Most Important Niche Marketing Questions Answered

August 4th, 2010 | 16 comments

niche marketing interview Jonathan Leger recently conducted an interview with me on the subject of Niche Marketing and I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out on it.

In the interview (below) I answer some of the most asked and vital questions on the subject. To keep the “flow” correct and so it all makes sense, I’ve just pasted the entire email below for you to read:

(Beginning of Interview)
Jonathan: I decided to conduct a few interviews with some very savvy marketers and send you the information they’ve provided. I think it’s a great idea to read the perspective of other successful people… My first choice was an easy one — Josh Spaulding. He’s a very successful article marketer and the creator of some powerful tools for anyone looking to make a living online.

I asked him some questions about how he researches new niches to target, and his answers are FULL of awesome information.

Here’s the full text of the interview:

Q: What is the first thing you look at when you consider targeting a new niche?

A: How much money is in the overall market. I learned early in my Internet Marketing career that not all niches are equal. A website in the “Football” niche (for example) isn’t going to profit nearly as much as a website in the “lasik” niche.

Just 20 unique visitors in one niche could only be worth $0.10 while 20 visitors in another niche could very well be worth $10.00. So for some niches you have to work 10 times harder to earn the same amount of money.

It’s also important to see what products (if any) are available to promote as an affiliate. Some niches are profitable, but have little to no products to promote. With that being said, determining a profitable market is the first thing I look at when considering a niche and also one of the absolute most important factors of the whole process.

Q: How much importance do you place on using your keywords in your domain name?

A: For big, authoritative sites I don’t place too much importance on it. But when I’m creating smaller sites that target “long-tail” phrases I put a great deal of importance in it!

When you’re targeting long-tail phrases every little SEO bump counts and having your main keywords in the domain can really make a noticable difference.

Q: Do you use the Google Keyword Tool for your Keyword Research?

A: I use some of the data from the tool, but I don’t believe it’s a complete tool particularly because it provides limited results. Somewhere around 80% of all SE queries are unique, meaning they have never been searched for.

So I typically use Google’s data to give me my initial list of keywords. I then filter them with my own criteria and use what is left to get started.

Q: You mentioned you use your own criteria to filter the keywords, will you share?

A: Sure, I’m a firm believer in Occam’s Razor (keeping it simple), as I believe you are. I think most people who fail at niche marketing do so because they over analyze everything and try to find perfection.

But the fact is some sites will fail and some will succeed. With that being said my criteria for filtering keywords is very simple!

I filter them by search volume to start. The exact volume will vary depending on my goals, but for an average niche site I try not to go much higher than 3500 monthly searches.

With what is left I simply calculate the average toolbar PageRank of the top 10 competitors for each keyword. If that number is above 3 I throw it out. If it is 3 or below I keep it.

I then look at the competition for each keyword and do some common sense elimination based on what people are looking for and what sites are ranking.

The success rate varies from niche to niche, but overall I’ve had pretty good success using that process and it saves me LOADS of time.

Q: You had also mentioned that you feel the Google Keyword Tool is incomplete. Do you have other sources for finding keywords once you’ve selected a niche to target?

A: Yes, once I’ve used the keywords that passed my criteria I start submitting articles and writing pages that target keywords that I extract from Google Suggestions (the phrases Google recommends via a drop down menu when doing a search.) These are often extremely valuable and untapped phrases. I also dig into my competitors sites and will often target phrases that they are targeting as well.

Q: In order of importance, what would be your three top tips for a person who has not yet found much success with Niche Marketing, but is determined to?

A:
1. Understand that everyone fails and that those who react to failure positively are often the people who succeed in the end. This isn’t specific to niche marketing, but I feel it’s so important that it should always be the #1 tip no matter what the question.

2. Always remember that the more money that is spent in a niche, the less traffic you need to make considerable profits.

3. Automate whenever possible! I think you’re the King of automating Internet Marketing processes, Jon. So I think you’ll agree, if something can be done quicker and/or easier then it needs to be!

Make smart investments and don’t spend too much time doing something that could be done much quicker and/or more efficiently.

Q: Is there anything out there that you use to automate these processes and make your niche marketing easier and more profitable?

A: For the longest time I paid a lot of money for multiple tools that did one or two things in the Niche Marketing process. But obviously I didn’t like spending all of that money.

[removed]

I use this tool to find profitable niches, filter keywords, extract untapped “Google Suggests” keywords, extract competitor keywords, do average PageRank and competition analysis, find keyword rich domain names that are available, check my rankings, Check internal PR & more.

So there you have it — some serious niche marketing advice from a Master at the trade, Josh Spaulding.

Here’s to your success Josh!

Jonathan Leger
(End of Interview)

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16 comments

Trent Brownrigg (4 comments.)
4th August, 2010 at 7:44 pm

Great information Josh. Thanks for sharing it. I particularly like your answer to the criteria for filtering keywords. I will have to try that from now.
Sally (8 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 8:52 am

Excellent Josh, thanks for sharing that.

