Today I will tell you how a Nut-Headed Nuttie Guru conducts his niche research! :)
Nuttie Guru is a regular, nondescript guy who does not have hundreds of bucks to spend on keyword tools recommended by top gurus, and he is not very sharp at using complicated scripts either! Google keyword tool is free and simple, so that is what Nuttie Guru uses! ;)
Nuttie Guru is currently interested in marketing affiliate stuff to the asthmatic people. So here is what he does:
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By default, the keyword tool shows stats about "Estimated Ad Position", "Estimated Avg. CPC", etc. Nuttie Guru certainly does not have the $$$ to invest in PPC, so these stats are pretty useless for him. He relies mainly on free, organic traffic and for that, he needs to know quite another set of stats. So Nuttie Guru clicks to hide all those useless stats and show the REAL stats, such as:
1. Advertiser competition: Nuttie guru needs to make sure that the keywords he is picking up have lots of money in them, and one of the surefire ways to know that is by gauging the advertiser competition of the respective keywords. The more competition a keyword has the better. C’mon, these folks are certainly not so nut-headed as to invest in loser keywords and throw money down the drain! ;)
2. Local Search Volume: Nuttie Guru maybe living in India, but unfortunately, the bulk of his website traffic comes from USA, so he needs to know if people of that country are searching for those keywords at all, and if yes, to what extent!
3. Global Monthly Search Volume: At the same time, he cannot ignore the rest of the globe, can he? So he would also look at the number of times the keywords have been searched globally over a period of 30 days.
4. Search Volume Trends: Nuttie Guru maybe dumb-headed but he knows this much that search trends are hardly ever constant (except for, maybe sex and wine, which are almost always in demand); rather they keep fluctuating from month to month. Generally, an upward search trend is a good indicator and a downward trend is a not-so good indicator. There is one exception to this rule:
Seasonal items! ;)
Seasonal items usually show an upward search trend during the respective seasons. For example, pumpkin is one product a lot of people buy during the Halloween (not in India though, as Indians hardly celebrate Halloween) :D
5. Highest Volume Occurred In: Nuttie Guru DOES NOT bother about this at all unless he is creating products to sell. This stat can give some valuable data for all sorts of product creators, digital or physical.
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Like, from what Google shows, most people seem to have weight loss problems in between the months of May-August. Maybe summer is the season of dating: people meet, get hitched, break-up, and eat lots of chocolates and sweets to "ease" their "heartache". Poor souls! ;)
In any case, what Nuttie Guru will do is outsource an ebook called "Top Weight Loss Secrets-How to Lose Weight Even While Eating Fatty and Junk Foods ", launch it in the month of May, team up with some guru buddies for JV, and then ask them to blast their respective lists…! After all, isn’t that the purpose of list building? ;) (only kidding)
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Okay, back to Nuttie Guru’s story.
Keyword research is only part of the process. Nuttie Guru needs to make sure that there are enough HOT affiliate products to promote on that niche/keyword. Nuttie Guru visits Clickbank to find some such products, but the stats don’t impress him at all – a little research proves that these products are not very popular. :(
So what would Nuttie Guru do now? Either he has to find at least ONE affiliate program for this niche or else it is back to the drawing board for him. How sad! :(
INTERMISSION…. :D
Very soon Nuttie Guru hits upon an idea: Darn Clickbank™. :( Let me head over to Google™ and search for "asthma products" (without quotes) :)
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So this is what Nuttie Guru does, and finds a site selling several physical products for asthma patients. Unfortunately for Nuttie Guru, the site does not offer an affiliate program! :(
Nuttie Guru however hits upon another idea – using Google Keyword tool for direct product research! He copies one product name from the site he previous landed at. The product name is "MicroAir Nebulzier". He then goes back to Google keyword tool and hits the "Generate Keyword Ideas" button again:
Very soon he finds that this product is indeed very popular. Not only that, he manages to grab a lot more product-based keywords for himself! Now Nuttie Guru has not one but two sets of keywords, "MONEY KEYWORDS", that is!
1st Set of Keywords: Generic HOT keywords on the niche. Nuttie Guru plans to write some really dumb, boring articles on these topics and build a little content site with the content.
2nd Set of Keywords: HOT product keywords. Nuttie Guru would find affiliate products based on those keywords, and fill up the whole content site with affiliate ads and banners! :D
But first, he needs to find an affiliate program for these products. Clickbank is not an option, what next? :P
THE CLIMAX….
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Nuttie Guru decides to spy on smart affiliates. So what if he is not very smart, he knows how to "copy" the super affiliates and make money! ;) So he searches for "MicroAir Nebulzier reviews" (without quotes) in Google. Soon enough, he finds a blog promoting such a product. Nuttie Guru "spies" on the affiliate link and discovers that the product is sold by Amazon™.
