I had someone ask me how I find a niche markets to market in. In most cases I am normally approached by someone and talked into going into a market. But I am pretty sure that is not what they were looking for.

If I was looking for a niche market to go into there are about 100 ways to find a niche, for this reason I will break them down into a couple different articles.
Just for fun let’s start with Amazon’s bestsellers.

By going to the above link I get a page full of Amazon’s current bestsellers. On the left hand side under “any category”, I can click on a category and find the hottest products in that niche.

So let’s say that we click on the baby category, I now get a page full of the hottest baby items and on the left I get another list that breaks down the baby categories even more.

So now let’s say that I click on Bathing & Skin Care. Once again I get a list that breaks it down even more. From here I can find a niche that I want to get into, build a website around it and begin marketing it.

I ran across what I thought was going to be a very good topic by Jordan over at WPW, however like most things on the web it fizzled out before ever hitting a high note.
This isn’t an attack on Jordan, as a matter of fact had it not been for Jordan I wouldn’t be writing this now.

I believe Jordan’s thread would have been a lot better had he tried new things as he went along. Other words, if something isn’t working try something different.

Jordan never tried anything new and as a result his income declined. The name of the thread was the $3,000.00 per month Google AdSense project and he got the idea from the $30,000.00 per month Google AdSense project.

The $30,000.00 per month Google AdSense Project never made any money and was started by Collusion who stopped the project 2 months into it.

In April of 2009 Jordan was able to make $282.00 however at the start of the project in May of 2007 Jordan was making $520.00, seems to me after 2 years of not making money I’d been trying something different. He’s managed to ignore just about every bit of advice he’s been given and continues to move forward, or backwards doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different result.

I like Jordan and while the thread does look hopeless it now seems that we have members joining in and asking Jordan for advice. Maybe he can do like Collusion did and start an SEO company.

I don’t want to upset anyone but surely if you step back and look at it you can see just how funny this really is. We have a guy that after two years was unable to make enough money to amount to anything. He was unwilling to change what he was doing and managed to decline month after month never meeting his goal. And then we have people coming into the thread, unable to see this and asking this guy for advice.

To stay alive you have to be willing to change, adapt and get better. If you are unwilling to do that then you are dead.

I know, the economy is bad and everyone is hurting for money but there is not a day that goes by that someone does not contact me wanting to know how to make a couple thousand fast. Oh…and they don’t have any money to start with.

The way I make money online doesn’t work in a couple seconds. I wish it did, but you’ll need at least 6 months of steady work before you’ll start to see a return on your investment. That’s six months of pain in the ass steadily working and seeing nothing happen before you start seeing an income from all your hard work.

I already know that this is more than most of you are willing to put into a project just from the phone conversations and I am sorry but I am unwilling to do the work for you. In order to make a living online it takes lots of hard work and a plan for the future. I can show you how to do the hard work and want charge you a dime for the information but you will have to put the time and energy into the project.

I guess there are more “How to Get Rich” websites then there are websites actually selling a product.

The reason for this is most people do not know how to make money online so instead of building a website that sells a real product or service (something they are unable to do) they build websites that sell information on how to make money online.

If I said that 98% of all websites online are not making money, I’d feel like that number was too low.

The sad truth is that there a more people designing websites then there are people making money with their websites. Most Web designers use call centers, newspaper ads, yellow page ads, and other means of off-line advertising to drum up customers.

I am telling you this because I want you to understand that making a living online is not something easily done. It takes hard work and dedication or lots of money.
There are certain steps needed to make a living online and none of the step are more important than the next.

The first of course is the website design.

The purpose of the website design is to get the attention of the web visitor. When someone lands on the site you have 3 seconds to get their attention and keep them interested.

The website design does not need to be flashy, fancy or show off the talent of a Web designer however it does need to be clean, easy to navigate, easy-to-understand, quick to load and have a call to action that will guide the web visitor in the direction you want them to go.

It sounds like we are taking all the hard work out of the Web design by removing the fancy flashy look but that is far from the truth.

The color of the cart button, the background color, the placement of the call to action, the size of the logo, colors used on the site, text size, text color, font, phone number placement, content, and so much more will affect the reaction of the web visitor when they are on the site.

Other words, a truly affective website is an art unto itself.

I got this e-mail today and thought I would post it here along with my answer. However, I will remove the name and the website address.

