Deciding on a niche market to target and researching keywords go hand in hand.  You can’t really do one without doing the other.

1. You must know if the niche you want to target actually has a market.  You wouldn’t want to try to sell products in a niche where there was little or no interest.  Remember the online grocery store delivery sites?  It may have been a great idea, but no one was interested. Creating new markets requires time and money.  Unless you have large amounts of both to spare, you should target existing markets.

2. You need to know what customers in your selected niche are searching for.  You may think they’re looking for product A when they’re really looking for products X, Y, and Z.  Or they may really want more information on a specific topic.  If you provide the information, they just might pay your site a visit and make a purchase.

3. You need to know how much competition you will be facing.  You can almost always find something within any given niche with little or no competition.  But if you don’t do the research to find these hidden gold mines, you could very well be competing with some large established online businesses.  I’m not saying you couldn’t compete with the big boys, but if you’re just starting out, it would be much easier to build a following around a specific element of a niche and expand from there.

So, how can you do the necessary keyword research to successfully compete online?  There are dozens of free keyword tools, and there are dozens of sites that provide historical search information.  But, if you’re really serious, you’ll want to buy a subscription to WordTracker.  WordTracker is probably the best keyword research tool available.  The free version of WordTracker is very basic, but it’s a great place to get started.  The paid version offers far more information, so you may eventually want to give it a try.

Okay, so now that you know where to find a few good keyword resources, let’s talk about how to use them.  First of all, you’ll want to begin with some keywords that you have in mind for searching within your niche.  For example, if you’re wanting to create a website about antique tractors, you would begin with the keyword phrase “antique tractors.”  From there, WordTracker will return a list of related terms that your potential visitors might use to find your site.  Along with the words, you’ll get the number of searches made by visitors for each keyword and the projected number of searches for those words over the next 24 hours.  Drilling down, you’ll get information for each of the major search engines, such as the number of competiting web pages for any given keyword.  You’ll also get the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) number, which compares the count of searches for a keyword with the number of competing web pages.  This number helps identify words that you could target with the best chance of getting a top spot in the search engines.

To summarize, don’t fly blind when it comes to creating content for your website.  First, find out what your potential visitors are looking for.  Then find out how much competition you’ll have for your selected keywords.  And finally, create content for publishing on your site that incorporates those keywords that will provide the best chance for getting located by potential visitors.  In an upcoming post, we’ll look at this in more detail.  Plus, we’ll look at some interesting ways to use what you learn from your keyword research to really boost traffic to your sites.

Anything classified as “public domain” is free to use for your own purposes.  When you hear the term “public domain” in the realm of online business, it is being applied to creative works of some type.  This may include books, movies, works of art, music, images, photographs, etc.  The reason public domain works are so valuable is that they can often be converted into information products that you can sell for a profit.

How to know if a work is in the public domain

Copyright laws vary by country, so you will need to become familiar with the laws in your country before you utilize public domain works.  In the United States, there are three general rules for evaluating the public domain status of creative works:

1. Works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain.
2. Works created after March 1, 1989, even if not published, are copyright protected for 70 years after the author’s death. Works made for hire (corporate authorship) after March 1, 1989 are copyright protected for 120 years from creation or 95 years from publication, whichever is sooner.
3. Works published in the United States between 1923 and March 1, 1989 are also copyright protected, provided that the formalities are observed.

To help clarify the rules, use the following guidelines when determining the public domain status of a work.

A work is in the public domain if it was:

• Published before 1923 
• Published between 1923 and 1978 without a valid copyright notice  
• Published between 1978 and March 1, 1989, without a notice and registration 
• Published between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice but author failed to renew it (According to a report, only 7% of copyrights issued through 1958 were renewed)

A work is not in the public domain if any of the following conditions apply:

• Published between 1923 and 1963 with a copyright notice, properly renewed before its expiration for the first 23-year protection term 
• Published between 1963 and March 1, 1989 with a valid copyright notice 
• Published or created any time after March 1, 1989 (Works after this date are deemed automatically under copyright protection)

Where to find public domain works

1. Using your favorite search engine, search for the following keywords. But, always be sure to double-check any results to be certain the works are actually in the public domain.  Failing to do this can land you in hot water for copyright violations.

