 articles and hour and you’re earning $20 an hour. Hire someone overseas to write the articles for you for $2 apiece, and you’re earning $3 an article for simply reading them over and doing light editing. If you can edit 10 articles and hour, you’re earning $30 an hour. And so forth.

Of course what is the problem with all of this? You are trading time for money – something that by itself will generally not get you to that magical six figure per year income.

Unless, of course, you not only hire out the work – you also hire someone to take the orders, edit the articles and fill the orders. Now you have a completely hands free system for making money, and it all started with you earning $10 an hour and working your way up from there.

Method #2 for making $10 an hour online – writing and selling PLR.

In our previous example we were writing articles for others. Of course in freelancing you can choose to offer any service people are willing to pay for – writing articles was simply one example.

But what if, instead of writing articles for one person, we write a packet of 10 to 15 articles on one specific topic using the best keywords for that niche, and then SELL that packet of articles to fellow marketers for their own private use?

Now you can sell the same articles over and over again. If you sell that packet of 15 articles for $10, and you sell 15 packets, you’ve earned $150. If it took you 5 hours to write the articles, you’ve now earned $30 an hour. Of course, if it takes you less time, you earn more per hour. And if you sell more packets, you’ve again made more per hour.

There are PLR writers who do exactly this. They write packets of articles, offer those articles either on their own websites or on the Warrior forum, and do quite well.

Can you outsource the writing of the articles? Of course you can. And with PLR, you are not limited to just articles – you can write blog posts, reports, ebooks, make recordings, videos, etc. You are also not limited by how many times you can sell each PLR product you create, unless you choose to set a limit so as to create scarcity.

So now you’re naming your own price, and you’re creating a bank of products you can continue to sell for as long as you choose. And you’re also creating a loyal following of buyers because once your buyers see that you offer good quality at a good price, they will come back time and time again.

Maybe your first PLR product only sells 10 copies, but then your next one sells to 10 new buyers and 5 of your previous buyers, and your next one sells to 10 new buyers and 10 of your previous buyers, and so forth. Every time you offer a new PLR product you’ll have more customers who already know that you put out great stuff, and so they’ll snap it up in a heartbeat.

Plus, as new customers arrive they’ll see your previous PLR products and purchase some of those as well. So that packet of 15 articles you wrote 3 months ago is still selling a couple of copies a week, and if you’re putting out new products every week, you’ve got more and more to offer and thus more and more to sell.

Leverage this by outsourcing some or all of the writing, and you’ve not only created a method to earn $10 or more per hour – you’ve actually got yourself a nice little business where you are in control, you set the hours and you set the prices.

Do you see how you are progressing from a freelancer to a service provider? And it really is that easy, but the first step is you have to actually START. And that’s the step that trips most people up. The second step of course is that once you start, you keep going. You’ll find the more you do, the more you want to do, and it just gets easier as you go because you’re building momentum and you’re seeing success. Plus as you go you’ll get more and more testimonials, which will make it all that easier to make more and more sales and even to charge more money for your work.

Again, getting started is the hard part, yet it can be easy if you get started right now before you have a chance to put it off. There is nothing stopping you because if you have time to read this, then you have time to start your freelancing business or even jump straight into your PLR writing business.

Method #3 for making $10 an hour online – Write an Info Product on How You Did It.

Did you get started? Are you now making $10+ per hour freelancing? Or writing and selling PLR? Then your next step is to write your own case study on how you did it, and sell that. For example, you might title your report, “How I went from $0 to $10 an hour in one day, and now earn $30 an hour doing simple work.” Or something like that (perhaps a bit shorter.) Then sell your report on the Warrior Special Offers forum or on your website or Clickbank or where ever you choose.

In fact, no matter what you’re doing online to succeed, once you get good at this you can always write a report detailing what you did and sell it to make easy, extra money.

In our example, if you price your report at $7 and sell 50 copies, you’ve made $350. The cost to run a Warrior Special Offer is $40, so you’ve netted over $300 for something that probably took you 3-5 hours worth of work. That’s $60+ per hour, PLUS you now have 50 additional buyers on your list that you can sell to again and again.

More tips – whatever service you’re offering, be sure to offer it with a twist. If you’re writing articles, use a spinner to give them multiple versions of each article, or use a program to transfer them into video, or blast the articles to article directories. If you’re doing backlinking, don’t just offer a standard package of one type of backlink – offer a package that includes multiple types of backlinks so it looks far more natural to the search engines. And so forth.

Your service could be something as simple as creating videos using any of the video programs out there. There are programs that make videos that look like Hollywood trailers, and others that make videos that look like home movies. Do your research, find a program you like, and offer the service. Sure you might spend some money on software or access to a special website that produces these videos, but then it’s as easy as ‘plug in and create’ to fulfill your video orders.

Now I know a lot of people are going to want me to outline a detailed step-b-step plan on exactly what you should do to earn your $10 an hour and work up from there, and I’m not going to do it.

First, I’d have a hundred people all competing against each other and complaining of the competition. Second, it’s not about me telling you what to do – it’s about you finding what you’re best suited for and following that path.

More to the point, this is where you do your research and you find something that resonates with you, and then you learn everything you can about it. Set aside 10 hours and just learn learn learn. Then you’ll know more about your topic than most people, and you’ll be ready to offer your service. And it will truly be YOUR service, not something you copycatted from a step-by-step action plan like a hundred other automatons.

This isn’t just about earning $10 an hour – this is about you stepping out of your comfort zone and stretching yourself just a bit. This is about you taking your first steps without the aid of a hand railing, and it’s the best way to get started and realize just how simple all of this is if you’ll only just DO IT.

November 29, 2023 0 comment