In the last module, I talked about how to select your niche.  So by now you should have at least one niche selected and an affiliate program you plan to promote.

The next part of the blueprint is important. While you may be tempted to go out and buy a domain name that relates to your niche right away, I’d hold off on it.

What I do instead is purchase a generic domain name that will work for testing out all my niches. I call this my investigative site. I purchase a domain name like one of the following:

Top3Products.com
BestProducts.com
TheReviewer.com

These were just off the top of my head and should spark some ideas. Get creative and you’ll find one in no time. Remember, you just want a domain name that can be used to test out ALL your niches so it needs to be pretty general.

It’s my opinion that you don’t need to waste your time initially coming up with a domain name, registering it and getting it ready to use for each test site. If you do, you’ll waste valuable time and most certainly uncover fewer good niches in the long run. So I suggest using a generic domain name for testing all your niches.

Using my system, once you find a winner (a good affiliate program that you can convert), you will transfer it over to a much better domain name later on.

But first, you will use this generic domain to find out if you have the right market to message match. That’s what’s important. Can you find the right market (the right keywords) to the right message (the landing page and the right affiliate product to promote)?

A lot of times I don’t get the right market to message match. There’ve been times when I hit something really good right away and other times when I spent a few months coming back to the same niche thinking … “If only I approached it differently I’d finally make some money”.

Guess what?

Sometimes it never happens.

If you follow this blueprint you can side-track that painful process. Instead of banging your head against a wall, just go with what is working for you. There are enough markets out there to not have to worry about hitting any particular one just right.

You can ask the top affiliate marketers you may know and they’ll say the same thing. You’re not going to win with every niche. So find the ones you hit just right and milk them. Brush the rest right under the carpet so to speak.

Best of all, if you use this technique, you aren’t wasting much of your time. After you register the generic domain name and set it up, there are only 2 things to do. One is to put up a single landing page promoting an affiliate product in the niche. The other is to set up your Adwords campaign. You can do both in a day quite easily.

So what needs to be on this domain? Firstly, I’d recommend putting up a home page with some generic information like …

… the point of your site (how you research and review products for consumers)
… who you are

You don’t need to spend too much time on this page; after all, most folks are not going to see it.

You will also want a page with your site’s ‘terms’ and ‘privacy policy’ … all the typical legal jazz. If you do not already have these, you can try LawGuru.com.

They offer a ‘terms of use’ agreement and a ‘privacy policy’ agreement as do many other sites and of course, so does your neighborhood attorney.

You’ll also need a footer at the bottom of each page. I would suggest putting in a copyright notice and some contact information in the footer. This is where paying $20 or so a month for a box from Mail Boxes, the UPS Store, Postnet, etc… will come in handy. Just include your box address at the bottom.

From your footer, make sure you link back to your home page, the terms, and your privacy policy. Here’s an example…

Having these few extra pages and the footer will help your site look more legitimate to surfers. It’s also useful when you start bidding with Adwords. Google uses a quality score for the sites promoted through its pay per click campaigns. Having a more robust site rather than a simple one-pager will help keep your site from getting a lower quality score.

This means you pay less in clicks. And that makes it worth the extra effort.

This extra work (not that it will take much time at all) will help your site look more like something Google wants to show its searchers rather than a one page site you put together in an afternoon (even though that’s pretty much what you’re going to do).

*Note: At the time I’m re-releasing this information, Google’s quality score is more harsh.  That means you may need to add some content to your site in order to keep your bids low.  I would suggest finding good articles from an article directory like EzineArticles.com and placing a few of them on your site in order to build up the content.  I’ll explain this in more detail later on. 

Best of all, you use the same domain name for all your test niches so you only have to do this once.  In the next segment, I’m going to cover a little about the keywords you want to select for your niches so that you start earning ASAP …

Assessment

Before you do anything else, you are going to find a niche and assess it. Just follow the exact blueprint here and you won’t waste much time or money uncovering lucrative niches. And that’s what we’re going to do in this module …

Niche Array

When you’re sitting down thinking about ways to make money, one of the first thoughts that will pop into your head is ‘what market should I pick?’