I have a problem with over-analyzing everything and it slows me down terribly in regards to taking my online business forward.

I have never heard of Occam’s Razor and I am going to look into this.

Thanks Sally
Mike Antoni (1 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 10:17 am

Great interview. This is the best part of the whole thing I think:

1. Understand that everyone fails and that those who react to failure positively are often the people who succeed in the end.

It goes with something I always say to people. The mansion of success is built upon a foundation of failure.
Wendy Owen (2 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 10:23 am

Hi Josh

Thanks for the good info. Do you think that PR is a better way to judge a site than inbound links?
I have a 6 year old site that has most of it’s main keywords on page 1 & 2 of Google but has a PR of 0
Strange!

Wendy
Paul
5th August, 2010 at 11:42 am

Excellent interview by Jon. Josh you are good, I mean really good stuff. Wish I had your ability to sift out the unimportant stuff. Occam’s Razor or Ockham’s Razor…is choosing and finding the simplest path to your problem. But, it does not always mean the simplest answer will always be the correct one.
Sandy Halliday (3 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 12:42 pm

Interesting stuff Josh. I find Google Suggest very useful especially when you find a keyword that has less than 300,00 competing sites.
Josh Spaulding
5th August, 2010 at 1:15 pm

@ Wendy – Neither way is 100% accurate, but it would be extremely hard to go through the backlinks of all of your competitors and come up with an authority level based off of their backlinks. You would have to know how strong each and every one of their backlinks were etc.

Regarding toolbar PR, your site is a good example of why toolbar PR isn’t accurate on a page by page basis, but when looking at the average toolbar PR of 10 or more sites in a tight niche it is a fairly accurate way to measure authority.
Online Tutoring Jobs (3 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 2:44 pm

@Wendy:
I know what you mean, Wendy. 1 of my competitors has a 0 year old site, with 10 pages, no .edu or .gov backlinks. In fact their backlinks are 1pr3, 3pr1 and the rest are pr0. There are less than 50 backlinks total.
Would you believe this guy’s site has a pr3!
Where the heck did he get it from? He’s not listed in DMOZ or Yahoo directories.
The only thing I can figure is that his on-site SEO is immaculately done.
And they say pr is given on the basis of backlinks only? I think not.

Peggy
Susan Greene (5 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 4:29 pm

Very informative, Josh. And thanks for the reminder that it’s okay to fail. I know sometimes I hesitate to go forward because I’m so worried about all the what-if’s. Need to take the leap and learn from any failures.
Gary Lambert (9 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 4:32 pm

Great Interview. I over analyze especially with the keywords. I have some attorneys I am working with and they have so many areas that they specialize and different areas that they are in. So there are a lot of possibilities. I know I just need to focus on 20 or 30 and then come back for more
Barbara Bruce
5th August, 2010 at 10:48 pm

I appreciate how candid you are, and how willing to share with others what it has taken you lots of time/money to learn! Excellent tips!
steve (14 comments.)
5th August, 2010 at 11:47 pm

“Understand that everyone fails and that those who react to failure positively are often the people who succeed in the end.”

WHAT? I don’t want to hear that! I though I was guaranteed to succeed the first time and it was easy!

Seriously, you’re right, and your advice applies to life in general as well. We all make mistakes… the key is some of us learn from our mistakes, and some of us don’t.
Steve
Terrell Just
6th August, 2010 at 3:13 am

Thank you, Josh,

Keep on moving and stay focused.
I have some IMer friends who know more about keyword analysis than I ever care to, or at least they SOUND like they do, haha.
For a while I froze, waiting to hit an AHA! moment….and never took action.
Then I read your comment somewhere about sticking with one model until it is in place and working.
Oh, Ok…..stay focused and keep moving.
Thanks for that,

Terrell
Martin Security (14 comments.)
20th August, 2010 at 5:30 pm

“I think most people who fail at niche marketing do so because they over analyze everything and try to find perfection.”

I’m wondering at what point does analyzing become over analyzing? But then maybe I’m over analyzing your statement

You are right, perfection is not achievable.
Beginner
26th August, 2010 at 3:26 pm

Josh, I have a small doubt.. Cant we just decide the best niche just by looking at the CPC , no of advertisers ads which will be there on the right hand side of google search results and global monthly search volume of that keyword ?? Is that not these 3 things enough to select a gud niche??

I havent really clearly understood on why we should care much about Toolbar page rank? As u said that we should take average of all the 10 sites and then we get some accurate page rank. But why should we consider this avg pagerank of a long-talied keyword, while when we are trying for selecting a gud niche??

Your explanation will be greatly appreciated sir..
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6th September, 2010 at 12:27 am

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