When you talk with people who have had experience with home base businesses you will typically get two types of answers. Some will say working from home is the best thing that every happened to them while others will say that they would rather go out to work every day. Having a home base business is really up to each individuals own preference. There are some that work better at a traditional job while others work better with the freedom of a home base business.

If you have young kids you may prefer to work from home since you can then spend a lot of time around your kids and have a part in their upbringing. Other people may prefer to go to work at a traditional job to have some free time away from the kids and family. These individuals may be overwhelmed if they are at home all day with kids running around the house, which can also cause distractions while trying to work at home.

Another benefit of working from home is the fact that you don’t have to report to a boss, you can be your own boss. This allows you to set up a schedule that works for you and your family. You don’t have to commute long hours every morning to get to work which not only saves time, but also money. You don’t have to deal with the weather and you have more free time to spend doing the activities you want to do. You will find you have more hours in the day and aren’t spending your time rushing to get things done before the end of the day.

However, there are some disadvantages you should consider with home base businesses before deciding if it is something you want to start. If you find you are easily distracted while working then a home base business may not be right for you since there are many distractions such as kids and household events. It is best to either have a home base job that only requires work at night or one that doesn’t require your full attention.

If you aren’t easily motivated then a home base business can also be difficult to do. With no deadlines and boss to report to it can be very easy to put off working until it is too late. You can’t expect to make a profit from your home based business by slacking off, so you need to make sure you have the right mindset to focus on your work and complete it.

If you are going to have a home based business it is best to make sure you have an individual office set aside where you can work in quiet and that family understands not to disturb you while you work. Although if you prefer human interactions while you work then it can be difficult to get used to doing a home base business at first since you will often be working on your own with no one else around the entire day.

Anyone who starts a home based business has high hopes for success. Many feel that with just a few simple ads the business will boom and take off into a major business. However, many find that customers are actually few and far between when it comes to a home based business. With the following tips you can help to market your home based business and turn it into a success.

While family and friends can be helpful when it comes to a home based business you should also look to expand your network. To do this consider the places where you can find good customer. Some ideas include local civic associations, regional trade shows, professional conferences and chamber of commerce meetings. If you have an online business then you may want to consider checking message boards to help build your online mailing list.

Whenever you find someone and the situation calls for it, talk to them. Everyone has the potential of being a customer if you just talk to them. The possibilities are endless and it gives you something to do instead of just waiting around for a bus or airplane. Just striking up a conversation can bring you in a lot of additional business.

Even if you don’t have an online business, one of the best advertising methods is online. Whether you are selling a local product or not, online is a way to get in contact with millions of potential customers from the comfort and convenience of your home computer.

When discussing you business it may be a good idea to leave out the fact that you have a home based business. Although a great many companies are starting up home based aspects of their companies many people still view these businesses as unprofessional. Rather focus on the product or service you are selling since this is what is important and this is what the customer wants.

Depending on the service you are offering consider doing a few local demonstrations. This can help increase the publicity for your business. Or you can offer to do a local service featuring your talents for free such as decorating a local restaurant. This way you can increase your popularity and possibly gain further sales later.

For the top marketing techniques consider attending meetings that focus on your business industry and talking with people about their successes and problems. This can help you learn what to do and what to avoid for your business. Another option is to read any trade publications for your business industry. Getting into the industry allows you to find someone that you can go to with a specific question or problem that you may encounter with your business. Just always remember to follow up with the individual and thank them for their help so they know you appreciate it.

Even though I am only up to posting day 20 the actual 30 day challenge wraps up today as it is the end of the month, I have other projects online so haven’t been able to keep up as well as I hoped. Unfortunately I don’t think I will be in the hall of fame for making my $10 in 30 days using the techniques taught by Ed however I have learned a great deal and do have faith that this stuff works.

There have been a lot of people who have made their $10 in the 30 days and congratulations to them. I know it sounds pretty obvious but finding the right niche is absolutely crucial.

Reasons for me failing are mainly lack of time and the fact I have picked a niche which has no affiliate products. I am going to build a community type site and have my own info product created.

