The Niche Experience

The Trouble With Keywords...

2005-05-03T08:40:00.000+10:00

I've been having fun with keywords recently.

Every time I went to generate a list of keywords for a particular niche I would get myself bogged down in all of the possibilities and options, and end up with a huge spreadsheet with all these different lists and groups and not being really sure of where I was going!

I do suspect that I am trying too hard - I should just work with what I have got and stop aiming for perfection.

(As a perfectionist I try to aim for a '10 out of 10' with everything I do ... a sure-fire recipe for burnout and frustration. One of my challenges over the last couple of years is to change my attitude to aim for a '5' instead of a '10' every time. But there is a place for sometimes going for the '7' or even the '8' - and because I want to make this thing work really well I am aiming a bit higher. Anyway, enough of the philosophy, back to the keywords!)

So I got tired of getting confused. I thought "I need some order in my life!!!". And having a day job as a programmer has its perks - I started to plan and write a tool to help me get whip these recalcitrant keywords back into line!

Doing 'simple' things like keeping the different keyword phrase searches separate, and removing duplicates when you search for similar things, and getting a list of word and phrase frequencies (a little bit like what the ASK database does with the flycatcher results) so I can see the recurring themes, and easily removing the negatives, and splitting the list into 'sub-niches' - either for a different flycatcher campaign or just for different wording with my AdWord.

Then there's the competitor research - keeping it under control so that I look at enough stuff without looking at too much. Having a simple and standard way of tracking all of the numeric results. Having a place to store, tag and index the qualitative results (this is in conjunction with the blog as per Ed Dale's fantastic "I wish I knew" recording).

And then there's the writing of the AdWords to match the keywords (or is that finding the keywords to match the AdWords?).

Am I making this thing all too hard? Or do other people just do this without too much thought (intuitively)?

Anyway, I'm about halfway through putting the tool together. So before you ask, sorry its not available yet, and when it is done it won't be available because I have written it in the database product I use in my day job, so it won't run on a PC without this database platform pre-installed, and besides which, I want to 'prove' it first (ie. with $$'s coming back in on my niche campaigns that I can attribute to this tool).

But when it is finished and proven, then I will prolly get it re-written in a more PC-friendly platform - I'll let y'all know then. :-)

Until then...
Stay true,
Tim

Self-Administered Brain Surgery!

2005-05-03T07:52:00.000+10:00

Hey, I'm slowly getting back on deck. I'll try to put up smaller posts - then there's more chance of me actually getting something up on a more regular basis for you to read!

I told you a couple of posts ago that I would be telling you about my self-administered brain surgery. Ok, so it's not with a knife, but with a book, and a mirror, and a bunch of re-programming!

The book I am talking about is The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker - recently a number one best seller on Amazon! I have read a bunch of other books that talk about the 'millionaire attitudes', but none of them have taken you on a process of understanding where all of the bad attitudes came from in the first place. This book takes you on a journey of understanding why you think the things you do, and gives you a way to gracefully retire the old thought patterns and to 'reprogram' your brain with new thoughts that support you in the direction you want to go.

This book seems to answer my question of why I am having so much trouble putting into practice a system (and believe me, this isn't the first one I have tried) that should be so 'simple' (sure, a lot of work, but it is step by step work - ie. I will get there if I just keep on going).

I have realised that the problem was not the system (enough other people have proved that), so there was really only one other place to look! As Eker says, "you can have the greatest "tools" in the world, but if you’ve got a tiny leak in your "toolbox" (I’m pointing to my head right now), you’ve got a problem."

Anyway, I'm starting to put it into practice - we will all be able to see what happens over the next few weeks!

Stay true,
Tim

I'll Be Back!...

2005-04-14T17:01:00.000+10:00

Just a super quick post to let you know that, despite rumors to the contrary, I have not been abducted by aliens or retreated to a cave at the top of the Himalayas.

Instead I have been getting over a minor relapse of glandular fever ... possibly brought on by working a little too hard over the Easter break on something that I am going to tell you about soon (very soon...).

