Who needs mixed martial arts or the World Cup when you’ve got a friendly Niche Site Competition to get your adrenaline pumping?
After announcing Monday that fellow blogger and good friend of mine, Tyrone Shum, challenged me to a Niche Site Competition, the response has been amazing. I didn’t expect this many people to get excited about it, and it actually makes me want to do something more than a tiny little product niche site, which I had originally planned. I want bigger results – something comparable to the results I had with my site at GreenExamAcademy.com.
I’ve done it before – and I know I can do it again.
After reading all of the comments, both here at SPI and on Tyrone’s blog, one thing is clear – everyone knows that I’m at a huge disadvantage because I’ve chosen to do a lot of the work on my own. Tyrone has a dedicated team that has actually selected his niche for him (based on criteria that Tyrone created for market research, which I’m pretty sure he’ll share with you) and they’ve already started building his site too.
It’s clear that the right move is to actually outsource certain aspects of your niche site.
I know this.
The cost of the work done by others can come back in profits faster, since things are moving more quickly. However, not all of us have the resources (or the patience) to find a reliable team of people to work for us, which is why I’m going to do a lot of the things on my own. If I do end up outsourcing anything, it will be on a per task basis, and I’ll show you which tasks those are and the process for finding people to do that for me.
You don’t need a full time team working for you to succeed, and hopefully I can prove that to you. Then at least when you do outsource something, you can point your own virtual assistants to my tutorials, or know what your VA should (or should not) be doing.
Finding a Profitable Niche
I spent a good three straight hours doing some market research before I narrowed down my niche. To me, this is the most important part of the process, and can mean the difference between a site that makes money, and one that doesn’t.
Here is an overview of the process I used, which was highly influenced by Glen’s interview in the Third Session of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. I will get into detail about each step later in this post:
- I came up with a list of 7 passions, 7 problems and 7 fears, making sure to stay away from anything that deals with making money online. (Side note: I once won $1,024 on a Blazing 7s slot machine, so I consider 777 to be a lucky number of mine. Hey – nobody said superstition doesn’t play a role in internet marketing.)
- From that list of 21, I selected my top 10 potential markets.
- I did keyword research for each of those markets, hoping to find any related terms that fit my criteria, which I will share in detail below.
- If any related keywords stood out to me, I immediately checked to see if the domain name matching the keyword 100% was available. If the exact match was not 100% available, I moved on to another related term, or another market.
Let’s break it down.
Passions, Problems and Fears
I was originally going to do a tiny product niche site, with a keyword and domain name that matches the product of choice 100%. These are the type of niche sites that I’ve been doing lately, and they seem to work. I started with researching the product first, and then comes the keyword research behind it.
The reason I’m steering away from a specific product niche site now is because the earning potential is far less than targeting an actual market, and because this is a competition I want to bring out the big guns. By targeting a market that involves a passion, problem and/or fear that I or someone I know has, I can be sure I’ll be interested in it enough to put forth the extra effort needed for it to become a potentially high profit site.
Here is a screenshot of a mindmap of my 777:
From this list, I narrowed down the list to a top 10, just based on what interested me the most. I knew I could always go back to this list if for some reason the top 10 didn’t work out in the keyword research or domain selection phase.
Here is my top 10:
Keyword Research
Now it’s time to figure out if these markets are something that other people are interested in too. On top of that, we need to know whether or not there are any related keyword terms that have a somewhat high search volume, and relatively low competition. This gives us the best chance of getting on the first page of Google, while still seeing enough traffic to do something worthy.
Remember, it’s all about getting on the first page of Google.
Like I mentioned in my Market Samurai webinar, there are ways to do all of this research for free, but Market Samurai (free trial) makes the process a whole lot faster and easier for me. What took me 3 hours may have taken me 3 days.
Instead of doing a whole number of screenshots, I decided to capture this video that summarizes how I did my research and how I landed on my niche:
(watch Selecting a Niche Market – Pat vs. Tyrone Niche Site Challenge on YouTube)
So there you have it! I’ve selected my niche (if you didn’t watch the video, it’s “Cop Training”) and I was able to pick up an exact matching .net domain.
Note: because Tyrone and I are revealing our niches, we’ll do our best not to skew the numbers because we’re reporting our results on our blogs. This is why you won’t see us link directly to the site.
Again, thanks to Market Samurai, I was able to find a niche with a relatively low amount of competition, and a relatively high number of searches and potential traffic. You don’t need it in order to find a good niche to get into, it just helps speed things up a bit.
I’m excited to see what happens next! If I didn’t say so already, best of luck to Tyrone and everyone else who is participating along with us.
Cheers!
What do you think about the niche I’m getting into?
Other Posts in The Niche Site Duel Series
- Niche Site Duel: I’ve Been Challenged, and I Accept! (8/16)
- Niche Site Duel 002: Finding a Profitable Niche – My Process Revealed (8/18)
- Oops. The Niche I Selected is Bad, and Here’s Why (8/20)
- Niche Site Duel 003: How to Setup a Niche Site – Before You Add Content (8/25)
- Niche Site Duel 004: My Content Strategy (9/10)
- Niche Site Duel 005: My Backlinking Boo Boo (9/13)
- Niche Site Duel 006: My Backlinking Strategy (9/14)
- Niche Site Duel 007: Ranking and Traffic (and Earnings!) Update (9/29)
- Niche Site Duel 008: My Monetization Strategy (10/26)
- Niche Site Duel 009: I’m On The First Page of Google! (10/27)
- Niche Site Duel 010: I’m Ranked Number One in Google!! (11/8)
- Niche Site Duel 011: THE Backlinking Strategy That Works (11/10)
- Niche Site Duel 012: An Experiment and Income Update (11/29)
- Niche Site Duel 013: CPA Promotions, Private Advertising, Job Board and Income Report(1/14)
- My 275% Increase in Adsense Revenue (1/26)
- Niche Site Earnings and Directory Listing Update (3/11)
- I Was Just Offered Five Figures For My Niche Site! (5/11)
- Niche Site Update – New Content, Record Earnings, and What’s Next (5/26)
- Niche Site Duel – One Year Later (Earnings and Traffic Update (8/15)
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Hi Pat,
I think you selected a great niche. Police training. Seems interesting!