Last Friday Ed declared that if anyone made their $10 by the end of the weekend they would go into a competition to be flown to Australia to meet Ed and the team. On hearing this I thought I would go back to the beginning and start again and see what I could come up with.

About the same time Ed also declared that someone in the 30DC made $7,000 and in fact will have made closer to $20,000. It turned out they were an affiliate for a real estate company or some sort of luxury good. I did a bit of research and found a new niche to promote and put up some pages on one of the recommended content platforms did some social bookmarking however didn’t, and still haven’t, been indexed.

So today I tried a different platform with some new content and some more bookmarking so will see how that one goes.

Going back to the guy who has made close to $20,000 I do have a slight gripe to make with Ed and some people will think I am just being envious which I can assure you I am not. I am extremely happy for the person who has obviously worked hard and deserves the success they are receiving.

My gripe is the fact that Ed is claiming that this person has achieved this result solely from using the techniques taught in the 30DC. Well this is actually incorrect and the person even confirmed this in a post in the 30DC forum. I just want to point out that this is my understanding from what I have heard and read and may not be entirely accurate.

Firstly this person was promoting his own site which at one stage was on the first page of Google I believe about 2 years ago. So as the site is an aged site and already ranked before the 30DC then surely that alone rules it out.

Secondly the phrases he was targeting were far more competitive than what is recommended, I think he said 1 million competing pages which using the 30DC techniques alone with a new site would be virtually impossible to compete with.

Thirdly as he had his own site and domain he had already spent money and the whole idea is not to spend any money at all.
So I have to say I was a little surprised that Ed and Dan counted this as being part of the 30DC. After all the 30DC is aimed at newbies showing them a way to make money without having to spend any and starting from scratch. Using this guy as an example of what can be achieved by following the 30DC in my opinion is a little off. I can understand Ed being excited at teaching this guy a few techniques which were obviously what was needed to give his site the boost that it needed and I also think this is great however there were clearly other factors which influenced his success.

So my point is I think it is unfair to use this case as evidence to tell newbies that by following the 30DC you have the potential to make $7,000+ and I really hope Ed doesn’t keep referring back to this particular case as it just doesn’t sit right with me. I don’t know if anyone else feels this way and it would be great to hear your comments.

Robert from the 30DC team created a nice little video about how to use Google alerts www.google.com/alerts. Once again this is quite a well known technique for keeping up to date with new content indexed in Google related to whichever niche you are interested in. By setting up rules/filters in your email system you can also keep all of this data organized.

Robert does however add an interesting little tip about using a unique phrase in any new content you produce that no one else is using and then entering that phrase into Google alerts so that you can monitor when your content is showing up in Googles search results.

Robert also released a sort of link building in a nutshell video which outlined the basics of getting back links to improve search engine rankings. Link building is a rather simple process, the more links you have pointing to your site, the more Google believes you are an authority on a particular subject therefore the higher you will rank.

However there are a few key things you need to know in order to be able to build back links effectively

• Some links hold more value than others
• One way links are better than reciprocal links
• Links from sites with related content are better than non related
• The higher the PR or authority of a site linking to you the better
• Links from .edu and .gov sites are more valuable than standard domains such as .com and .net
• Linking should be natural, in other words if you get too many links too quickly Google will sandbox your site. The sandbox is where a site is placed if it is suspected of using strategies to manipulate Google’s search results.
• Do not exchange links with sites which are not indexed by Google or have PR0 and only exchange links with sites which are related in some way to your own.

There are hundreds of different ways of getting back links to your site, however the best way is simply to create quality content. This will encourage other sites to link to yours without you having to do any further work yourself. Links will be one way and most likely from related sites.

Submitting articles is another excellent long term strategy, you can submit your site to search engines, directories, RSS directories, comment on other blogs or web 2.0 type sites such as Squidoo and HubPages the list goes on.

It’s definitely no secret that back links are the most important thing for getting your sites ranked well in the search engines and unfortunately can be the most time consuming task. Master the art of link building and you will have great success making money online.