So, hang in there, and (put on your best Arnie accent) ... I'll be back.

How To Set Up An Underachiever Site For Under $100 - Part 2

2005-03-22T20:05:00.000+11:00

** WARNING **

You Are Still In A THEORY ONLY Zone!

This is Part 2 of this Post. Please click here for Part 1. The ideas presented in this article are purely theory, and have not been tested in the real world by me! This is what I have learned from reading and listening to the experts. This is what I am planning on doing. This is what I expect will work. But I haven't done it yet. You'll just have to say tuned for the next few weeks until I post the update that tells you what actually happened! :-)

In Part 1 we established that there are times when we need to find a low-cost alternative to following the standard UnderAchiever method and paying for a product to be developed. I have been looking around and researching the possibilities, and have come up with three options that we can consider:

We can purchase Resale Rights on a product that meets the market's needs.
We can sign up as an Affiliate on a product that meets the market's needs.
We can create a Content Page.

Remember, at this point we have come to the end of a successful flycatcher campaign, which means we have:

A reliable and on-going source of traffic (paid for through Google AdWords)
A growing mailing list of people who are interested in your product
A really good idea of exactly what the market wants

THE OPTIONS

Resale Rights and/or Affiliate Sales

Because we now know exactly what the market wants, we can search for a matching product where either the resale rights are available to be purchased, or we can sign up as an affiliate. Assuming that we wouldn't be able to find something that matches exactly, we would have to make the call on whether the product is close enough.

If we can buy the resale rights (and if we have the available $$'s) then we are back in the UnderAchiever game plan ... this time with a ready-made product instead of having it custom built.

If we can sign up as an Affiliate, then there is one more thing that we need to do. We don't need to create the sales page, because the product will already have that. What we need to do is create a 'pre-sales' page. I have also heard them called a 'Landing Page', or even a 'billboard' page. Whatever we call it, the basic idea is to drum up enough excitement through giving a brief review and emphasising the benefits, to then get them to click on our affiliate link.

I found a great source of information on how to do Affiliate Marketing - check out Google Cash by Chris Carpenter.

Now that we have a product, we no longer need a Flycatcher. The Google Ad can just send the traffic straight to the pre-sales page. Of course, we still need to capture Names and Email Addresses. And I'm not too sure on how best to present this to someone ... maybe we just ask for their details anyway, without giving a reason. Or maybe we just keep the Flycatcher going... I dunno. Anyone got any thoughts on this? Feel free to post a comment... :-)

Content Page

This is where it really gets exciting. This is where we can really get 'something for nothing' (weee..eell ... ok, no money ... but it does take a bit more effort... ;-).

The idea of a content page is to give them lots of content (duh!). Of course, this is where my understanding of it all goes a little hazy, so when in doubt, quote an expert! And who better to quote than ... Ed Dale uses a Blog to collect all of the information that he creates during the research phase, and this becomes the Thank-you page after the Flycatcher...

"Who wrote the law that said you HAD to direct people to a "thank-you" page? Mine dont say thankyou - in fact my last two have been going to blogs. The blogs have worked really well and they have FANTASTIC content. But here is a tip and reason 64 for doing your research and only doing one project at a time. My most successful effort has been with an affilate program - not Adsense. Please dont skip the research - all the questions are there for a reseaon. Like - are there any affiliate programs...."

So how do we make money off this (that's what it's all about, remember ;-)? Some of the content can be a review of an associated affiliate product. If there is enough good content (and traffic) we can slot in Google AdSense (and start to even up the Google ledger) ... more from Ed on this too ...

"You have to have a content page ... for adsence to work. My latest trick - I send them to my blog which I have been creating while doing the research. Superb content which I did not have to lift a finger to create and it makes product creation so much easier... My Thank You page has on average twelve different ways that I will get paid... I get a payday, if they click any link of the page... That's why I beg you to do only one flycatcher at a time and do the proper research - all the info I get from one of these pages is from the research phase of underachievers."

