I have a client who found his niche a few years ago in the healthcare field. A family member of his was diagnosed with autism and the parents did not know what to do. He saw the child’s mother trying everything to treat his disorder and dealt with many struggles along the way. He almost immediately found a very profitable niche: desperate mothers wanting answers to their child’s illness. He started doing research and found vitamin supplements and lifestyle changes that helped children with autism and put his findings into an e-book–which he now sells for $39.95. Whether his book works or not is beside the point, he is able to make over $700 per day off of a specific niche market and he does very little work to make that happen!

I’d like to invite you to explore the Micro Niche Finder Tool. It’s an amazing product that I use to find niches very easily. You can compile reports, track trends, and easily determine if the niche you’d like to get involved with might be profitable or not.

The biggest benefit to marketing to a niche audience is that paying for traffic is super easy. Think about it, your click through rate is going to be higher so you’re cost-per-click will be lower, your keywords will be more precise and your conversions will be much more cost effective, and your overall cost per conversion will be much lower because your competition is much smaller.

If you find a product within a niche market that you like, don’t think of them as a competitor. Rather, think of them as assurance that the niche is popular and can be monetized. Here are a few popular niches you could explore. To find products for the specific niche, simply type the keyword into Google and click on the publisher’s advertisement. Here are some examples of great niche markets that you can explore:

• Beauty and Skincare – find a book that teaches you how to look younger and remove stretch marks, moisturize your skin, keep your hair health and clean, or get rid of winkles, etc. This is a very popular niche that women respond to!
• Becoming Organized – find a book that helps you organize. Notice all of the televisions shows that are beginning to tailor to dirty people? “Clean House” on the Style Network is a perfect example of this. If you can find a book that you can resell that makes organization easy, create storage space, etc, you will be able to target a great audience!
• Customer Service – A book about what kind of language that can be used in a customer service environment, dealing with complaining customers, creating a happy work environment, entertaining customers, dealing with difficult customers, etc, are great niches to explore. Any number of these can sell very well to your target audience!
• Pet Care – Pet care is something that many people interested in. If you can find a book that teaches you how to train your pet, teach it tricks, control fleas and odors, or stop dog aggression are wonderful markets to explore!
• Fashion – How to get a deal when shopping and how to bargain, making an impact on your wardrobe, how to dress with style, how to shop on a tight budget, or how to color match your clothes are good niches as well.
• Gardening – Most people do not have green thumbs. If you can find a product to teach you how to fix a bad lawn, how to create a magical garden, creating an herb garden, or take care of houseplants are all great niches.
• Fitness – Weight loss is another popular niche, but so is maintaining the perfect weight, keeping your whole family healthy, getting on a fitness regiment, building muscle, etc.
• Health – If you can target a health audience, like someone dealing with cancer, or if you have a natural cure for a disease, or if you can teach someone how to deal with a disorder like ADD or Down syndrome, you can target another very “desperate” audience.
• Home Repair – Everyone wants to learn how to do it themselves. If you can teach someone how to paint, put up drywall, fix plumbing, or wire electric outlets, you target another great audience.

The best way to purchase rights to a product is by contacting the author of the product. You can purchase anything ranging from software, e-books, and even entire companies-everything on the internet is for sale!

On a whim, I decided to dive back into affiliate marketing, because I saw so many of my favorite websites gain huge successes as a result. After plenty of reading, I realized WHY my AdWords campaign failed. It wasn’t Amazing Guitar Secrets that caused me to fail-they specifically designed there home page to generate as many sales as possible, obviously the ball was in my court and my failures were my fault. I realized that “guitar chords” was not exactly what the person was searching for. Bidding on such a vague keyword is like shooting fish in a pond. Instead, I decided to bid on something much more specific like: “How to Play Guitar”. By bidding on such a targeted phrase, I finally started getting conversions.

If there is anything I can teach you from my story, it is that researching keywords that work vs. keywords that don’t work are imperative to your success as an Internet Marketer. There are several places you can go to research, here are a few that I recommend.

