Niche marketing is marketing that is focused specifically on the needs of a very targeted group of users. Such a market is typically not large, so that the competition is manageable for the less established players.
Online, niche marketing usually refers to the technique of entering a niche market in which the search engine competition is low compared to the potential or profitability of the market. Usually, you will go about it in this way:
* Research keywords that a surfer will use to find what they want. Look out for those particular keywords which has a good potential for profit and not a lot of competition in the search engine rankings.
* Build a blog or website around those keywords.
* Use on-page SEO techniques to optimize the website for the targeted keywords.
* Get inbound links to your site or blog by submitting articles to the article directories. In addition, you can also network with other webmasters and get links between your sites or blogs.
* Keep building inbound links until your website ranks at the position you want in Google for your targeted keywords.
I have outlined the basic steps above but you will probably have to mix and match as necessary. Niche marketing is definitely not an exact science and you have to adjust accordingly.
Expected Cost
The only thing that I think you really must pay for is your web hosting and your domain name. A web hosting account that allows multiple domains goes for about $10 a month. A domain name costs about $10 a year, or less than $1 per month.
There are other services you might want to consider spending money on as they will increase your productivity, and in the long run, give you a better return on the time you spent:
* Paid writers for your articles, websites and blogs. You can look for them at job sites like eLance.
* Submitting your articles to all the various article directories, websites and blogs is time-consuming and probably one of the most boring activities known to man. If you can afford it, you really must get a service that automates the submission.
* Getting other webmasters to exchange links with you would also take up a large portion of your time. There are some services that brings together webmasters interested in link exchanges, and some would even monitor the backlinks resulting from link exchanges for you.
Skills Needed
You don't have to be William Shakespeare, but you must have good grammar and be able to present your ideas in a clear and concise fashion. In addition, good spelling is also a prerequisite. Even if you are intending to outsource the writing, there will be times when you would want to do a simple rewrite to avoid being flagged for duplicate content.
When you are starting out, you will be doing a lot of the computer and web related work yourself. You will find yourself installing software, updating your name servers, configuring your web hosting package, and other related stuff. You don't have to be a computer whiz as instructions will be provided, but you do have to be computer literate enough to understand those instructions.
Niche marketing cannot be seen as just a sales job but must be seen in the larger context of a business. And by its very definition, each business is unique. Although I have broken niche marketing into a few simple steps, you must look at those steps as an integrated whole, that is, as a business. As a niche marketer, you are not a salesman but a businessman.
Online, niche marketing usually refers to the technique of entering a niche market in which the search engine competition is low compared to the potential or profitability of the market. Usually, you will go about it in this way:
* Research keywords that a surfer will use to find what they want. Look out for those particular keywords which has a good potential for profit and not a lot of competition in the search engine rankings.
* Build a blog or website around those keywords.
* Use on-page SEO techniques to optimize the website for the targeted keywords.
* Get inbound links to your site or blog by submitting articles to the article directories. In addition, you can also network with other webmasters and get links between your sites or blogs.
* Keep building inbound links until your website ranks at the position you want in Google for your targeted keywords.
I have outlined the basic steps above but you will probably have to mix and match as necessary. Niche marketing is definitely not an exact science and you have to adjust accordingly.
Expected Cost
The only thing that I think you really must pay for is your web hosting and your domain name. A web hosting account that allows multiple domains goes for about $10 a month. A domain name costs about $10 a year, or less than $1 per month.
There are other services you might want to consider spending money on as they will increase your productivity, and in the long run, give you a better return on the time you spent:
* Paid writers for your articles, websites and blogs. You can look for them at job sites like eLance.
* Submitting your articles to all the various article directories, websites and blogs is time-consuming and probably one of the most boring activities known to man. If you can afford it, you really must get a service that automates the submission.
* Getting other webmasters to exchange links with you would also take up a large portion of your time. There are some services that brings together webmasters interested in link exchanges, and some would even monitor the backlinks resulting from link exchanges for you.
Skills Needed
You don't have to be William Shakespeare, but you must have good grammar and be able to present your ideas in a clear and concise fashion. In addition, good spelling is also a prerequisite. Even if you are intending to outsource the writing, there will be times when you would want to do a simple rewrite to avoid being flagged for duplicate content.
When you are starting out, you will be doing a lot of the computer and web related work yourself. You will find yourself installing software, updating your name servers, configuring your web hosting package, and other related stuff. You don't have to be a computer whiz as instructions will be provided, but you do have to be computer literate enough to understand those instructions.
Niche marketing cannot be seen as just a sales job but must be seen in the larger context of a business. And by its very definition, each business is unique. Although I have broken niche marketing into a few simple steps, you must look at those steps as an integrated whole, that is, as a business. As a niche marketer, you are not a salesman but a businessman.
About the Author:
While ideas are easy to come by, those that are easy and really work are not. David Lim runs a site about easy money making ideas that are practical, quite easy to implement and works well given some time and effort. Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.
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