Email Mini-Course

Another idea is to package up all of that content and feed it out in bite-sized pieces into an email mini-course via an AutoResponder. The Thank-you Page says "Thanks" and lets them know that they will be receiving a bunch of information via email over the next few weeks. Again, some of the emails will contain links to products that they can buy - one advantage of this method is that if there is a big ticket item you can remind them of it every few emails. The mail-order experts tell us that we get a much higher conversion rate when people are exposed to the idea of buying multiple times, and over an extended period of time.

Just a quick thought on Research

I have put together a few ideas that help me when researching a niche - these are just a few places to look and things to look for. I'm sure there are a bunch more - but this gets me started, anyway!

Forums - To find: Type in the Niche and the word ‘Forum’ into a search engine.
Google Groups
Google Answers
Industry sites & Portals - In the course of your browsing you may find industry association sites or Portals for your particular Niche. These often provide useful links to resources.
Individual Magazine sites - Find the magazines using Amazon or Magazine.com.
Blogs - To search Blogs directly use Technorati.
Ezines - There are a number of sites that publish lists of ezines – one of these is List City.
Reports - Search for Reports directly by simply typing in the Niche Market and the word “Report”. Return only results that contain PDF files by searching for “filetype:PDF” followed by the Niche Market. Another one to try is Microsoft Word document format – for this type in “filetype:doc”.

Hopefully this has been helpful for you. As I mentioned above, I will be trying these options out, and will be reporting back here as to how they are all working. Please feel free to leave your comments if you have tried any of these techniques and let us all know what works, and what doesn't.

In my next Blog I will share a little bit about my self-administered brain surgery. No really ... Stay tooned for details (use those links over there on the right under Subscribe To This Site to make sure you don't miss it).

Until then, stay true,

Tim

How To Set Up An Underachiever Site For Under $100 - Part 1

2005-03-05T20:19:00.000+11:00

** WARNING **

You Are Now Entering A THEORY ONLY Zone!

The ideas presented in this article are purely theory, and have not been tested in the real world by me! This is what I have learned from reading and listening to the experts. This is what I am planning on doing. This is what I expect will work. But I haven't done it yet. You'll just have to say tuned for the next few weeks until I post the update that tells you what actually happened! :-)

As I told you all at the end of my last post, I have run into a small Cash Flow problem. This has got me thinking about how to still keep moving forward, and not get stuck at the "Outsource the Product Creation" step.

I came across something the other day that got me thinking, and the more I thought and the more I read about it, the more excited I got about the possiblities and the potential. But first, some background...

As I'm sure you already know, as a general rule, to make copious amounts of money we need to first invest either generous amount of money, or generous amounts of time.

'Pure' Underachieving generally requires an investment somewhere between $500 and $1000 to get a product developed. Now, in business terms this is a very small investment, especially as we should make our money back in well under a year.

But if we don't even have that much money available to invest, then the process requires more time. More time to set it up, and more time elapsed before our income reaches the same levels as with the first method.

It looks like this:

The idea is to make some 'immediate' money, until such time as we either have enough money saved to create the product as per the usual process, or we might decide that we are getting enough return just to leave it as it, without ever creating our own product. Whatever we decide, it's nice to have some options...

So let's just review what we have so far. I will assume we have come to the end of a successful flycatcher campaign. So to do an inventory we have now got:

A reliable and on-going source of traffic (paid for through Google AdWords)
A growing mailing list of people who are interested in our product
We know exactly what the market wants

Ok, so what are our options? A few options I have heard about, read about and thought about are:

We can purchase Resale Rights on a product that meets the market's needs.
We can sign up as an Affiliate on a product that meets the market's needs.
We can create a Content Page. (It is the potential of Content Pages that I got so excited about)

Stay tuned for Part 2 of "How To Set Up An Underachiever Site For Under $100", when I get all revved up about these options. To make sure you don't miss out, use the buttons on the right under "Subscribe To This Site".

Until then, stay true,

Tim

When The Rubber Meets The Road...

