Ok,

Nearly every day someone posts a new thread on BHW that looks something like this...

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Im a complete newbie to the whole make money online thing. Could you please tell me how you make money online? Can you teach me?

So I've decided to create a no B.S. lot of threads which detail a simple system to make money which WILL work if you implement it. It's not a get rich quick scheme or a quick fix solution. It's a proper system which thousands of people use every day to earn a full time income.

It's called Niche Marketing and I'm sure you've all heard it before.
The information detailed in this series are all part of the system and specify the exact process you need to go through in order to start profiting from these tiny Niche Markets.

So...

PART 1 - Finding A Niche

The first step to creating your Niche Empire is to find some profitable niches.

When selling a product, a lot of people make the mistake of developing their product first, and then trying to find a market for it.

Of course, the process should be reversed.

First, find a market that spends money, then find out what they want and give it to them.

Deciding on what product or service you will promote in a niche market should be based on a simple principle. There should be a demand for your product or service. You want to offer something that people actually need, something that will make their lives better, make them feel better physically, make them look better, or help them solve a problem.

The process I go through when looking for new niches to enter is as follows.

For starters, I'm always aware of trends and current events in the real world. I read several newspapers each day, many magazines, both general and niche-specific, I watch the news, I listen to the radio. Occasionally something that I hear or read will stick with me. I may jot down some notes, or draw a diagram to help me remember it. Sometimes I'll call my phones voice mail and leave myself a message.

But at some point I'll have several broad ideas to research. I want to look deeper. And I want to make sure there is a good market for them before I even think about creating a product.

To begin with, I check out the hottest search trends at Google's Hot Trends. At this point I am just looking for ideas.
If I see that a particular topic is hot, I’ll make a note of it and look at more targeted sub-niches later on at more specialized sites (which I’ll show you in just a minute!).



The Lycos Top 50 is another site, like Google's Hot Trends, where I will review the latest trends and look for hot topics to explore further. I will also look at Yahoo! Buzz for ideas as well.

The eBay Pulse site is a great place to start looking at sub-niches. What I will do is select the category first (using the topics I’ve gathered from looking at the previous sites), then look for profitable sub-niches by then selecting a sub-category.

The best chance for success is if I am as specific as possible with my niche selection. In the example below, I don’t want to sell to the “crafts” niche.
I want to sell to grandmothers who enjoy giving their latch rug hooking gifts to their families and friends. Whatever. You get the idea.



Also, I’ll always check the largest stores as well to see what they’re selling. There has to be a reason they are the largest stores. They must be doing something right.

TIP: eBay also puts out a PDF report of their hottest categories each month, available at http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf.

Now that I have some potential sub-niches to work with, I want to see how much of a market there is there.
Just because a sub-niche is popular doesn’t mean people spend money on it.

Amazon is a great place to see what currently exists for any given sub-niche.
Chances are, the more books there are written on that subject, the more that market spends on those topics.

For example:



First I specify “Books” to search. Then I enter my niche, in this case “crafts.”
Uh oh. There are WAY too many books returned. This niche is not targeted enough. It is too “mainstream.”



Much better! There are possibilities here.
We now suspect the following:

1) This sub-niche may be targeted enough.
2) This sub-niche may spend money.

Once you have an idea of which niche you want to target, it’s time to determine its profitability. For this, you would have to use the tools found at:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Or…
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Simply type in the idea you have in mind, and press the submit button. You will then be presented with a list of keywords and key phrases that are related to the subject you have entered. Each keyword or key phrase would have an indication of the number of searches that they have gathered from search engine users. The number of searches made for a particular keyword or key phrase is a good barometer of the demand. You’d want at least 5,000 searches for your main keyword.

Here are several other sites you can use to get niche ideas:

Nichebot - http://www.nichebot.com
Shopping.com Top Searches – http://www2.shopping.com/top_searches
AOL Hot Searches - http://hot.aol.com/hot/hot
Google Groups - http://groups.google.com
Craig's List - http://www.craigslist.com
Delicious Popular - http://del.icio.us/popular
Dig - http://www.digg.com
Google Catalogs - http://catalogs.google.com
Google Suggest – http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Technorati - http://www.technorati.com

Also, I'll do several targeted searches in both Google and Yahoo (for example, on the subject of "hobbies").

And of course I will always Google my keywords and check out the competition in the Adwords ads. In this case I pay special attention to the ads that sell information products (or services like mine if I’m selling a service).
Some of the ads will be irrelevant as far as competition goes.
Ok, the next thing I'll do is check how many magazines there are on the subject of my chosen niche.

Ok, the next thing I'll do is check how many magazines there are on the subject of my chosen niche.
There are two places I go online for that:
Magazines.com - http://www.magazines.com
and
Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/599858/
At each site, I search by category to find the magazines in my niche.

