eBusiness For Women

The Tools I use for Niche and Keyword Research

Woei Yu — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:29:50 +0000

There are a lot of keyword and niche research software available.

I personally use 3 different programs to help do my research

Micro Niche
Market Samurai
SE Nuke

And you know what the oddest thing is?

All the software tools I use interface in some way with the Google Keyword Tool.

In other words, the software I uses not only grab the data from Google Keyword Tool, it sometimes displays the data verbatim, i.e., it displays exactly what you see in Google Keyword Tool.

Then the question is why do I even bother with these 3 tools and just head straight to the horse’s mouth in this case Google Keyword Tool.

Well, for the simple reason the software was created in the first place.

To make our life easier and perform our task faster.

It takes me 2 hours to write an article using paper and pen but it takes me 45 min to type one using my computer. And that doesn’t include checking the spelling, using a thesaurus …etc

In the same fashion, it takes me 5 hours to analyze niche and keywords but it takes me 1 hour to decide what to do using the software.

But I am not going to ask you to head straight off and purchase the software.

And, I will not spend the rest of the blog post reviewing the software.

There are plenty of reviews available out there that more or less tells you the same information.

That is … the software delivers as promised and more.

However, what I can do is to tell you what situations I use the software in.

You should purchase software ONLY if your situation fits the criteria, otherwise, it will be just a waste of your money and your time.

The software I use cost as follows:

Micro Niche ($97)
Market Samurai ($150)
SENuke ($127 per month)

I use Micro Niche to find new niches and keywords.

Just type in the niche, and it returns a list of related keywords and key phrases, the number of times the term is searched every month, a button to click to get the exact phrase count (the real number of competing websites) and a strength of competition (SOC) indicator.

The SOC is presented in a simple to follow traffic light style manner, green – low competition (go ahead), red – high competition (avoid) and orange – medium competition (maybe, use your judgement).

I personally look at the average of 10 niches per month and in some months even up to 30 niches.

Because of the volume I deal with, Micro Niche has saved me hundreds of hours giving me exactly the right information when I want it.

However, if you don’t have the volume that I deal with, that is, you only deal with 1 or 2 niches per month or even per quarter. I suggest you use Market Samurai.

You may be asking yourself “What? Use the more expensive tool is I need it less?”

Let me explain why…

Market Samurai has a relatively good niche and keyword module among the many modules included.

For a one time cost, it provides modules that not only help you figure out your niche, get the keyword for your niche but it also provides you the ability to drive traffic to your site.

That includes looking for high-quality sources for backlinks, looking at your competitors, gathering quality content for your blogs, articles if you have any.

Market Samurai

Unfortunately, because of the numerous modules this software has, it is not as robust as I want it to be.

It is slow, cumbersome and not very user-friendly. Many times, I could have taken a leisurely stroll to the kitchen, grabbed a snack and get back all while it is moving from one module to the next.

But, boy, does Market Samurai delivers.

SENuke is my favorite software but it is also the most expensive.

At a monthly cost of $127, you have to think seriously and hard about such an investment.

Although it has a pretty good niche and keyword module, I rarely use it.

To be honest, I really shouldn’t include SENuke among the software list.

It is really more of a traffic generation tool with a niche and keyword module thrown in (maybe even as an afterthought)

But SENuke is such a powerful tool and helps me deliver so much traffic to my websites that I think it would be almost sacrilegious for me to not make a mention or two.

So in summary…

If you are working on lots of different niches, get Micro Niche.

If you have deep pockets like Donald Trump, run not walk to get SENuke.

If you wish you had deep pockets like Donald Trump, then get Market Samurai.

Till next time…

Cheers,

The Tools I use for Niche and Keyword Research is a post from: eBusiness For Women

More ways to get Niche Ideas

Woei Yu — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:16:05 +0000

Someone was asking me if there are other ways to get Niche Ideas besides Google Keyword Tool

Thanks to Ed from 30 Day Challenge, here is 54 other websites that you can use to get more Niche Ideas.