2005-02-27T18:06:00.000+11:00

We came back from 3 days of intensive learning at the UnderAchiever Weekend II with a manual, pages and pages of notes, and (what seemed like) 50 million ideas wizzing around in our heads. (To get you up to speed quickly if you have just joined this blog - it was November 2004, there were three of us planning on learning the UnderAchiever system, and applying our skills to developing some niche sites together.)

We set our action plans, we set up a regular weekly time to meet, and we got to work.

And suddenly found that the simple 23 steps in the Quick Start Guide, while simple to understand, were slightly more involved to put into practice. We brainstormed a bunch of Niche Markets (it's amazing how right-brained you can get at 2am!) and I set up a couple of spreadsheets to help us make sense of the pages and pages of data that we were returning from the search engines and the keyword analysis tools. Spending about three weeks, and looking through more than 100 different niche possibilities, and getting up to step 9, we picked out (what we considered to be) the best three Niche Markets to set up the flycatcher pages.

At this point I would love to be able to say that we got heaps of questions posted, came up with a really good idea of the main needs of each Niche Market, and started to work on getting a product developed. But we live in the real world! We live in the world where if it works first time, that means you fluked it. As John Reese said during the weekend

"I hope that it doesn't work first time. Otherwise you will think that you can do this, and you won't learn anything. But if it doesn't work, then you have to figure out WHY it didn't work, and you will learn fast."

(actually, that is a direct quote taken from my memory of an event that ran almost four months ago, so I can't guarantee it is word-perfect.... :-)

What we did do was set up two successful flycatcher pages (‘successful’ in the sense that Thomas Edison used: "I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work."). And we learned enough from that to know not to set up a flycatcher page for the third Niche Market that we had picked out.

So what did we learn from this?

Lesson Number One: It is so important not to get bored with the research and just say - "ahh this is close enough, let's give it a try" without doing the last step and properly check out the competition. I remember Frank Kern imploring us to not skip the last half an hour of research and skip over this step. At the time I though "yeah, of course. We've come this far, why would we want to skimp on this bit?". But when you been looking at pages and pages of numbers and trying to make quantitative sense of it all, and then you have to get all qualitative and rate and categorise a whole bunch of other people's ads and websites, it just gets all too hard. "Hang it all, I'm too tired, let's just run this up the flagpole and see if it will fly".

Ed Dale said this in a recent post: "I very rarely have every market radar category ticked off with a yes - but I take the time to do the research - and I think competition research is the most important research element of all.".

Lesson Number Two: Play around with your Google AdWords Bid Price to boost your CTR.

John Reese said something about this during a teleseminar prior to the Undies weekend which I didn't understand at all, at the time. But it all came back to me while watching some great Click Through Rates (CTR) on some keywords in a Google AdWords campaign, even though the average position was not even getting the ads onto the first page.

He mentioned that you can initially increase your bid price to 'establish your position', then drop the price back later. The reason that this 'did not compute' with me was that I figured once you dropped the price back down your position would drop back down also. What I didn't understand then (but do now) is that your AdWords ad position is based on a combination of your bid price and your CTR. So the theory is this: Increase your bid price on an otherwise well-performing AdWords campaign (push it up at least enough to get you in the first three or four of the first page). This will push your CTR rate up (we went from 0.95% CTR at $0.05 per click, to 28.7% CTR at $0.15 - at 300% increase in price produced a 3000% increase in CTR!). Then you drop your price back down. Sure, your position drops back a bit too, but you have already established your reputation with a great CTR, so it doesn't drop back nearly as far as would have been before.

The trouble was in our example, the market simply did not respond with questions. In other words, even a 100% CTR is no good if your conversion stinks! And ours stunk like it had been rotting in the tropical sun for a few days!

Anyway, all in all I figure that what we learned was definitely worth the investment of about $12 for the Google ads. (And it sure beats offline direct marketing for research - that would have easily cost us anywhere from $500 to $2000 to run the paper or magazine ad, take the 1800 calls, etc - don't ya just LOVE the Internet!!!).