It is really exciting to watch how you make a niche site, and see the exact methods, step by step.
You were right about giving us the front row seats to this competition! I am glad I am here and watching the competition!
Best of luck to you Pat!
Kindest,
Nabeel
I’m glad you and everyone else are so excited about it! I think in the end, everybody, including the spectator, wins. Thanks Nabeel!
Hey Pat,
Love how you used a mind map as a part of your research. I use mindmeister and cacoo a lot for my maps.
Curious…now that some time has passed, are you still brainstorming in this way?
I find Google Instant to be one of the best brainstorming tools and used it to discover my last 6 profitable niches.
Trent
I, too, fear speaking in front of large crows.:) (see screenshot #1). Thanks, this is really interesting and I think I’ll learn a lot from this competition series.
Yea – that was a biggy of mine not too long ago, and I know a lot of people have the same issue. And honestly imagining the audience naked or in their underwear only makes things worse, at least for me! Haha.
Thanks for following along, Emily!
So, Pat. What kind of Crows do you have that will come and listen to you speak. I’d be afraid of those kinds of birds too!
Seriously, Loving this challenge
Holy crap – I just realized why people were saying crows instead of crowds. LOL. I can’t believe it took me 24 hours to figure that one out.
ROFL!
HaHa Pat. I just got the joke right now too, after you finally commented.
Yesterday, I was just searching for crows in the screenshot no.1, and I couldn’t even find that!
Completely and totally hilarious. The mental image this conjured up was pretty crazy.
)
I know it’s nearly a year later, but I need to say that the part about the crows here in the comments really cracked me up. And while I’m saying that, I also want to say thank you to you, Pat, for sharing this very awesome resource. I’m putting your tips to use, and I’m extremely glad I stumbled across your site (while doing a check on a keyword I was positioning myself in, of all things).
Hi Pat!
Thanks for this!! I can’t wait to watch your video when I get home!! My niche site has been up 5 days and it’s still not ranked. I’m sure I’ll get some good tips from following your process to change that!
One question I’ve been wondering about – once you get a good ranking, what then? I think the idea is to not have to continually add to the site, but rather to be able to let it go and still make money on it. Once it gets a high ranking on Google, will it stay there without doing anything else?
Good question Karen.
Really, it’s just about being ahead of everyone else. If no one else is competing for a place in the front page of Google, or they aren’t just doing a good job, then you have nothing to worry about. Obviously, if others are trying to compete with you, then you have to do what you can to maintain rankings and staying ahead of them.
Naturally, though, once you get on the first page, things happen like other sites linking to you and people referring your website to others which helps you stay up there too.
It depends on the niche you’re in, I guess that’s what it comes down to. Good luck with your sites!
Pat,
This is awesome, one blog post and you have given us tons of information on finding a niche.
The competition is getting good I can’t wait for what’s coming next.
I’m thinking of giving Market Samurai a try it does seem like an all-in-1 tool.
Great post,
Edgar
It’s honestly one of the best purchases I’ve made regarding my online businesses and niche sites.
Glad to see you’re excited, and I can’t wait to share whats next. Cheers!
Thanks for the video on how you selected your niche. I can see how that software can very helpful in speeding up the process!
It definitely helps Rachel! Cheers!
I see that you aren’t too worried about what kind of product you will be marketing. I would think that this would play a bigger role in choosing a niche. (especially in a competition)
Is there a reason why you aren’t too worried about that?
Good question – maybe it’s because I already have experience with study/training through a website, and I know exactly what kinds of things people are looking for. The products are important, but after doing some further research regarding adwords and how much people are paying for things related to this niche, I know there are a number of products out there. As far as what type – that may come when I see what kind of traffic I’m getting and what people are clicking on.
Great question! Thanks!
Hi Pat
Is there any existing affiliate products selling well in that niche?
Maybe you could start from there, unless you assume that you will create your own infoproduct from scratch when launching your micro-blog.
It might be wiser to get positionned in your niche first and start making some money with the lowest initial investment (basically set-up the blog & few articles to generate traffic + affiliate link to start making money), and if the sales results are promising to increase your ROI by creating your own info-product
Lower risk, Higher Time-to-market. ¿Does it make sense?
Pat, this is really great stuff. I’m currently exploring several niches in a couple internet marketing programs (to learn the basics) and they use similar strategies, especially with market samurai which is a great tool. What I like about your tactic is it really makes it less scientific and almost more psychological, by using the 777 method. That’s a fantastic way of finding a niche but its great to see two different approaches at work.
Keep it up and I’ll be following diligently!
Hey Mike, sounds like you’re right in the middle of doing the exact same things as us! As much as I think the numbers are important, I think the psychological part is important too. Cheers dude!
Pat, I hate to be the negative voice here, because I’m a huge fan and all, but as a former cop I feel I should speak up. What are your qualifications for this project? Don’t get me wrong, if done right this could be a great help to a lot of folks in LE, but keep in mind that cops’ lives depend on the quality of their training and there’s a lot of second-rate training products on the market already.
Best of luck, though- I’ll be watching closely! If you come up with a quality product, I’ll shut my mouth and even add a link from my own blog!
