Bill-Bainbridge.com

Niche Marketing is the last great frontier for the small business entrepreneur. Out there in the ‘real’ world, small businesses don’t have a half fair chance of competing against the giant international corporations of the world. The Internet has evened the odds for small business. The Internet has created a real equal opportunity for those who are willing to use it. There are several different ways to make use of niche marketing and succeed. All of the ways require getting a domain and a webhost, building web pages and adding content. Those are just the basic basics of Internet Marketing in any form. Then there are the choices of how to go about building a successful niche marketing site that will provide you with a profit….hopefully a very large profit.

1. You can create an informational product. An informational product can be articles, reports, and columns, audio or video, or other things. These can be sold as stand alone products or used for advertisement or promotional causes.
2. You can build a content rich web site that will be so interesting it will draw potential customers again and again.
3. You can publish newsletters and ezines that are so full of pertinent information that people will happily pay for subscriptions to them.

All of the above listed ways can be used to create a niche marketing website that has the capacity to make money. There are two things that all of these methods have in common.
1. The topic must be one that helps people solve a problem, makes them healthier or happier, or provides them with information that they want or need in some way.
2. The content of the website, no matter the topic, must be relevant, timely and interesting to the people who are reading it and the website must be easily navigated.

Informational niche marketing websites are the last frontier of hope for the aspiring entrepreneur. The guru sitting alone on a mountain top and charging whatever he wanted for information is a thing of the past. No longer can small business complete in the real world with the giants of big business. The Internet has given those with the ability to produce an informational product a big edge, however.

Here are the steps needed to establish an informational niche market website on the Internet:

1. The first thing to do is to choose a topic….a theme….a subject that your product will be concerned with. The trick here is to get the topic narrowed down as far as it will go. Go from the general topic of dogs down to small dogs down to Poodles down to Toy Poodles….down to how to groom a toy poodle, for example. The more specific the topic, the better it will perform. Choose a topic that will help people solve a problem, make their lives better, and make them look better or feel better or give them specialized information that they need. Choose several narrow topics that you are interested in yourself.
2. Research the market available for the topics you have chosen. There are many avenues open to you to accomplish your research. Ask questions. Visit websites with topics that are similar to the topics you have chosen. Read articles. Learn everything you can before beginning the construction of your informational product.
3. Once you are satisfied with your topic, have done the research and determined that there is a viable market for your idea, the next step is to choose a domain name and buy it. There are several places on the net to buy domain names one is Godaddy.com but it isn’t the only one out there. Choosing a name is usually done by the process of elimination. Make a list of acceptable domain names that describe the topic of your website. Start with the one with the least number of letters in it….less than 20 is better.
4. The next step is to get a host for your website. There are hundreds….more like thousands of companies that host websites. There are free ones and ones that are paid for. There are a variety of options. You will need to do some research and choose the type that is best for you. In very general terms there are shared host servers, dedicated servers and your own servers. It is not practical to try to detail the options in one article.
5. Other than your own informational product you need to choose related content for your website. There are many places on the internet to find content for a website dedicated to almost every topic under the sun. Some content is free for the taking…some must be bought. You can write or video tape your own website content. You can have content written by others. Content is the backbone of your website and this isn’t the place to cut corners. All content needs to be relevant to the theme of your website. It is best that it be original, as well.
6. Find and sign up for affiliate programs for products and services that are related to the theme of your informational product.
7. Build your website. In times past you had to know HTML code and how to use it to build a website but that is no longer the facts. You can find WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that you can use to build your website without needing to know the first thing about HTML.
8. Advertise your informational product. There are many ways to do that but the most common way is by using Google Ad words to get started.

Starting any online business will consist of a few basic steps to get a website up and running. The tasks involved may look a bit daunting in the beginning but the initial steps are really pretty simple. In order to set up a website for any purpose you must:

1. Buy a domain. You go to a site like Godaddy…there are many such sites….and purchase the rights to a name. Since there are no two names alike, you must choose something that is original. These sites have a place for you to type in your choices and find out what is available. The cost is under $15 per year for a domain name.
2. You must get a host for your website. There are thousands of companies on the Internet that provide web hosting services. In general terms there are three types of servers. There are shared host servers, dedicated servers and your own servers. You must do some research and find the one that is right for you.
3. You must build the web pages that will make up your web site. In earlier times you had to know HTML code and how to use it to build a website but that’s no longer the case. You can find WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) programs that you can use to build your website without needing to know anything about HTML.

The above are just the basic steps to setting up a website for any purpose. Now here’s the part about setting up a content rich niche marketing website.

The first thing to do is to narrow your topic down as far as you can take it. The more narrow the topic, the better your chances are for succeeding. What is meant by narrowing down your topic is this: dogs – small dogs – Poodles – Toy Poodles – Tiny Toy Poodles – Caring for a Tiny Toy Poodle. By making the topic of your website as narrow as possible you will have an audience (potential customers) who are most interested in what you are offering.

Many websites consist of only 1 or 2 web pages. A content rich website will consist of many many pages. The key word here is ‘content’. The content must be directly related to the topic of your website. It must be timely and relevant. If your website is about ‘Caring for Tiny Toy Poodles’ there shouldn’t be any content about anything else. The content must be organized in such a way that no page is more than three clicks away from the main page. The information needs to be categorized. Staying with the ‘Caring for Tiny Toy Poodles’ theme, the information can be categorized into sections such as; Feeding, Special Needs, Grooming, Pedigrees, Training, etc. Content can consist of written information like articles or e-books or it can consist of audio or video products.

The products that you advertise or recommend on your content rich niche marketing website should always be directly related to the topic of your website. For example, you wouldn’t advertise products related to bicycles, washing machines or other breeds of dogs on your site about ‘Caring for Tiny Toy Poodles’. It just won’t compute with your customers.

Your customers will want and expect the content of your site to be kept up-to-date at all times. You will need to actively search for, or produce yourself, new material for your website.

Finally, a content rich niche marketing website should supply a message board or blog as a service to their customers. Customers like to be involved in a website they believe in and buy from. They want an opportunity to share their knowledge and exchange information with others.

The day may come when people do all of their researching and reading online but it isn’t here yet. Fiction, of course, will always be in print….it would be hard to curl up with a good novel in front of the fireplace on a cold winter day with a computer. Research, however, may eventually all be done online. People buy ‘how-to’ books and books that are devoted to solving their problems and/or making their lives better every day. By identifying the hot market books that are being sold in bookshops (online and off line) you can identify a hot niche marketing topic.

Go to the bookshops in your area and take note of the kinds of non-fiction books that are stocked. You should particularly note the ones that are self-help or how-to books. If you can create the opportunity, ask the stock boy which ones are selling the best. He’s the one who knows what is being restocked most often. That failing, ask a floor salesperson the same question. Asking the bookstore owner or manager is the last option. They are more likely to be pushing the books that aren’t selling well in order to make a sale. Learn by whatever means you can which self-help or how-to books are the hottest sellers.

Another option is the online bookstores. You can’t, of course, ask for information from a person but you can research the site and determine which of the non-fiction self-help or how-to books are highest in sales.

Finding out what books people are most often buying can give you some insight into what the hot market subjects are. Armed with this information, you can go about creating a niche marketing website that will have a better chance of becoming successful.