Christian

Is Your Niche a Good Niche or a Bad Niche?

By Christian

I’d like to take just a minute to dispel, as well as I can, the myth of there being such a thing as a “good niche” or a “bad niche”. Do you think there is such a thing as a “good niche” or a “bad niche”? I’m going to argue that there is not. You’ve either done adequate research or not. That’s all there is.

No Such Thing as a “Bad Niche”

There is no such thing as a bad niche! You can make money on nearly anything. The point of this post is to hopefully get you to look past the niche and to look at what really matters. What you sell doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you sell it. Look at all the millions of dollars being made around the world by selling substandard, crappy products. I’m not advocating low quality of course, but I’m saying that your business plan matters much more than what you’re selling.

Thinking about whether your niche is good or not puts the focus on the wrong place. The focus needs to be on research and planning.

Is there strong demand for what you’re selling?
How have you verified this?
What are you offering to fill this demand?
How much is your target market willing to pay for this?
How do you know?
How do you plan to reach your target audience?
What sites do your target buyers visit most regularly?
Do your visitors prefer text or video content? How do you plan to engage them?
Are your buyers more inclined to respond to a free ebook as a premium, or are they more responsive to a physical product, or perhaps a service of some sort?
Again…how do you know?

These are questions you should be able to answer. You don’t need a “good niche”. You need a good business plan!

No Such Thing as a “Good Niche”

Just as there is no such thing as a bad niche, there is also no such thing as a good one. There is no magical niche that will make you successful. If you’ve done your research and found that you have an actual, valuable solution to a real demand that exists, and you have a solid plan on how you’re actually ready, willing and able to supply that solution, you will be successful, period.

Likewise, if you have an awesome product that people really would like, but you fail to connect to the right people, or if you fail to market the product properly in any number of ways, you will fail, period. So it’s entirely possible to have a “good niche” and still fail. Your niche doesn’t matter. Your plan matters. Research matters. Do the work up front. It’s worth it!

Don’t Compare Your Blog to Others

By Christian

You have a unique value proposition to offer your readers. Get in tune with it! What do you do better than anyone? Competition is fierce. That’s not news, and it shouldn’t surprise you. I’ve written about how to research keywords and find little pockets of opportunity here and there, and that’s good stuff. It’s important to be able to do that, but it’s MORE important to simply know who you are and work really hard at being better than anyone else in something.

There is SO much content out there right now about niche marketing. I get it. People want to make money online. They want to connect with a lot of people really quickly, easily and very inexpensively. And there are a ton of people out there talking about how to do it…how to find “your niche”. There is certainly such a thing as niche marketing, and learning how to write for search engines is important, but there is way more value in just going out every day and creating huge value for your readers. This is what’s going to create long term success for your business, nothing else.

Niche marketing is the equivalent of writing a great ad. It will pull in sales, and that’s a good thing. But it doesn’t last forever. It’s not substantive. If you want to be successful in business, you’re going to need to get in touch with what real value you can offer your customers. Nothing short of this will do.

Niche Marketing is not a Magical Cure

Please keep your magical thinking in check. We’re all subject to falling into this trap. God knows I’ve done it…but magical niches that provide you with huge traffic, tons of sales and easy money cannot be counted on. Can you make millions in internet marketing? Of course, but please don’t waste your days on trying to find some magical niche…in other words, don’t shy away from competition. Competition is a good thing; it means there is strong demand, and strong demand means you can make money in that area.

But what we see is not opportunity, we see competition. We see all the other guys and gals out there competing in a certain niche, and we think that because there are so many others that there is no room for us. Not true. Stop comparing yourself to others! And definitely don’t compare your blog to the others out there in your niche. You are unique. You are an expert in your field. You bring a new and fresh perspective.

Why I Write This Make Money Online Blog

Look at what I’m doing…a blog about making money online. This has been done before! But I bring a unique perspective. I come from direct sales; I’ve had a lot of success in that area, and over the last few years, I’ve been applying everything I know about sales…to online business. I look at making money online in a unique way because of the experiences and successes I’ve had, and I can offer value in that area. People who want to purely do internet marketing from a technical perspective and who are only interested in making money are not likely to find a ton of value in this blog, but people who understand the value of connecting with their customers on a human level and who want to build a real business will be able to see that I actually know something about that.