Honestly, this is where the mistakes frequently happen. It doesn’t matter if you are planning on pursuing profits by Adsense (or other advertising methods), affiliate marketing, or your own products and services. You need to pick the right market. You need to pick one where money is being spent.

A lot of folks (both old and new) pick a market that isn’t proven to be profitable, and then when their new business idea fails, they pack it up. It takes these poor folks a long time to feel like starting over again (if ever). I’ve been in this unhappy place a number of times. Even though I have more than my fair share of optimism, it truly is hard to pick yourself back up from failure.

But you know what? Even top marketers have failures. I honestly haven’t met any successful online marketers who have never picked a bad niche. That’s just how it goes.

The truth is, most, if not all affiliates aren’t going to be able to swing it ALL niches. Why that is so is a bit of a mystery.

My explanation for this phenomenon is that certain products will resonate with you better than others. You will most certainly relate to a particular problem (especially if it’s one you’ve experienced for yourself) over others. This is true due to all the unique life experiences you’ve had that I haven’t and vice versa.

This is an obvious example, but if you’re a stay-at-home mom, parenting may be an easy niche for you to conquer, whereas horse racing (especially if you’ve never been to a horse race) may turn out to be a challenge.

You will be able to see how to put together certain marketing campaigns better than others. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself with how much you understand about a particular niche. Maybe you’ve never suffered the problem a certain product attempts to solve, but you may know more about it than you think. You may just resonate with folks who have this problem a lot more than you’d ever imagine.

No matter what, no one can avoid selecting a bad niche from time to time.

So I truly believe that one of the best strategies is to try as many things as you can without getting too caught up in any one in particular. Throw them all out there. When one project starts earning you some money, then pursue it like crazy and spend your time earning more from it. This way, you waste as little time as possible.

This is in contrast with someone who comes up with an idea, spends weeks if not months preparing the product, creating the website, fine-tuning images, writing an autoresponder series, and all that jazz only to find out months later that no one wants to buy their product.

I want you to avoid that kind of failure at all costs.

In my opinion, the best way to test out a niche is to become an affiliate first. It’s my philosophy that you never enter a market void of any products. The market you’re thinking of entering SHOULD have competitors and hopefully at least one of them has an affiliate program you can join (if not, I urge you to pick another market for now).

If you can join an affiliate program and start earning money from it, you’ll be way ahead of the game before you spend any of your time creating a product. As I’ll show you later, this has the added benefit of allowing you to create a much better product if you decide to do so.

What I want you to avoid at all costs is creating a product that turns out to be a dud. Believe me, it can still happen, but if you follow my blueprint; you’ll turn the odds of it NOT happening in your favor.

So let’s get started with niche selection …

If you have a niche in mind, check for affiliate programs by typing in “niche keyword + affiliate” without the quotes into Google. You can often find a number of affiliate sites in your niche just by doing this.

Another way to get started is to look for good affiliate programs first, and then pick the niche based on those programs. You can search for affiliate programs from the following sites:

www.cj.com
www.linkshare.com
www.clickbank.com (only digital products)
www.shareasale.com
www.associateprograms.com (a directory of smaller affiliate programs)

The best affiliate programs to promote are those that offer at least a $15 to $20 payout on each sale. Anything less than that may not be worth your time (unless the market is not very competitive at all).

You also need to make sure the program you plan to promote is converting. If you’re going to send traffic their way, make sure they know what they’re doing and have a well put together sales page along with compelling copy. I look for a product with testimonials, a money back guarantee, and an easy order process. If you are looking over Clickbank.com and/or CJ.com then you can see how the programs are ranked (essentially, the higher the product, the better it’s selling). It’s a little more complicated than this, but that’s the essence of it.