I don’t exactly what Pat has in mind in terms of monetizing this site, but there are a lot of ways to monetize it without actually being the one to provide the training material. For example, he can link to a CPA offer for a real cop training school, where he’ll get paid each time someone clicks through his link fills out a short application.
Again, this may very well be irrelevant to what he’s planning, but I just wanted to ease your concerns a bit.
Hey V-Man,
First of all, thanks for your service. I highly respect police officers and the duty they serve, which is another reason why I like the niche that I chose.
Eric is right, there are actually a number of ways of monetizing this site, and helping future officers without actually creating the products on my own. What if I had a product that included interviews from police officers and their own tips for training and joining the force. Also, I could partner up with a police officer so he could make sure that any products I do create (if I go down that route), are worthy for potential police officers’ eyes. And lastly, there are study guides and practice exams that are already available, as I’m sure you know, and I could help people decide which ones are good, and which ones are not so good, and throw in an affiliate link at the same time. Sort of like a review site. There are a lot more options, but I understand your concern, and am actually really glad you asked.
You don’t have to be in the industry or an expert in order to succeed at providing quality information. Such was the case with my site at GreenExamAcademy.com. I created the site as I learned (which I plan to do with this site as well), and because of that I think the material was more genuine and easier to understand, since I’m “fresh” to the scene.
Thanks for the best wishes, and I hope to put your mind at ease when you see what I come up with for the site.
Cheers!
Guys, I’m not knocking outsourcing, heaven knows I do enough subcontracting during my “day job”. Leveraging other peoples’ skills is the only way to complete a large-scope task, but keep in mind that while you can outsource the labor, overall responsibility for this site’s content will rest with the manager/developer (Pat). My biggest concern with managing subcontracted services is always making sure that we have proper oversight in place, in order to guarantee customer satisfaction when it comes to the overall quality of the service provided.
Pat, I don’t mean to sound like I’m doubting your ability, since I’ve gotten pretty decent results by following your advice on my own blog. It sounds like you’re on the right track, and I’ll be watching this next project with interest. Crush it!
Great “niche finding” post, Pat. It’s nice to see the thoughtful process behind niche selection. Usually when people create niches sites and talk about them, square one is “So I picked this niche…” No one every really talks about the process of selecting their niche.
While I agree that outsourcing can be key (especially because it frees your time and allows you to work on other profitable ventures), it’s nice that you’re not outsourcing, at least for the sake of this competition. I think if you were outsourcing the entire process or large chunks of it, we’d lose some of the transparency of the actual process. Because you’re doing it all yourself, it really allows us to see and understand EVERYTHING that goes into it (to the extent that you actually publicize each detail).
Great stuff as always – looking forward to the next installment.
Thanks Eric – I though most people thought I was crazy for not utilizing outsourcing as much as I could, but like you said I wanted to get people to understand everything that goes into it.
Thanks for the support. Cheers dude!
Very good niche Pat. Getting into another “training” type site could give you a good advantage since you already have experience in the training market. Thanks for the video showing exactly how your decision process works. It makes me want to jump in the competition…getting several good ideas now, and have been thinking about one in particular for a while. Will do my keyword research on Market Samurai now. I also like the fact that you’re planning on doing most of the work yourself, and not outsourcing all of the heavy lifting. I would have to do the same.
Cheers – Bruce
Hey Bruce – if you do want to join, please keep us updated! It’s cool because as you can see everyone has different styles, and maybe we could all learn a little something from each other.
I think the training niche is a good one to get into because, like you said, I have that experience and sort of know exactly what things people are looking for. I have a lot of longer tail keywords in mind that relate to this niche that I could target as well for blog posts and articles.
Thank you so much for doing this competition Pat! I am planning my first niche site right now and seeing how you go through this process is going to help a TON!
Awesome Thomas! I’m glad it’s proving to be helpful – at least so far! Good luck!
I think you picked a great niche. My brother starts cop training next month, through the local community college, and on the weekends he’s doing security for the Minnesota Vikings. He’s excited that he might get to meet Brett Farve;)
Wow – that’s awesome! Adrian Peterson too!
Wow! This is really cool Pat,
I have never saw niche marketing this way. I will now work on listing my own 7 passions, problems and fears and I will work hard to also get a profitable niche.
Keep up the good work and I will really be anticipating your updates.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
BTW Pat: I just sent you a guest post on blog commenting, pls check on this.
Thanks a lot,
-Onibalusi
Thanks Onibalusi, I’ll get to it – I finally have email back up and running again today after a hard drive failure. Will respond soon. Thanks!
Pat was this when the expert recommended backups to your backup’d backup?
Pat, thank you so much for sharing the HOW TOs for outsourcing.
For a second site in Spanish I know I need to do this as the day only has 24h, but really dont know how to do it skillfully.
Wishing you the biggest success EVER
Megumi
Pat, I love you. This was exactly what I needed to see and hear, the thought process of someone else that has been successful and has experience. I’m a loyal follower/fan now. (I found your podcast from itunes top 10 business podcast, your podcast is amazing). Looking forward to see everything you do.
I love the Passions, Problems and Fear process you applied from Glen. The first time I searched for my niche (manually), it took me 9 hours!! Only to end up with a .net domain name. Love how everything is happening real-time with your niche site development. Thanks again for doing this.
Wow! It’s great to see you in action! I am so on this. I’ll have my niche worked out tonight using these steps. Tempted to get Market Samurai….it would definitely make this job easier. Can’t wait until your next post. K.
Hi Pat,
Great topic – I was actually involved (and still am) with the largest non-profit organization in the world supporting police volunteer training. Police training is a very unique, but loyal niche and I’m looking forward to seeing your approach.
If I can ever be of assistance, please do not hesitate to ask.
Best of luck!