So now we are back to the drawing board, and going through some more potential niche markets. But we are much more confident that our next flycatcher pages should produce some positive results.

At the same time as getting ready to launch another couple of flycatcher pages, we have hit a slight cashflow problem. Which is the subject of my next post - How to set up an Underachiever site for under $100 dollars. Of course, this is still theory for us at this stage - remember, this blog is the real Internet Marketing - it is at the coal face. In this Blog you won't hear "I did this; it worked really well; you can do it too." Instead you'll hear "I am planning on doing this; it should work like this; oops, it didn't work, this went wrong; ok, now we'll try it like this; ok, that worked a little better; how about if we tweak this; ok, now we're flying; you can do this too...!". Use the buttons on the right under "Subscribe To This Site" to make sure you don't miss my next post.

until then, stay true,

Tim

Side Issue - I Love Blogging!

2005-02-26T17:01:00.000+11:00

Just a quick side issue. Since I have started this Blog I have had various emails from people who can relate to where I am coming from with some of my posts. Ryan Sheehy, from Perth, Australia, aside from being a fellow 'Undie', has his own Blog with some brilliant 'getting started' info on setting up web sites. Check it out!

Ya Gotta Underachieve Before You Can Overachieve!

2005-02-23T23:19:00.000+11:00

I had heard about these guys back in the middle of 2004, and had thought, hmmmm, that sounds like it could be what I am interested in. It involved marketing to niches, not to the Internet Marketing community. It was "how to pay the rent", not "how to retire in the Bahamas within six months" (I know, they don't usually actually say that, but that is the implication). I am, of course, talking about Ed Dale and Frank Kern's UnderAchiever system.

At the time, though, another seminar in another state was out of the financial question, so I listened to the free audio's and mentally shelved the idea.

Then a few months later it was announced that they were repeating the event - this time in Melbourne (my home town). I had some money in the company after a couple of big contracts, so it was financially possible, so I sat myself down and had a good long talk with myself. I asked myself the questions "Why haven't I made any money through the Internet yet? Will this seminar make any difference, or will it just be another expensive 'learning experience'?"

The answers weren't necessarily comfortable to admit, but I was too frustrated with my current (lack of) progress to hold back now.

I had a lot of specialized information, but I didn't have enough basic information to get started. (well, I did have a lot of stuff that was just about 'ready to roll', but it was all aimed at the Internet Marketing community)
I wasn't able to focus on any one method, because I was not willing to commit just in case something better came along.
I am inherently lazy, and will prefer to just 'play in my comfort zone' than get out there and do the hard grind - especially if I am not 100% sure of the outcome.

So this seminar seemed to answer questions 1 and 2. It was a basic step-by-step system. It did not rely on selling to the Internet Marketing community. It seemed good enough to stick at, and it certainly was completely aligned with my understanding of where things were heading (ie. niche marketing).

That only left question 3. What to do?

Well, one answer I know for that dilemma is the same one that works for getting people out the door and going for a walk at 6am in the morning - and that is knowing that someone else will be waiting to meet you and walk with you. I seem to be relatively happy to let myself down when the going gets tough (not the way I would like it, but I warned you that this would get brutally honest!), but I am much less likely to let someone else down if they are relying on me to come through.

So, I had to find someone else to come along with me. I threw out a few feelers, and got a couple of 'nibbles', but no-one had the ready cash to take the plunge. So over to Plan B - and after a serious conference with my creator, a heart-to-heart with my wife, some furious cashflow forecasting in Excel and some long discussions with my accountant - I made two people an offer that they couldn't refuse (well, they could have, but they didn't! :-).

In return for developing an UnderAchiever Niche website each and growing it to the point of regularly generating a certain monthly figure, my company would pay for their training and attendance to the UnderAchiever Weekend II in Melbourne, Australia, November 2004.

So now I'm getting a lot closer to $8,000 down, and no income to show for it, but a great deal of optimism and potential and opportunity were now in the air! Stay tuned next time for when the rubber meets the road.