THE EPILOGUE…
Everything is now crystal clear to Nuttie Guru. He would repeat the same process to find Amazon products for the rest of the keywords and build a spammy site full of affiliate links (kidding). ;) If Amazon does not suffice, then Commission Junction and/or Linkshare are surely the other options available to him!
Hooray, finally a happy ending! :)
Just in case you didn’t realize, the above videos have been done by Nuttie Guru himself to help others (of course, that hardly needs to be mentioned as the quality of the videos speak for themselves! ;) ). He figured that it would be better to use some cool royalty-free music pieces from Ginny Culp and arrange them in the weirdest way possible, than bore people with his terrible English accent. :D
These videos may not be as entertaining as your favorite daily soap, but they are very much REAL. Unlike those soap-makers, Nuttie Guru did not have any pre-written script to follow! His whole journey was filled with uncertainty and hiccups. He was not sure where he is going to, but knew that he should keep going! That he finally reached his goal is not a coincidence, nor does it indicate that he is any smarter than the average newbie out to make money online; it is the result of his determination to succeed! :)
Nuttie Guru hopes to see some NICE comments on his blog. Hopefully you won’t disappoint him! :D
LOL Great post! Maybe you should write the sequel to the froggy stories! As always, I learned some new techniques from you, but I was sure looking forward to hearing your voice when I saw the videos! Oh well….
@Renee,
>>I was sure looking forward to hearing your voice when I saw the videos! Oh well
LOL, sorry about that. Didn’t want to spoil the broth…err, videos ;)
I liked how you took a niche without any good ClickBank products and turned it into a winner anyway! Very good stuff. Thank you!
Thanks Bill. Glad you liked it. Believe me I did not have any idea I would reach the goal, but I reached it anyway. I have been lately infected with the ‘massive action” bug of Jason Fladlien I suppose ;)
Thanks a lot guys it is very informative.However to speedup process i use Market Samurai to do some keyword research. Amazon tips without Clickbank is cool.Im waiting for more tips
Gosh! I saw the Video and just couldn’t figure out what you where doing, I try and I try and I try to understand all this Keyword search,SEO’s, Backlinking,RSS Feeds what all that is about but it just won’t sink in so keep E-Mailng me maybe someday hopfully the light will com on for me. My Dad was right I sould have stayed in school instead of play Hooky!I don’t even know how to make those little yellow faces thats how new I am at the computer.So that’s that!
Ex Trucker Brand New Geek Trying To Keep Up Frank!
Tank’s
Hi Frank,
Welcome. :)
Invest some time in your knowledge man; you will thank me. Most of the basic knowledge you need is probably free: just type in Google and hit the search button! ;)
I “invested” almost a year in learning the basic stuff, and through this one year I didn’t make any dime. Why is the word invested in quotes? Because back then I was really unhappy about having to learn the rudiments of IM and thought that I am just wasting my time. Back then multimedia was not really as popular as now. :)
Good Vid,
So many people do not understand the advertizer competition and think that green there is bad. I agree you want as much advertizer competition and as little good web page compettion. Good Job Nutty Pro.
Maybe this is a bit off topic but I’m going to ask anyway. If you are based outside the USA and wants to market a product to US customers. Would it make any difference if your website is on a server that is not in the USA? Would it produce different search engine results?
>>If you are based outside the USA and wants to market a product to US customers. Would it make any difference if your website is on a server that is not in the USA? Would it produce different search engine results?
Conventional theory goes like this:
It depends on where your bulk website traffic comes from. If your site is a local business, then perhaps it is best to have a server located at your own country. Remember the nearer your server is located to the source of traffic, the better. Example, if the majority of your customers are from Canada, then it is good that you have a Canada server (even if they are a bit more expensive than the typical US server). If you buy a server in UK and server Canadian customers, your customers may have a hard time accessing your website and you may either end up having low conversion rates, high bounce rates and/or loads of support issues.
Conventional theory also says that server location matters in SEO too-if you wanna rank high for a term in US search engines, it is best to have your server at US.
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My own experience: Most of my servers are located in different states of USA. I serve customers from all over the world and never had any such issue. The bulk of my customers are from USA, Canada and UK; however but I also have customers from the rest of Europe, PRC, the Indian subcontinent, etc.
In fact I am physically located in India and never have any issue accessing my own websites (except the normal downtime that affects people all over the world); if at all, I have great trouble accessing the websites of my banks because their servers are physically located in India. What does this say:
If your hosting provider has a robust infrastructure then location does not really matter. If your server is weak then your websites won’t work anywhere no matter how hard you try! What I suggest that you choose a host who own their own datacenter, even if you have to shell a few extra bucks. Going cheap is not always the best way to go, especially when you are building sites to generate revenue. Other things remaining equal, there is a big difference between a $10 hosting and $30 hosting. ;)
This is something confirmed even by this person: http://board.mypersianforum.com/showpost.php?p=3300713&postcount=4
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, it certainly makes sense. It is never a good idea to put all the eggs in one basket….