• WordTracker is probably the best website to use when researching keywords. They do charge a small fee for their service, but you don’t need any kind of subscription if you’re only generating keywords for one website.
• Another service is Keyword Discovery, which is highly comparable to that of the Word Tracker service.
• There are also some free alternatives. Yahoo! Search Marketing has a keyword tool that will help you find relevant keywords in your category called the Inventory Search.
• Google also has a few tools, including their Google Suggest tool and their Keyword Tool for Google AdWords.
• SEO Book also has a wonderful keyword research tool as well.

When researching keywords, it’s also very important to remember that some of the first results these tools give you are going to be very competitive. Many people find much more success by researching “niche” keywords, which help them generate better traffic via organic search results and pay-per-click.

For my Amazing Design Secrets Course, I got into a very competitive market. It wasn’t that there were hundreds of other books just like mine-on the contrary; I have one of the only good web design internet marketing books on the internet-but I was competing against Universities who had web design programs (and were willing to pay as much as $10 per click for their website to be listed in Google AdWords). I had to get creative and go niche, so I tailored my product for individuals who wanted to learn web design to make money. Instead of bidding on keywords like “how to design a website”, I bid on “how to design a website for affiliates” and “how to market a website online”.

Finding the right keywords will save you an enormous amount of time and money in the long run and will bring you plenty of other benefits.

We’ve all heard the saying, “I can sell ice to Eskimos”, well, the truth is that nobody can really make a money selling something to someone that has absolutely no use for and no interest in—and you certainly will not make a living selling ice to Eskimos. It is very difficult to market a vague topic. In fact, I encourage you to not even promote or create vague products for several reasons. For one, they’re very expensive to market. Could you imagine the competition involved in a category like “music” compared to a category like “how to play lead guitar”? The “music” category is going to cost you a fortune and most of your traffic is not even going to be relevant. Imagine spending money in advertising and having 1/1000 people buy your product—if you’re lucky. I’ve seen this mistake over and over again and I know better than making this mistake in every endeavor I get involved in. Now, a category like “how to play lead guitar” is very specific to a much targeted audience. You’re practically selling your product to your customer before they even visit your website. If your product is specific enough, you can increase your conversion rate from 1/1000 sales to massive 1/10 sales.

Here are a few products that have performed very well in their respective niche markets. Most of them can be found on the ClickBank marketplace to research, but these are a few that I promote regularly because they perform so well in all of my campaigns

• Jamorama
• How to Catch a Cheating Spouse
• Rocket Piano
• Rocket Spanish
• Singorama
• How to Stop Dog Aggression
• Offshore Oil Rig Jobs
• Job Interview Success System

Notice how targeted these products are? Some of them even go for the desperate factor and in my experience the desperate factor sells very well in this business. Those who are looking for advice and are searching for it online want privacy and are desperate enough to search for “the easy way out”. Take “How to Catch a Cheating Spouse”, for example. The person searching for this product obviously wants to know “How to Catch a Cheating Spouse” and he or she is probably willing to fork over some cash to find out. These kinds of products are everywhere on the internet and in every possible category. You have two big choices when building an advertising campaign and they are to either create a product of your own product or promote someone else’s product (see the next chapter). The most important step is to find an audience that you can relate to.

One tool that I feel is well worth your investment is the Micro Niche Finder Tool. It’s a powerful new software tool that uncovers hot untapped niche markets that have been completely overlooked by the masses and allows you to swoop in and absolutely dominate these niche markets. It has greatly helped me find new interesting niche markets and make huge profits on them. Research is one of the most important aspects of online marketing because it is easy to build a great product, but it is not easy (and sometimes not even possible) to promote even a good product that no one is interested in purchasing.

Many people ask me “if I make my product extremely targeted, won’t I be missing out on customers?” No! In fact, you are most likely gaining customers. There are billions of people in this world and the probability of finding people who are interested in what you have to say if extremely high—but only if you market to those who are interested in what you have to say. That is the beauty of Internet Marketing! With television and radio advertising, it is very difficult to narrow down your marketing to specific group of people. This is why most products that are sold on this media are vague products that everybody can find a use for. Let this be a warning: these are the hardest to promote and the most expensive to find leads for. The internet opens up new opportunities for higher quality products that are relevant to what the customer wants. When you do good market research and heavily target and dominate a market, the possibilities are endless!