Throughout the whole thirty day challenge Ed has been mentioning his “special sauce” which was going to virtually guarantee top placements in Google if we had chosen our niche phrases as instructed. Unfortunately the special sauce should now be called the secret sauce as Ed has decided not to reveal it in the 30 day challenge.

I must admit I was pretty disappointed at this news as I know social bookmarking alone isn’t usually enough to maintain top spots in Google and I was looking forward to learning a new way to get back links (I assume the special sauce had something to do with getting good quality, one way back links).

However, I totally understand Ed’s reasoning for the sudden withdrawal of the technique due to the potential abuse from spammers who were also partly responsible for the Tumblr episode. I believe the only way to learn this technique is to join Ed’s membership sites called Immediate Edge.

I know it sounds like a big scam just to get people to sign up for Ed’s membership site to make him more money but if you have been following along with the 30 day challenge you will have made up your own mind about Ed and whether or not you think he is genuine or not.

Personally I think Ed is an exceptionally genuine guy and deserves any extra revenue that comes his way as a result of the 30DC, the amount of time and effort he has put into it and the quantity and quality of information he has provided for no charge whatsoever is absolutely brilliant.

I seem to have finally shaken the bizarre flu/bug thing that I have had for the last week and over the last couple of days I have been re evaluating my thirty day challenge project, lets just say I am taking a bit of a short cut. The whole idea of the 30 Day challenge is not to spend a cent testing whether or not a niche has high earning potential by using free blogging and CMS platforms and selling affiliate products.

One of my niches in particular has no affiliate products which normally would be a concern as you would suspect there is no earning potential. I am going to take a bit of a gamble and get an ebook created on the topic anyway as I am confident there will be plenty of interest. I really like this particular niche because it is quite a good umbrella phrase, in other words there are plenty of phrases within it that have high traffic and low competition.

I am also already outsourcing my content creation as I find writing articles is far to time consuming. I found a ghostwriter on www.elance.com who I am going to try out for a while and see how that works out. It’s hard to find good quality writers which don’t charge too much and remember quality is essential, you are far better off paying extra for better quality content.

I have also purchased a domain from www.namecheap.com which I am going to start adding my articles too using a free content management system called Joomla! I built a few sites a while back using Joomla! and wasn’t really all that impressed, compared to Wordpress it has far more features but it seemed very rigid. What I mean by that is it didn’t seem all that easy to customize which is why I love Wordpress.

However, the reason I did choose to go for Joomla! rather than Wordpress is because it is getting a lot of praise at the moment and was even touted as being loved by Google. It is also great for creating community sites which is my main aim. I want to build a loyal base of regular visitors who are passionate about the niche and contribute their own content. This over time will hopefully create a self providing environment with little input from myself. Using Web 2.0 technology this shouldn’t be too difficult to achieve.

So even though I am now officially out of the thirty day challenge as I have spent money on various things I will still document my progress here and perhaps even beyond the 30DC. At the beginning of the challenge I was determined to win however the far more important thing for me is to create my own info product and generate residual passive income.

Nothing particularly surprising today from Ed and he basically went over what I thought he would as mentioned in my day 15 post. I have decided I am going to use a combination of EzineArticles and Squidoo to test my niche phrases from now on, so here is how I came to my decision.

EzineArticles are the premiere article directory on the internet and Google absolutely loves them. You probably noticed in the niche research phase that articles from EzineArticles quite often rank in the top ten and all content submitted is human reviewed to ensure good quality. This means that not only will any articles we submit have a good chance of ranking well but any back links we place beneath our article (called the resource box) will be very valuable in terms of helping other pages we own rank well.

The other thing I like about EzineArticles is the fact that all we need to do is write an article, submit it, social bookmark it and then forget it. If we decide to create our own info product for that particular niche and we end up with our own domain and web site, we can do back and edit the article adding a link to the resource box which will give our brand new site a big boost in Google’s eyes.