Websites To Get Niche Ideas

43things.com http://www.43things.com/
About.com Be a Guide Topics http://beaguide.about.com/topics.htm
About.com A to Z list http://azlist.about.com/
Alexa Top 500 http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500
Amazon Hot New Releases http://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases
Amazon Magazines http://www.amazon.com/magazine-newspaper-subscriptions/
AOL Hot Searches http://hotsearches.aol.com/
Ask.com Top Searches http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml
Barnes & Noble Daily top Sellers http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bestsellers/top10everything.asp
BoingBoing http://www.boingboing.net/
Delicious.com Popular http://del.icio.us/
Digg.com Popular Archive http://digg.com/archive
Digg Spy http://digg.com/spy
Dummies.com http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesTitleAll/index.html
eBay Hot Categories monthly pdf report http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf
eBay Marketplace Research http://pages.ebay.com/marketplace_research/index.html
eBay Pulse http://pulse.ebay.com/
eBay Seller Central http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/
eBay What’s Hot http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html
eHow http://www.ehow.com/
Face Book http://www.facebook.com/
FreeIQ.com http://freeiq.com/wrkfrmhm
Google Catalogs http://catalogs.google.com/
Google Groups http://groups.google.com/
Google Groups Active http://groups.google.com/groups/dir?&sel=0,83986080
Google Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google News – Most Popular http://news.google.com/news?ned=us&topic=po
Google Trends http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends
Google Zeitgeist http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
GoogSpy http://www.googspy.com/
How to Do Things.com http://www.howtodothings.com/
Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
Live Search http://www.live.com/
Lycos 50 http://50.lycos.com/
Magazines.com http://magazines.com/
Meetup Topics http://www.meetup.com/topics/
My Goals http://mygoals.com/
MySimon Categories http://www.mysimon.com/4002-5_8-6273602.html?tag=ftr.glnav
MySimon Top Searches http://www.mysimon.com/9098-1_8-0.html
Neilsen Net Ratings http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/resources.jsp
Netscape Popular http://netscape.aol.com/
Omgili http://www.omgili.com/
Reddit.com Popular http://reddit.com/
SEObook Keyword Tool http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/
SEOmoz http://www.seomoz.org/popular-searches/
Technorati Popular http://technorati.com/pop/
Thisnext.com/activity http://www.thisnext.com/
Trendwatching http://www.trendwatching.com/
VeiwDo http://www.viewdo.com/
viralvideochart.com http://www.viralvideochart.com/
WikiHow http://www.wikihow.com/
WordTracker.com http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
Yahoo Answers http://answers.yahoo.com/
Yahoo Buzz http://buzz.yahoo.com

Happy Hunting

PS: If you know of any other places where you can get niche ideas, feel free to share below!!!

More ways to get Niche Ideas is a post from: eBusiness For Women

An Introduction to Video Marketing

Woei Yu — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 03:46:54 +0000

This informative article is designed to expose you to just what exactly video marketing is and exactly what it can do to your internet business.

It’s going to also highlight some other articles or blog posts like How to Create Your Own Marketing Video.

Let us begin!!

Video Marketing Defined

Video marketing is usually described as “using video to plug your internet business.”

That’s relatively clear-cut, right?

The most basic form of video marketing is surely an advert – a video which probably has for sale your product – you acquire ad space on appropriate sites and their website visitors look at your advertisement.

However, there are various additional methods that video enables you to promote your internet business; we will take a look at those in a different article.

So that you can decide how you can make use of video to build your company, it is crucial to know what video can and cannot deliver.

The Advantages of Video Marketing

As outlined by research carried out by the Pew Research Center, 57% of US Residents have downloaded online video and 19% download video every day.

As pc’s are slowly replacing tv’s for some shoppers and cellular technology continues to evolve, it’s expected that video will keep growing.

The research also observed over half of people watching video were sharing the video clips with other people, showcasing the viral or “word of mouth” advertising and marketing element of this medium.

There’s not any question about it, video and audio mediums are generally a powerful type of content and they are quickly growing as the advertising tool of preference for a lot of small businesses both large and little.

