In short, Squidoo is Seth Godin’s fantastic contribution to the Internet World. Let me ask you, do you know how to Squidoo? Do you know how to build a simple yet perfect Squidoo lens for your business or personal need and rank them on the Search Engines?

I decided to give away a guide book to help you get started with Squidoo. The book is only about 30 pages and covers all the fundamentals you need to setup Squidoo and profit from it.

I don’t want to waste your time anymore. Go ahead and download the book below. Make sure to let me know of your experiences with Squidoo.

Download the Squidoo Guide

To start a Niche Marketing website, you need -

1. Profitable Niche

2. Keyword Research

3. Content

4. Platform

5. Traffic

6. Monetization

Profitable Niche – A profitable niche is one that pays over and over again. It is a niche that carries demand and never diminishes. It is also a niche where you can build a passive income over time with an almost zero maintenance.

Does such a niche exist? Yes it does. In fact there thousands of such niches that fit the above description. Your job is to find them. I use a software called Micro Niche Finder to unravel hidden niches with low competition and high profit factors. The software, when given a generic phrase or word, digs Google database and gives up to 250 niche topics off the main keyword.

For example, the first time I used it, I typed in the word “Cure”. It gave many results, one of which was Acne Cure. I dug the word deeper found certain profitable niches within with medium to low competition. Thereafter, I made a list of these micro niches and setup a blog geared towards them.

Keyword Research – This goes hand in hand with the previous heading. I wont go into much detail except that Micro Niche Finder helps you to accomplish this in simple steps. Please make sure to read the accompanying guide.

Content – This is a tricky one. This is the mode where many niche marketers get discouraged and quit. Unless you are interested in the topic you have chosen, you will have a hard time preparing content. Couple the fact with the issue of duplicate content. It is imperative to have original content if you are in for long term success. Niche Marketing, even though it sounds like a get rich quick scheme, or is portrayed that way, is in reality a long term money maker.

You have 2 choices here. First being Private Label Rights articles which you can easily re-write and give the required unique flavor. Private Label articles are pretty cheap and have reasonable quality. Rewriting them is not really difficult. Read my experiment with Private Label Articles for a better understanding.

Your second choice is to outsource the content writing job to a writer. This can cost you anywhere between $4-$10 per article and set you back a bit. If anyone of you is interested, get in touch with me and I can put you through some very good writers who are reasonable priced.

Platform – Upfront, Wordpress is my choice. The days of static websites are fading. They are not over definitely, but are slowly getting into the back burner. Wordpress is the most up to date dynamic content management system available in the market. Wordpress is open source and hence 100% free. There is no strings attached.

There are many web hosts that come with ‘1 click’ installation of Wordpress. I recommend Doreo.com. They are the best I have experienced in the past 4 years. Read my Blogging Guide to understand how to operate Wordpress and make it more Search Engine friendly.

Traffic – For a niche marketing blog, Search Engine traffic is the order of the day. Search Engine traffic is what makes this business a passive earner in the long run. If you do proper SEO and build legitimate backlinks with related anchor keywords, you will eventually start receiving organic traffic and this will only increase as you keep building relevant links. Traffic from Search Engines is your first success installment. Thereafter the game becomes easier to play.

Monetization – By now, your blog will be receiving quality traffic from Search Engines and other sources. When your analytics confirms that you are receiving at least 40-50 visitors from Search Engines, you can go ahead and monetize your blog. Do not overdo it. Start with Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher and slowly move to affiliate marketing and eBay auction products.

Let monetization be a gradual process. Never compromise with the appearance of your blog for a few bucks. Keep it clean and with quality content. Money will follow suit.

A Simplified Guide to Niche Marketing

I have owned this software for the past 6 months. Before we go ahead, please take a moment to read my Affiliate Review policy. Let’s move forward.

Web2Submitter allows you to submit to about 9 different Social sites from various niches plus Onlywire.com, a one click social submission site. The owners Brandon and Jack claim that this tool saves several hours in a week by reducing the time taken for submission. Everything basically is done from a single interface. All you have to do is click the button once to login and click again to fill in the info and click a third time to submit. As easy as 1,2,3.

While I agree with the 1,2,3 theory, I do not really believe it saves minimum 7 hours every week. Why? Because, I have done both manual and semi-auto submission and it took me just an extra 10 minutes to while submitting manually. I keep a notepad handy and then it is just a matter of copy and paste for each site.