There was a bit of a Squidoo craze there for a while as people were building lenses (simply their name for a page) which were ranking extremely well even in considerably competitive markets up until recently that is. Not all that long ago Google penalized Squidoo due to a group of spammers who were using Squidoo in an unethical manner to rank well in Google and as the content was rubbish and Google is all about quality (or at least try to be) Google had to step in and take action.

The effect this had on Squidoo is debatable, some people reported a substantial loss in traffic, some reported no loss in traffic but at the end of the day Squidoo lenses still do rank well, perhaps not as well as they used to but in my opinion well enough. It is important to note that Squidoo have made a lot of effort since then to prevent spammers from doing this again so they could possibly regain their former status, who knows.

Squidoo vs HubPages - I have used both platforms and in my personal experience have had far better results with Squidoo. However in saying that others have reported they have ranked very well using HubPages. In my niche research I can’t say I have ever come across a HubPage in the top search results which doesn’t give me a lot of faith, Squidoo lenses on the other hand frequently appear on the first page of search results.

HubPages have been rather flexible in the content they allow however I think lately they are making a move to reduce spam also so could result in the whole Tumblr scenario all over again. On the other hand Squidoo does actually encourage affiliate marketing as long as it is done properly. In other words if you supply some decent, unique content and enough of it then sure you can provide links to affiliate products and/or services. If you provide duplicate, worthless, spammy content then your account will get deleted before you know it.

So thats my reasoning for my choice, I think a combination between EzineArticles and Squidoo is going to be an extremely powerful combination. In regards to the comments made in this post I am not proclaiming to be an expert in any way, shape or form I am simply going on my own personal experience. I am sure some people will use HubPages instead of Squidoo for the 30 day challenge and have great success, some may even use both.

I know a lot of people are wondering is it over now that Tumblr is out of the game, and why Tumblr, why can’t I use Blogger, Squidoo, HubPages or Wordpress? Well first of all no, it is definitely not all over and secondly yes you can use any of the many web 2.0 blogging or content management systems that are available.

Some of you may also be wondering why we can’t host our own web sites as that way you don’t have to worry about someone deleting your account. There is one very crucial factor as to why everyones sites ranked so well so quickly and why in my opinion using these web 2.0 sites rather than hosting your own sites is far more beneficial in the short term and that is due to trust factor. Web 2.0 sites such as Tumblr tick all the boxes when it comes to what search engines like, especially Google, and the fact they have been around for a long time makes them extremely useful, so Google trusts whatever content is produced on these sites.

Compare that to buying your own domain and your own hosting and it simply comes down to the fact that Google knows nothing at all about your domain. Most importantly as Ed pointed out in one of his videos, new sites are far more likely to contain software generated content (spam) as opposed to content on well established sites. For this reason, as well as a few others, are why web 2.0 sites rank extremely well, not just Tumblr, but most web 2.0 type sites. I hope that explains the reasoning behind Tumblr, it was merely a preferred web 2.0 site, mainly because of it’s simplicity due to the number of newbies in the 30 day challenge.

Interestingly enough it is now very easy to find out how much competition you have for your niche phrases from other 30 day challengers by seeing how many other Tumblr blogs are appearing in the Google results for your phrases. One of the niche phrases I was considering I discovered today was also the phrase of choice for at least ten other 30DC’ers. So if you are up against a lot of other competition you may want to consider going after another phrase, especially if you are a newbie.

Well talk about from one extreme to the next! First of all I haven’t posted in three days because I came down with the flu on Friday so I have been having a bit of a break from the computer, not the best timing as the 30 day challenge was just starting to reach full throttle. But it doesn’t stop there…

On Thursday last week I posted about how we were using Tumblr blogs to post our content to and then using social bookmarking to get them indexed and ranked extremely quickly. Due to the thousands of people in the 30 day challenge this caused an abnormal spike in activity at Tumblr and various social bookmarking sites causing an adverse reaction. Unfortunately thousands of accounts were deleted leaving everyone a little demoralized and wondering why even though they had followed Ed to the very letter were getting penalized. This has probably led a lot of people to question the ethics of Ed’s methods.