Market Samurai was a God-send, Pat. Seriously, for the depth of data and information they give you on your competitors, they could easily justify a $200+ price point. Having Market Samurai has really helped me to better “conceptualize” the battlefield….
The interesting thing I’ve been noticing alot of lately is that people tend to get a bit ‘lazy’ when it comes to backlinking. As a result, if you don’t take the extra time to backlink (outsource or not), more often times than not you can see a significant increase in rank simply because you are doing something that others won’t/can’t/or don’t understand how to do. Alot of people seem to just write content, and stop there….fortunately, where others leave off, it leaves a huge opportunity for us to exploit those weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
And…with the ‘Problems, Passions, and Fears’, that similar to what I did as far as the organization of my Info Barrel product. (It was interesting to see you point out Writer’s Block…)…So, it made all the sense in the world, from a product development and creation standpoint, to really look hard at the specific ‘problems’ that people face. As you know, what resulted was a 6 book course, where each book essentially addressed, on a broader scale, each individual problem that writers/content providers face on Web 2.0 Rev share sites. That was a definitely a great approach to what you are doing now.
Perfect!!
I have never been able to find a niche in 3 hours
WIsh you luck!!
I think you’ve provided a good summary of the processes for finding a niche. I love these types of competitions because as a reader, I get a lot of tips either directly or indirectly, from you guys. Thanks
Nice…$1024 sounds like the Blazing 7′s progressive, the top prize for the $1 machine…awesome. I didn’t know you were into police training…I actually took the L.A. County Sheriff’s written exams and physical test after Cal Poly but would up going into engineering and sticking with that until I discovered SPI that is…
I look forward to learning the process as I get started on my blog site!
Hi Pat,
I think you might have made a slight mistake with going for ‘cop training’. It shows in Market Samurai as having a 67% PBR which usually indicates that people are actually searching for something else. If you dig a bit deeper in MS then you see that the traffic showing for ‘cop training’ is actually coming from people searching for ‘cro cop training’ and ‘mirko cro cop training’. He’s a MMA fighter and people are searching for info on his training methods. They’re not interested in police training.
Sorry if that sounds like a bit of a negative comment but I thought I should let you know what I found.
P.S. Sorry for the re-post I originally left this comment on the wrong post. oops.
Hey Christian,
Thanks for doing the additional research. I was actually looking around for related keywords and came across Mirko Cro Cop too. The PBR of 67% for “cop training” is really high, which is why I didn’t give it any second thought.
I’m still confident that I’d be able to make money from this because I’m sure not everyone looking for the keyword is going for the MMA dude, but it really has me thinking that this may not be the best move, especially because I want to knock something out of the park. I’d probably be able to get a high ranking for this keyword, but I might be targeting the wrong search volume.
In doing some more research, I found a keyword that I like even better that has a higher SEOC, but less strength to compete with in the top 10. Plus, the SEOT is much higher. I’ll probably do an emergency post for tomorrow explaining this, because it’s really important.
Thanks Christian.
Hi Pat,
A PBR of 67% is high but does kind of indicate that there is something else going on. In this case a more useful metric might be exact-to-phrase ratio but MS doesn’t show it. If you look at the broad, phrase and exact match traffic for ‘cop training’ the traffic drops off dramatically when you switch to exact. The exact SEOT for ‘cop training’ is only 24. To me, that shows that people are not searching for ‘cop training’ but ‘ cop training’ or ‘cop training ‘. In this particular case I believe most of the traffic is coming from ‘cro cop training’.
I agree with you about SEOC it is a useful quick check but top 10 strength is much more important. If the top 10 is weak then the SEOC doesn’t matter too much.
Good Luck and thanks for sharing all this publicly, it’s very helpful.
Christian.
I’m super interested in this process. Good Luck on the contest! I am especially interested in how fast you can generate backlinks and what methods you use. Keep up the good work.
Hey Pat
This is getting juicy, man! Hmm, police training for a nice site – very unique and very clever, but I’m curious to know why?
I eagerly await the next installment.
Michael
Cop training, interesting! This is my first time commenting on this blog though I have been subscribed to the RSS feed for quite some time now. Will definitely follow this competition and probably create a niche site of my own as well! Not sure if I should make it public though coz I am not an expert like you guys O_o
I love this contest and looking over your shoulder, as it were, while you plan, grow, and build. “Cop Training”?! That’d be a major turn OFF for me, a dispassion. MOF, NONE of your “777″ rings w me at all. I’m still stuck at square 1: find something that I actually want to pursue amidst fatigue, etc.
Pat,
This is awesome. I love to study someone who is already successful. Best of luck in the competition. BTW, what do you use to capture screen shots? All your pictures always have a cool cut out to them.
Hi Pat,
I really like the how you identifying the “777″ way of searching for a niche site. The real competition is yet to start but i have already learn something out of your process of choosing a niche. As the competition goes along, i am pretty sure there is lots of training stuff for me to dig inside. I can’t wait to explore further in your next post.
Lye
Pat, when I first saw your 777 and your fear of speaking in front of “large crows” – I was astounded. That’s something I never thought.. speaking in front of large crows. Then I began to imagine how it would be like …. having an auditorium full of large crows… and suddenly they all start cawing… as you start speaking….. wow.. that is real scary. LOL…
Thankfully, your final list of 10 made it clear… Phew… I am relieved. crowds are so much better than crows… maybe not a good niche to go after ultimately but still its better than crows.
Dude – I just realized why everyone was talking about crows now. Thanks for the laugh, because I was literally crying when I saw that I put crows and then I imagined a room full of large crows and it scared the crap out of me. LOL.
Hi Pat,
i found your site a long time ago, with your little Niche Challenge you got me finally to write my first comment on your blog.
