Wow, I'm glad to see that this thread has prompted more people to share. I was away on vacation and thought it sank into oblivion.

Thanks Libertate for taking the time to share some of the finer details of your process, but please don't attribute the initial information to me - I merely picked up what I know from others who came before me and believe in paying it forward.

I've got a full load at the moment but when things slow down I'll jump back in here and see if there is anything else I can add that Libertate hasn't already put forth

Think

If anyone actually makes money starting from scratch using these methods Ill be shocked.

Unionisnotdead, the contest is over...

You have better methods?

Originally Posted by unionisnotdead

If anyone actually makes money starting from scratch using these methods Ill be shocked.

You compiled it, now you have to suffer the consequences! :thumbup:

Originally Posted by Think

[...]
Thanks Libertate for taking the time to share some of the finer details of your process, but please don't attribute the initial information to me - I merely picked up what I know from others who came before me and believe in paying it forward.[...]

Originally Posted by unionisnotdead

If anyone actually makes money starting from scratch using these methods Ill be shocked.

This guy's a pain in the *** who never has anything positive to contribute. He was hating on someone else in another thread, being annoying in others... Mods?

Originally Posted by Bookworm-SEO

This guy's a pain in the *** who never has anything positive to contribute. He was hating on someone else in another thread, being annoying in others... Mods?

I was actually thinking much the same. After reading the fifth response from him that was negative (and didn't contribute anything to the thread) i was starting to zone him out of my internet experience.

I would have started a thread about it in the general forum but i'm new so what does my opinion count for *shurg*

Saying all that though unionisnotdead did (unintentionally i suspect) give me some good advice. His constant "this has been asked before" bull**** made me think i should start from the first thread in each forum and read them all. I'm slowly working my way through the forums picking up lots of info that's not on the first page. Unionisdead could have said this in a nice way though.

Agreed... he's always negative, never anything good.

Motion to include an Ignore option!!!

Originally Posted by hitzatak

Motion to include an Ignore option!!!

http://www.earnersforum.com/profile.php?do=editlist

added - poser

Thanks a lot Mustang .

Incidentally, can we have this thread sticky-d?

Originally Posted by Think

[...]

1. Find a Niche - [...]
2. Check Search Volume - [...]
3. Check Competition - [...]
4. Judge Monetization Potential - [...]
5. Expand and Organize Your Keywords - [...]
6. Let it Stew - [...]
7. Refine - When you return to the plan, you now have a basic site idea along with a list of ideas and keywords. It's time to sort through the ideas, generate some more, explore their possibilities and decide which are worth further investigation and which should be trashed. Use whichever idea generation methods you prefer –If people request it, I would be willing to detail my process for this in another thread.

[...]

This, as Think offers his/hers, can be very subjective. Refinement not just allows reduction or concentration of a specific niche, but potentially change the direction how you approach monetization.

For example, if one find a big enough niche, with sufficient amount of key phrases, one might approach it through a single site with large numbers of unique content, appropriately optimized.

Alternatively the same niche can be approached with multiple web sites, each dedicated to one or two key phrases with fewer pages, creating a small network of web sites, or neighborhood of web sites.

In some cases a forum is the best approach as the content grows with postings. A blog could be a reasonable solution - not exaclty a full blown forum, yet not a complete "static" site.

Read the news, listen to TV shows, specially pop-cultural ones, and watch for trends. They will all reflect what will be a topic searched.

There are a plethora of tools to review existing niches, but from my perspective, news resources are an excellent source. Many of them will even send you e-mail notification on specific key phrases.
http://news.google.com They provide a very good count that showsindication of interest.
http://news.yahoo.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Search DMOZ for compatitors, and news sources in the specific niche. RSS feeds are an excellent source, but one can get overwhelmed with too much background noise. Throw out a wide net for resources, then narrow it to a managable short list.

I also avoid high paying but very high competition niches. It does not worth the effort to start in a niche nowadays from the begining. If one is set on conquering such niche, it is best approached by "flanking" it. Find parallel topics, and create strength in there, then once those pages/sites have momentum, strike the center.

Here is a prediction - polygamy, and poligamy and other miss-spellings will be big keywords for this week. How do I know?

I dunno, how?

If you read the news, as indicated it would tell you how.

Because they captured Him!!!!!!! woohoo.

Well done, think!

Originally Posted by otherjohn

Because they captured Him!!!!!!! woohoo.

The capture of Warren Jeffs has brought on thousands of news articles not just in the US but all over the world. As the primary words that these articles press are "polygamy" and "polygamist", the chances are very good that there will be large amount of searches (and visits) are made to sites describing polygamy.

Can you capture some of the bang? You are a couple of days too late...

Remember this is a shooting star, that comes and goes fast.

You want to find one that is steadily increasing.

First, thanks Think for getting this rolling and Libertate for carrying the ball.

It seems that one thing that's still rather fuzzy for me is the analysis of the relationship between volume, competition and price. In other words, you can have a number of situations

10% of the traffic for something that gets 1 million searches and pays $.10 per click (so with a 1% CTR, that's $100).

90% of the traffic for something that gets 10,000 searches and pays $1 per click (so with 1% CTR, that's $90).

Of course, the problem is that I can't guess in advance what percentage I'll garner. I can gather somewhat of a proxy measurement by looking at

# of searches / # of sites

and get an idea of how fractioned the traffic is likely to be, but how do you make the step to "I think I can bring in x% of those searchers" and get from that a vague idea of traffic potential so that you can do calculations like the ones I've done above?

So let's assume that the competition is not terrible but not fantastic. If the competition is terrible, that probably means there's little incentive in that particular area. If it's fantastic, it's likely hard to break in even if there are few sites (in fact, the dominance of that one excellent site probably explains why there are few sites for the phrase).

Anyway, given that, what do you look for as multiples in the formula

number of searches / site * earnings/click * clicks/visitor

Clicks (or actions or sales)/visitor is easy - you'll presumably base it on what you've attained previously on similar sites and you'll just need experience to know what that number is likely to be.

But what about the others? If you thought there were some good sites but not great ones, and you thought you could create a really good, but still not great, site, what would you be looking for in the

number of searches / site * earnings/click

part of the equation? Or is that just not how you approach it at all?

Hey there,

This is a great post! Thank you Think for starting it and Libertate for
continually giving us more. I am new to niche marketing and am learning
fast!!

The methods being discussed are similar to what I just learned in the 30-day
Challenge with Ed Dale and FranK Kern. This challenge was to research for a
niche, find out if it could be profitable, build a list, create an info product that
the list has determined and make sales within one month. If you made your
$1 you got to go to a conference they are putting on in San Diego for free
(costs others $500).

By the way, I did make my $1 and am in the Hall of Fame on the forum and
will be in San Diego this month.

You can Google "underachieverlife" and find the site. (I'm still to new to post
links). You can view the forum without registering but the extras are only for
those that are registered. The challenge is over but it is still open for people
to register and have access to all the tools, audio and videos. There is an
awesome tool called the Undies Market Radar that really helps in searching for
good information on any niche.

Oh, all of underachierlife stuff is free.

Talk to you later,
Connie

This stuff is really highly preached. On the lateral meaning part,


1. Go to Google Labs and find Google Sets, type in your keyword. In this case, I used internet marketing and it spits out Internet Marketing
Affiliate Programs
Banner Exchange
Advertising
Banner Advertising
Site Recommendations

Write an article in 5 minutes based on this. You should rank quite high.