In deciding on a niche I’m very often persuaded by the quality of the site I’m promoting, together with the available data on ClickBank, such as popularity.  I don’t think that there would be any niches I wouldn’t tackle, if it met my criteria. So using my rules of engagement led me to the ‘Anxiety & Depression’ niche. I made an early conscious decision that visitors to my site would perhaps ‘more vulnerable’, shall we say, than your average visitor and I was going to make it the best resource I could to help these people. Sure I wanted to make money, but I wasn’t going to take advantage. I’ve seen some really shit sites dealing with sensitive issues and it only makes you wonder at the stupidity and ignorance of the site owner that they ever thought it would make them money.

For example, I put up an Amazon carousel widget, but instead of promoting the most expensive books, I researched and found the best selling books and visited forums and authority sites to find out which books had made a difference to peoples’ lives. It didn’t matter to me if they were the cheapest books and I would make less commission - it was all about quality.

After a couple of weeks or so I noticed some traffic was coming through from an unexpected source - a forum for sufferers of depression. In a post, a woman had referenced my site saying how useful it had been to her and recommending it to others. Well, I can’t tell you how good this made me feel and the additional traffic was a welcome bonus.

So now the sales are starting to come in, rather than just leave the site on auto-pilot, I’m updating it to ensure that it stays the best resource it can be. I’m beginning to empathize with my visitors, particularly as you learn the issues through the search strings (usually stated as questions) and the monetization becomes an almost self fulfilling prophecy. The other interesting thing about this site is that visitors stay on it longer and view more pages than my other sites.

Just goes to show that to be successful you have to give your targeted audience quality information that will make a difference in their lives. As Mark Twain said,

Always tell the truth, then you won’t have to remember anything.

Is it possible that you can reveal too much about yourself on Twitter? Twitter is a micro blogging service that allows users to update (called Tweets) one another on anything they care to talk about. I recently joined and have drafted 5 updates in about 6 weeks, as I’m still not convinced the world is interested in anything I have to say. Maybe I just don’t see myself as leadership material and why anyone would want to, “Follow Me“.

Some people are totally hooked though and will provide updates on just about anything, regardless how banal it is. If you follow another user you begin to get an insight into their lives and this can be quite fascinating. The downside of course is that they can turn out to be something very different to what you imagined.

A case in point is Chris Pearson who is the designer of the Thesis WordPress Theme, the template this site is based on. I’ve been an admirer of Chris’ since the first time I set eyes on his Cutline Theme, which was a much earlier template he designed. My first blog was based on Cutline, so I kind of feel me and Chris go back a long way ….. we’ve grown up together - we’ve evolved.

Starting to follow Chris on Twitter though has given me a far different perspective on the man, to the one I had in my head (you know -the demigod one). How can I say this? …. well basically, he comes across as a bit of a ‘knob-head’, who’s a little too self obsessed and incapable of updating without mentioning ‘Thesis’. The guy has to be admired for his work on Thesis but I think his persona is defined by his avatar. I’m sure the unflattering photo of him with a smug grin, was supposed to suggest that, ‘ hey, here’s a guy who doesn’t take himself too seriously’, but actually…… it kind of sums him up quite nicely, which is a shame.

I couldn’t bring myself to unsubscribe from Rob Benwell of ‘Blogging to the Bank‘ Fame.  His mails are so lazy (can’t even be bothered to make the copy unique to the other JV partners) and cringeworthy, that they’re actually good entertainment.  I made the mistake of buying his ‘Blogging to the Bank 3′ which was accompanied by his ‘watching him over his shoulder while he creates a successful blog’, video series.

Based on the quality of the ebook, I quickly canceled my monthly payment but I’ve noticed the link I was given is still active for the videos and it would be rude not to watch.  Each video lasts about 4mins max, and is delivered in his dull, English, northern accent (Manchester? - dunno).  Choice advice includes spending about $1,500 on a custom, WordPress template and then waiting for about 3 weeks while it gets completed - how to take the wind out of your sales before you’ve even begun!

I know Blogging to the Bank (1) was a deserved success, but you kind of get the feeling he’s been dining out on that one ever since.

I have to admit that during the whole PPC process I’ve missed the creative input that goes along with designing and publishing a website and then promoting it (despite my previous comments on the beauty of creating PPC campaigns without a website). While I’m used to driving affiliate traffic to other peoples’ sites (usually for digital download) I would find it interesting to put up my own store based on affiliate products.

The two ways to do this would be by taking a store’s product feed and publishing that on my site or finding a drop-ship, wholesaler who could handle the customer fulfillment on my behalf. At some point I would like to try both, but the easiest to set up would be to simply publish someone’s product feed.

One system I’ve come across to build affiliate stores is datafeedr . While datafeedr looks like it could have possibilities I recently came across the Pepperjam Network Store Builder. The PJN store builder looks very straight forward and seems to integrate well with WordPress.  Once again, as with any of these routes to market, success can be all about choosing the right niche.

I have a potential niche in mind and once my PJN application is approved, I’ll begin building my store, and will of course tell you how I get on.

NOW WATCH THIS

No further comments required other than ‘don’t believe the hype’!