First of all Smart Passive Income is an incredible Blog, which i really like to read, this involves also the comments on your articles. I learned a lot, and surely i will learn a lot more in the future from you and the other readers.
Second. The Niche Challenge challenged me also a little bit and got me involved, i will participate on the challenge for my own by building my first Niche Website.
Hope all of us will learn a lot from the Challenge here.
Greets
Sebastian
Another great post Pat! Loving the videos too so we can see right over your shoulder. Let the rocky theme music begin playing
Pat,
awesome niche choice! I love that you followed glens 777 approach to finding a niche. Makes selecting one much easier.
It is going to be really interesting to see this process unfold.
Hi Pat, I really hope you wiwn.
Its kinda you versus Tyrone and his team. It woud be interesting to see the difference between Tyrone taking an outsourced approach and you taking a more singular approach (as you were on your own).
I have only recently encountered your site via the pod cast and its really exciting but scary prospect in the chances of going online, forging a business and being a success.
The fear of failure could put many off Im sure but its nice to see someone of your calibre offering tips and I will stay tuned.
Heck I might even consider having a go myself once I have basic grips on the concepts you discuss.
Thanks for your help and good luck!
Hey Pat,
I use MS myself and I was very thrilled to learn that we use it the same way. Now all I have to do is find myself a niche. I’m curious about the 400+ BLP that you had on the SEO Comp. stats and you said that should be no problem for you. How long do you think it will take you to get over 400+ BLP and do you use a tool in order to get that much?
This is exactly how I find a niche too. Where did Glen get the Passions, Problems and Fears from? I’m sure it’s from a book I’ve read (probably by Dan Kennedy) but I can’t remember which one.
I’m excited by this because I’m actually creating my own case study for a course I’m creating (I think I mentioned this in my email) so I’ll compare my results with yours and Tyrone’s too.
Man, I need to get this course finished so I can start a blog and talk about this stuff all the time. I LOVE IT!
Hey Pat,
awsome post! Maybe I should try the “777″ niche research too! It looks really interesting
Hey there Pat,
Thanks a lot for sharing on how you identify a niche (perhaps I think most of them are profitable). I also love your “777″ formula. Maybe that works for me too. Who knows?
That’s a great way to pick a niche with the 777 principle. Will have to try that one, at least it’ll always be something of interest. I guess if you do a niche for all 21 choices then you can set up another 777 list too.
I check the cpc and search volume in the Google adwords tool to see the potential it has to make money, some niches aren’t worth bothering with if it’s too low and use the tools from The Keyword Academy: http://thekeywordacademy.com/coaching/996.html who are updating them shortly. It seems like Market Samurai does that all within the one webpage though.
Good luck with your new niche, I enjoyed the video and will check out market samurai now.
Hi Pat
first up: great thing which you’re doing here with Tyrone.
I have been reading a lot lately about coming up with your own blog etc and the info can get confusing (but that’s another story). I am just wondering now about the niche you selected. Obviously, you have a passion for police training and in the end chose security guard training as your subject you want to write about. Usually I would think that one chooses a niche site s/he knows about because of having more or less experience with the subject. Apart from the fact that your mother, as you say in one of your videos, is a security guard, it seems to me as if this subject is not really something you know a lot about. Correct? If so, I’d be really interested in learning how do you ensure that your posts create value to the future readers?? Of course, you can pick many different subjects within that niche and write about them (as you have already started to do), but: how do you get together the info for the posts?? You simply write whatever comes into your mind? Or do you google a little and then come up with your own article that is mostly a ‘compilation’ of the best thoughts you came across?
That would be really interesting info for me to know because that’s actually what I am struggling with when thinking of starting a blog that, if everything goes well, can be monetized.
Another question that just came up:
when you chose cop/security guard training, how important was the thought of potential making money from it through affiliates (training programs etc)? Or did you choose the niche because it was your most favorite of the top 10 topics?
Sorry if any of the questions might have already come up in the comments to this or any of the other blogs to this challenge. I went quickly through them but couldn’t find anything related to my questions.
Best regards from one of your European readers (German but living in Greece),
David
Hey David – wonderful questions, and hopefully I can address them for you here.
Regarding knowing about the topic you’re getting into, it obviously helps, but it’s not necessary. I know this, because I started GreenExamAcademy from scratch without knowing anything about the LEED exam, and as I learned about it, I posted the information I learned, and honestly I think because it came from someone who before knew nothing about it, it was better tailored to those who also knew nothing about it. That’s the same approach I’m taking with my niche site – although I anything about it from the beginning, I’m learning and I can post what I learn for those who eventually end up at my site.
As far as the information I’m providing, I’m going into it as if I were my target audience, so I’m doing the research online and by phone, and posting my results in articles in my own voice.
To address your last question, about monetization, it’s really important to think about before getting into a niche. What helped me understand that my niche could be profitable was:
1) The numbers I was getting as far as costs per click for people paying for Adwords Ads with the related keywords in my niche. The cost is $2.36 per click for an ad using my niche’s keywords, which is relatively high so I know there are people out there with products competing to get in front of people’s eyes.
2) The further research I did based on #1, which is actually looking to see what Ads pop up in a Google search, and see if any of those companies had something I could potentially be an affiliate for. There are such programs, and even if there wasn’t, the adwords CPC was high enough that I could pull some good revenue from adsense if I wanted to. I may do that at the beginning, we’ll see.
3) There are a number of books available on Amazon around my niche, so there’s a potential to be an affiliate for those, or even possibly someday creating my own information product, which could be a compilation of the information I learn, or even a product I put together with an expert and share the revenue with.
I hope you see my train of thought here. If you have any follow up questions, David, please let me know. Thanks for asking!
Thanks, Pat! I really appreciate the time you take for answering my questions.
