keyword researchToday I decided to expand on my keyword research tutorial by going into more detail about finding and using effective keywords properly. I’ve received a lot of questions on how to apply this and after giving it some thought I decided to do something not a lot of affiliate marketers do, and that is show you a real live example of a niche I decided to try and promote.

The reason is to show you exactly how I did my keyword research using another practical example. In the main keyword research tutorial I used the keyword ideas behind keyword marketing research as the example but this time we are going to look at an actual niche. Again this is something that I haven’t seen any affiliate marketer do, but I am going to break that mold so that the new guy trying to make money online or an affiliate marketer that is struggling his face off to try and make more then 100 bucks a month can see exactly how all this applies to a real niche.

Again finding and using profitable keywords isn’t hard to do, but it does require work, and I’m going to show you exactly how I did it and explain why I did it. Now you might be thinking I will be shooting myself in the foot since I will be revealing one of my niches. Well, if I do oh well, there’s still 100’s of others niches to work.

I started this exercise off on May 1st. I also wanted to start this off with a niche I know nothing about or have ever marketed before, so in essence I am starting right from scratch just like a newbie internet marketer.

Step One – I need a Niche. Now there are lots of resources for finding ideas, the main 2 I use are;

Yahoo Buzz
Google Trends

What struck my fancy here was the Niche Webkinz. Now for those who don’t know, webkinz are stuffed toys with codes that kids can enter online and play within a virtual pet world. I only know this because my kids have a couple each. So even with this limited knowledge I know that kids are eating these things up, but the questions is, can I promote this stuff as an affiliate and make money?..Sure can here’s how.

First let me say that I am trying to answer a few basic questions before I decide to actually try and develop any niche.

What is the Potential Traffic this Niche Might Have?
Is there anyone Buying this Stuff Online?
Is there an affiliate program and are there any other Affiliates?

Usually on a niche I have no idea about the first question I want to answer is, Is there anyone even buying this stuff (niche) Online? No sense putting in a ton of work, if the niche won’t convert to $$$. You can have the most effective keywords in the world but if the niche doesn’t convert to $$$ then there’s no money in it, or not enough $$$ to make my work worthwhile. Now I will say sometimes a niche will tank and sometimes it’ll take off huge in a big way. There really isn’t any magical wand that says this niche is going to be a big time money maker..a good example is last month I took 6 niches from clickbank to develop, guess what happened? 3 of the 6 made money and the others tanked. That is just the name of the game when it comes to making money online. I have no real idea if this niche (Webkinz) will make me any money, but by doing my homework I can minimize the amount of times a niche tanks.

That said for a quick qualifier to find out if a niche sells is to use ebay pulse

Ebay Pulse

Here I can quickly look at categories a niche sits in and evaluate the market fast. Now here’s an Ebay tip that not a lot of people use to determine if a product sells or not. Remember just because you find 1000’s of listings within a niche doesn’t mean it’s selling. Lots of people try to sell on ebay and they tank. So here’s what you do. Once you find a category look on the right hand side for the box titled completed items. Make sure you check this off and filter the results using this. What this does is show you all the completed auctions for that niche. Here’s the secret. What ever is listed in green sold whatever is in red didn’t. See screen shot

retired webkinz

Ok quickly we can see people are buying in this Niche, so this passes my first check.

Step 2 – Now I followed my keyword research tutorial to get me to the point of having about a dozen potential effective keywords that look promising, now we need to get to the meat and potatoes.  this is what today’s post will help you do, take that list of potential effective keywords and take keyword marketing research to the next level. This is effective keyword development in motion.

For this purpose I like to use 2 free tools;

Google Trends
Wordtracker Free Tools

Now for the real work. It takes time but here is where I am trying to answer the rest of the questions I posed above.

To help narrow down what is effective and what isn’t the goal is to match up keywords from our google list that meets specific criteria. Low enough competition and high enough search potential by web visitors to make it worth our while.

