A good article will answer a question, provide information or deliver news within your niche. If you are stuck for a topic for your article you can go to places like Yahoo Answers to find out what information people are looking for. This is a great place of not only inspiration but also a great place to find information yourself on any given topic.

If I am researching an article, I often will post a question on Yahoo Answers and then use the answers people have provided as a means of gathering information to include in the article. In essence, other people pretty much write the article for me. I just put it all together into a nicely flowing story.

Another source for inspiration are article publishing websites themselves. What are other authors writing about? Spend a little time in the article sites and you will quickly get a sense of what makes a good article. Was it an entertaining or informative read? This will give you an idea of what your articles should look like.

Do not ever, under any circumstances, directly copy another article and claim it as your own.You might take the basic principles of an article and rewrite it in your own style with your own opinions added.

It is certainly okay to re-publish an article. Most authors hope you do; but be sure to also publish the author’s full credit as supplied by the article website. These articles are great for niche blog content and newsletters.

That is precisely the reason you are writing the article in the first place. You want people to read it and share it because it will have your website link in the author’s credits. This is a way for you to get the most back links to your website or blog without having to go out and search for them yourself. You do the work of writing the article and submitting it to the article publishing site and then it becomes a set-it-and-forget-it way of generating traffic and back links for you. Every article you publish about your profitable niche will become mini traffic generators for you. The growing back links will help you boost your page rank in the search engines.

Another benefit of article marketing is that the article publishing sites rank very highly in the search engines. You may be struggling at first to gain page ranking and search engine placement. Your published articles may out-perform your website when it comes to search engine positioning so while your niche website might be sitting on page 5 of the search engine results, your article may be on page one for your keyword.

In the next lesson of the niche marketing course I will cover the basics of writing effective articles for your profitable niche.

Today’s action: Visit Yahoo Answers and several article publishing sites and gather ideas for articles within your niche market. Get at least 5 ideas for articles and read articles to determine what makes them good or bad.

Lesson 14

For this method of market research I use the Amazon.com website. Since it is a top site for buyers in a wide variety of markets, it will give us a pretty good idea of what is hot and what is not. Here is the trick.

Search for Everything

The first thing you need to do is a very broad search. To do this just type an Astrix (*) into the search box. This will allow you to search everything. Yep…everything in every category.

Broadest search possible

From this search you will see how many products are offered in every category they offer. Now you will want to start narrowing your niche.

To do this you will begin digging deeper within a category that interests you. If you already have a niche you can go into a corresponding category. If you are searching out a brand new niche you can start wherever your heart desires.

Go deeper into the category

To narrow the niche you just keep clicking deeper into the category until you find a reasonably specific niche. For this example I have chosen the Toys & Games category and have navigated deeper into the 5-7 year old niche where there are approx. 32,000 products within this category.

Top Selling Products

Now by going to the sort box on the right and selecting  “Bestselling”, Amazon will show me the #1 selling products within that niche. I can now source out those products, build an Amazon store or create an information product and be confident that I am promoting a hot product.  This greatly increases my chances of finding a profitable niche.

Internet Marketing for Small Business | Niche Marketing Course | Finding Profitable Niches | Social Media Marketing

I found this site that helps to save you some time. Domize is a service I use to quickly search for available domain names.

With this service you get:

• Real-time results as you type
• Immediately see what domain extensions are available
• Have the ability to do advanced searches to generate larger lists
• Do multiple searches within the same session

When you find an available domain name you can even click through to go directly to GoDaddy to register it. How cool is that?

Posted via email from Cathy’s posterous

Posted via email from Cathy’s posterous

Now that you have your niche marketing blog set up and have several posts done you need to show Google that they are relevant by giving them some “link love”. One very good way to do this is through the use of social bookmarking sites. Just like Facebook, Twitter and other social communities, social bookmarking sites are used by many people surfing the net for information.

Why should you do this step?

This will help each page of your blog get indexed faster on Google. If your site is showing up on the social bookmarking sites then Google will make a point of crawling the page. This can mean the difference in how fast you can penetrate your niche. Once you get the hang of doing it you should take the 10 or 15 minutes to do it every time you create a blog post.

Remember back in the preparation for this course when I had you sign up for all of those sites? Well this lesson is where I am going to show you how to use them. I know you all understand now how very long it can take to sign up for them all. You can appreciate just how long it would take you to manually go into each site and place a link for each of your blog posts.

I am going to show you a several really great time saving ways to quickly add your links to them all.

socialmarker.com is a site where you can put the bookmark information of the page you want to bookmark into the text fields and click on submit. They will then go through one by one the social bookmarking sites you have selected and pre-fill in the forms. This makes it much faster to go through the process of adding your links and descriptions to the sites.

This video will walk you through how to use the social marker site. The first time you use it it will not be supre fast because you will have to sign in but if you use it on a regular basis all of the sites will already be signed in and it will go much faster.