By not comparing your blog to others and focusing intently on the value you can provide, you can get in touch with what you really want to do. This is huge! It’s absolutely essential for you to like what you’re doing and to have a LOT to say in whatever niche you decide to target. Don’t pick something just because you think it’s a good market. Bad idea. Do what you love. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for failure…forever seeking some magical niche that will solve your problems. Not gonna happen! Answer these questions:

What niche do you WANT to work…regardless of competition?
What unique value can you add to it?
What experiences and unique successes have you had that can lend to your expertise in this area?
Why should people listen to you?
Is this a topic that you talk about a lot anyway?
Would you do it for free? (the answer should be “yes”)

If you can answer these questions, it will help you get in tune with what you ought to be blogging. Regardless of what others are doing…you need to develop the conviction necessary to market in the area where you really feel the most competent and where you can really provide the most value to other people. That’s what a real business is built on…it’s built on you, not a niche.

Why Making Money Online with Advertising is not My Focus

By Christian

So many people have questions about how to monetize their website! I talk with a lot of business owners, real estate professionals and others who really want to ramp up their social networking and blogging efforts and really start to get results. This is very smart, and I applaud your interest in this hugely powerful technology. Internet marketing is the place to be if you run a small business, because it allows you to be very targeted, to connect with your buyers in a very personal way, and it’s more cost effective than any other form of marketing out there! That said, most people seem to have a very limited view of how to make money using these tools.

How Much Does Advertising Pay?

This is the main reason I want to focus on selling things as opposed to advertising…advertising just doesn’t pay very well! So many people want to make money online with advertising, and the thing I think these people don’t understand is that the average ad will pay out something in the neighborhood of $3 cpm. That’s $3 per thousand visitors. So to put that in a real world example, if you have a pretty successful site that’s getting 30k visitors a month, you will get $300 from an ad. It’s very possible to make a lot less than this, but it’s not very likely you’ll make much more.

$300 is nothing to scoff at. If you run 10 ads on your site, you’re looking at something like $3k a month.

This is why I’m not against advertising, it’s just the reason I don’t focus on it. If you have a site that is getting tens of thousands of visitors a month or more, and you want to get some ads up and running, use these:

Google Adsense
Text Link Ads
Kontera

With these three well-known and proven solutions, you’ll be able to get ad revenue coming in from your site. Google Adsense can be put up anytime, but the other two will require that you have adequate traffic to your site before you can get approved to use their ad network.

If you want to make money online with ads, I recommend visiting John Chow and downloading his ebook. It’s free, and it has some good tutorials on how to set these things up in detail.

Again, setting up ads is fairly simple. It’s a no-brainer. If you have some good traffic, you can put up some ads and get a few thousand a month. Not bad. And since I get questions about it often enough, I wanted to have this post up to direct you to the right resources.

Why I Focus on Other Ways to Make Money Online

I honestly think there are way better ways to make money online than with advertising. Like I said, I’m not against it, and I’m not saying I’ll never put ads up on Next Level Blogger, but if I do they will be minimal and non-intrusive. It’s not the point, and it’s not the focus of Next Level Blogger.

You can sell a product or a service and do so much better. It takes more work, but it’s a vastly better return on your time, and it has the added benefit of creating a better, more targeted experience for your readers.

To use a very basic example, let’s say you put out an ebook in your area of expertise. Let’s say it’s a 100 pages long, and you decide to sell it for $47. You can put up a landing page and sell the ebook through that page. I’ve written before about how some of my sites get far above average conversion rates, but even if you get an average 2% coversion, that means you’ll sell 20 out of a 1000 visitors. Are you following me? That’s $940 of revenue, vesus $3 that you would have made with Adsense. See why I focus on selling as opposed to advertising? The difference is massive. Yes, it takes more work. Yes, you need to take extra measures to make sure you’re traffic is targeted. Yes, you’ll need to set up a way to take orders and process credit card payments. Yes, you’ll have to field questions and the occasional person demanding a return, etc. Money ain’t free! But I’ll take $940 over $3 any day. How about you?

The CASE Method of Success

By Christian

Terry Watson is a sales trainer I’ve learned a lot from, and I credit him with teaching me the CASE method of success. Copy And Steal Everything. Couldn’t be simpler, and I love it when things are simple! It’s one of the great myths of all time that if you want to be great, you need to be 100% original and do everything on your own. People take on too many things if you ask me. Success requires a lot of work; why make it harder than it needs to be?

I’m NOT saying to not be true to yourself, and I’m surely not advocating plagiarism. What I’m saying is that the model for success is likely already laid out for you. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to!

Who’s already out there doing what you want to do? Go out and model your efforts after them. Before I started selling things online and doing internet marketing, I learned how to sell face-to-face. I started in direct sales. I learned right away that if I wanted to make any money, I needed to sell, and if I wanted to learn to sell, all I needed to do was watch what successful salespeople were doing. I basically became a stalker! I followed them everywhere. I literally sat in on their sales presentations and watched their every move. I took notes. I copied their techniques. I learned to say the same things and act the same way in front of a prospect. I modeled my behavior to match theirs in every way I could think of, and when I did this a funny thing happened. I started to make money. I started to make sales. And that’s how it started.