They offer quite a few rewards not obtainable through normal print content, including:

Enable you to show off your company’s personality: People seem to be requiring authenticity as well as openness on the net; people need to know who you are and what your business is about and video can be the appealing technique to communicate your qualities.
Enable you to evoke instant result: Video and audio in many cases are viewed right away while standard print text will often remain in an e-mail mailbox for weeks, if it is read at all.
A chance to convey a better story: Video and audio offer your company a unique chance to show rather than tell – anyone acquainted with effective storytelling techniques and advertising knows the old saying, “Show, don’t tell”.
The ability to stay away from duplicate content challenges: Duplicate content limitations trouble online online business owners. Duplicate content considerations basically do not exist yet with video and audio, and both forms still help to boost search engine results positioning (SERP).
To be able to simply create new content on a regular basis. To keep an excellent web page rank with the search engines, webmasters should routinely post completely new content to their web sites. However, creating unique content on a continuous schedule turns into a struggle for many, particularly when it is a small business and you’re putting on many hats.
To be able to capture the interest of your target audience in a completely unique way. But if your readership has grown accustomed to print, then video and audio may well light a fire under them once again and encourage action.
Google has been featuring a lot more videos inside the search results.
Creating a video is quite inexpensive and posting it is totally free.
A chance to have other people promote for you. Almost all video sharing providers, like YouTube, now have a number of tools to aid people spread the word. Imagine that, others essentially market your videos for you.
There is reduced competition. Millions of people market their websites using article marketing, however just a tiny percent of them take advantage of videos; so the competition is a lot less fierce.
Video communities usually are considerably more dynamic as compared with article communities. It isn’t rare to place a video on YouTube and get 1,000 responses in juat a few weeks!

As reported in a Marketing Sherpa analysis about Marketing with Video, unveiled January 2009, 57% of online marketers that have employed video for advertising and marketing purposes have been completely pleased with the outcome.

These people tell of a growth in sales, list size, web site visits, as well as much better client relations.

In the world of online commerce, that’s exactly what it is about.

It’s what all of us strive for and when something like video and audio comes on th scene, it makes sense for you to benefit from it to improve your business.

Products using video and audio content, tell fantastic stories.

Like no other medium, it helps corporations to interact with their potential clients on a totally different level.

Designed to aid organization owners attain greater profits by means of video and audio content, audio and video help a internet marketing business to be able to reach their target audience in a way that no other medium provides.

Exactly what other tool supplies the target audience a view inside of your company – who is operating it, what its character is and, in addition, the way it can offer a benefit along with a means to fix their issues, or a way to gratify their dreams?

Video gives your online business, and also you, a voice and it offers the audience a personality to connect to.

Terrific content along with being liked really encourage buying behavior.

Video Stimulates Sharing and Interactivity

Let’s consider Web 2.0 for a moment.

Web 2.0, is understood to be the shift online from a one way street to a two way street.

Instead of the readership basically being the recipient of knowledge on the internet, they now participate in it.

They make information, they share it and they also coomunicate back.

Video meshes extremely well with this concept.

If YouTube demonstrates anything at all, it shows that individuals like to share videos that they find both engaging as well as enlightening.

They forward videos using their hand phone, via electronic mail and send hyperlinks verbally.

Great videos can be water cooler talk and superior video and audio solutions are usually suggested to friends and relatives.

The trend for sharing and communicating with online marketers who make use of video and audio is so strong that there are a lot of widgets available to aid the process and, not surprisingly, to track the information for advertising and marketing purposes.

World-class information sites like Fox News as well as Forbes supply widgets for visitors to download so they will have access to the most up to date and well-known videos.

This supplies prospects instant access to information.

They can vote, provide feedback, or forward the links, each of which increase traffic and build a subscription base.

In an article published in Business Week, Peter Yarad is quoted as saying “instead of simply trying to build brand awareness, marketers now have the ability to reach out to customers with useful features to enhance their personalized experience.”

Web 2 . 0 websites like Facebook also offer a huge number of user produced widgets all made to improve sharing of videos and content.