The next service I use for bookmarking is called www.traffic-bug.com. Now this is not a free service but it does have a free trial period so you can use it while learning to see if it is something you find useful and worth the money. The reason I like it is because it is set it and forget it. It works away at submitting your site for you. Once you set up the first session for each page in your blog you do not have to do anything else ever again. Over a period of time this service will go out and submit your pages to the social bookmark sites without you ever having to do anything else. Huge time saver!

This video likely explains it better. I use this service so I don’t have to take the time to do all the social bookmarking myself for the majority of the sites. That way I can focus my time on developing more niches and doing more blog posts. It is up to you whether paying for this service is right for you. You may decide to wait until your niche is paying for itself and just use the socialmaker service instead.

From blogger unmaskings to social media bans, it’s been an interesting week in the social realm.

We also brought you a wealth of resources to help you do more online, from spicing up your GMail signature to combating annoying Facebook notifications.

Without further ado, here are the top 10 social media stories this week.

Posted via email from Cathy’s posterous

Here is a video I did on a little secret trick I use on my small business website that drastically increased the number of leads I capture on my opt-in list. The tip also increased my conversion rates 100%, increased my page rank and improved my bounce rate. It just doesn’t get any better than this!

If you like this video please feel free to put it on your blog or share it with your subscribers.

Leave me a comment to let me know your thoughs.

Using Social Sites for Business

Most people have heard of sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, etc. These are social community sites where people of like interests can connect with each other. This can be a gold mine for your business or it can be a disaster. The key is to learn how to use them to your advantage.

You must remember that people generally congregate in these sites for fun and to gather information and to network. They are not there to buy. A successful internet marketer will join these sites to create a following and to brand themselves as being a good and trusted source of information on a particular niche.

You are there to gain the trust and friendship of your potential customers. To let them get to know you. You should treat these sites as if they were a party and use the same etiquette you would use if you were face to face with a new acquaintance. Do not be the jerk of the party who can only talk about themselves, their products or selling. We all have met that type of obnoxious house guest. We avoid them like the plague.

Be entertaining and engaging. Provide good quality information that is helpful. Be real. Why do you think reality tv is so big right now? People want to feel connected. Be approachable. If you are fun to be around you will attract followers.

Fill out your profile with a killer bio. Be creative and authoritative. Let them know what business you are in and a link to your blog or website or both. That is the only place you should really try to sell yourself. Use the same picture in all of the social sites so you can brand yourself. Do not make the mistake of using your company logo. It MUST be a picture of you. The smilier the better.

Most people belong to more than one social community. If you start popping up in all of them associated with your niche you will very soon gain expert status among your followers if you give them quality info and are entertaining. Let them know that they can follow you on all of the sites by telling them how to find you on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Linkedin, YouTube etc. Join niche groups and contribute or start one of your own.

Finding followers who are most likely to like you. You do this by searching your niche within the social sites. You already know you have something in common with them. Request to be added to their friends list or subscribe to their feed. 9 times out of 10 they will follow suit and add you to their lists too.

It is okay every now and then to say” I just did a new post on my blog about (whatever). Check it out if you are interested.” and leave it at that. Just don’t be too self promotional.

The process of gathering potential customers on social sites is as follows:

• Like me

• Know me

• Trust me

• Pay me

Report content to them instead of trying to create it all yourself. Find controversial but non-offensive topics to cause interaction. Don’t be spammy, or pushy.

If you follow these basic rules you will eventually start getting JV offers from people who see you as an expert or celebrity within your niche. No need to source out ways of making money yourself once you are branded.

So use social websites wisely and you will reap the benefits. In the next lesson I will show you how to manage all of the social sites from one application. This will drastically save you time while making it seem like you are very active.

Action for today: Get out there and be social.

In the last lesson we covered how to create quality content that has the proper keyword density for your blog. By now you should have several blog posts completed and submitted. Now we cover how to get your profitable niche website found indexed.

Now let’s check and see if Google has found your site yet. Do not panic if it hasn’t and do not really expect your pages to be showing up on page one of Google yet. It is a process and sometimes it takes a few days for Google to find you.

Here is how you can check to see if Google has crawled your site yet. Go to the Google search engine and in the search firld type in site:yourdomain.com or site:yourdomain.blogspot.com whichever you have chosen to use for your blog. If you are indexed you will see the pages that Google has visited in the list. If nothing is showing yet give it a bit of time. Check each day.

I have had some pages that show up within minutes and other pages that takes several days.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is one thing I can almost guarantee will happen so I do not want you to panic when it does. You will type in your site one day and 5 of your pages will show up. Then the next time you type it in they are all gone. Nothing at all showing. That is normal! Just continue posting on a daily basis and usually the next day you will be back indexed again.

The reason this happens is because the search engine wants to be sure you are not a flash in the pan. One of those sites that posts today and gone tomorrow. They will not serve old news to their customers. They will wait and see if you are still relevant a day or so later.