Obviously the more the better, up to a point.

For example, golf has a lot of magazines, but it's not a good niche by itself. It needs to be more targeted. But in that case I can always get more targeted sub-niche ideas within that topic by looking at the types of magazines for that topic.

The next thing to do to find out more about a niche is to visit the forums. By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned about you can search the Internet for products and services that will help them solve those problems. Gather the information about the topic. Do some spy work.

Ok. By now you should have found a profitable niche market.
There are plenty of sites I use for research in addition to the ones above, but they are usually niche specific. These sites will help you to research practically any niche market effectively. Once you have this process down, you’ll be able to do this very quickly.

Anyhow, that's it for now. The next step is understanding who your target audience is. To find out how to do that, keep reading here:
http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackha...-audience.html

Very Nice Wealthy

This should Hopefully put and end to a lot of the repeat Questions being asked.

Nows all they need to do is search for the answers to there Questions.

Originally Posted by gokarter

This should Hopefully put and end to a lot of the repeat Questions being asked.

The questions will still be asked but at least there will be a post to refer people to

The questions will still be asked but at least there will be a post to refer people to

Yes You are very correct ,thats sorta what I meant to say in a round about way.

Wait, so I'm a newbie, how do I make money from the internet?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

wealthy199
Nice and important thread you started.
Can be trully helpful for many...

Keep up the good work.

Good, ultimate, basic guide

Very basic and straightforward guide. Great work.

Really helpful information wealthy199

thanks for the info. now all i need to do is apply it to what i'm currently doing. I have to take some steps back but thanks for the direction.

thanx im gonna put this to good use, i was just about to sign up to a proxy forum

great thanks

Thank you wealthy199
for starting this Excellent thread here.

You show me, with examples and link to websites, how to find profitable niche....going and reading your other thread also.


When ur site launch, consider me also...I subscribe to email list there

What was in the picture that's missing below:

Uh oh. There are WAY too many books returned. This niche is not targeted enough. It is too “mainstream.”



Much better! There are possibilities here.

I wanted to add another niche keyword search tool here at http://tools.seobook.com. I use it all time and it comes up with some awesome results.

Thanks a lot

Pity there is no mention of Micro Niche Finder
May be in Part 2 - Good Info - great stuff!!

This is a great guide for a newbie!

I just hope people appriceate it.

Great post

THanks for a well thought out post.

Very nice post with details info..will try to implement

Originally Posted by Rambo

This is a great guide for a newbie!

I just hope people appriceate it.

I'm a complete newb. I've read the books and the forums and Adwords still always seemed risky to me. However, this thread I think made me realize WHY the niche is so important... thus putting everything else I've learned into perspective. Thanks so much for taking the time to post it.

Thnaks for the post dude this will hpefully help me make money online

Ok, ignorant question of the day here.

Are you looking for 5,000 daily searches for your targeted word? Or 5,000 monthly?

Thanks for clearing up the confusion!

Specific, and straight to the point...This should get rid of a lot of "newbies" who want their hands held through the process...Such good work is greatly appreciated...

ever stupid mf that commented on this post should be banned

Originally Posted by ebikerz

ever stupid mf that commented on this post should be banned

Please enlighten me what is the stupid you think of.
Unless tell the point to criticise people!!!

I'm appreciate that you can tell us.

Great Info and i love forward to learning more. Thanks

Great tips, thanks a lot, been looking for some tips on finding a niche

Here is one more ...

Code:

http://www.seomoz.org/popular-searches

Very Nice thread, its should Hopefully for me.
thanks.

Very well written, loaded with plenty of great research tools. Just dont get caught up in over analyzing the niche. Find one...test it, if it works go balls to the wall, if not dump it then find the next.

j

great list, thanks for this....saving now.

Thanks that allot of info to have! I love the knowlege offered on this forum

But - while hunting for the "perfect niche" it's easy to get lost...don't forget about the "blasting principle" promoted by Levenhagen...better try 20 "maybe niches" and dump 18 when they don't pull, than spending more time on searching - and see fail the hardly chosen one. With the first way you still have 2 Winners - and move on trying 20 others... (2 already bringing in money) *g*

Thanks for the guide, but some questions:

You say our category should have at least 5000 searches for our main keyword (per day?) but terms like "green tea" are only coming up with 582 searches (2000 for the top 100). Do you mean 5000/month? So about 150+ searches/day?

Great list of links! Thanks

This is an excellent walkthru. Always a source of frustration for newbies.

good walkthrough for newbies

this is really awsome for me as beginner on bhw! Hope to find more such epic topics....

Great thread! lots of info

you could have wrote this in a pdf file and sell it on DP

thanks for information.

Good starter info thx.

short and to the point, good info