This is my first foray into PPC and I know that to be successful requires a lot of testing and different strategies.  To begin with I set up two campaigns (4 Adword Groups per Campaign/50-100 Keywords per Adword Group) in my niche and tested the two with Yahoo! Search and Yahoo! Content.  Here are the early results.

The first conclusion that we can draw is that Yahoo! Search (top row), results in more clicks with fewer number of impressions (higher Click Through Rate (CTR)). This is no surprise as people who are searching are more likely to be potential buyers, compared to those just browsing content. BTW CTR is the number of people who see your advert and decide to take action by clicking on it.

My Yahoo Ads are driving traffic directly through to my advertiser’s landing page (two different products in the same niche) - ’so what about sales?’, you might ask. Well, the 415 clicks have resulted in 2 sales - Total value $32.  You don’t have to be a genius to work out that on this basis I’m receiving a negative return on my investment (a fancy way of saying I’m losing money) as my campaign to date has cost me $52.44.  This is not unexpected which is why I have kept my maximum daily budget low, to avoid losing the shirt off my back.

I am going to run the campaigns for a few more days and then decide what adjustments are needed to improve CTR and conversion rate into actual sales. As well as PPC I am also going to look at Cost Per Action (CPA) and I am currently setting myself up with some CPA Networks.

The beauty of CPC and CPA (if you can get right) is that as an Advertiser you are simply buying traffic and converting this traffic into Sales (or actions) with your Publisher - you don’t even need a website! Now I like designing websites, but not that much, if I can make money without having to do it - call me lazy

I’ve had a change in strategy for the article submission.  Rather than submit my articles to hundreds of sites, I will be concentrating on only 14 - quality not quantity! This will make the whole process much more manageable. I’ve also found an automation tool which I’m quite excited about and I’ll talk more about this once I’ve had a chance to properly road test it.

There seem to have been a number of Internet Marketing launches recently and my In-Box is bursting with the hyperbole.  These guys are baying like a pack of rabid dogs and I’ve had enough and turned off all my subscriptions. It was getting too much and I am fed up with reading the same copy which these guys can’t even be arsed to rewrite.

I’m now on my own: I’ve got the method , the tools and the motivation.  I’m now considering my next niche and excited where this new journey will now take me.

There’s no exact science in choosing a niche but it helps to have a roadmap to guide you through the process. Typically what I will be looking for is niches that pay well per click (using SpyFu) and attract strong affiliate products. By going to ClickBank Marketplace I can search for products with a high gravity and good conversation rates. Look at the pitch page and put yourself in the position of the customer.

Once I’ve established a niche I might want to get involved in I need to research the keywords I’ll be targeting.  I use an excellent Free Keyword Tool for this.  Another good method is to go over to Ezine Articles and search on your niche. The chances are that other people will have already done the research, so that if you analyze the page source you will see the keywords they are targeting. Follow the links through and see how the marketing is being done, and whether you could do better to dominate search rankings.

In my latest niche I have chosen to market two affiliate products - one with a high gravity and the other with almost none. It could be that this a new product, but I like the pitch and felt it was something I could promote. Don’t always look at just the numbers, but do your due diligence and go with your instinct.

My first niche which I launched less than two weeks ago is already ranking for a keyword phrase on the first page of Google from a total of 7.9m results. Looks like a promising start, but still a long way to go.

In order to do this I looked for an Article Submitter program which would takeaway some of the pain and manual legwork.  There are a number out there in the market but having used Brad Callen’s products before I was immediately drawn to Bryxen Software’s Article Submitter: The Platinum version.

There was an initial issue as some months ago I had registered for the free version and sort of forgot about it.  In purchasing the Platinum Edition I used a different mail address, so that I effectively had two installs registered differently.  As you would expect this caused some conflicts but I have to say that the Bryxen Support Desk were excellent in getting things sorted whilst also maintaining hours of data I had already created.

The first thing I did was to become a Ninja in registering to the all the Article Directories, which I soon learned was made a lot easier with the available automated process.  Once you receive an email response from the Article Directory you simply logon for the first time and the software remembers the details for future use.  The initial registration to all the Article Directories is a bit laborious but I was driven by the time I knew I would save further down the  line.

For some sites I could actually register, logon and submit my article in less than one minute.  The real benefit comes with the autosubmit feature which is article submission on steroids! Simply sit back and relax as your article gets submitted automatically to over 200 sites - it’s a thing of beauty and a joy to behold as you sip your coffee.

The only small gripe is that there were more broken links to article directories than I would like to have seen.  However with so many available (388) losing a few is no real hardship.  You also get the option to report these broken links to maintain the integrity of the Database.

My first niche site is on Depression where you can see that I’ve used the same WordPress Template as this site. Although there’s a little more work to be done, I’m pretty pleased and this will be the formula I use as I go forward.

At the time of writing Article Submitter Platinum is available for $167 and represents good value, given it’s a one time cost for all my future article submission.  The good news is that there is also a free version available as well which gives you a feel for the product.  The free version does not however include the Auto Submitter feature, which for me was the killer application and worth the upgrade price.

Already my articles are being accepted and published with backlinks to my site using appropriate Anchor Text.  Next time I’ll tell you how I sourced the articles and chose my keywords.