Taking Advantage of "Topical" Niches

We all know about the "usual" niches - things link "weight loss", "dating", etc. But there are zillions of 'topical' niches that can do as well as any top niche, usually with much less competition.

I have a number of niche blogs and sites, monetized with Adsense, to take advantage of traditional niches:

Nursing School Programs - nursing schools, jobs, careers.

Hypnosis-X.info - everything you wanted to know about hypnosis.

Complete Home School Guide - about homeschooling and homeschoolers.

Fix Credit Repair - fixing your credit rating, repairing your credit score.

My point is simply this: Don't limit your Internet Marketing efforts to traditional niches. There's a LOT of money to be made outside of the "usual suspects"!

But I've also begun exploring topical niches: news events, trends, etc.

The Presidential Zone is a new blog I put up to take advantage of the traffic generated from interest in the 2008 U.S. presidential race:

PresidentialZone - a new political blog on the 2008 US Presidential race.

High gas prices is another topical niche with tons of traffic:

Gas For Less Money - blogging on gas savings, mileage improvements.

The 2008 ULTIMATE Gas Savers Guide - improve gas mileage, gas saving devices, more.

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

"SEM", or Search engine marketing, is a type of marketing that focuses on generating a high ranking on the Internet search engine results pages ("SERPs") of the major search engines. Search engine marketing – also known simply as "search marketing" – includes search engine optimization (SEO) on the one hand, and various kinds of paid search engine marketing including "pay-per-click", "paid inclusion" and "paid placement" on the other.

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help users find information stored on the Internet. Essentially, search engines were built to help minimize the amount of time required to locate information. Nowadays, they are the main tool used by Internet users to find the information they want. Consequently, search engines are a major source of web traffic for many websites. Moreover, because search engine users tend not to look beyond the first few pages of results, the higher the ranking achieved by your website, the more search engine traffic it is likely to receive.

Search engine optimization is the process of increasing your search engine ranking for specific keywords. In other words, if you know that many of your prospective customers tend to search for your products and services using particular keywords, you want your site to be highly ranked in the SERPs for those keywords. In general, to achieve a high ranking, you need your website to be perceived by the search engines as being highly "relevant" for those keywords. Although the algorithms used by search engines are a carefully guarded secret, it is generally believed that this involves designing your website in a certain way, as well as attracting "back links" from other relevant ("authority") sites.

While achieving a high ranking in the SERPs via search engine optimization can take time and effort, it doesn't take much time to get a high ranking in the paid listings… if you're willing to pay! Essentially, you can have your site or ad appear high on the paid listings in return for a fee. Pay-per-click advertising, for example, is where the search engines display a short ad for your website on the right-hand side of the SERPs in return for a fee. The amount of this fee will depend on how popular are the keywords you're targeting. Fees can range from $0.05, to $5 to $50 per click!

Paid inclusion programs are programs where, in exchange for a fee, a search engine will guarantee the inclusion of your website listing. The downside of these programs is that they cannot guarantee that the pages will rank high for certain keyword searches. This is in contrast to paid placement programs, which do guarantee top listings if you pay a high enough fee. Paid placement can be particularly expensive. Both paid placement and paid inclusion typically involve a flat fee.

While there is a cost involved in either search engine optimization or paid search, both can be very cost effective compared to other means of advertising and marketing. It is generally wise for anyone with a website to consider pursuing some form of search engine marketing.

For more information, tips, tricks, and strategies, visit: Improve Your Internet Marketing

KeywordSpy - Even Better Competitive Intelligence!

KeywordSpy, with a database of over 1 billion keywords, has been a mainstay for our Internet Marketing efforts since it's release.

The newest version builds on this comprehensive database and provides some of the best competitive intelligence tools for Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing available.

Not only will KeywordSpy give you keyword phrases that matter, you can finally get them in context! KeywordSpy Pro will show you who is advertising for the keywords you enter, AND show you their ads!

Find out who is advertising Clickbank products, what keywords they're using, what they're paying, etc.

Most astonishing of all, you can 'reverse engineer' your SEM competitors by seeing ALL the keywords they are using for a campaign!

