Membership Niche Selection Tips

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In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here's how.

Number 1 - Discover Niches with Fanatics

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you're looking for because they are so enthusiastic they're willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. Here's how to find fanatics:

  • Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. In today's economy, running a magazine is tougher than ever - some of the best ones are going out of business. So if it's on the shelves, it's making money, which means there is a big market interested in this topic. That doesn't mean definitely that it will make a good membership business, but it's a good starting point.
  • You've got lots of opportunities every day to see what people are interested in. Just pay attention to what people talk about on the radio, at social gatherings, at the store or restaurants and anywhere in public. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
  • Conventions, clubs, and organizations. Once again, if there are enough people interested in a topic to create a club or organization, then there are enough people to build a membership business around it. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
  • Think about the things that you are interested in. Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Hot topics that people are excited about make great niches for your membership website.

Second - Analyze the "commerciality"

OK, so you've got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here's a punch list for figuring out if anyone's making money in your niche:

  • Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for "YourNiche blog" & "YourNiche forum" and see what comes up. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
  • Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. What you're trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
  • Watch Google Adwords for a period of time and look for ads the run again and again. Adwords ads are expensive, so people only run them repeatedly if they are profitable. And to be profitable, they have to be selling products and making money.

Finally - Figure out your barrier to entry

After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. Here's how to make this determination:

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
  • Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that's not completely saturated with competitors.
  • Unless the market is just so big that it doesn't matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
  • Market readiness. Are people ready to buy? Are the receptive to marketing messages? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

Summing it all up

At this point you've figured out what niche you're going into. You found your fanatics, you know they spend money and you're confident there's room in the market for you. If you've done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article...for additional internet marketing tips and ideas start at the home page of JackFolsgood.com

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Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

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The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.

But, first...

Before you begin trying to get traffic to your site, you need to do your keyword research first. Why? Because you have to target these keywords if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. So you need to make sure the keywords you're targeting are worth targeting.

Here are some important keyword research tips:

  • Will you be able to rank for these keywords? Take a look at the "strength" of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
  • Will the keywords you're targeting bring buyers? Some keywords will bring lots of traffic, but none of them will buy. What you want is buyers!
  • Will these keywords bring affiliates? If you want to build a huge business, you're going to need affiliates to help you. This means that some of your traffic focus should be on getting affiliates to your site.

Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. And hiring an expert is very expensive. Which is why practically none of your competitors will do this! If you're smart you will use website traffic software to help you with this process. This way you get this critical step done fast and done well.

Only then can you start getting traffic

Once you've done your properly keyword research, you're now ready to start targeting these keywords to draw in visitors.

Here's a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:

  • Surveys
  • "Traffic Traps"
  • Video Sharing Sites

Surveys

People love filling in surveys. You can use this fact to provide "sticky" content for other website owners. And when they put your survey on their site, they will include a link back to your website. Think about that - you get website traffic for free just for making a survey! Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don't even care about the answers. Just make the question interesting enough that people will want to share it with their own visitors.

"Help" Websites

Sites like Yahoo! Answers allow users to ask and answer each others' questions. However, you're interest in these sites is not to ask and answer questions. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! Now, you can do this all by hand - visit a classified ads or answers site and one by one copy and paste contact info. The good news is that it's easy to find website traffic software that can do this automatically. Then you just get a daily batch of fresh leads delivered to your inbox.

Video Sharing Sites

No doubt you're aware of YouTube and other video websites. YouTube is one of the most highly traffic and search websites on the entire internet! So don't miss out of this incredible source of free website traffic.

Even if you don't think you can make a good video. It's really easy to just start with an article or something you've already written. Then just do a screen capture of yourself going through it. And like anything else, there is software available that will turn articles into videos for you automatically.

In Closing

It's not that hard to get traffic to your websites. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren't doing. You can even use software to automate most of what we've talked about.

Get started right away:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Next, set up a survey or two with viral appeal
  • Make sure to use the "answer" sites
  • And don't forget about video

For the absolute best online (first 30 days free) course regarding keyword research and how to make money online visit the Keyword Academy.

Return to Jack Folsgood home page.

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Affiliate Marketing Secrets

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Secrets of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. This is when you refer traffic to someone else's product sales page, they make the sale and deliver the product, keep 50% or more of the sales

Here's just a few benefits

  1. You're able to start instantly without having to make a product, write a sales letter, develop a website, create marketing materials, get a merchant account, or provide support
  2. It's complete hands-free for you because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
  3. There's no risk for you. The product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

Looking at these benefits, it's clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

The downside is...

Once you send your visitors to the product sales page, they are gone forever. Less than 10% of the visitors your send will actually buy the product. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

Is there are way around this?

It's simple: You must get your visitors' email addresses before you send them to the product owner's website. By getting their contact info, you can follow up increase your odds of making the sale by sending them back to the product owner's website multiple times. And if you want to do it like a pro, you'll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here's why you want to implement these affiliate marketing strategies:

  1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
  2. You'll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.

If you want to create an affiliate marketing system like this, you'll need the following:

  1. A squeeze page, and even better a Video squeeze page.
  2. Several high-quality content pages
  3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you'll send them to your lead capture page first. Your squeeze page adds your visitors to you autoresponder. This is how you start building your list, and at the same time begin sending them useful information. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.

You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. While they're reading the content you've provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it's well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it's set up, it runs automatically - you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

One option, if you're not up to the challenge of setting this all up yourself, is to let someone like Affiliate Silver Bullet do it for you. These kinds of services will build the whole system for you and then just give you a video squeeze page (with video), pre-written emails, content pages, etc. The benefit is that it's much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it's instantly set up. One negative is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn't really matter.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to "outsource" each of these components. Whichever way you decided to go, it's critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you're at all serious about your business.

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If You Are a Published Author and Not Making Any Money Then You Are Perfect For Making Money Online

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By Jack Folsgood

If you are one of those who has a knack and a natural talent for writing you may have decided to get your book published by a self publishing company. After investing all of that time and money you most likely have found that the sales of the book (so far) are even less than disappointing. If you have been able to recoup your costs, much less your time invested so far you are luckier than most.

If you are like most self published authors you have probably been able to somewhat placate yourself with the thought that "at least I got it published". But what does that do for your pocketbook? What about your dreams of being famous? Maybe you just wanted to make a little bit of money, (okay a lot of money) and now your big idea seems to be shattered or shattering right before your eyes.

People ask you how your book sales are going and you lie and tell them something along the lines of "decent", "okay", "I am happy so far", or something like that. But you really know that the only one who is being fooled is yourself. Face it. You do not know how to market your book. You are probably even a little bit shy and are hesitant and probably even downright unwilling to get out there and make something happen.

Do not get down on yourself. If you had the tenacity and the persistence to complete that book you have the ability to make money with your writing talents. Maybe you will never make money on that particular book. That is okay. You need to find an outlet for everything that you have inside of you just pleading to get out.

The world has changed a lot over the last ten years or so with the advent of the internet. (okay... twenty years), but that does not mean that there still is not over two hundred new books published everyday in the United States alone. What kind of chance does a talented author have to succeed with all of that competition?

There is still a way (and probably an even easier way than in the past) to make money by writing. You just have to know how to go about it in this ever changing world.

Visit a resource site for authors and aspiring authors who want to know how to make money with their writing talents and abilities. At Prufe.net you will find a compendium of articles and links to the things that will not only inspire you, but that will also help to learn what it takes to make money by manifesting your thoughts. Visit The Prufe today!

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