How is your opinion, in this context, on membership sites? Your fellow high level bloggers (yes, that’s a compliment for you and your work
) like Yaro Starak or Daniel Scocco seem to be doing really well with those. In your selected niche it seems to me generally possible to come up with a training program for security guards (i.e. texts, videos,…), maybe you can team up with a pro of needed. That seems to me where the real money lies.
I loved Glenn’s process of fears and passions and am excited to hear your acting on his advice and the advice of your Podcast… You’re doing as you say, Pat. Good stuff.
Hello Pat, I’ve been reading your content recently, which is tres good btw, and caught sight of this post…
I was wondering if you might pass comment on the subject that I write about: Snowboarding. I don’t think snowboarding is particularly niche, but there are some challenges associated with the subject.
Snowboarding is seasonal, people (mostly) do it in the winter. Not only that, the bulk of snowboarders, the holiday makers, tend to do it on a “holiday” or “trip” basis, within winter time. So it can be a once per year, with ramp up and ramp down “interest” phases.
Snowboarding is a huge passion for me, which I why I started the blog. Over the last year or so, I’ve wanted to be more strategic in my approach, increase subscribers, interact in social networks, think about offering a product, etc.
Of course, mixing the motive has made me look honestly at the potential for this subject to be profitable. Is the seasonal aspect too much of a hurdle?
Cheers, Gavin
Hey Pat,
Just wondering why you selected a domain with 260 searches a month? You kept the broad search on in Market Samurai, which does not give you the correct number of searches.
In the GKT they record the keyword as having 260 searches. I only use exact search, just wondering why your not as this is not accurate.
Pat, I was curious if you know if there is any difference between using a domain that ends in .com compared to .biz/.tv/.us/.net. Does it affect page rank at all? So would AwesomeKeyword.com rank better than AwesomeKeyword.biz? What about compared to AwesomeKeywordxy.com?
There is a discussion of this on one of Pat’s podcasts. It’s the episode where he interviews the young man who I believe is 20 or 21. The conclusion was that Google supposedly treats them all equally but gut feeling says otherwise basically. In addition I think it looks more respectable to have a .com and just be a little more creative with the name. Maybe a .net but beyond that it looks bad, I would trust the site.
Niche finding is so time consuming it would be a great business for someone to start. Start by asking people who want to start online business about some of their interests, find niches related to those areas for them, give them the top 3, break it all down, that would be a great service.
Hey Pat
when you chose your ideal keyword for your niche site (also in respect to your domain name) and when using Market Samurai, I would like to get your opinion on something, please. In the SEO Competition field, there are the fields DA, PR, IC, BLP and BLP. When choosing the ideal keyword, what is your suggested order of importance of the above aspects? I mean: if there’s lots of green in BLP is that more important than lots of green in DA which again is more important that green in PR etc….?
Thanks in advance for your answer!
Best regards from Greece,
David
Hey Pat,
I also use market samurai and love it! Mainly I have used it for my own product sites and blogs, but recently began exploring niche sites too. Love reading through these ‘duels’ you are having and I wish you would stop GIVING AWAY such premium content!
I recently found a niche that has CPC earnings of $15-30per click, yes it is competitive, but after looking at the data, I think I can get in on some of it, and heck at that price it’s worth at least a good college try right? No it isn’t lawyer or health related, and no I won’t reveal it yet but I may after I get started over on my blog…
Thanks for putting great shizz out dude!
When deciding on a niche I did a search using google keyword tool and I found two words related to what I want to accomplish, both show good stats and low comp. My question is: in combining these two words to create a domain name, am I guaranteed the same stats for these words? So, if a visitor were to type in the keywords in google what is the likelyhood that my site will pop up first (assuming the content is rich and I followed all of Pat’s advise on getting my site up in the ranks).
Pat,
This is an awesome posting. I was wondering if there is a way to do all this without having to buy market samurai. My trial has expired already.
Thank you,
V.
Pat,
The greatest gift you are providing me, along with your first class content, is a focus. For the last couple of years and I have flitted from one thing to another without expensive failure upon failure. I felt like I was working hard, but from watching your site I realise that I have to set my goals. You have inspired me to change my life.
All the best, David
Hi Pat, Thank you for providing this information. I have been following you for some time now, and have decided to take a go at the internet again.
I was unclear on how you weeded out the other 9 areas on your list of 10 areas to focus on for a niche. i.e., did you go through the same market research for all 10 areas, and select the best one, or did you just stop as soon as you found a good niche?
Could you please help me understand a little bit more about how you weeded out the other areas?
Hi Love your ebook, podcqsts, qnd blog info. I am now a member of IBM and really like all the help. I redid my sie just a few months ago about Insurance and thought it wold be boring – get over 200 comments a day. Have several other sites w/o qs much response. TY for your info!
Great..I know you can do it and win the competition….
Hi pat, you just mentioned that you are using (Market Samurai) software but i found out that they sell that software and i am not capable of buying it this time but maybe in the future. Do you have any related software like that that is free?
Hello,
In the most recent of Market Samurai, the screen with the analyze screen has now a dropdown for the period (daily, weekly, monthly). Just to be sure, when you say SEOT should be > 0, is it daily or monthly ? Thanks.
Sorry meant SEOT > 100 above
What do you think of Tyrone’s “MoneyWord Matrix” that he uses for his keyword? I noticed that if you used “Security Guard Training”, since that keyword has >10,000 google search results, it would score in the bottom right “poor” category. However, you seemed to do fine with your selection
I just started following this. The video is great and makes sense. When I log into my adwords and pull up cop training, I only see gloabl searches of 1600 and estimated daily clicks as 0. Am I missing something. Just wondering because I am looking for a niche market also and want to make sure I am doing it right. Thanks.
