Take it away, Susanne!

Niche Marketing: Mission Impossible Style

by Susanne Myers

Let’s have a little fun with niche marketing and approach it “Mission Impossible” style. I don’t know what causes me to come up with these quirky topics and analogies when I’m writing for Nicole’s blog, but I sure hope you’re enjoying it. With that said let’s dive right in …

Your mission, should you accept it, is to connect your readers with the best solutions to help solve their problems. Let me introduce you to your team:

• WordPress Site With Awesome Content
• Redirected Affiliate Links
• Autoresponder Messages
• Niche Research Packs

Let’s start with some good news.

Building a profitable niche website is not an impossible mission. In fact, if you assemble your team and put it to good use following the steps I’m outlining below, it won’t take you long at all.

Let’s say you want to set up a new site over the summer to help pay for that new car you want to buy (I know you’re car shopping Nicole). I like doing that anytime we have a new purchase coming up or even to save up for a nice vacation or a new laptop.

Every good mission needs some sort of mission plan. Here’s yours:

Start With The End Goal In Mind

I find it helps to set some sort of goal for the site. This could be making an extra $200 a month to pay for an upcoming vacation, $50 to cover the phone bill or $2000 to make your mortgage payment each month. Without a goal, you don’t know what you’re working toward. Having the goal helps you figure out how hard you need to work, how fast you need to build your site, how much traffic you need and how big of a list you want.

Once you have your dollar amount, it’s time to find a suitable niche to work with.

Find A Problem And Solution

As I mentioned before, your job on this mission is to help people solve their problems and since we are in the US,  that often involves our wallets and credit cards. Of course some of the problems are going to be solved by sharing a quick tip or explaining and idea. But since we’re in it to make a living from niche marketing, you also want to find good products to promote.

Build Your Site

Let’s bring some of our team members into play.

Team member #1 is a site (or blog) built with the free WordPress software. It’s quick and easy to install, very customizable and most importantly it’s fast and simple to add content to it. Use this team member to its fullest advantage by learning more about using wordpress and the various plugins available. For example there are quite a few good ones out there to help your readers share your posts via social media. (see those Facebook and Twitter buttons on this page for example).

Team member #2 is Redirection. Redirection is a simple plugin that helps you to redirect your affiliate links from within the WordPress dashboard. Of course any other way to redirect your links will do – just make sure you get it done.

Built Your List

Team member #3 is your autoresponder. 

My favorite autoresponder to use is Aweber. (Both Nicole and I use it.)

Set it up right away and start creating autoresponder messages that send subscribers back to your niche website, share additional tips and of course make offers. Your list will be one of your biggest assets so get started here as early as possible.

Your Secret Weapon – Niche Research Packs
Last but not least, I would like to introduce you to a secret weapon – or an ace up your sleeve – Niche Research Packs. They help you set up niche websites on the fly with all the time-consuming research already done for you.

Nik says:  If you use Susanne's Niche Research Packs, it's a heck of a lot faster than doing it yourself and a heck of a lot cheaper than hiring someone!

In each niche pack, you get…

• Detailed niche description
• Who your target market for this niche is
• List of affiliate products available
• 100 domain name ideas (plus list of modifiers for hundreds more)
• Detailed keyword report for over 1000 keywords
• 100 article and blog post ideas
• 15 different author resource boxes
• 2 different detailed marketing plans (beginner and advanced) with action steps to get you up and running right away.
• List of available PLR products for this niche
• Recommended tools and resources

Here’s the link to check those out: Niche Research Packs

(NOTE: Use coupon  61414 – to save $20 off any niche pack)

Please show Susanne some love and comment below.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

Want to see more posts from Susanne? Check these out…

• Online Success Interview: Susanne Myers
• How to Create Niche Products
• Reinvent Yourself
• What is Link Building and How Does it Impact SEO?
• Before Building One Way Links – 3 Things You Need To Have In Place First
• Link Building Frequently Asked Questions
• How to Declutter Your Online Business
• How to Create Passive Income and Summer Fun
• Affiliate Marketing Lessons That I Learned at The Bowling Alley
• Skip The Latest And Greatest Marketing Techniques and Stick With Stuff That Really Works

So, I turned to my bud, Susanne Myers of Daily Affiliate Tasks and asked for a guest blog post.  In addition to being one of my favorite people on the planet, Susanne is a successful niche affiliate marketer, too, and is also my mastermind partner.

Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!

Skip The Latest And Greatest Marketing Technique and Stick With Stuff That Actually Works

By Susanne Myers
Learn Susanne’s system here -> Daily Affiliate Tasks

It’s so easy to get distracted by this new course, that new link building network or the latest and greatest “super-secret-just-press-a-button-and-get-rich” system. But here’s the thing … that stuff doesn’t always work all that well and even if it does it doesn’t work for long. I’ve been doing this for quite some time as has Nicole and we’re both pretty successful at what we do.

We were chatting this morning about how easy it is to feel overwhelmed or left behind if you don’t keep up with all the latest and greatest stuff… and came to the conclusion that it’s really the same few things, done well that work in the long run.

Here’s What Works

Here’s what works for us. We share lots of great content through various outlets including our blogs, articles, short reports, audios, podcasts, videos, Kindle ebooks (in Nicole’s case. I’m still working on that one), and info products.

Yes, it’s work, but it’s well worth it. And we both have a couple of little tricks up our sleeves to make the most of all that content. The first is to simply repurpose as much as possible. That means that an email we wrote to a subscriber becomes a blog post, and is then expanded upon to turn it into an article. We compile several different articles in into a short report and submit it to sides like “Scribd”.

From there we may go back to the blog post and create an audio or video around the same content. You get the idea. By repurposing, you get to leverage every single piece of content you create.

Content Marketing Supercharged With Social Media

Once you have that content out there, mention it on social media sites. Tweet your latest blog post and post your videos on Facebook. Connect your Scribd account to Facebook and record some audio posts on Cinch.fm which will auto tweet and post them on FB. The more active you are in these social media outlets and start to share your content, the more readers you will attract back to your site.

I also recommend you make it easy to share your blog posts (or any other content for that matter). Take a look at the Twitter and Facebook button Nicole has on her blog. With the click of a button you can share this post. Please do :).

List Building And Email Marketing

Last but not least let’s talk about list building and email marketing. We both put a lot of time and effort into this and it accounts for a large chunk of our income. New readers find our content all across the web and eventually land on our blogs (here at NicoleOnTheNet.com or in my case at AffiliateTreasureChest.com). From there they’ll end up signing up for one of our lists and start getting emails. Some of them will be pure content emails; others will be offers for various products. Many of them will be a combination of both. In fact chances are that you’re reading this blog post as a result of one of Nicole’s emails to you.

Do me a favour… stop listening to all the hoopla about the latest and greatest “not-to-be-missed” technique for the next two weeks and instead focus on creating great content, marketing it via social media, building your list and then emailing them regularly. After those two weeks see if you don’t start to see an increase in traffic, exposure and most importantly income.

Ready for more tips on what works and what doesn’t?

Join Daily Affiliate Tasks for $10 per month and work on things that actually work to bring you more traffic, more subscribers and make more affiliate commissions working as little as 30 minutes per day. Learn more and join today at Daily Affiliate Tasks.

Thanks for reading!

Susanne Myers

Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!

Affiliate Marketing Lessons Learned From The Bowling Alley

By Susanne Myers

Learn Susanne's system here -> Daily Affiliate Tasks

I’m sitting in a bowling alley as I’m typing this watching my daughter and her friends bowl. I know, it’s a weird place to work, but hey … I’m not a big bowler and one of the big advantages of being an affiliate marketer is that I can work just about anywhere. As I’m watching all the fun and excitement here, it struck me that there are quite a few lessons to be learned from bowling.

Lesson #1 – Practice Makes Perfect

Let’s start with the obvious lesson here. The more you bowl the better your score will be. The same holds true when it comes to building and marketing small websites that are monetized with affiliate offers. At first things can seem a bit overwhelming and you won’t always get the results you want. But as you stick with this business model and get better at your craft, it will become easier, more fun and most importantly more profitable to be an Affiliate Marketer. We’re not born with the skill set it takes to make this work, but a little practice each day helps to hone our skills.

Lesson #2 – They Can’t All Be Strikes

Even if you have bowled for 20 years, I’m sure you can’t throw a strike every single time.  The same is true in online marketing. Not every niche website you build will be a big hit. Some may only make you a handful of dollars each month; some won’t make any money at all. Not every mailing you sent out to your list will work as well as anticipated. I’ve had some that resulted in only one or two sales… but that’s ok. They can’t all be strikes and if you pay attention to what’s happening and listen to your subscribers, you can learn something from each of those “flops”.