I can assure you everything Ed has been teaching is ethical if done the correct way. In regards to Tumblr’s mass deletion of accounts this was probably due to a number of reasons. First of all when they saw the spike of accounts being created they would have thought someone was using software to automatically create the accounts as I doubt very much that Tumblr would have been aware of what was about to happen. Perhaps Ed should have contacted Tumblr to let them know beforehand but hindsight is a wonderful thing. To top it all off a few of the 30 Day challenge members were posting spammy content which would not have helped the situation either.

In regards to the social bookmarking sites it’s a very similar situation, they all noticed a huge spike in Tumblr blogs being submitted and acted on the pretense that someone was using software to spam their sites. So you may have done absolutely nothing wrong but still had your blogs and social bookmarking accounts wiped out and on the verge of quitting.

There is a fine line between spamming Web 2.0 sites and acceptable self promotion. Usually it’ a good idea to let your blog establish itself before adding any monetization via affiliate links or adsense or at the very least be extremely subtle, don’t put big banners or sales letter type posts on your blog. When using social bookmarking make sure you bookmark sites other than your own, at least one other site to every one of your’s. If everyone just bookmarked their own sites then the whole system wouldn’t work so it is crucial for the social bookmarking sites to be strict on this.

Tomorrow Ed is going to release his damage control report to try and help everyone pick up the pieces and get everything back on track. I would say this time he will offer a list of possible Tumblr alternatives and let people choose which one they are going to use. HubPages will probably be my number 1 alternative at this stage but I will wait and see what Ed has to say first before taking further action.

Well we finally got to find out what web 2.0 blogging system Ed Dale and the team recommend and it turned out to be www.tumblr.com. Personally I hadn’t even heard of Tumblr up until a few days ago when I was watching one of Ed’s videos and he was browsing the Google search result pages for ‘Free Speed Reading’ when he noticed his Tumblr blog had already been indexed (we didn’t find out it was his blog until today). It wasn’t hard to pick up on how surprised he was to see that listing that I assumed Tumblr was going to be the blogging system we were going to use.

I am not sure how many other people picked up on this but I think a lot of people had already claimed their niche phrases at Tumblr before today much to the dismay of the others. There were cries in the forum today along the lines of “my niche is taken, I am doomed!” However as I quickly pointed out, even though someone already has registered a blog at Tumblr with your niche phrase it doesn’t mean they are going to do anything with it.

So as soon as I had watched todays videos I got to work making my first post. I wrote a very short post, about 250 words long, for my least competitive niche, 900 competing pages with phrase match. After I submitted my post I actually took a little shortcut and used a tool which I have used several times before over at http://ekstreme.com/socialzier I actually have the bookmarklet installed in my tool bar. Ed mentioned another similar looking service at www.socialposter.com.

Even though my competition was extremely low for the niche phrase I was targeting the speed in which my blog was indexed was nothing short of outstanding. I submitted my post at 5:30pm and by 7:15pm my blog was ranked about number 20 in Google with a normal search. Remember at this stage I have only made one post about 250 words long.

As far as monetization is concerned as there are no directly related affiliate products for this niche I have included an Amazon affiliate product just to test if visitors are in buying mode or not. If I start making a steady number of sales then I will look into creating or getting someone else to create my own info product.

It’s early days yet but things are off to a good start, obviously I will have have to get that blog ranking in the top ten before I will start seeing a decent amount off traffic. I have also just submitted a post to my second blog on a separate niche which has around 20,000 competing pages so it will be interesting to see how well this one performs.

I have about 10 niches which I plan to post content on over the next few days so I will keep you updated with my results. Don’t hesitate to ask any questions.

Today was supposed to be building blog’s day however Dan had a technical glitch with his video so we have to wait till tomorrow. I have used today to keep digging around for potentially profitable niches and my list is growing at a considerable rate. For those who can’t seem to find any niches whatsoever my only reasoning is that they are looking for the wrong thing. To get an idea of what niches people are making money from go along to www.clickbank.com have a look around.