Be true,
Tim

The First (BIG) Step Into The Unknown

2005-02-20T19:53:00.000+11:00

Back in the middle of 2003 I figured that I should be able to make some money using this thing called The Internet. I had no idea how, so I just typed some searches into Google and somehow (I still have no idea how) I stumbled across a guy called Brett McFall. He was rabbiting on about something called copywriting (at that time I thought that was something you put on your creations with a little 'c' in a circle, and that he couldn't even spell it right!)

But his stuff looked ok, so I subscribed to his free newsletter, and to cut a long story short, within a few months had shelled out a few thousand dollars to go to something called the World Internet Summit in Sydney, Australia (a one hour plane flight away) in Feb 2004.

After the biggest build up I have ever experienced, with multiple teleseminars and free downloads, my wife and I sat through a mind-blowing 4 days, and came home with our heads buzzing!

We took the next few days to map out what we thought we would do, then hit the ground running! And then life hit us, running even faster! All of a sudden I had more work in my regular business than ever, and I was getting myself more and more confused trying to put all of the advanced concepts that I was learning into practice when I didn't even have something there in the first place to apply them to.

After a few months I just put it all on the shelf. I knew it could work - I knew all of the basic concepts - I knew a lot of advanced concepts - I was also getting more and more sure that I did not want to compete in the Internet Marketing arena. I just had absolutely no idea how to actually get started!

So here I was, about $4,000 down at this stage, knowing this it was possible, but just not being able to start the ball rolling. So life went on, and my dream of the 'Internet Lifestyle' (for me this means being able to go away for a week and come back with more money instead of more debt!) was slowly fading.

And then the next opportunity came along and the light started to glow down that long tunnel...

Stay tuned for my next post - where things start to look a bit more hopeful again.

Getting Started

2005-02-12T15:59:00.000+11:00

I have been looking into getting something up on the Internet for quite some time now - well, actually it has been a bit over one year!

Keeping score?

Money spent on Internet marketing resources: $8000 +
Money earned from Internet Marketing: $nothing!

One of the things that I realised fairly early on, is that the big buzz about making money on the internet through marketing information that teaches people how to make money on the internet through marketing information that teaches people... well, you get the idea! ... was a little too circular, and, well, incestuous for my liking. I could see that the way to go was marketing to niches that were all about aspects of people's lives that have nothing to do with marketing.

Trouble is, I'm not one of 'them' - those people you hear about who get an idea, and then just go out there and do it! Then make heaps of money off telling everyone else that "you can do this too. All you need to do is to get an idea, then you just do it!"

Instead, I am just 'one of us'. I know that something out there is possible. I know that people are doing it. I know that I can follow instructions, so I spend oodles of time and money searching for and buying those instructions, but somehow I can't seem to get it together.

This blog is a bit of a ramble, a bit of a learning experience on my journey thus far. I will post a few entries to get us all up to speed with how I got to where I am now - but rest assured - this is not another "how I did it and I am nothing special so you can do it too" blog. Instead this is a "join me on my journey, cause I'm not there yet, and I'm definitely nothing special so you can at least relate. ;-)" I'm certainly not guaranteeing that if you do what I did you will also be as successful as me (well, right now I guess you will - the score is $8000:$0 so far! :-). But I can guarantee that you will learn a few things, because I will be telling you what I am learning as I go.

Enough for now... Read above as the story continues.

PS. I guess it is inevitable that as I find better and easier ways to do things, I will prolly start to make them available to everyone, and I will want a reasonable return for my efforts. Hey, I gotta eat, and these things involve a fair bit of investment before getting any return. Plus you don't value what doesn't cost you - and I'd hate for you to waste as much time as I have by not being committed to a course of action. (check out this quote for an insight of what I mean). So in due time I guess that I will post links to somewhere that you can get this stuff. Don't get offended by this - I won't be ramming it down your throat. I just want to make it available for those of you who can relate to my journey and want a bit of a helping hand.

Be true,
Tim