So, Lesson # 1 – They are lying. Sounds rude?

Next, you have this guy called Sam Beatson who claims this software saves him 5 hours everyday. I am not sure if this guy is smart or stupid. What in the world is taking him 5 hours a day for? I have submitted multiple articles in a day and it has never taken more than an hour for me at the most. This guy Sam, as well as the other testimonies, are giving the false impression that it is Web2submitter that is getting them all the “Traffic Overload”.

It is not true. This software only reduces your submission time by a few minutes. You can get the exact same “Traffic Overload” without this software. Period.

So, Lesson # 2 – They are lying. Sounds rude again?

The only useful part of this deal is the Buzz group. It is a private membership based group where you can send your post every week, and if they like your content, they will vote for you, thus helping you get better exposure. I still use them and will continue to. Is this worth $47? I don’t know, but since I bought the deal, I am a part of them.

They have another bonus for you. Oh actually, a “promotion in disguise” bonus. They give you a free 1 week test drive of “Authority Site Center” so that you can tour the product and buy if you are convinced. I wasn’t convinced, so I signed out. This really isn’t a bonus but a stupid marketing gimmick.

Am I using this software now? No. I am not. I have all my social sites in my toolbar and I do the same one click submissions without the software. Moreover, nowadays, I only submit to Sphinn, Shoutwire and StumbleUpon. Takes me less than 10 minutes, unlike Sam Beatson’s “5 sweaty hours”. Sam Beatson, you indeed beat me!

After all the explanation above, if you still plan to buy it and try it, by all means go ahead. It costs $47 only. Click one of the links in this article to visit their page and buy Web2Submitter. Now you are wondering why the affiliate link eh? Go ahead and read my affiliate policy once again.

Review Thursday – Web2Submitter

Nevertheless, SOC is a very useful feature. It shows you strength of the competition based on the amount of work that has gone into it. What do I mean by that? I am referring to the number of times the keyword has been used a anchor text on backlinks that are pointing towards that particular site. It also shows how many sites have used the keyword in their title tag.

This definitely is an incredible feature by itself. You will get a very good idea as to how many backlinks you may have to build with the particular anchor text and whether you should use the same title or should you go for a variation and more.

Based on these figures, the SOC gives a rank as well as a color denoting the strength visually. Green stands for a light competition while yellow stands for medium competition. There is a red that denotes fierce competition and James recommends to skip these keywords as they take double the effort to rank well and are also sometimes, a sign of saturation.

So, next time you open up Micro Niche Finder, do not forget to take a look at the SOC for your favorite keywords. You won’t know when you got addicted to it.

Weekend Talk – An update on Micro Niche Finder

Last week, I picked up a software called Micro Niche Finder. It is owned and marketed by James.J.Jason. That’s JJJ, pretty cool. The website has the usual marketing hype and B.S, sadly. I picked up the software because of the 30 days refund it came with. I literally had nothing to lose.

I seriously don’t understand why James had to create a hyped up marketing letter, because the software works pretty well. It actually helps you find smaller profitable niches within your main niche, so you can make real money while everyone else is behind the main niche.

I started a Adsense based site for testing purposes. I will discuss this more in the coming edition of Sunday Blogbits. For now, let me tell you, I have found about 12 niches out of which at least 7 are clearly profitable and have pretty low competition.

Here are some of the features of the software:

1. It shows you the Search count, Broad and exact match for the keyword that you are researching.

2. It shows you the strength of the competition. Personally I am not convinced about this feature.

3. Once you find your hidden niche, it shows you related products from Clickbank to sell.

4. It also links the hidden niche phrases to royalty free articles so you can setup an Adsense page in 5 minutes.

The drawback is, it works off Google’s search database only. You have to rely only queries made on Google and not other Search engines. It is not a worrying concern, but it would have been nice if the options were extended to other keyword databases too. It helps in a better research oriented results.

Overall, I am happy with the performance. I am using this software extensively for the Adsense project. So far, I really haven’t seen a need to look elsewhere, even though I would love to. Plus, there are certain services I came who claim to find the hidden goldmine, but charge 3-4 times of the cost of the software.

My advice to you is go ahead and pick up the software, install it, use it. You have about 30 days to play your will on it without losing a dime. Let me know here in the comments section, how you faired with it, how many niches you were able to find and whatever you can share. Our discussions can definitely benefit the online business community.