Great post.
Thank you, Pat.
The whole “crows” thing just makes it better.
Anyone here use the Site Build It niche choosing function(Brainstormer) and how does it compare to Market Samurai?
Hi Pat and great post!
I would like to suggest another factor for coming up with niche ideas, education. I find that some people usually have a background in some topic they learned in school that they know a lot and could potentially mix up with the factors you wrote about such as passion and fears.
Hi Pat. I just came across your blog today and it blew me away! You’ve really been able to make something that’s been so difficult for me (and I imagine lots of others) seem so simple. I’m working on my mind map now and hope to finally begin moving forward. You are incredibly inspiring – even if you are afraid of crows!
Thanks so much for sharing!
All the best,
Peggy
Fantastic Video, well explained.Thanks
hum. this is real nice. really really great.Thanks mate
Loving all the material you have on your site. Just purchases MS -wow – so much easier than the Excel spreadsheets I used to use!!!! I am still brand at this…
Question: I don’t see the steps you used to go from 7 x 3 – 21 keywords ideas from passion, fears and problems…down to just one????? I saw that you just randomly went from 21 to 10…. What did I miss -where did I miss that???? Thanks!!!!!!!
Nice post. You mentioned that you don’t need to have Market Samurai to research niches. Could you write a blog post that explains the manual process of niche exploration in more detail? Maybe you’ve already written one? Thanks.
Never mind. I must admit I like the Market Samurai software so I guess I’ll just get it (through your affiliate link
Thanks for all you do and keep up the great work! I learned so much from your blog and I’m sure others did as well.
Btw I’m a Cal student too. Go bears!!!
Late bloomer in this business and subscriber to your podcast Pat, but still, I want to give a big thanks to your site (and your ‘duel partners’ as well) for the vast amount of knowledge provided.
I have a rather newbie question about keyword research. I’m currently using Brad Callen’s Niche Finder and Traffic Travis (free version), and GKW for my KWR and finally narrowed down to a niche.
However, I’m confused with the ‘competition’ data collected from all three tools show me that the selected keyword(s) I’ve picked has a decent search count (>5K-6K), moderate to high amount of adwords publishers (as confirmed by simple ‘broad’ and ‘quoted’ google search).
With both quoted and unquoted searches (even with related long tail KW), the top 10 results are pretty weak. The top 8 sites having PRs between 0-2) and only 2 out of 20 have PR4 and 5 (one’s a large, multinational company’s own website, the other’s a service company’s website). Traffic Travis already gave it a 5-star “very easy” rating while NF gave it a low 40s difficulty rating.
The confusion lies with the competition results as ‘no quote search’ throws back 11M sites while ‘with quotes’ still throw out 700K sites.
It seems conflicting that the search results and KWR tools findings state it’s a relatively easy niche but the site count is high.
I’m saying conflicting because it seems that you guys are trying to target KW/KPhrases that yield less than 50K search results or so.
I hope you (or anyone here) can chime in. Thanks in advance!!!
Regards,
Dave Tong
In Market Samurai do you place a lot of stock in the referring domains and index count of related pages on large sites like Ask and EHow? I find niches that only seem to be in competition with those sites and there aren’t many backlinks to that particular page but the domain is linked to a lot because of all of their different content.
Great video! I have two clarifying questions:
1. If given the choice of domain names which would you prefer keywordHQ.com, keyword.org, or keyword.net; I am thinking that ketword.org and net help in getting the quick #1 page rank in the short run but would cause profit/traffic loss in the long run if the site takes off via word of mouth, press, from misclicks, and because traffic seekers are so familiar with the “.com”?
2, Also when I do SEOC analysis on some keywords they look like they could have potential but I am not sure. Do you make adjustments if the SEOC analysis is showing red when the first two sites are youtube viral videos or images, do you make adjustments if the sites you have to knock off the first page or wikipedia and ebay item searches with lots of BackLInks?
Thanks so much I feel like I am on my way to making my snowball.
I like the 7 Passions 7 Problems 7 Fears Method, creative and inspiring
I’m just wondering why you’re passionate about police training?
Oh me too, Jean-Luc – I haven’t come across this before Pat so thanks for sharing your process on working out which niche to follow.
I’m looking forward to seeing how it all turned out, and will try not to jump to the ‘last page’ for a sneak peek!
Thanks so much Pat!
Police have training? Kidding! What a creative approach to finding a niche, the sum of all hopes and fears! Might actually stumble upon a topic people really want to know about. Gave me an idea for a post, hmmm, the greatest fear is not death, it’s public speaking. Looking forward to reading the rest of the duel.
Hi Pat,
I see you emphasize the importance of finding a keyword-specific domain name for a niche site. I am wondering if Google looks differently at domain names http://www.PoliceTraining.com vs http://www.XYZ.com/Police-Training/
The reason I’m asking is because I’d assume both domain names above are keyword optimized. Does Google look at domain name keyword density when ranking websites???
Thanks!
Thank you for this info. I am surprised that you went with cop training. It is something that I would never have thought of because I didn’t think it could be niche. I thought most people just contacted the police station and then got the information. I would have never thought of this as possibly being a niche.
hum, this is really nice. it means i have been using the wrong approach for my keyword research
Hi Pat,
Thanks for all the work you have done! I have learnt a lot from all these info!
I have a question about Market Samurai. When I research about SEO Competition of my keyword, what I find is the top 4 results are webpages of Amazon.com and the fifth one is an article from ehow.com. Do I have to bother these results which have high domain age and Google Index Count?
Thank you.
how do I find existing niche sites? This would be good if you know another language and can create a site for that language.
Thank you!
also, how do I find out which ads Google AdSense would display? Is there an AdSense preview mode for keywords?