Video marketing may well quickly turn out to be by far the most powerful tactic in your online strategy.

It can be relatively cost effective to create and offer a incredible return on your investment.

Commonly, some proper tagging and Search engine optimization guarantees your video gets to your audience and the viral nature of video gets control, enlarging your reach and awareness.

Conclusion

Video marketing is a really tremendous marketing tool.

It provides an unprecedented ability to communicate with your buyers in a very individual way.

It helps brand your online business and it is far and away the most digestible content format online.

It is also the most commonly shared, which makes it a wonderful viral medium.

For more information. Go to http://StreetGuideToVideoMarketing.com

An Introduction to Video Marketing is a post from: eBusiness For Women

First step to a Successful Online Business

Woei Yu — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:00:35 +0000

One of the best “secrets” to internet marketing is to find a underserved niche market – and serve them with the products and info they want.

Not much of a “secret” now, is it?

The concept sounds simple enough, but I find that for many folks (unfortunately even myself), actually going and FINDING a niche market proves to be a very difficult task – let alone finding niche keywords to go with it!

But before I even jump into the how and why of finding a niche market.

Let me tackle a more fundamental question.

What is a niche market?

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

from Wikipedia

Let’s simplify it ….

A niche market is the subset, or the sub-sub-subset of a bigger market.

from eBusinessForWomen

Okay … Let’s break it down even further …

For example, cooking is a market, right?

Products are marketed to cooks all the time…and it is VERY big and very profitable market.

I sure spend my fair share of money on cookbooks and gadgets.

(By the way, for anyone interested … I am still hoping for a Creme Brulee Torch for Christmas)

But the thing is, you can’t effectively try to make one web page, or one little website, that appeals to ALL cooks. To me, that is going back to what my grandmother used to always tell me -

When you try to please EVERYONE you end up pleasing NO ONE!

So, what we need is a niche market within the cooking market.

How do you find a niche market?

Well, going back to the cooking example, I have an insanely and *gulp* unhealthy sweet tooth.

Let’s try to find some examples of niche markets within that market, okay?

Going to the Google Keyword Tool, I type in the keyword “Cooking Dessert“, and concentrate on monthly search volume between 1,000 to 10,000.

Why Monthly Search Volume of 1,000 to 10,000?

Pssssttt… Let me tell you another best kept secret.

Most smart Internet Marketers target keywords between 1,000 to 10,000.

Anything higher, it will be a market too tough for us regular Janes to get into.

Anything lower, and there are not enough interest to warrant a second look.

With that…. below are the keywords I pick that strike my fancy.

appetizers desserts
authentic desserts
breakfast desserts
cheese desserts
holiday desserts
india desserts
korean desserts
mexican food desserts
rice desserts
spain desserts
thai desserts
vegetarian desserts

And this is just a small subset of more than 50 keywords between monthly search volume of 1,000 to 10,000

The Perfect Niche Market

To me, the “perfect” niche market is when I match the “who” with the “what” and find that the demand for that info/product is HIGH, but the supply of resources offering it is LOW or is of low-quality.

Yup, right back to good ol’ supply and demand

Finding a niche market is not difficult – the only tool that is absolutely necessary is your brain.

Although having the right tool like Google Keyword Tool does make your life easier.

Make a list of things you like to do… then, make a list of all the types of people who also like to do what you like to do.

See what is available online for these folks.

See if you can make it better.

Now you probably asking yourself…

If it is so simple, why most of us (including yours truly) just couldn’t find a niche market.

For me, figuring out which of the many niches to concentrate on is a problem.

I simply just want to do them all.

To this day, I still have challenges trying to pick a niche.

But that is neither here nor there.

I am here to help you learn what to do (and hopefully you can do a better job of focusing than me.)

Cheers,

eBusinessForWomen.com

PS: Tell me what you think below if you are part of the “Niche Anonymous” like I am.

PPS: In fact, tell me what you think even if you found a niche and just want to gloat about it.

First step to a Successful Online Business is a post from: eBusiness For Women