We did get a very interesting video from ED today however giving us a bit of an outline as to what techniques he is going to teach over the next few days in regards to promotion and getting traffic. He talked about the traditional marketing method of getting traffic related in any way to your niche and trying to then force your visitors to “take a detour” to your sales page and buy or sign up to your product or service.

The technique he has been using over the last 6 months or so is to be a lot more subtle, provide the visitor with exactly what they are after and then expose them to your sales page. He may be referring to using opt in forms to collect emails and provide a mini series of free information relating to whatever phrase the person happened to be searching for, at the end of the series presenting them with your product or service and hopefully making a sale.

However as the 30 day challenge uses completely free marketing tools and methods this would involve using a free email auto responder. I know www.getresponse.com have a limited free email auto responder so perhaps he will recommend that one.

On the other hand I am probably way off and he has some other technique in store as the method just mentioned isn’t by any means uncommon practice.

If you are interested in what sort of stats I have been getting for my niche phrases, my best phrase has 1,500 searches per day and 22,500 competing pages, no web 2.0 competition and definite revenue potential through affiliation or my own info product. It’s all going to come down to how much information I can find and the quality of the content I can produce as it’s a reasonably technical niche.

Altogether I probably have about 30 niche phrases with over 200 searches per day and less than 30,000 competing pages and perhaps another 50 or so between 100 and 200 searches per day. So as I mentioned earlier there are plenty of niche phrases out there just keep looking!

I have to put my money where my mouth is now and turn those phrases into cash

One of the tests we used to find out if a niche market has potential or not was to see if it had affiliate opportunities attached to it. The easiest way to find out this is to go to Google and type in your niche phrase followed by +affiliate. If there was a good number of affiliate products to choose from then you know there is a good chance that people are spending money in this niche.

However what if there are no niche products? Well it’s not all over yet as you can sign up as an associate at Amazon. Even though Amazon pay very little in the way of commission thats not really an issue, what is important is whether people are actually buying whatever you are promoting. If they are buying whatever you are promoting then you can create your own product and be pretty confident in the fact that it should sell. The other thing about Amazon is that they cover virtually any market or niche under the sun so there should be no problem finding a product to promote.

If you have been following my 30 day challenge journal you may remember that I mentioned discovering a huge umbrella phrase with reasonably low competition and high traffic. The only problem I have is that the sub niche’s are very tight, in other words there is not that much content I can create about each niche. However the umbrella phrase I have is very broad and only loosely relates to the sub niches contained within it. So I am not quite sure how well this is going to work using Ed’s technique I do have some other niche phrases which are slightly broader which I will test too.

So tomorrow looks like it is going to be the big day where we actually start to make our content live. I am really looking to seeing what site(s) Ed is recommending we used to build our pages as we only have another 2 weeks to reach the number 1 spot in Google. I think it’s pretty clear that it is going to be a social blogging type site like Squidoo and HubPages, possibly a new and relatively unknown one. We will just have to wait and see!

By now we have selected our niche(s) which “ticks all of the boxes” so to speak, it’s time to crack on and start creating content. A lot of people find this the hardest stage in the niche marketing process and I have to admit it isn’t my favorite either although it is absolutely critical. Trust me though when I say it gets easier and easier with time and eventually you will be able to outsource your content creation when you start making money. The content you create is what is going to attract people to your pages which in turn will hopefully convert into sales.

Creating content is in actual fact very easy if done the right way. First of all you need to keep up to date with what is going on in whatever niche you are targeting as you can’t write about something you know nothing about! In the information age we live in their is an abundance of information on virtually any topic right at our fingertips so this shouldn’t be a problem. Secondly you need an efficient way to organize all of this data so that you can quickly refer back to it at any time. Refer to my post on staying organized for more info on recommended tools for helping with this.

The best way to keep up to date with what is going on in your niche(s) is to subscribe to RSS feeds belonging to blogs, groups, news feeds or whatever and make a note of anything you find interesting or more importantly what you believe others might find interesting. RSS feeds are constantly changing so it is crucial to check on them regularly and keep your own records or notes. I talk about how to subscribe to RSS feeds in Day 4.

