How Do You Choose Your Niche?

If you want to make money online (and particularly with affiliate marketing), you need a niche. Or better yet, several niches. But each niche needs its own site and/or blog, its own mailing list, and its own affiliate programs for you to promote.

If you've been an affiliate for any length of time, you've almost certainly heard this advice. But it's amazing how many affiliates don't follow through with it. Or they try to follow through with it, but their ìnicheî is nothing more than a product category, and they don't tailor their marketing efforts to a specific market segment.

For the uninitiated, catering to specific niches might seem counterproductive. After all, by narrowing your focus, you're limiting yourself to prospects that fit into a certain small group with specific characteristics. Wouldn't it be better to offer a variety of products to a variety of people?

If you're Wal-Mart, that's not a bad approach to take. But for the rest of us, it's just too difficult to appeal to people with different interests, from different backgrounds, and with different needs. If you can focus on a small group, you can better meet their needs, and that's where your affiliate sales will come from.
Now that you know why working with niches is important, let's explore how to choose niches that are profitable. In order for a niche to make you money, it has to possess a few important characteristics:

It should ideally be something you're interested in. This is a topic you're going to be working with a lot for a while, and possibly for a long while depending on your marketing strategy. If a niche bores you to tears or otherwise doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't do very well with it.

It must have a sufficient audience. There must be a reasonable number of people who are interested enough in the topic to seek out information on it. Without an audience, you'll have no one to sell to.

It should not be saturated. This simply means that there should not be a lot of other marketers catering to the same niche. The more marketers there are targeting the same group, the lower your chances of breaking in will be.
It should either be evergreen or an up and coming trend. Evergreen niches provide the best long-term income potential. Trends, which are on the rise, offer tremendous income potential in the beginning, but may or may not stand the test of time. It's fine to work with either type, but if you're following trends, be prepared to pursue the next big thing when you find that your current niche is on the decline.

The niche's target market should be willing and able to buy online. There are some niches that obviously wouldn't be a good choice for affiliate marketing, but for the most part, this is discovered by trial and error.

Once you've come up with a topic that interests you, you can start doing some research to determine whether or not it would make a good niche. A good tool for this purpose is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Just type in your topic idea, and you'll be presented with a list of related keywords, along with a bar graph indicating the amount of competition for the keyword and its search volume. The best niches have low competition and high search volume. 
When you find a niche that interests you and appears profitable, search for affiliate programs that would interest members of the target market. Put yourself in their shoes and think about the kinds of things you would be interested in buying. Then see what kinds of affiliate programs you can find that sell those things, and what percentage commissions they offer. If you like what you see, this could be a good niche for you.

There are no guarantees that any niche will be a winner. But if you do some research before jumping in, you can greatly increase your chances of success.

How To Choose Your Niche

Selecting Domains

Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, it wasn't too difficult to get any domain name you wanted. Today, it's a different story. It's pretty much impossible to get a good one-word .com domain name, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to get good names with other extensions.

But if you're choosing targeted niches, one-word domain names probably aren't your best bet anyway. They don't have much SEO value, because Internet users don't often do searches for just one word. They are more likely to search for phrases, so domain names that contain those phrases are better choices. If you can snag a domain name that contains your targeted keywords, you'll have an easier time getting good search engine rankings.

A domain name shouldn't be too long, though. If it is, it will be hard to remember. It's true that most visitors will click on a link from another site or bookmark your site if they're interested, but if someone hears your domain name and wants to visit, wouldn't you want him to be able to do so? If he can't remember it, you miss out on a potential sale. For the same reason, it's wise to avoid using abbreviations, numbers in place of words (example 4 u instead of typing for you,  etc.), and words that are difficult to spell.

There is some debate as to whether you should use hyphens in domain names. At one time, it appeared that search engines favored domains with hyphens between the words when ranking for the keyword phrase appearing in the domain name. But today, it doesn't really appear to make a difference. Now the most common reason for using hyphenated domains is to get a name that is already taken in the non-hyphenated form. As long as you don't use more than one or two hyphens, it shouldn't have too much of an impact on your type-in traffic.

As far as extensions go, it's a good idea to try for a .com domain first. Even today, it's the most familiar extension to the average Internet user. But if you absolutely can't get a good .com for your niche, try another extension. .net is a good one, and .org gives the impression that your site is trustworthy (even though anyone can get an .org domain). If you're promoting products that are seen on TV, a .tv extension is perfectly acceptable.

If you get a really good domain, it might be to your advantage to get several forms of it. Hyphenated, non-hyphenated, .com, and .net are good variations to have. You might even consider purchasing common misspellings of your domain. There's no need to do this for every domain, but if you're lucky enough to get your hands on one that contains a frequently searched keyword phrase, it could be worth the cost.

A good domain name can certainly have a positive impact on your traffic. The pool of available domains is constantly shrinking, but with a little creativity you can come up with something that's both memorable and appealing to the search engines.

How to Select A Domain Name

Domains and Affiliate Marketing

Most affiliate marketers are no stranger to the domain name market. At the very least, they probably have a domain name for their website or blog. And some have dozens of domains in their possession.

There are a few ways that domains can be used in affiliate marketing. Many affiliates create niche sites or blogs for the sole purpose of promoting affiliate programs. Some also purchase domains to redirect to their affiliate links. This makes the URL shorter, easier to remember and more appealing.

If you're serious about affiliate marketing, you'll probably end up with several domains. But it is possible to go overboard with them. Some affiliates feel the need to buy a domain for every affiliate program they join. Not only is that expensive, it can also get extremely confusing.

Even if you are buying domains to redirect to your affiliate links, you don't necessarily have to buy one for each and every program. If you belong to several programs in the same niche, you could use a general domain name and create sub domains for each program. 