*** If what you’re really interested in does not have any affiliate programs, then try thinking more broadly. Pick a niche that the same type of buyers may flock to. Sometimes this is a similar niche, other times it’s just a broader version of the niche.

For example, if you really want to enter the ‘how to fly fish’ niche, but there are no information products ready to promote, expand your horizons by entering the ‘fishing’ niche. If there are no information products in the ‘fishing’ niche (which I know is not the case), then you could enter the ‘outdoorsman’ or ‘hunting’ niches. Keep taking steps backwards until you find the bigger market that exists for your sub-niche. Try selecting an affiliate product in the bigger market if none exist in your sub-niche.***

You really want to enter a proven market rather than one that’s entirely new. This is especially true if you’re not making any money online yet. You want to start out with some easy successes. That way you’ll keep going.

Otherwise, you might hit a roadblock and give up completely. This stuff works; you just need some guidance and a little experience under your belt.

One of the best features of an affiliate program is one that allows you to track right down to the keyword. That means anytime you make a sale through a pay-per-click ad; you know which keyword got you the sale. If you can’t find an affiliate program that offers this feature in your niche, it’s OK; I’ll show you a few ways to get around it.

The point is if you’re hovering between two affiliate programs in the same niche; pick the one that allows you to easily track the keywords that make you the sales.

One of the best signs of a healthy market is competition, so don’t be scared of a niche with a lot of affiliate programs. If anything, consider it a good sign. It only provides you with more choices to promote.

In the next module, I’m going to explain to you how I set up what I call an Investigative Site so that you can test out the niches you find…

Is there really such a thing as no risk market selection? Don’t I wish!

Truly, there’s risk involved with anything we do in life, down to getting out of bed in the morning. But if you follow this blueprint, I think you’ll agree it’s about as risk free in the world of online marketing as you’re going to get.

I’ve done everything I can to simplify the system I use to uncover and test out hot niches (without wasting tons of my time or breaking the bank). I’ve broken down my exact system into step-by-step instructions even the beginner can follow.

Here’s an overview of what you’re going to be doing …

You are going to become an affiliate in your test niche. Your test niche is the niche you are trying to determine if YOU can make a profit in (notice ‘you’ is in bold; I truly believe that many folks just aren’t meant to be selling in certain niches).

You are going to become an affiliate to a popular product in your test niche so that you can …

1) Build a list.
2) Find ‘keyword to product’ matches. It’s very important that you know which keywords are searched for by buyers. Not all keywords convert the same. If there’s anything you should get out of this blueprint, it’s the simple fact that some keywords convert better than others.

That way if you decide to really roll-it-out with the niche and create your own product, you already have two major assets; a list of potential buyers and a list of highly converting keywords (plus you have an additional bonus … an income stream).

Having these assets makes launching almost any new product practically a no-brainer. Best of all, after you have these assets you can leverage them when seeking out potential JV partners. I can guarantee that if you approach JV Partners with these assets under your belt, they’ll be more excited to help you out than if you don’t have anything at all.

As you will see, there’s more to the system than just building a list of potential buyers and compiling highly converting keywords, but these are the key factors.

The whole point of this blueprint is to get to the point where you start seeing results as quickly as possible so you can pick up in speed from there!

Momentum can really build once you start to see results so we’re going to begin with what I call the Assessment phase in the first module which will be posted next …

I’ve decided to do something a little crazy.  I’ll be giving away some of my absolute best content for free on InlineSEO.  This content is a step-by-step plan for how to find profitable niches and build up the revenue as quickly as you can once you find them.

It’ll be a whole affiliate marketing series.  I’m going to refer to it as the ‘Affiliate Marketing Blueprint’ for now.  If you’ve ever struggled with how to make money as an affiliate marketer, then this series is crucial for you to read. 