There are a number of places you can keep up to date with news stories, http://news.google.com is a good place to start. Simply search for your niche and then subscribe to the RSS feed for those results. This will keep you updated whenever a new story is posted on that particular subject. It’s a good idea to keep your search term quite broad when subscribing to news feeds. You can also check out http://news.yahoo.com and http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Depending on your niche sometimes it may not be the sort of topic which you would find mentioned in the news so the next step would be to find any blogs on the same topic and subscribe to them. Also subscribe to any newsletters which you come across as they can give you ideas for content and affiliate products or services.

Basically the whole idea here is to collect as much information about your niche as you can from anywhere possible as long as it is from a trusted source. Where and how you find the information is going to vary from niche to niche but with the help of ol’ Google you shouldn’t have any problems.

In day 1 I talked about my way of distinguishing the difference between a market a niche and sub niche and in my market research phase used several methods to try and identify potential niches. There is another way to uncover niches which actually ended up becoming my preferred method and that is to take a market such as ‘golf’ and enter that as a search term in Wordtracker rather than a niche such as ‘golf clubs’.

By doing this you are initially broadening your search in Wordtracker which will then uncover niches for you. So lets take ‘golf’ and enter that into Wordtracker and here are the top five results…

• golf clubs
• golf carts
• golf equipment
• golf balls
• us open golf

…as you can see we have just uncovered several niches and if we want to uncover sub niches we can just click on one of the search terms and dig deeper. So for example I will click on ‘golf clubs’…

• used golf clubs
• discount golf clubs
• clone golf clubs
• ping golf clubs
• cheap golf clubs

…so now we have a list of sub niches which we can target. In theory the further you dig down into a market (as long as searches stay around 100 or higher per day) the less competition that term is likely to have. Lets go one more level down into ‘used golf clubs’…

• used ping golf clubs
• used callaway golf clubs
• buy used golf clubs
• used golf clubs for sale
• used ben hogan golf clubs

…you will notice as we dig deeper the search terms get longer and longer which is what is known as the long tail. In regards to approaching a particular niche we should start by targeting keywords at the very bottom (sub niches) then once we rank well for those search terms we can go up a level and start targeting the more competitive higher traffic search terms. A lot of internet marketers do this the wrong way around and make life difficult for themselves.

I know the whole idea of the 30 day challenge is to make $10 in one month without spending any money whatsoever but lets face it, if there is a way to drastically speed up our niche market research using a particular tool then I am all for it. Well luckily there are several tools which come highly recommended for doing just that, some of them are desktop tools and some of them are membership sites. Personally I prefer the membership sites and although you are paying a monthly fee as opposed to a one off payment the server side scripts tend to work much faster.

NicheBot have a membership site which is my tool of choice at the moment. It incorporates Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Google search terms all in one place. You can also access Keyword Discoveries database as an enterprise member allowing you to create keyword lists up to 10,000 per search. You can gather competing results in Google for your entire list automatically which is a huge time saver for the 30 day challenge and then export your lists into a spreadsheet.

This means you can eliminate any keywords which have too much competition with very little effort and concentrate on the ones which have low competition. Unfortunately at the time of writing this post the method of using Google Trends to confirm traffic, as far as I know must be done manually but I am sure that won’t be for long.

There is a free tool however which does speed up the process of checking traffic data in Google Trends, first of all watch the video here, then click here to install the search plug in.

Other tools which come highly recommended for finding and analyzing keywords for niche market research are

• Keywords Analyzer
• Keyword Elite
• Adwords Dominator

It’s important to understand that these tools are simply that, tools! They still require you to put in the time and effort to research potentially profitable markets however make uncovering high traffic low competition phrases a much quicker and easier process.

Update on the 30 Day Challenge - We are about to move on to the the next phase of the 30DC. By now we all should have our low competition, high traffic keywords with available affiliate products to promote. I can’t wait to see what Ed has in store for us this week.