I found that I could simply choose what level of success I wanted and then achieve it by simply modeling others who had already done it. I started off copying the top people in my office, and within months, I had learned their techniques and was the top salesman in my office. Then I branched out and started talking with the top performers in OTHER offices around the country. This increased my performance to where I was the #1 salesman out of 1500 in my division.

This is what the CASE method will do for you when you apply it yourself to YOUR business. I guarantee it. Success is free for the taking. All you have to do is go steal it 🙂

Is Internet Marketing too Techy for You?

By Christian

I network primarily with home based business and other small business owners who want to use blogging, internet marketing and social networking tools to promote and grow their business. One of the biggest concerns I hear is that this “internet stuff” is just too technical. With terms like “seo”, “image alt tags”, “robots.txt”, and so on and so forth, internet marketing is surely filled with jargon and a lot of things to learn. But so what? My argument is that the learning curve is NOT something that should scare you away. You’re looking at tools that can literally transform your business. And they cost almost nothing to use them! If you’re in the camp that has delayed getting online in a big way because you’re intimidated by technology, I get it, but I hope this article gets you off the fence. That’s my goal anyway.

What’s Your Competition Doing?

Consider this: your competition IS going after the internet space in your niche, so if you don’t you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage. Besides, with even a cursory glance, you can see that people are looking for what you sell online, and if you’re not in that space in a big way, then you’re basically begging your customers to go somewhere else. That’s not you!

It’s Time to Be Smart, not Safe

This is not a time to not be smart in business. I see business owners canceling their print advertising left and right. And many have reported to me that they see little to no negative effect. What does that tell you about the power of traditional advertising on today’s consumer?

You need to market yourself in some manner. Would you not agree? I think there’s something essential to consider here. I’m not going to pretend there is not a learning curve to internet marketing. I’ve spent years doing this, making a lot of money for clients, and I’m just now starting to turn the tables to make real money for myself. It takes time to learn the ropes of ANY system. This is no different. Let me tell you that if you take on internet marketing for your small business, you will not only learn a lot about technology, but you will be tapping into a global market…it will likely transform your business in a very real, positive way. It will change the way you think about your business, and you’ll see a whole new set of ways to grow it in the future. This ought to both thrill you AND scare the crap out of you. If not, you can stop reading now 🙂

Success Takes Work, Period

I can’t make the learning curve disappear for you. Anyone who claims to do that is full of BS. One of the top things I concentrate on at Next Level Blogger is how to make money online using blogging, social networking and internet marketing. This field is filled with content on “how to get results fast”, “how to make money fast”, etc. I’m trying to keep my foot off the gas in that department. It takes work, and I don’t want to give any false impressions. Even Frank Kern, the king of laziness in the internet marketing world, openly admits that he has to work hard to make his millions. Deep down, we all know success takes hard work, and as a business owner I have no doubt you understand that. So why should internet marketing be any different? The question is not whether you should do the work necessary…the question is whether or not you can get huge results with it. I’m telling you the answer is “yes, you can get HUGE results with it! It’s worth the work!” My goal is not to make the work disappear, but I do want to put it into perspective.

To Put it into Perspective…

One field I know well is real estate. I’ve had a lot of success generating leads online and helping my real estate team sell a lot of houses. When making the transition from traditional advertising to internet marketing, I often confront (and still confront) the concern of internet marketing being too techy. I explain a new marketing idea I have, and some people just don’t “get it”. And because it’s an uncomfortable concept, they just want to keep doing it old school. Well, if old school still worked, I’d be out of business. The whole point of this is that old school doesn’t work anymore, not when it comes to marketing. To remain competitive, we NEED to try new things.This means we simply have to dive in, get our hands dirty and learn new stuff. Period.

This is what I try to explain to my clients, and this is what I’ll try to explain to you today: to become an expert in your field, to become good in your business, you needed to learn a lot of things. In real estate for example, Realtors NEVER used to use cell phones or laptops. They never used to use contact management databases. They didn’t know how to typeset their own print ads or design brochures…none of this. Now, a real estate agent without these tools and skills is out of business, period. Stuff changes, doesn’t it?

And this is all I’m saying in this article. Soon, a Realtor without a Twitter account and a strong social networking plan is going to be uncompetitive. And this applies to YOUR business 100%. Whether you’re in a home based business, network marketing, whether you sell ebooks or affiliate products, whether your main business is online or offline…no matter what you’re selling, this applies, because what the consumer wants is changing, and the way they’re searching for information is changing. Is internet marketing too techy for you? At this point, yes it probably is. So it’s time to start learning! Embrace change, because it’s here to stay.