Hello,

I’ve been reading your “95 % of blogs abandoned thread”, you are very knowledgeable about SEO strategies so I would like your advice. I employ SEO stretegies for my site including:
1. reciprocal link exchange with sites in my niche
2. commenting on blogs and websites in my niche
3. commenting on internet magazines such as yahoo shine
4. joining social bookmarking sites
5. joining blog directories
6. using twitter

I always leave a live link on all of the above. When I began this internet business I actually used a website but the company turned out to be of ill repute and I was able to get a refund and re-launched in blog format. My domain name and site name are two years old (I created them myself). In those early days I had to approach established websites for link exchange, now I receive link exchange requests. I also receive offers from advertisers (although at the present time it is for sample products not monetary payment but this is still proof that I will receive offers for payment soon). My page rank is now at 3 which is good. I don’t rely on PR that much, though as site quality is more important.

I know that advertisers look at the most popular sites ie the ones with high traffic. My traffic is not as good as I know it should be. I have a quality website and it is well respected, I receive compliments from readers and I welcome this. But I want to know what more I can do to get traffic. I receive less than 100 visitors per day and this is far FAR below what a general health site should receive.

My site url is

At your convenience could you take a look at my site and offers suggestions as to how I may improve it to get more traffic? I will say that I will not change my format because I do not want to lose my core audience. I do know that some readers are telling others about the site (not only have they told me so, I have seen it in recent traffic). I have approximately 70-80 subscribers/followers across feedburner, MyBlogLog, Blogged, BlogCatalog, and twitter (all of which has been since late 2008/to present). This is good, however I need more. So any advice would be helpful.

Thank you.

I want to post my response because some people might have these same type of question and maybe it will help someone else as well.

My Response;

Looks like you are doing everything right, although I would link my social media sites to one another.

In other words, if I had a MySpace page that was linked to my site, I might create two blogs talking about the same topic and link to my MySpace page. So it would have a little more weight when it linked to my site.
From there I would try and increase the number of keywords I was using. There are lots of free tools online like;
WordTracker.com

Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker

Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

https://www.PayPal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_shop-ext

eBay

Shopping.com – Find, Compare, and Buy Anything in Seconds

Search-based keyword tool

Google Trends
The idea is to get a good list of keywords that you want to target and then add keywords in with those keywords that you feel someone would search for.

If I was trying to sell website designs, I might use a list of keywords like these;
Buy
Buys
Buyer
Buyers
Buying
Bought
Order
Ordering
Orders
Ordered
Purchasing
Purchased
Purchase
Purchases
Cheapest
Cheap
Cheaper
Discounted
Discount
Discounting
Discounts
Special Offer
Special Offers
Sale
Sales
Sold
Selling
Value
Values
Valued
Coupon
Coupons
Cost
Costs
Costing
Shipping
Ship
Ships
Shipped
Sale Price
Sales Prices
Sales Pricing
Online
On Line
Promotion
Promotions
Promo
Promos
Promoting
Promote
Promotes
Merchandise
Merchandises
Merchandising
Merchandises
Merchant
Merchants
Refurbished
Free Shipping
Reasonable Price
Pre Owned
Used Using
Using
Pre Own
Old
Vintage
Pre Owns
Pre Owns
Pre Owning
Store
Stores
Vintage
How Much
Model Number
Quality
New
Newer
Newest
Special
Best
Most
Highest
Greatest
Top
Wholesale
Retail
Shop
Shopping
Shopper
Shops
Get
Gets
Getting
Got
Acquire
Acquiring
Acquired
Custom
Customer
Customers
Customize
Customized
Good Buy
Best Buy
Good Buys
Best Buys
Pay
Payment
Paying
Paid
Deal
Deals
Dealing
Bargain
Bargaining
Bargains
Bargained
Find
Found
Finding
Search
Searching
Searched
Negotiate
Negotiates
Negotiating
Low Price
Low Prices
Low Pricing
Low Priced
Lowest Price
Lowest Prices
Lowest Pricing
Lowest Priced
Economy
Economic
Economical
On Sale
Low Cost
Low Costs
Low Costing
Lowest Cost
Lowest Costs
Lowest Costing
Cut Rate
Cut Rates
Reduce
Reduced
Reducing
Bargain Basement
Bargain Basements
Best Cost
Best Costs
Best Price
Best Prices
Bonus
Bonuses
Free Bonus
Free Bonuses
Promo Bonus
Promo Bonuses
Gift
Gift
Free Gift
Free Gifts
Competitive Price
Competitive Pricing
Competitive Prices
Inexpensive
Easy on the Pocket
Easy on the Pockets
Review
Cost Effective
Reviews
Moneymaking
Useful

And then add my keywords to each of them.

For example, order a website design, I’d then write an article about ordering a website design.

I have noticed that with each blog post I make there is an increase in traffic. I have one site that is getting around 2,000 unique visitors per day and I try to make around 20 blog post on that site every day.

It has worked well for us so far.