I wrote this series a while ago after building an 11-page site that began earning me several thousand dollars per month.  I don’t have the figures right in front of me, but I earned quite a bit from that first site during its very first year online and was able to repeat the process …  This series details exactly how I was able to do it so that anyone can repeat my success. 

BTW: I had compiled the information into an ebook called ‘Cracking the Niche Code’ and was selling the information for about $50 quite successfully.  I’m in the process of cutting down on the number of products I sell now, so I’ve stopped selling it and will begin posting a revised version of it.  If you were a buyer of that product, you’re on a special buyers list where I’ll let you have my next product for at least half off the regular price.  And half off will be a lot more than what you spent for the ebook.  I’ll send out the details when I’m closer to being finished with that new product.

So please be on the look-out for the Affiliate Marketing Blueprint.  I’ll try to post the very first part of the series in the next day or so.

 When you’re first getting started with internet business, it’s easy enough to do your own web writing – whether it’s a 100-word product description for your e-commerce store or a longer article for directory submission.  Unlike more complicated skills such as web design or internet programming, almost anyone can throw together enough coherent senteces to fill a web page.  However, as your business begins to grow past its introductory stages, it’s time to think about adding a professional ghostwriter to your team. 

Many people struggle with this step – after all, if you’re perfectly capable of writing your own content, why should you pay someone else to do it for you?  For many internet business owners, the decision comes down to time.  Yes, you can write your own website text, but how long does it take you to generate that single page of content?  And what could you do with your business if that time were suddenly freed up?  Most online business owners find that the additional income they earn as the result of the increased productivity they’re able to achieve with a ghostwriter far outweighs the cost of these services.

However, beyond the simple time-versus-money equation, working with a ghostwriter offers another significant advantage.  Writing for the web is different than writing for traditional media outlets, so finding a professional ghostwriter who has experience with web content is crucial.  A good web ghostwriter should be aware of the following rules:

Good web writing speaks to the lowest common denominator

Writing for the intended audience is important in any situation – you wouldn’t submit a highly-technical, jargon-filled journal piece to a popular magazine, just as you wouldn’t submit a simple report to a complex medical journal.  However, writing for the web is a little more complicated in that you can never be sure who’s visiting your site.  Sure, you can conduct in-depth market research to determine which demographic ranges your visitor most likely falls in, but you’ll never really know who’s on your site.  Therefore, a good web writer understands how to write in a simple, yet sophisticated style that’s easily read and understood by all possible visitors to your site.

Good web writing takes on a conversational tone

Formal grammar and syntax are great for academic writing, but web content is all about the conversational tone!  Therefore, web writing tends to use dashes, contractions and fragment sentences more often than traditional writing rules allow.  For example, the sentence, “A word of caution, though,” is technically considered to be a fragment, even if it’s something we’d say naturally in real life.  Good web writing attempts to mimic these natural speech patterns in order to form a connection with the reader – which brings us to our next point:

Good web writing builds a relationship

One of the challenges facing internet businesses is that we – unlike our brick-and-mortar relatives – rely on the language and images on our sites to create a sense of professionalism.  Although people are slowly becoming more comfortable with e-commerce, the natural inclination is still to be distrustful of online sellers.  And quite frankly, this makes sense – it takes a lot to trust someone you’ll never meet with your credit card information!  Good writing can help bridge that gap by helping you connect to your visitor through the text on your site, eventually leading to more sales.

As I’m sure you know, there are literally thousands of professional ghostwriters working online today.  Just do a search at Guru.com or Elance.com and you’ll turn up hundreds of names for both qualified and unqualified writers.  But if I may make a brief plug, I highly recommend that you check out New Arbor Enterprise.  Sarah, the owner, works with a small team of writers from around the world to produce some of the best quality content you can buy today.  With over 500 articles published online – as well as several longer reports – she has the talent and experience to take on any writing project you need, regardless of the topic. 

I’ve used her for a ton of my articles and she always goes out of her way to write informative, high quality content.  For more information on her services, check out her site at www.NewArborEnterprise.com.