In my experience, the health and fitness categories perform really well in niche markets. The “Easy Quit System” is an excellent example of this. It’s a product devoted to helping people quit smoking and for a small fee, he promises to make that happen. The creator of this system obviously knew that he had a great selling product before he even developed it. I’m sure he had to spend very little on advertising to achieve extremely high results. However, that domination only lasted for short period of time because eventually several other “quit smoking” systems have become competitive and the cost of advertising has skyrocketed. However, his product still ranks very highly on Click Bank and is heavily promoted by his affiliates.

Good niche marketing goes after the desperate factor and has customers sold before they even visit your website. I encourage you to find the niche that works for you and results in higher and more profitable results. Remember, you can truly sell ANYTHING on the internet—and InfoProducts are a fast growing method of generating revenue—but you’ll see more results if your product is exactly targeted to what a customer is looking for. I encourage you to experiment with the Micro Niche Finder Tool—or your own market research—and I truly believe it is the best way to break into the most profitable niche markets on the Internet.

There is a lot of advice that I could give on the subject but I’d like to keep this brief and let you come up with your own method of research—since my way of doing business may not necessarily work for you. Another option is to talk to the competitor’s customers. Talking to their customers of your competitor is the best way to learn where you can improve your business and also get newer clients in the process. There are plenty of public filings about larger corporations, study those and learn from it. It’s a great way to learn more about the products you sell by seeing how others sell their products. Going to networking groups and trade shows is also a wonderful way to study competition and build a successful online business, while also promoting your own business

Finding Colors

Color is the most amazing gift that we have as human beings. It allows us to feel the words we are reading and the actions we see. It’s important to use colors that are legible, relevant, and appropriate for the project you are about to start. There are people who take entire classes totally devoted to the subject, but I am going to teach you the basics of color theory as it relates to web design.

The colors we see in life are based on a color harmony. I could sit here and draw out a color wheel like you probably learned in grade school, but I’d rather teach you how to find these colors based off of your feelings. Lets say that you’re about to build a website for a landscaping company who sculpts gardens, lawns, and creates beautiful outdoor art for their clients. The best way to find colors for your client is to take a look at their work or portfolio. It’s a wonderful way of examining their business and getting inspired by their work at the same time. As your holding that beautiful 8 x 10 picture of their masterpiece in your hand close your eyes and start to derive colors from the picture you just saw, what did you see? I saw green, brown, bright pinks and purples, and that is what I’m going to base my designs upon.

You would be surprised on how relevant your first instincts are in this business. They’re essential to the success of any art you create, because you have to imagine the objects in your head first before you can process the information. Let’s try another experiment with color, and this one is much more on the creative side, rather than the business side.

Imagine, for a moment, you’re favorite flower in the world. I’m imagining a white orchid with small pink spots scattered across in a rugged pattern. Now take that beautiful flower and focus on everything around it, the rest of the garden, the dirt, the grass, the trees, but still focus on that beautiful flower. Start naming the beautiful colors you see (but don’t write them down yet). Now, imagine that there is a woman sitting on a bench in that garden and she’s crying. Start to analyze why she’s crying, perhaps her significant other broke up with her, perhaps she’s lost a loved one, perhaps she’s stressed at work and needs a reprieve in the garden. Now, write down the new colors you see. I guarantee that you’re no longer seeing colors of pinks and greens, but are instead introducing bolder and darker colors to compliment that flower. That, my friend, is what complimentary colors are. It’s taking aspects of an object and making them fit for your situation. I can design an entire website devoted to the situation. Perhaps is “Girl on Bench Recovery Center” or maybe “Getting Therapy from the Outdoors, Inc.”, regardless what you want to call this website, you’ll dealing with thoughts, people, objects, situations, and most of all–feelings. If you choose the wrong color to correspond to this; you can change the entire meaning of the situation. So, you are the artist and scientist and you get to choose which colors go together. Take it as a responsibility to the future of this website that the colors you choose are the best and that they always make a difference whatever service or product you are promoting and trying to sell.