• public domain music
• public domain images
• public domain books
• public domain movies
• public domain works
• public domain library
• public domain software

2. Check some of the more well-known online public domain sources:

• bartleby.com
• ibiblio.org
• readprint.com
• gutenberg.org
• retrofilm.com

3. Research for available books at your local library that meet the public domain criteria.

Once you’ve found some material that you can use to put together a product of your own, there are many ways to go about creating a great product.  You can produce ebooks, audio CDs, videos, newsletters, membership websites, etc.  The sky is the limit.  So, do some research up front to find a good niche, dig into the public domain and find some material to make a product for that market, produce the product, and make some money. 

Of course, this is an oversimplification of the steps involved.  But it should provide you with enough information to get you started in the right direction.  Public domain works have created fortunes for many individuals and businesses throughout the last century.  You, too, can utilize the public domain to build your own information product empire.

In the last post, I talked about using the Build a Niche Store script as a way to quickly create a site that can begin generating income quickly.  Although the script is extremely simple to use and provides a great way to generate affiliate income, there are a few things that should be done to get traffic to the site in the beginning.

It’s true that the store script will create SEO-friendly URL’s that will help you to get traffic from search engines using long-tail keywords.  This is because the affiliate listings included in your store will typically include products closely related to your site topic.  These items will have titles and descriptions that provide content for the search engines to index.  When I first checked my site logs, I was surprised to see all of the keywords that were bringing visitors to my sites.

But, you must first make your site visible to search engines or you won’t have any traffic at all… 

To begin, I used the included WYSIWYG tools to add a few content pages.  I did some research on my site topics to create several articles that would be relevant to my visitors.  If you prefer not to write the content yourself, you may also use PLR content or articles from an article directory.  You could also hire someone to write the articles for you through a site like Elance.com.  Just be sure that the keyword you intend to target is mentioned in the article a few times in a number of different ways.

Next, I used the script’s page listing tool to add relevant product listings to each of the pages.  You can do this by selecting the specific product category number from eBay’s category list, or you can enter your own custom search term.  (Just be sure to check eBay to make sure the search term you use will actually return a list of products.)  Adding these listings will add relevant content to your page that may include some keywords you may not have even considered.

Next, I used IBP to submit my sites to all of the major search engines.  Because it often take weeks for your site to be indexed, you want to be sure to do this as soon as possible.  I know that you’ll often read that you shouldn’t do this because search engines will rank you higher if they find you through links into your site like from blogs or forums.  I’ve tried it both ways, and I find that submitting the sites up front with a good tool like IBP works best.  At least I haven’t had any problems getting my sites indexed – and quickly.

Finally, I write articles related to my sites’ topics.  I’ll make a few different versions of an article and submit them to sites like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, and ArticleCity.com.  You can usually submit 3-4 unique articles on your topic to the top article directories to begin getting a few good links into your site.  You don’t really need to submit to hundreds of directories, especially now that search engines are smart enough to ignore duplicates.  Be sure to include a link to your site in your author bio because that will drive traffic back to your site.

You can then follow up by making relevant posts to blogs and forums, wihch include a link back to your site.  You’ll also want to alter the anchor text on the links when possible.  For example, if your site is about model airplanes, you might want to change between the anchor terms model plane, model airplane, or model aircraft.

NOTE: If you’re not familiar with the term “anchor text,” it’s the word shown in the browser that is linked back to your website.  The HTML looks like this: 

<a href=”http:\\www.profitwithyour.com\”>Make Money Online</a>

You replace the website address with your own, and the words between the >< brackets is the anchor text.  In this case, the anchor text is “Make Money Online.”

There are dozens of ways to get traffic to your site.  Using the technique I’ve outlined here will get you going quickly without a lot of effort.  You can always write more articles and continue to post in blogs and forums to increase the number of links.  Add to this numerous ways to get traffic from sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Squidoo, MySpace, and YouTube, and you see just how quickly you can start building a steady flow of traffic to your new online store.