By Rob Maggs

Niche Marketing is a proven method of targeting a small group of people who are interested in a specific product.  It is true that there is less demand in a niche market but it can yield very lucrative living from prospects are far more likely to convert into loyal and returning customers.

A niche market consists of a sub group of markets within a larger and more general one. For example, Niche Marketing, Internet Marketing, Email Marketing, Offline Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Bum marketing  and Guerrilla Marketing are all sub groups of Marketing. Each subset may cater for completely different audiences.

Niche Marketing is a great way to find new business opportunities and return customers and it is for these reasons that anyone considering working from home should consider it.

How to research a niche:

1. Get an idea

Brainstorm ideas and visit sites like Amazon, or eBay Pulse to discover the top selling products. You may well find that these markets are completely saturated and therefore you need to drill down into the sub sections of the niche. I use software to do this to speed the process up, but it can also be done by using Google’s free keyword tool. If you use the Google AdWords tool to do this, enter your keyword/ keyword phrase, ensure that the “check synonyms” box is checked, fill in the Caption and submit. Google will return your keyword phrase along with suggested terms. I usually select  “show all” and sort the data by the Global search volumes.

In the Global search field I look for keyword phrases receiving around 1600 searches a month (which equates to 53 searches a day) and can quickly see which phrases are not too competitive and are worth targeting. Even phrases which receive 20 searches a day (600 searches a month) can convert nicely into sales.

Once I’ve chosen a good keyword phrase it is now time to continue the research on Google.

2. site:keyword phrase.com

This reveals how many pages of this domain have been indexed by Google. If this site appears a lot of times it is safe to assume that the site is an authority site on the subject

3. “keyword phrase”

Putting your targeted keyword phrase in quotes gives you an understanding of how many people are competing for the phrase. Google will display the phrase in quotes only where they appear together on the site or page. With this information we can discover how easy targeting this niche will be especially if the results displayed are low. If you find that the amount of sites is higher than 30000 then the niche will be very hard to dominate.

4. keyword phrase

This displays all of the sites that are actively targeting the keyword phrase, where the phrase is contained in the title. This is one of my favorite tools and can reveal some good potential niches.

5. keyword phrase

Pretty much the same as above but will only return pages where your phrase is used in the title. This will give you an even better idea of how many competitors are targeting this niche.

6. inurl: keyword phrase

This displays all of the domains which contain this keyword phrase and reveals the competitors that are targeting it. Having domain name based keywords will give you an advantage over other competitors and this phrase will expose the people using niche marketing techniques.

7. Creating content/finding a product

Now I scour forums and “Answer based” sites related to the niche to discover the questions that people are asking about the subject. I join these forums and search for affiliate products (or create my own software/ information products) which people in this niche will appreciate. Creating an information product is easy all you need to do is answer the questions people are asking in your niche. You can do this by creating a document online at Google Docs and when you’ve finished it simply download the document in PDF format. You might want to use this technique to create small reports to sell for $7. I have done this many times and it really is a quick and easy way to make money. At a price like $7 the prospect doesn’t really have much to lose, but you must make sure that you are providing value or you can “kiss goodbye” to repeat customers. A great tip here is to look for public domain material which you can claim as your own. I have a free ebook available at my site which describes in more detail how to do this. I generally create products to sell in the range of $19.99 to $50.

Create a Project and keep all of the details of the email address, accounts and passwords and anything important in a spreadsheet. I have one main Google Account where I store all of this information. I use the Spreadsheet facility of Google Docs to do this, that way I never have to worry about hardware failure.

8. Create a blog

The next step is to create a blog where you will market your product, this can be done by registering and hosting a domain which will cost you a few dollars for the domain name. I have found that “.info” domains work well and will cost you less than $2 (I generally use godaddy.com). You will also need to find a web host (I use hostgator.com). I tend to stick with the .info domain and if it yields good profits I’ll buy the “.com” address too. I have a PDF report available which describes this process in detail and how you can use free hosting entirely to great effect, negating the need for purchasing or hosting a domain, but this information is beyond the scope of this article.

9. Build backlinks to your web page

This is where I submit my new blog to about 100 free web directories. This will get me backlinks which will help my site to rank well on the search engines.

10. Promote the blog using a network of Web 2.0 sites

I will create unique content for my niche and create a page for Blogger, WordPress, Squidoo, Hubpages, Twitter etc. Each of these sites will be linked together by a one way link and each one will also link back to site which I am promoting. Once the network has been created I use a service like pingomatic.com to “ping” the RSS feeds of each of the Web 2.0 properties. I create several of these networks targeting different keyword phrases and each network points to the site I am promoting

11. Bookmark and promote each Web 2.0 property

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