Accept that they won’t all be strikes and move on. Most importantly don’t let this fact discourage you. Keep working away … stick with what you know works and sooner or later, you’ll get that big strike in the online world.

Lesson #3 – The Right Equipment Makes A Difference

Have you ever tried bowling in your street shoes or with a playground ball you had laying around the house … it doesn’t work very well, does it? The same holds true for affiliate marketing. Like in bowling, you don’t need a lot of equipment, but getting the right stuff in the beginning helps set you up for success. Don’t try to build your site on a free platform. Get a webhost, buy your own domain name and start stuff of right. I promise it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

When you start to build your list, stick with a reputable service like Aweber or Feedblitz. Set a little of the money you’re making aside and invest in new courses and eventually some coaching. Attend some events and conferences like NAMS.  Reinvesting in your business is one of the best ways I know to really grow things.

Lesson #4 – Keep it Simple

Bowling is really a rather simple process. You look down your lane and roll the ball, hopefully knocking out lots of pins in the process. There aren’t a bunch of fancy techniques. You just do what works and keep doing it turn after turn. Sure there are some variations depending on what pins you’re trying to knock down, but overall it’s pretty simple and something you can explain to a 5 year old.

Look at affiliate marketing the same way. Sure you could do all sorts of elaborate and fancy stuff, but what works is doing the simple stuff and doing it over and over again. You know that guest blog posts like the one you’re reading right now work to get more traffic to your site and to help with search engine rankings. Sit down and write some of them this week. The same goes for articles… they still work as well. Add more articles and blog posts to your own site, submit some to article directories. Keep it simple and work on what works.

Lesson #5 – You’ve Got To Ignore The Noise

This one isn’t very easy, but I can tell you from experience that you have to work on tuning out the noise, whether it’s the bowling alley noise on your next turn to roll (or while you’re trying to work in this place), or the noise of emails, tweets, and the latest and greatest tip, advice or product offer in the online realm. There will be all sorts of distractions that will keep you from completing the handful of tasks each day it takes to grow your online business.

Don’t let the latest email or webinar distract you from what it takes to grow your site. Yes, there is a time to learn more and implement new ideas, but don’t allow it to take over your entire day. Make a list of things that you should be getting done today, work on those first and then take a look at the other offers, courses and ideas. In other words, don’t get distracted by all the noise around you.

Lesson #6 – Coaching Helps … Or even just a few pointers

Right in front of me a dad is showing his son how to hold the ball and throw it straight down the lane. The little instruction is making an immediate difference in the boy’s score. Sometimes all it takes  are a few pointers. Talk to other affiliate marketers, find a mentor or hire a coach. Take a look at some good courses and most importantly apply the tips and strategies offered. Then watch as your own score (your affiliate income) improves.

Ready for more tips on how to grow your affiliate income?

Join Daily Affiliate Tasks.com for $10 per month and work on things that actually work to bring you more traffic, more subscribers and make more affiliate commissions working as little as 30 minutes per day.

Learn more and join today at www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com

Want More from Susanne?

Here are some places you can learn more..

• Free Affiliate Marketing Fast Start Lessons
• Daily Affiliate Tasks
• Susanne has also shared great information all over my blog. Click here to learn more from her

ok. Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!

Creating Passive Income

By Susanne Myers from AffiliateTreasureChest.com

Today is the first day of summer break in our neck of the woods, which means we headed down to our beach house right after our daughter got out of school yesterday. We’ll be spending quite a bit of time here this summer, swimming in the ocean, napping in the hammock in the backyard and checking out the local seafood restaurants. It’s something I never thought we’d be able to do, and to be honest, it wouldn’t have been possible just a few short years ago.

The reason we can take off for weeks at a time and spend most of the day playing on the beach is that my husband and I have both spend the past few years creating passive income. We have quite a few different websites, some lists, autoresponder series, reports and ebooks out there that create income for us even when we’re not working.

How’d you like to get started this summer and set up your own little stream of income?

Getting Started

What’s worked well for me is to start small and then keep building and keep working at it, increasing my passive income along the way.