(I know AdSense also takes your search history and other stuff into consideration, but al the same, this preview feature would be great)
For the design I chose Adam Short’s excellent Niche Profit Press WordPress theme. Unfortunately its only available if your a member of his site. I choose this because of its easy customization, built in plugins, and it offers a choice for 1 column and 2 column design. Having a 1 and 2 column design will allow me to test two distinct styles and see which one works better.
Hey Pat, great video information on how to chose a Niche.
I am also trying to find a suitable niche that I can work on.
Lets see how it goes.
I really wish I knew how you guys do it. I’ve been stuck on this step for so long that I think it’s probably best to give up. How long do you guys normally spend searching for a single niche? Every idea I originally had and have had since is either over saturated or does not have people looking for it. What am I doing wrong?
Hey Chris. same here.
Dude, Pat: It’s been like 3 months and I have followed your process above ^^ and I still HAVE NOT found a keyword that fit your criteria. (I am trying to mimic the same (or better) numbers from your keyword in Market Samurai) – is this normal? I even do keyword research while I am in class/watching T.V with random keywords. I am not entirely sure how you found your keyword SO FAST relative to the amount of time I have spent. The closest keyword I have founded is “midwifery courses” (if anyone wants to steal it go for it
). Is it really *that* competitive or am I just going about this the wrong way? A tip or two would be appreciated pat.
Thanks again!
Dilanka
Three months wow I’m ready to give up after three days. There just doesn’t seem to be anything left (and I’ve dug pretty deep) and the fact that you haven’t found anything after 3 months pretty much confirms it.
Hey Chris:
That’s probably the wrong attitude for this industry I think. The fact that there are TONS of people who make a living online confirms that! Plus how can you possibly DIG DEEP in 3 days? Considering there are literally thousands upon thousands of niches out there. I think it might have to do with a better process and some luck. I am definitely not going to give up on this though – mostly because of the opportunity cost being too high. (The reward is too high rather when you succeed). Don’t get discouraged buddy! — take a day or two off and get back at it. Learn something. Anything new. Don’t just get stuck on keyword research only. Hopefully Pat can chime in (provided he’s not too busy).
Also, feel free to email me anytime, I’ll be happy to share what I have tried and my on going projects.
It takes time Chris, and keyword research is definitely the most important part of the process. If you’re not having fun with and you’re just getting frustrated, then I think maybe it’s not right for you. It’s just part of the process.
I can definitely tell you that I’ve recently found several niches that I’m going to be creating a website for very soon, and new things come out every day that could possibly become a niche one day. I’ll see if I can come up with some tips and tricks for people who are having issues with keyword research soon.
Chris and Dilanka,
I’m in the same boat. I can’t afford to get discouraged because I’ve already quit my job! But, I have been following the process (I have several hundred niches that I’ve brainstormed, not including variations), and I can’t seem to find any that meet the criteria outlined in the how to. I’m not sure if I’m missing something (wondering if things are getting filtered out?). I did notice that in Pat’s version of Market Samurai, he has an option for Google Search Keywords under the Google Synonym tool option on the Key Word tab, and that does not appear in my trial version of market samurai. Could that be our issue?
Good news – I went back and rewatched the market samurai tutorials and used the Golden Rule filters first before adding additional filters that Pat recommended. That did the trick! I have now found several potential options within my interest topic. Hope everyone hangs in there as I was pleased to see there are still opportunity spaces to be found!
Katy,
So about the Google Search Keywords that Pat had in the videos, what exactly is the replacement (that you found) and how do you use it?
Hmm now I understand why you have FANTASY FOOTBALL as a passion.
I typed FANTASY FOOTBALL in to Google and went to images. Go Watch
Hi Pat,
I have been listening to your podcasts and reading your blog for over a year. I now feel I am equipped with the basics (thanks to you) to pursue an online niche site business. I am going to see if I too can make a living online.
I just had a good chuckle at one of your 7 fears. I noticed on your flow chart you to have a fear of speaking in front of large “CROWS”! That would scare me too.
I love all the help you so freely give away.
Thanks
Rob
Hey Pat,
I know this is old. I also know someone else brought this up. But for your search traffic, you are taking the “broad’ match #’s which will take into account anything with those words in it. If you switched to exact (someone actually typing in exactly ‘cop training’ you will notice there isn’t much traffic at all specifically targeting ‘cop training’. Also, in your competition analysis, the first kw you get rid of show comparable results to your cop training with youtube videos scattered on both first page? This step is by far the most important out of all the work anyone will do because it all will come down to all the work you put into this niche and kw’s. The bottom line is you want to provide useful information to someone thats actually going to read it. And then provide them with a answer (whatever your promoting) to help them. Personally, also think its useful to find your niches first, then find if theres even available products/services/leads to use for them. You can spend all your time again finding the perfect kw and then realize theres nothing to promote for it, unless you have something built for it. But if you have time and still check this I would like to know if you have some other reference on your niche selection, product selection and kw research? Thanks.
This post really sells Market Samurai and I think I’ll give the trial version a try. I’ve heard from some of the other podcasters that it is just too slow, and they’ve switched to LongTail Pro. However, not having to pay up front for keyword research is important so I’ll be giving this a try. I wonder if you can get this good of results by just using Google Adwords’ keyword tools. Great video!
Hey Pat,
After reading all you posts about the niche site challenge, you have inspired me to do the same. I just want to see if I can follow your plan and make a relevant, information rich site for my visitors, but of course monetize and try to earn some $$. I already have a niche and a domain name. Now, I just need to figure out what content to put on the site and how to compile it.
I am so glad I found your website. It is very inspirational and I hope I can achieve just a fraction of the success you have. You now have a new loyal follower of you blog!
Thanks,
Chris
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