Do yourself and your client a favor, develop multiple color schemes to go by. With the skills I teach you in this book, you’ll be able to easily change entire color schemes out, even after the website is completed and published to the web. There is no such thing as a bad idea, only not so good ones.

Design Secret:

Palette Generator – Palette generator is a free service, where you can upload a favorite photo and create a color palette based off of the colors that are included in that photo. If you are struggling with getting the idea in your head put to good use, this is a great tool to help you accomplish your color goals. http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/colors.php

Finding a Layout

Finding a good layout is the second step to building a powerful and usable online presence. Notice while you’re surfing the web looking at websites that at the very core of most web designs is a cookie cutter approach to its layout. You can do absolutely anything with one row for a company’s logo, another row (with individual columns) for the website’s navigation menu, and a third row with two columns to drop website content and pictures in. However, unless you’d like all of your websites to look exactly the same, it’s a good idea to draw your website’s lay out on paper before you get started. Here are a couple of ideas for website layout to get you started.

What do you notice about these layouts? If you’re thinking that they’re all a bunch of squares, you’ve aced the exam of website layouts. These layouts represent 90% of all websites on the internet today. Of course there are infinite 12 possibilities when it comes to putting your content together, and these are only a few examples, but the concept of putting your information onto a grid is a format that the human brain can easily understand. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which we will talk about later in this course, is derived from the concept of using squares for layout design—and that very concept has existed in art for thousands of years. Draw your website out on paper, begin to experiment on how you would like your website to be laid out and what colors you would like to use on your design. Come up with several ideas and concepts and choose the one that works best for you. Associate a color palette, which you chose in the last section, with layout you just created. Imagine these colors with your layout and put together an actual website in your imagination. Think in your mind all of the details you see, but don’t think too hard because the content brainstorming is about to begin.

Brainstorming Worksheet

Client Name:
Woman’s Networking Group, Inc.

Business Description:
Woman owned business networking group who meets weekly and needs a solution for women to go to see events

Needs:

• (5) Five Page Website
  • Home Page (Introduction Page)
  • About Us
  • Schedule of Events
  • Members
  • Contact Us
• Group owner plans to redevelop the non-profit into a restaurant within one year and also plans to promote this group alongside several other groups she and her members are a part of.
• Website needs to incorporate a liberal and empowering atmosphere for women to feel welcome and inspired
  • Client recommendation: incorporate powerful images of women in art
  • My recommendation: incorporate empowering quotes from famous female leaders

See, that wasn’t very hard at all. It took about two-to-three minutes to get all of my client’s ideas on paper and I was able to give myself a great starting point to the development of her website. Just by understanding exactly what her business model was, I am able to build a template of thought around it—which honestly, getting a grasp of exactly what you are trying to build is sometimes the hardest job a web designer can have.

I recommend, before beginning any web design project to get organized as much as possible. It is never a bad thing to know exactly what you want in your website and it will always put you in a position where you can achieve all of your goals. If you are building a website for someone, they will appreciate your organization and you will have a better chance at wining them over as a future client and many other web opportunities in the future. If it is an independent project you are building for yourself, you will appreciate in the long run having all of your ideas together so you can achieve your internet goals as quick and easy as possible.

Another issue many professional web designers have when building websites on a daily basis is that their clients are uncooperative in the “getting organized” process and they expect you (the designer) to handle the entire situation. You may not be too keen on building a website for a business you are unfamiliar with, but the best web designers are able to theorize (sometimes guess) their clients needs and present them with the best solution possible—perhaps without even knowing what the product is. This is Marketing 101, and it’s a concept which you are not going to learn from college or any book you find relating to web design on the planet, it’s something that you will learn as you grow into an experienced web designer and developer—all lessons I’m going to teach you by the end of this course.