Since you’re a reader of Nicole’s blog, I’m sure you know all about her awesome PLR articles from www.EasyPLR.com.  You may even own quite a bit of it already, so let’s start with that.

Pick one of the PLR article packs and use it as the basis of a new niche site.

I’ll tell you a little “secret”. Nicole does a lot of research before she ever puts out a PLR pack on a topic. She makes sure there’s plenty of traffic, affiliate offers to promote and most importantly that it’s a profitable niche. That’s part of what makes these packs perfect for affiliate niche websites that will make you money month after month.

The basic steps to getting started with your own affiliate website are to choose a niche, set up a website (via a wordpress blog), add content to it (both the PLR from Nicole and some you write yourself), promote it and then monetize it.

Instead of covering each of those steps here (and turning this into a super-long 2000 plus word post), I’ve put together a short 7 day ecourse for you that walks you through each step.

-> Sign up here: Free Affiliate Marketing Fast Start Lessons

Go ahead … go sign up right now – it’s free and I’ll wait till you’re done

All signed up? Perfect!

Work through each of the daily lessons using the PLR article pack you picked as the basis for your niche website. By the end of the 7 days you have your first little stream of passive income set up.

Don’t stop there …

Keep Working At It

Take a minute to give yourself a pat on the shoulder for a job well done … and then get back to work. Add some more content to your new site, build another or set up a list for the first one. Keep working at this and other little streams of passive income. The key is to keep working at it and building more and more income streams, even if it just brings in a few extra dollars per month. Those little dollars all add up.

We weren’t able to hang out at the beach all summer last year and the years before that, but we keep at it. At first the passive income paid for a pizza a week, a few months later we were able to cover our car payments and now we’re able to rent a house at the beach all summer.

How about you? What would you like to be able to do that’s just a bit out of reach financially? Use it as motivation to set up a new niche site this week and keep working on your passive income streams all summer.

Want More from Susanne?

Here are some places you can learn more..

• Free Affiliate Marketing Fast Start Lessons
• EasyLinkLove.com
• Susanne has also shared great information all over my blog. Click here to learn more from her

ok. Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!

Decluttering Your Online Business
By Susanne Myers from AffiliateTreasureChest.com

A few days ago Nicole invited me to share some of my big takeaway lessons from 2010 with you. One of the things that made the biggest impact on my online business was decluttering. Not only am I more profitable (which is nice), I’m also a lot happier and less stressed without all the extra sites, lists etc. to worry about. That’s why I’d love to share a little more about decluttering your online business with you so you can make this the most profitable year for your business and most importantly improve your quality of life – since that’s why we started these businesses in the first place.

Take Inventory

Start by getting a better picture of all the different little parts of your online business. What websites do you own, what domains? What products are you promoting as an affiliate? What products do you have that you’ve created yourself or have resell rights to? What PLR is collecting dust on your hard drive? What lists do you have and how are you doing about following up with those lists and monetizing them. What other income streams do you have?

Take some time to answer those questions. In fact, I recommend you take out a notebook and write them down. It’ll help you determine what pieces of your online business are worth keeping and what parts are ready to be pruned off.

Where’s The Money

Next it’s time to take a look at what sites, lists and products are currently the most profitable. Chances are that if something is already making you money you can spend a little more time and effort on it and make even more.

At the same time keep an eye out for things that can be a bit of time sucker but don’t really make you much money. This could be a newsletter you spend a lot of time publishing that doesn’t really pay off as well as you’d hoped or it may be a time intensive membership site you are maintaining. It could also be a site you’re updating regularly.

Don’t forget about mental clutter. I had several sites in the past that were making a little bit of money here and there, just enough to pay for hosting.  I wasn’t spending any time updating them, but they were always in the back of my mind and kept me thinking that I should do something with them to make them truly profitable. It was mental clutter that kept me from focusing on more important parts of my online business. I ended up selling a few of the sites and giving some away or closing them down.

It gave me a lot of focus and clarity getting rid of some of these sites. The same holds true for lists and products by the way.

Where’s The Love

Of course money isn’t the only thing to consider. You should also be doing things you love to do and work and what you enjoy. Take a look at the projects, sites, products and lists you have left and strike a balance between things you know will be profitable and things you know you’ll enjoy working on.