For example, if your niche is herb gardening, you might be an affiliate for a seed company and the author of a book on herb gardening. But instead of buying a domain for each program, you could get a domain like herbgardening.com and create the sub domains seeds.herbgardening.com and book.herbgardening.com to redirect to your affiliate links.
It's also possible to be too conservative when it comes to buying domains. 

In general, it's best to have a domain for each niche you're in. And in some cases, you might find that you need two or three for the same niche. There are no hard and fast rules. Just do what's most comfortable (or most profitable) for you.

Domains and Affiliate Marketing

Building Trust 

Trust is hard to build when you don’t even know who the Internet marketer is.  You can’t meet them instantly and they just become a face or a name in a sea of business.

But to be an internet marketing guru, you need to build trust and credibility in order to be noticed and to be taken seriously.  

While the market has become increasingly virtual, people still consider the person on the other side of the transaction to be a vital part of their decision to buy or not to buy.

Better said: if you seem like a good person, people from more walks of life are going to listen to you.

What Your Intentions Really Are

Your customers are suspicious folks and they should be.  

They’re giving their money to someone they can’t see, for a product they can’t necessarily try out ahead of time.

They already put instant trust in many businesses because of their credibility, and you need to be a part of this trust as well.  

What you can do is start to look at trust as something that begins with intentions.  

If you are clear about your intentions for your business, then people are more likely to trust you.

Think about a car salesman, the stereotypical one.  

This person wheels and deals to get someone into a more expensive car than they might like, without being clear they want to make the most money they can.

Now, what if that salesman said they wanted to make as much money as possible, but within the budget of the buyer?  

Wouldn’t you be more likely to buy from them as you know what their intentions were?  

Sure.

Stating Your Intentions

As an internet marketer, you might not have the luxury of talking to a person directly, so you need to state your intentions in other ways.  

If you look at many business websites, you will see that one intention is a running theme:

I want to help people.

This is a noble intention and one which is probably the case for everyone who wants to sell something.  

Now, they might not want to help their customers so much as they might want to help themselves to profits, its true.

But when you truly do have the intention to help your customers, your customers will realize it.  And they will appreciate it.

Here are some ways to show your customers you want to help them:

Share your own story

If you were changed by the product or the service you have to offer, then you NEED to include this for your customers to know.  Think about it, would you buy a weight loss product from a person who never had a weight problem?  Probably not.

Create a mission statement

Having a clear mission statement is another way to state your intentions to your customers, without having to explain them again and again.  This can be posted on your website.  And it can help to read it regularly to keep yourself in check about whether you are meeting your own demands.

Be honest

Though you can’t necessarily prove that you are being honest, you will certainly be attacked if you aren’t honest.  Make sure that you are honest about everything you put on your website and all that you do in your business.  This will allow a person to see that your intentions are pure too.

What you intend from your relationship with your customer is the most important factor in the way that you build trust.  Have a clear intention from the start and see that it shines in all that you do.

Building Trust in Internet Marketing

Marketing and Selling on Internet

Marketing on the Internet involves online advertising to reach out to potential customers.

It requires creativity like designing, development and technical aspects like marketing and advertising. 

Affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing and interactive advertising are all different facets of Internet marketing. 

It also includes sales, public relations, information management and customer service. Ever since the advent of Internet, it is widely used for all kind of purposes. 

Among the advantages of Internet, some helps in doing business, shopping, etc, from the comfort of the house. 

According to a research, a quarter of the Internet users shop online. 

It has also helped grow electronic commerce and Internet marketing is a part of electronic commerce.  

Direct marketing techniques like radio and television commercials, mails, and newsletters are the inspirations for Internet marketing, which involves direct response marketing strategies and is rapidly growing. 

Business-to-business, also known as B2B, and business-to-consumer, also known as B2C, are the two business models to which Internet marketing can be linked. 

B2C companies were the first to start when Internet marketing originated. 

They are companies that sell directly to the customers. 

B2B companies are meant to do business with each other.

Websites built for Internet marketing are slightly different than others. 

There are peer-to-peer modeled websites which are used to exchange products and services between each other. 

Other is name-your-price, where the customers have to specify their price range that they can spend and select products that fall in that price range. 

Priceline.com is an example of such a website. 

Amazon.com is a website which is based on find-the-best-price model, where customers can find the lowest prices. Last are online auctions sites, where items are bid. 

Ebay.com is an example.  

The companies who use Internet marketing are at an advantage. 

They don’t need to put in huge amounts of energy and time in Internet Marketing like other traditional methods. 

With the help of only few resources national and international markets can be reached.

Because of very low investment, even small businesses are turning to online marketing. 

Websites and blogs have been developed for this purpose. 

Internet marketing is advantageous in the sense that the data is easily available on the Internet. 

Newsletters can be directly sent to customers and if it doesn’t contain the information they are looking for, they can search for information about the product online, make a decision and purchase it online itself. 

A negative point of online marketing is that the customers cannot feel, taste, smell or try products in order to make a good decision. 

To over come this, some of the online stores have created liberal return policies with the help of which the customer satisfaction is guaranteed.

Another biggest threat of online shopping is identity theft. 

Paying online using credit cards, e-checks are susceptible to hackers and information can be stolen and used. 

Many hackers and websites have been caught who were involved in buying and selling of personal information. 

Most of the websites have taken measures and incorporated good security on their websites. One of the best methods is encryption. 

When the data is being transferred between two computers; there is a possibility of a hacker intercepting it. 

So the data is changed by applying some encryption algorithm and is sent through the network and upon receiving, the decryption algorithm is applied to bring back the data to its original form. 

Online selling is influencing all kinds of businesses like banking, advertising, music, etc.

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