So, go ahead, pick up your copy of Micro Niche Finder and do not forget to keep me updated. Oh, by the way if you are thinking about the affiliate link, please read my affiliate policy here. That should make you comfortable.

How to Make Money in Saturated Markets – Part 2

In spite of the above Gospel truth, there are netrepreneurs who get into a saturated market and make money in a short time. The first impression obviously is that of surprise. How do they make it? What propels them above the Top 10 cult? And various other questions.

When you take a closer look, you realize that these netrepreneurs achieve the above the average results by simply going behind a niche within the primary niche. If suppose, there is a niche like Video Games, the netrepreneur narrows it to a popular company, say PlayStation 2. He looks at the competition at this level. If all is good, he goes ahead with the execution. If not, he further narrows down within PlayStation 2 filtering until he finds something profitable with low competition.

When I am referring to competition, I am talking about the Search Engine trends. If I were to do a search for Video Games in Google and I get 50 million results, then the competition is fierce. If I narrow down to PlayStation and do a search, and say get 1 million results, then the competition is relatively low.

I wont deny the fact that it isn’t easy to find micro niches. No it isn’t. It involves a lot of research and trend study. There are certain services on the Internet that, upon an upfront fee, can find you your niche market with relatively low competition and reasonable profits. If you can learn how to do this and develop the skills to recognize smaller niches within the primary ones, it is well worth the time and effort. In the long run, this could pay for your retirement and beyond. Most importantly, you could retire early and rich. Many of these micro niches are virtually untapped exposing you to a goldmine. We all know what a gold mine on the Internet is, don’t we?

So, the next time you decide to enter a niche, think of the many hidden nuggets that are waiting for you to tap and make a fortune. Do not get disheartened by looking at the broad picture. Dig deeper and you will definitely find your retirement package.

Next week, I will cover more on how to find the hidden niche markets that have both, low competition as well as high profitability.

Weekend Talk – Making money in Saturated Markets

Stay tuned to this section next week. You will definitely benefit from the readings.

Launching Affiliate Review Section

Let me start with an ad of the product:

This is not why I really hate them. Of course, this is deception and I hate deception, but wait till I show you the meaty content. The sales letter goes on and on and comes to a point where it compares itself with other products in the market.

One of the products you see is Google Cash Detective, a program run by another Internet Marketing Liar, Chris Carpenter, albeit a successful one. They managed to sell 1000 copies in the first week and 2000 copies in the first month and plan to re-open soon. First hand information.

Anyways, Brad does a comparison above showing how his product is superior and others inferior, including Chris Carpenter’s.

Alright, I scroll further and guess what I see:

The fearless Chris Carpenter. He is actually endorsing his competition’s product. Why? For a small 554×52 pixel sized free ad space. It seems he found 1042 affiliates for his client and 109 of them have already promoted his client’s ebook.

This endorsement was on the sales page the day the product was released!

How sick can these guys get? This is why I quit the Internet Marketing Liar’s club. Pathetic.

This is why I hate Internet Marketers Liars

When deciding over what programs to promote and make money from, what criteria do you set for yourself? Do you take your credibility and reputation into account? Lot of people look for factors like “How much does this program pay in commissions? How fast do they pay, do they make payments through Paypal”, etc.

When you decide over a program to promote, it is very important to consider factors that have a direct impact on your reputation. The first and foremost question should be:

“Would I buy this product if somebody were to present it to me?” If yes, why? If no, why?

It is important to pay attention to the usability of the product as well as the source where the product has come from. If you don’t trust the source where the product has come from, how can you market and recommend others to buy? Will your conscience agree with it? I tell you, it is clear cut deception. This also leads to weak selling power. You cannot convince someone about something that you are not convinced about.

Oh yes you can, but you have to first sell your soul for it. You can see several so-called top Gurus like Jo Mark, Ewen Chia, etc. These people have made it to the top by selling their souls first, and then the affiliate products. Take a test ride of their newsletters and you will know what I mean. After a week, you will realize their newsletters are Newsletters 10% of the time and Spam 90% of the time.

So think about it today. You gotta believe in a product or service today to get others to believe in it. Your decision today can make or break your online career tomorrow.

What are your criteria for choosing Affiliate Programs?