Time To Declutter

Now it’s time to sit down and make a list of what you should keep, what you should expand upon and most importantly what you should plan to get rid of this year. Here are the types of things you want to look at:

• Domains – Decide what to keep, what to let expire and what you could potentially sell.
• Websites – Decide which ones to keep, which to close down, sell or give away.
• Lists – Decide what lists are worth keeping updated and which ones to delete.
• Products – Decide what products you should continue marketing and which ones you should retire or turn into free giveaways.

Of course, you won’t get all of this done in a matter of days. For now, come up with a plan, and then take care of what you can right now (deleting lists or not renewing domains for example). Then work on a few of the other things at a time over the coming months.

And now I would like to invite you to visit my blog AffiliateTreasureChest.com where I write about all things affiliate and internet marketing. Take a moment to sign up for my blog updates and let’s make 2011 our most profitable year for our online businesses.

ok. Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!

SEO Tips: How to Optimize your Article Marketing with Keywords

Article marketing is a great way to get traffic and back links to your website, but when you combine this strategy with keyword optimization, you can really drive targeted visitors to your site. Today, I'd like to share the exact steps I use every time I sit down to do some article marketing (or at least most of the time ).

Step One – Optimizing Content On Your Own Site

I always start with the content on my own site and recommend you do the same. I'm just talking plain old on-page seo stuff here. Make sure you pick a good keyword for your new content (for your blog post) and use the keyword in the title as well as 2 or 3 times in the content of your page.

For example, when I sat down to write this blog post, I chose the keyword “keyword optimization” for this post. I used it in the post title and am also sprinkling it throughout the content.

In step 4, you will also use the same keyword again as the “anchor text” for the link back to your site in the resource box of the article that you will write and submit to article directories. More on that in a little bit.

Step Two – Coming Up With An Article Topic (For Article Marketing)

Once I know which page (or blog post) on my site I want to promote with the article, I like to come up with a related topic (or two) for the articles that I will be submitting. Think of something that will allow you to easily transition into the resource box with the link back to your site.

For example, if I wanted to submit an article to promote this blog post here about keyword optimization for article marketing, I may consider topics like:

• How to write a good article title
• A strategy for writing an article in under 15 minutes
• Getting traffic with article marketing

With any of these topics it would be easy to transition into a resource box that invites the reader to this blog post to learn more about how they can make sure their articles get the most traffic by using keyword optimization.

Step Three – Finding A Good Keyword

Once I come up with the general topic for the article, I go back and do some more keyword research. This new keyword will be used to optimize the article that I'm writing and submitting to article directories.  I want to find a keyword that's not terribly competitive but gets at least 20 or 30 searches per day. I use wordtracker to find those keywords, but you can also use several free tools available.

You can read more about how to do the keyword research and why you should not skip this step in this blog post:
What Is Keyword Research

Read through it and then do your keyword research using your tool of choice.

I did some research on the topics from above and decided on the third topic. My keyword for the article will be “article marketing promotion”

Step Four – Writing The Article (For Article Marketing)

Once you have your keyword, it's time to write the actual article. Make sure you use the keyword in the title of your article. I like to use it first thing in the title. So my article title in this example may be “Article Marketing Promotion – Drive Traffic To Your Website By Writing Quality Articles”.

Then write your article, making sure you use the keyword again 2 or 3 times throughout the content. I like to write articles that are about 400 to 500 words long and break them up into several small paragraphs to make them easy to read.

Don't forget to transition into a resource box that links back to the page of your choice on your website using the keyword for that page as the anchor text of your link.

My  article on using article marketing to drive traffic for example, may end with a resource box like this:

And now I would like to invite you to learn how you can get even more targeted traffic by using keyword optimization in your article marketing.

Step Five – My “Super Secret” Weapon For Ultimate Results

Ok, this technique isn't exactly super secret and chances are that you have heard about it, but almost no-one actually does it, yet when you do, the results of your article marketing will skyrocket. That means your site will get a lot more traffic and that means a larger list and more customers for you.

The secret is to not just stop at writing and submitting the article that promotes a page of your website. Instead promote your promotion, by doing some link building to the article itself once it is published. Start with some simple things like bookmarking the article using social bookmarking tools and sending it out to your twitter stream. If it's worth the effort (and you have the time), you may also want to write another related article and link in the resource box to the first article. Often that's enough to get the article listing on the first page of Google's search results for your keywords. And that of course will result in quite a steady stream of traffic to your site from your article marketing efforts.