You can use your own criteria for a quide but in doing my own keyword research I try to find and use keywords that have less then 100,000 competing websites with a keyword inside “” marks and one that has more then 30-50 hits a day. 100 hits a day would be golden but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, so go with what you think you can manage. By finding effective keywords that meet these 2 criteria we have found the low hanging fruit for any niche. The idea is when I create keyword focused content around these profitable keywords, I have a good chance to score well and perhaps even get indexed on the front page of google for those keywords.

So after doing some more legwork on my potential profitable keywords here is what I found.

retired webkinz, 39,500, 50
cheap webkinz, 20,900, 40
webkinz love puppy, 20,000, 65
webkinz recipies, 2,700, 130
webkinz codes, 42,000, 315
webkinz secret code, 19,000 , 50
webkinz recipes, 49,000, 667
webkinz secret codes, 26,000, 90

The first column is the total competition from google with the keywords in quotes, again trying to find those that have less then 100,000. and next is the number of hits.

Step 3 – Start developing content for these keywords. Now for this niche I will be using both Amazon and Ebay affiliate programs as my money makers. I did this because for this Niche it seemed to be the best way to go. But this can apply to any affiliate network program it all depends on the niche. The key to developing good content is use of the effective keywords.

For example the first keyword, “retired webkinz”. To score well with this keyword I need either a domain name with the keyword in it, or use a sub domain name from free content places like squidoo and huppages and use this keyword. Plus the keyword should also be used within titles of my posts, bolded in my content, mentioned and cleverly written into the content sentance structure. The idea being to tell google hey, this keyword is important.

Now to make maximum use of the traffic potential here you need to take it to the next level. It’s ok to create one page around this keyword, but what if you created a bunch of legit webpages focused around this keyword. For example take any one of your niches you have that is indexed. Great isn’t it? You are 1 of 10 possible results on any given google result search. You pat yourself on the back for a job well done. Now for the killer part, that doesn’t mean your going to get all the traffic now doesn’t it? Nope, your 1 in 10 bidding for the visitors attention.

Now take out of the equation the idea of great titles, great webpages summaries etc how else can you dominate that page? Simple, be more then 1 of the 10 listed results. To do this you need clusters. Clusters of sites all focused all around the same keyword and each site acts like a funnel to your product service or affiliate link.

Here’s what I mean with this niche we are studying
http://www.squidoo.com/retired-webkinz-online
http://retired-webkinz.blogspot.com/
http://retiredwebkinzonline.wordpress.com/

Here are three pages of content I created, all focused around 1 keyword, can you guess which one? Take a look at each webpage, study them what do you see? The keyword “retired webkinz” is in the title, it’s part of the posts titles, I’ve used the keyword in the content itself, the whole idea is the page is built around this one keyword. heck even the name for the site itself has the keyword. Get the idea? Now I just made these, and the goal will be to work these later on and get them indexed. Hopefully, google rewards me with a front page listing. Imagine for sake of argument google does. Guess what? Now if someone searches for this keyword I will be on that front page 3 times. The visitor doesn’t know this, but that’s ok, the idea is I am trying to dominate this keyword and set up all my pages in such a way so as to funnel the visitor to my affiliate link and make a sale.

Step 4 – Rinse and Repeat. Create clusters for each for keyword you did keyword research on. Write articles with those keywords in it, the idea being anytime anyone does a search on this niche All of your sites are found everywhere. This is the base premise behind dominating any niche. This is keyword marketing researching and how to start using profitable keywords.

Now the secret. These steps work with any affiliate marketing program. I doesn’t matter if it’s a product from clickbank, CJ or any of the CPA networks this is how to take your keyword research to the next level. In fact I’ve actually given you more top secret money making tips in this post then most ebooks do and I gave it to you for nothing because everyone that wants to put the time and effort into learning how to make money online should be able to, without getting scammed.

So get out there do your own keyword marketing research and make some money.

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Tagged with: affiliate marketers • affiliate marketing • effective keywords • keyword marketing research • keyword research • niche • profitable keywords

Filed under: Free Keyword Tips

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