How to target hot niches

This is an experiment to show you how I target hot niches that can generate you some money in the short run. These types of sites can be set up quickly and are meant to target some short term trends. The good thing about such trend niches is that they typically don't have existing authority sites to compete against, meaning you will have a much easier time to rank for them. This experiment is a demonstration of what Grizzly has been showing us in his American Idol and Blinkweb review posts.

For this experiment, I am going to target a keyword and report its earnings and ranking for about 2 months. We will see how much effort is needed and for what kind of returns can I achieved. In this experiment, I am targeting eclipse clothing line to capitalise on the latest Twilight craze. The site has already been set up and is now ranking on page two to three, depending on where your data centre is. This out of the box ranking can be achieved through the exact domain bonus as well as the non competitiveness of the keyword itself.

As a first step, you need to have a source for finding these hot trend niches. Personally, I often use AOL hot, Amazon Hot New Release as well as all the niche forums that talk about new products and services. I used to visit Google Trends as well but all the other Internet Marketers guys are crawling over that so to be successful, you need to have your own areas to draw ideas from. The best way is to look out for new products in the forums or social networks that you are currently hanging out in. See what things are getting people in your niche excited. This is the perfect keyword to target. Most of these trends will die off but if you can earn some passive money while they are still hot, it is not a big deal. Moreover, some of these trends might turn out to have some lasting power. That is where you really hit the jackpot.

Once you have found these keywords, the next thing is to set up a site optimised for that keyword. If you want to know how to set up an optimised site, here is a basic breakdown:
- keyword in URL
- keyword in blog title
- keyword and related keywords in blog description area
- keyword in post titles

This is how a SEO optimised site will have. However, to really rank well, you need anchored backlinks. This means get backlinks from article directories such as ezine, inforbarrel, hubpages, post your articles etc. All these sites can give you good links. For non competitive keywords, they will be enough to bring your site up. If you need more sources for free backlinks, I will cover that topic in a post scheduled to be published in July.

When targeting keywords, it is always good to target related keywords as well. For example, in the eclipse experiment, my site will also target related words like eclipose fashion line, eclipse clothing, where to buy eclipse clothing line etc. All these longtail keywords will bring you more traffic than just one word. If you want to know more about these anchored keywords, click on the link to read my previous coverage for more information.

Stay tuned for the my update on this experiment. I shall be back in two weeks with income reports and other interesting facts that come up in the experiment.

Btw, this is my last day in US. I have been spending about two weeks touring the western coast with my wife. The good thing about passive income is that while I am on tour, the income doesn't let up and continues to come up. My amazon is also up meaning my authority site experiment is beginning to see some results as well. I will report on that as well once I have more data.

In the meantime, go earn some passive income. It will change your life and your perspective on what is possible : )

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How to find keywords from ezine that brings in traffic

Most of the time, beginners are advised to do keyword search using Google adword tool. While that is a good start, I find that the tool is useless for longtail keyword that beginners should target. What I am currently using now is a different approach.

This is how I do keyword research. It is a variation of the common strategy that IM folksuses. When analysing keyword competition, they look out for an ezine or hubpage or other web 2.0 properties on the first page of the SERP, because that is a strong indication that the keyword is easy to beat. However, this process is tedious and is very dependent on luck. You just need to try a lot of keywords to see which one has the result that contains these Web 2.0 in the first page.

What I do is the reverse. I first analyse which ezine article is already getting lots of views in a short time by using the following search string:

site:ezinearticles.com “This article has been viewed″ “Article Submitted On: * 2010″

The first part allows you to see the no of views directly on the SERP so saving you the trouble of clicking into individual articles. The second part is your niche. The third part will filter the articles according to date.

For me, I look for articles that have been written in the past 3-4 months and see which ones have a couple of hundred views. This tells me that the market has interest in the niche.

Then I look at the post article and try to deduce what are the keywords that the article is ranking for. I then do a search using the keyword that I have deduced. If I see that article in the first page for the keyword, it means that the keyword is easy to rank for.

The reason I look only at the past few months is to take away the age factor. If an article written in April has gather ranking and generate hundreds of views within 1-2 months, it means we can probably achieve the same result by either using an EDN or creating a page on your current site and point several Web 2.0 properties to it.

As an example, this is what I found just 15 minutes ago using the diet niche

http://ezinearticles.com/?1300-Calorie-Diet-Menu-and-Meal-Plan&id=4101617

Submitted on 13 April 2010,
455 Views
Ranking for: 1300 Calories Diet Menu

I have tried this method a couple of times and so far, the results are what I have expected. However, I need to experiment for a longer time to draw any meaningful conclusion. In fact, I have all these data in my spreadsheet. Once I have enough sample, I hope to derive some formula such that I can estimate any monthly traffic based on these few statistics that been mentioned.

If this method works, it will be interesting because I can use the same approach to data mine all article directories like ehow, associated content etc. In fact, with some alterations to the search string, you can identify a lot of big seasonal money makers : )

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