Susanne Myers

Check out Susanne's complete Link Building Course Here:
Links Building for Beginners

Hey all. If you have questions, comments, or need examples, let us know. We'll be here to help.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

There's a picture of us together from earlier this year. ->

I'm the closer one and she's the one further away. We're both thinking hard, getting smarter.

Well, I'll step down and let Susanne take the stage and shine.  Here she is…

A Step-By-Step Approach To Creating A Niche Website

by Susanne Myers

I spent the past weekend with Nicole at NAMS (Niche Affiliate Marketing Workshop) in Atlanta where I spent a good bit of my time helping out in the beginner room.

The first stumbling block for many beginning Internet Marketers seems to be choosing a niche that they will then build a website or blog in.

Over the years I've done quite a bit of niche research. Here's my process I go through every time I am considering going into a new niche.

First of All, What IS A Niche?

Let's start by talking about what exactly a niche is.

According to Wikipedia, a niche is

“the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact”.

For Internet marketing in particular they have the following to say:

By appealing to smaller segments of larger markets, referred to as niches, a website can be developed and promoted quickly to uniquely serve a targeted and usually loyal customer base, giving the affiliate a small but regular income stream.

Let's look at an example. Health and Wellness is a large market, weightloss is a subset of that market. We can then “niche” it even further down by choosing “weightloss for new moms” as our niche.

Is It a Profitable Niche?

Next I like to take a look at the profit potential of a niche. Some things to consider are:

• Is it popular?
• Does it solve a problem or entertain?
• Is there a magazine (or even better several magazines) out there that target your niche market?
• For ecommerce sites, if you can't find the product at large stores like Wall-Mart, you have a pretty good chance of being able to sell it online.
• Do others buy google adwords ads for products in this niche?

If you can answer several of these questions with a definite yes, your niche has quite a bit of profit potential and it is usually worth spending a little time putting together a website to test the niche further.

Who's My Target Market for this Niche?

My next step is to put myself into my customer's shoes. Get as much information about your target market as you can. Who are they? What kinds of problems do they have that you can help with. What questions do they have that you can answer. Great places to research your target market are niche forums and sites like yahoo answers.

Are There Products I Can Sell?

Before you start building your new site, I want you to check on one more thing…  Are there any products (eletronic or physical) that you can sell to this market? I like to start by looking at affiliate products. Later on I might consider developing my own products, but for now let's focus on affiliate products. If you have several options, move on to the next step.

If there are no good products out there, it may be time to move to another niche. Please do not skip this step. I have spent hours and hours developing a site in the past only to notice a week or two into the project that there was really no good way to monetize the site.

Time For Keyword Research

I mostly get free traffic via search engines to my niche sites and the way to do this is to do some keyword research and then optimize content for these terms.

Pick your favorite keyword research tool. I personally use the paid version of wordtracker, but even the free wordtracker keyword tool or the google adwords keyword tool will do.

Spend a little time figuring out what terms are searched for in your market. Put them in a spreadsheet so you can refer to them easily when you start to create your content plan.

I like to sort my keywords into 3 different segments. The first is my main term. This will be the keyword with the highest search volume, but it will also be very hard to rank for. That keyword becomes my main focus for the home page of my website.  Next I like to choose 5 to 10 keywords that are very general, but a little easier to rank for than the main one. Those become my category pages. All other keywords will be used in individual articles blog posts. This sorting is the first step toward creating a content plan. Let's talk about that a little more.

But first, if you want to learn a bit more about keyword research, listen to this panel discussion I was involved in along with SEO experts Karon Thackston, Lynn Terry and Dan Morris. It's $17, but I think you'll find it well worth the small investment.

Creating A Content Plan

I like to take those “sorted” keywords and come up with a content plan for my new website or blog. It helps me get things up quickly when I'm ready. A great way to organize the keywords is to use a mindmap. You can see a very simple example in the image below:

Of course you would add quite a few more long-tail keywords for the individual article pages (shown here in green). As your site grows you can expand by adding more and more keyword targeted articles.

Of course you can also do the same on paper if you are not comfortable with mindmapping.