One way to show them you are here to stay is to do a bit of backlinking and promoting of your site. I am going to show you how to do this.

Remember when I told you to reserve one of your articles? There are some very good article sites that will allow you to post that article and give you a backlink to your site but ONLY if it is original content. The one that seems to hold the most weight with search engines is ezinearticles.com.

The reason this site carries so much clout with the search engines is because every single article that is submitted for inclusion on the site is read and approved by a human. The articles all must meet ezinearticle’s standards. This is the way they can ensure that they are delivering quality articles and not spam. Do not include any links within the article itself. They allow you an author’s resource box where you can put your bio and your link to your website. Never, ever place any affiliate links in any articles or it will be automatically rejected and may get you banned.

Play by their rules and you will be rewarded. Their articles are also a source for other websites looking for quality content. The terms of use for the articles is that they are free to be used anywhere so long as the original author is given full credit. This is a good thing for you.

Think about it. Your one article could potentially show up on hundreds of websites all from your own niche and you will have backlinks from each one. This will really boost you up the page ranks quickly. So make the articles you submit there top notch stuff.

Another place I have had fairly good luck with is hubpages.com. This site is kind of fun. You can create some great articles, add video, images, links, etc. You also have the option to monetize the articles although you will not likely get rich from them they may bring you in a few more dollars each month if you use Adsense, Amazon or eBay affiliate programs.

Again, they prefer and reward original content although not as strictly. You will get a lower hub score initially if your article is not original but can climb the ranks if it is good quality. Just do not use anyone else’s works. That is seriously frowned upon. If you use one of your blog posts be sure it is your own and not one you have mined from another source.

You can likely find many article submission sites. I know of a few. buzzle.com is another one similar to ezinearticles that does have human approval as well. It usually does well in search engines too. For the first while I would suggest you write two articles per day. Submit one to your blog and one to an article publishing site. If you do this it will be very quick for you to get your site indexed and really start climbing the position in Google within your chosen niche for your main keyword phrase. Check daily to see if you can find your site in the search results for the pages you know are indexed already. There is no point in checking pages that aren’t indexed yet as they will never appear in results.

Another way for you to get quality back links is through leaving comments on other people’s blogs and doing forum posts with your url linked in your signature. Now listen to me carefully here…DO NOT spam other people’s blogs or forums. If you leave a comment make it relevant to the post. Do not make your comment self promotional. Seem like you are genuinely interested in what the blogger was writing about. They will reward you with approving your comment and giving you a backlink. Spam or be competitive with them and they will disapprove your comment so you have just wasted your time and theirs. You have too much to do to waste time.

In forums, follow the rules. Many forums do not allow links in your signature until you have had 10 posts approved. So make your posts or replies to other’s posts polite, relevant and non-promotional. Add value to their site and they will reward you with back links. Nothing is more hated in any blog or forum than a spammer. Do not do yourself the disservice of ruining your reputation. Remember that the members of that blog or forum are interested in your particular niche and if you are helpful they will check you out.

There are various tools and software that can help speed up this process for you. Your Market Samurai is a huge time saver in this aspect of promotion. The Promotion Module will save you from having to surf for hours to find relevant blogs to leave your comments on. They will also be able to tell you whether the site has a “no follow” setting. You don’t want to spend time leaving comments on blogs that have no follow tags. The search engines will not be able to follow to your site so it will not count as a back link. It may drive a small amount of traffic your way if that particular blog is a very active one, but for now you really need to focus on quality back links.

Here is a very good Market Samurai training video that will walk you through using the Promotion Module and building your back links.

Another way to grab links on other sites is by using pingbacks. This is a relatively new technology but is super easy and way cool. If a blog is set to allow pingbacks, each time you place a link to that blog within your blog post it will appear in their comments as a link to the post you have created. But how do you know if a blog allows it? Well that is another engenious feature of Market Samurai.

In their promotion section they analyze other blogs to not only let you know if they have no follow tags but they also let you know if they allow pingbacks and you can very easily do a quick post up within the software itself that will create a post that looks a bit like an RSS feed with the link to thier blog post and a brief excerpt of the article. You can put them all together in a list and put it into your blog. I usually say something like, “Here are some great articles I found about (your keyword phrase) that I would like to share with you.” Then I paste the code that Market Samurai has created with the links and summaries. At the end, I finish it off with…”I hope you have found these articles about (your keyword phrase) as interesting as I have. Please leave me your comments to let me know what you think.

Submit your post and you now have a new series of very relevant back links that Google will love.

Make building back links a part of your daily routine. It is critical to gaining authority for your site. With the right tools it takes less than 10 minutes a day but can make all the world of difference to your success.

Today’s actions: Check to see if your pages are indexed, post your article to an article publishing site and leave at least 2 comments on related blogs (more if you are using Market Samurai)

In the next lesson we will begin building a Web 2.0 presence for your niche market website.

Lesson 11