Mid Life Marketer’s Kick Start

After having used and struggled with the black art of Keyword research for the past 8 months I finally remembered that little acronym KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid!

Nichebot isn’t simple by any stretch of the imagination, but like so many high order skills, learning it should be. Only now have I started dipping into the masses of tutorial video and audio help that is available in this awesome tool. I have used the Google Keyword Tool, Word Tracker, Overture (now well and truly moribund); even the Daddy keyword tool, coughing up a pile of cash for each of the
paid options. Has my cash been well spent? Nope! But I think finally, part of it is about to be! The Google and Nichebot combination are the way to go as far as I am concerned.

Like so many people; when I look back over the last several months, I realise I have been guilty of un-focussed dabbling. Too many projects on the go at once and too many techniques being tried out all at one go. Sum result? Frustration! Only now, having given myself a good old fashioned kick up the arse (sealed with a KISS), is the keyword nightmare beginning to melt and some understanding dawn.

All the systems and tools mentioned above are actually very good, but what most people don’t grasp for a long time is that they only (with the exception of Google Keyword Tool) represent a tiny fraction of the search traffic of the web. All of them, even with Google’s new inclusion of the search volume data, only give a flavour of the numbers of searches being conducted worldwide. The other side of the research coin is that most of us have been doing the researcgh process in a perversely back to front manner.

How often have you started to research a niche and shied away from the obvious highly competed niche keywords. Doh! that’s where the traffic and the money are likely to be found, isn’t it? Well, I have just recovered from a failed little enterprise where I attempted to promote an excellent guide to marketing your photography, a guide produced by photographer Dan Eitreim and marketed in Clickbank. I faithfully tracked down the low competition keywords, optimised my landing page and wrote the best set of ads yet. Sadly there wasn’t much traffic on those keywords, either on the search network or the content partners. So I managed to make exactly diddly squat! After pulling the plug on the campaign when the author restructured his own campaign and rendered my split-test landing pages, ads and keywords inaccurate at the press of his upload button; I had to analyse just what the cock-up was this time and I spent quite a bit of time going over the pattern of what little activity my work had attracted. It was only then that I began to realise my niche was a bit of a non event. Slowly, the necessary question began to crystallise in my mind … how should I go about RESEARCHING my MARKET NICHE????

The answer appeared, by surprise almost, while I was listening to 1 of Jim’s archived audio calls. To cut a long story short, I received a digital slap round the lugs and a penny dropped. I hadn’t done my market research with any rigour, before racing off to play with my expensive toolbox to find the “plum” keywords. My campaign was doomed before I had spent my first tenner! Suddenly here was Jim Morris telling me what to do and what to read BEFORE I started even thinking about keywords. Now the advice boiled down to a few very simple tips that I have heard before but never internalised. It was all about discovering the real potential of a niche, to funnel cash in your direction and doing this rigorously: BEFORE looking into the minutiae of keywords and SEO.

Jim’s article 5 Free Powerful Ways to Conduct Online Consumer Market Research to Find a Profitable Niche that has nothing to do with Keyword Research can be found by clicking the link.

The 5 key steps boil down to:

5 What is the top selling product in the niche?

On competition, his advice is to embrace it and then do your own thing to stand out from the crowd. Read the article, it is a very informative 10 minute read.

So, follow this very successful marketer’s advice, check out the niche first; then harvest your keywords and finally; keep it simple stoopid, USE the INSTRUCTIONS with whatever tool or programme choice you make. I’ll see you on the successful side of the fence.
Ray