Building Your Site

With your plan in hand, it's time to build your niche site. You will need a domain name, website hosting and some sort of content management program. While there are quite a few good ones out there and you could even build a static html page, I prefer using the free wordpress blogging software (www.wordpress.org) to build my niche sites. (If you've never installed a blog, ReliableWebs.com will set one up for you.)

Use your mindmap or content plan to lay out your categories, then start writing your content using the long-tail keywords. I like to get about 10 or so posts in to begin with and then work on adding a few more each week.

Content Promotion Strategies

The last step is to go out and actively promote your new site and the individual articles on it. It's a little outside of the scope of this blog post to cover content promotion in detail, but here are a few ideas to get your started:

• Tweet about your new site and new articles as you add them.
• Do some article marketing.
• Participate on popular niche forums and include a link to your site in your forum signature.
• Comment on other popular blogs in the niche.
• Write some guest blog posts on other blogs.
• Build some backlinks to each page of your site to get it ranking well in the search engines.

I hope you found this step-by-step approach to niche research helpful. Yes, there is quite a bit of work involved, but it's also a fun process to go through once you get a hang of it.

Of if you prefer, I'll do all of the research for you. I create niche research packs that include all sorts of other important niche info at your finger tips to help you enter a new niche or dominate one that you're already in.

Check them out at NicheResearchPacks.com

Susanne Myers

I hope this was helpful!

Please let us know if you have questions by commenting below. We’re happy to keep answering questions as long as you keep asking.

Have a great day!

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

A few days ago, we started talking about what link building is and why it is so important. I'm sure by now you are anxious to go out and start building one-way links, but before you do that, there are a few things you need to have in place to make sure your link building efforts are worthwhile. These are all things you need to have in place on your own site first.

#1 Keywords – The first thing you want to do is a little keyword research. I like to pick a keyword for each new page on my website. For example, for this blog post I chose the keyword “building one-way links” even before I wrote the first word. I then created a title and the content for this post around the keyword I would like this post to rank for.

#2 Great Content – Next, you need to sit down and write some great content. Each of your pages is going to have a goal, something you want to accomplish with it (more on that in #3). In order to reach your goal you first have to impress your readers with some really good content. Put some thought into what you are writing. Make sure it is well laid out and easy to follow. I do this by creating a quick little outline before I write the actual post.

Make sure you also include your keyword in both the title and the first 100 words of your post or article.

#3 Call To Action– Last but not least you want your readers to do something at the end of your post. This could be joining a mailing list, buying your product, checking out an affiliate offer or just leaving a comment. No matter what you would like them to do next, it is important that you tell them. It's called a “Call To Action” and if you keep reading you will read mine shortly.

Once you have those three things in place it's time to start building links. Your first few links should come from your own website. These are called internal links and they will help make sure your new content is indexed quickly by the search engines.

If you are using a content management system like a WordPress blog for example, some of those links will be created for you automatically. If you have a static website, make sure you link to the article from a category page (i.e. your articles page ) and if possible from your home page. I suggest you use your keyword in the anchor text whenever possible.

Once all that is in place, it's time to start building one-way links to your new content. Nicole has some great resources on how to build links here.

I would also like to invite to join my link building class at EasyLinkLove.com. Over the course of 13 weeks we go over various things you can do to build incoming links including social media, link directories, link exchanges, article marketing and guest blogging.

Did you catch that? The invitation to join my link building course was my call to action. Now go sign up
http://www.easyplr.com/r/getlinks

She'll be here this week, talking about Link Building (specifically for Beginners).

You may be wondering “Who the heck is she to teach link building?”

Well, let me tell you…

She has gotten over 50,000 incoming links to one of her sites in under 2.5 years.

(that's no typo)

What does that mean, exactly? And, why are links important?

1. Having links on other websites to yours get people to click through to your websites.If you've got links to your website all over the net, people will run into those and click through them. That's a gooooood thing. (People have wallets to spend money on your stuff.)

2. Having lots of links TO your website tells the search engines that your website is important. That way Google, MSN, Yahoo, and all the rest know you're a “real” site with “real” value.

However, I won't steal Susanne's thunder. I'll hand the stage to her.

What's the Buzz about Link Building?

By Guest Blogger Susanne Myers

I’m sure you’ve been hearing a lot about link building lately. Every six months or so it suddenly becomes the “hot” topic of the week usually at the same time some new course or piece of software is released by one of the big internet gurus. But here’s the thing…  link building is something you should be doing consistently throughout the year.