Imaging being able to enter a keyword, see who is advertising for that keyword, what they are paying, view their ad, AND see what other keywords they are using in those campaigns???

If you are doing any Search Engine Marketing - PPC - you absolutely MUST use KeywordSpy! Compared to a competitor who is using this amazing tool, you are flying blind without it, at a serious competitive disadvantage.

KeywordSpy offers a free trial 'test-spin'. Check it out, you will be thoroughly amazed!

Website Flipping

Website flipping - creating websites specifically to sell - has become very popular.

As pointed out on Improve Your Internet Marketing, flipping a web site is not necessarily the same as buying/selling a business.

For one thing, with a business, your main concern is, well, the business. With flipping, everything is done and revolves around the end objective of selling the site.

While it's possible to sell a 'brand new' site, generally speaking you want to get as much traffic and/or revenue as you can before listing it for sale.

Holding the site for even a few months while creating traffic or sales can result in a selling far higher than it might be otherwise.

Selling prices that are multiples of revenue are common, and a multiple of 6-12 times revenue is not at all unreasonable.

Guaranteed Traffic Formula

Traffic is the lifeblood of Internet marketing, ecommerce, and all online business.

There are many ways to generate traffic, from Pay per Click (ppc), to Free-for-All sites (FFA's). But one of the most popular methods being used today is Article Marketing.

Article marketing is done by submitting articles to article directories. The articles contain backlinks to your site by way of a "resource box". Someone reads the article, and hopefully clicks through to your site.

One of the best things about Article Marketing is that it is free (it is often referred to as "bum marketing", though this term encompasses much more).

There is a great article on generating traffic at the Improve Your Internet Marketing, the in-house blog of Analogy Marketing.

Follow their 'guaranteed' formula, and you can generate as much traffic to your sites as you like!

Gauranteed Formula for Free Traffic Generation!

We all know the success of Internet Marketing rests on our ability to generate traffic. Regardless of what you do online, if it involves Internet marketing, you need traffic. Conversions are necessary of course, but without traffic, there isn’t anything to convert.

In order to improve internet marketing results, we must improve our traffic generating techniques and methods.

After many years online, after many failures and some successes, I have refined my “formula” for generating traffic. It revolves around article marketing, works, it’s repeatable, and it’s sustainable.

I posted a complete step-by-step "formula" to my blog at Analogy Marketing. Read it. Memorize it. Act on it. Live it!

Pay per click (PPC) is a wonderful thing - after all, I am a Google Adwords Certified Professional and manage over $100,000 in Adwords spending, but the bread and butter for most internet marketers revolves around free traffic methods.

Go ahead and read this, print it out, and begin improve internet marketing for yourself:

http://www.improveyourinternetmarketing.com/free-guaranteed-traffic-formula/

The Truth about Hype and Internet Marketing

To be successful in Internet marketing, you have to have high-quality advertising. This means you have to present your product in the best light. However there is a difference between putting your best foot forward and hyping your product to the moon. In this article I will discuss how to use hype appropriately to positively help your sales argument. I will show you what to avoid when using hype so you don't get high refunds or tell flat-out lies which can get you in trouble with the law. After reading this article, you should be able to identify what is okay to write your advertisement and what will get you higher sales, and what you should avoid.

In order to sell something, your advertisement has to be believable. Too much hype means very little believability. If people believe your message, they will perceive you as an credible. If they don't, they will think you're con man. Hype doesn't sell products. Learning how to color your product or service and favorable lights, while still being believable, is what sells products.

Hype does have its place in advertising on the Internet, especially in certain markets. Some markets are so saturated that people won't respond to your message, unless you make it outrageous. This doesn't mean you make outrageous claims. This just means you put an interesting spin on your advertising. For example, a one legged golfer who can hit a drive 250 yards is more interesting than a two legged golfer who can hit a drive 300 yards when you're selling a golf instruction video. It's outrageous, and it probably has nothing to do with the product, but it's effective at getting attention. And if your ads don't get attention, they don't get read and you lose sales.

Techniques like these don't work on markets who have been over exposed to them. After awhile, these markets will become immune to tactics that they know are often manufactured to create urgency or interest. Use these wisely, and always know the state of awareness of your marketplace. What works well in one market will fail in another.