Nicole was nice enough to invite me to talk to you about link building for the next couple of days. We’ll talk about what link building is and why it is important today. The next post will be about what you need to have in place before you ever start to build links to your site and then we’ll chat a bit about effective link building and how you can fit it into your busy schedule.

What Is Link Building

Definition for Beginners: Link building is the process where you go out to other websites across the internet and through various methods (many of them are free) and get them to link to one of the pages on your website. This can be done in a variety of ways.

Here are just a few examples:

Link Exchanges – These used to be all the rage and worked very well a few years ago. You would simply ask a website owner to link to your website and would offer to do the same for them.

Article Marketing – Every time you write and submit an article to an article directory or another website, you are including an author resource box with a link back to your site. That’s a link building strategy – a really good one in fact and one I am dedicated two lessons to in my 13 week link building class.

Guest Blogging – Do you remember when Nicole went on her guest blogging tour last summer? She gained a lot of exposure and traffic, but also a lot of powerful links to various pages on her site. Guest blogging is another great link building strategy.

Link To Me Page – Something as simple as setting up a page on your blog or website that tells people how they can link back to you can be effective over time. You’ll be surprised how many fans of your site would love to help spread the word for you but don’t realize that they can link to you.

Those are just a few link building strategies.

If you’d like to learn more, I invite you to take my beginner link building class were we’ll cover those strategies and more in great detail.

Why Is Link Building Important

But why do you need to worry about building links in the first place? Let me answer that question with another question. Could you use some more traffic, more people to your website and thus more subscribers and more customers? I’m sure you could, I know I can.

Link building is how both visitors and search engines find you in the first place. Think back on a time (maybe even today) when you were surfing the web, going from page to page, clicking on links and coming across some really neat stuff. You wouldn’t have found those sites if other websites didn’t link to those.

More importantly though, incoming links will help you rise in the search engine rankings. Let’s say you sell an ebook on underwater basket weaving. Just imagine how much traffic and how many buyers you could get to your website if you were the first page to come up in Google anytime someone types in “underwater basket weaving”.

Link building is one of those things that should always be on your mind and more importantly something you should do on a regular basis. Let me share with you how I go about building links and how I was able to accumulate well over 70,000 links pointing to just one of my niche websites.

Sign up today at How to Get Links: A Course for Beginners

Thanks, Susanne, for stopping by. I look forward to more posts from you this week.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. I'm an SEO geeky type person. But, when I have a question about SEO, I go straight to Susanne. So, if you're ready to rise up through the Search Engines, be sure to check out her course.

Do you ever feel stuck in your online business? After you’ve been writing content, creating product and marketing for a while, you get to a point where things just start to feel stagnant, no matter what you do. Traffic and profits aren’t growing the way they used to and let’s face it, there are only so many different ways you can say “eat less and work out more” or whatever the main idea for your particular niche is.

Your first reaction may be to start over in something completely new, but it’s often not the smartest idea. I’d like to suggest a slightly different strategy instead that gives you a little more leverage.

You’ve spent months or years on your original website and more importantly on the products you are offering. Leverage the time and effort by reinventing yourself instead of starting over. No idea what I’m talking about? Let me illustrate…

Let’s say you are in the “weight loss for new moms” niche. Instead of moving into “getting out of debt” niche next, rework what you have already to fit the “weight loss for men” or “weight loss for seniors” or “weight loss for work at home entrepreneurs” niche.

Sure, you will have to modify and edit your products, and you still have to set up and market a new website. But, believe me, it will be a lot faster and easier than starting on something completely new. You have spent the time to learn a lot about losing weight and are already an established expert in your market. This will lend you immediate credibility and of course also make it easier to create fresh content for the new site.

But it goes deeper than that. You have an existing customer and prospect base that’s (hopefully) happy with your products and the results they get from them. Let’s go back to the weight loss example. If you’re in the new mom market there, those moms have husbands and parents. If you created products catering to both those demographic and shared this with your existing customers (the new moms), don’t you think they would recommend you to their husbands and parents (provided the later need to lose weight).

Moving into a different subniche within your main market, can give you some serious leverage that will make it faster and easier to set up and will result in faster sales because of immediate credibility and referrals.

Of course you want to make sure that the new niche you are considering moving into is profitable.

Susanne Myers