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[Micro Niche Finder] Finding a niche is harder than I thought

by Obmotomom
14 replies
I thought this was going to be one of the easiest parts about IM. I have MNF and according to it, I find some great niches. One I just found has .com, .org, and .net domains available (though I have to bum market and use squidoo or wordpress), 720 searches per month (not so good, but I thought it would be fine for bum purposes), 13600 exact phrase count, 99% OCI, and zero SOC. So what's the problem?

When I search these phrases in Google, I get nothing but big names in the search results. About.com, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. Not directly to those pages, but to products within those domains.

I have no idea what to do about it. I found one niche before that made me about $15 total in more than a year, and it was the only one I could find that didn't have this big name competition. I made a squidoo lens with it and got it up to #7 in google, and it's been there for a long time, making me no money despite getting about 100 visits per week. You'd think it would make at least $20 per month or something.

Anyway, I'd like some advice with this. MNF says it's okay to start a page in that niche, but Market Samurai's SEO Competition feature is basically telling me that the competition is too much. Any help?
#finder #finding #harder #micro #niche #thought
  • Profile picture of the author J23
    Originally Posted by Obmotomom View Post

    I thought this was going to be one of the easiest parts about IM. I have MNF and according to it, I find some great niches. One I just found has .com, .org, and .net domains available (though I have to bum market and use squidoo or wordpress), 720 searches per month (not so good, but I thought it would be fine for bum purposes), 13600 exact phrase count, 99% OCI, and zero SOC. So what's the problem?

    When I search these phrases in Google, I get nothing but big names in the search results. About.com, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. Not directly to those pages, but to products within those domains.

    I have no idea what to do about it. I found one niche before that made me about $15 total in more than a year, and it was the only one I could find that didn't have this big name competition. I made a squidoo lens with it and got it up to #7 in google, and it's been there for a long time, making me no money despite getting about 100 visits per week. You'd think it would make at least $20 per month or something.

    Anyway, I'd like some advice with this. MNF says it's okay to start a page in that niche, but Market Samurai's SEO Competition feature is basically telling me that the competition is too much. Any help?
    My advice is to check the backlinks of the sites on the first page and see how many they have and how strong the links are. You can use SEO Quake or SEO for Firefox to check these.

    Most of the time, Amazon, Nextag, Buy.com, etc. will be ranked on the 1st page for a specific product name, but they are usually very weak (having minimal to 0 backlinks to the actual product page.) If you think about it, Amazon isn't going to go out and hire SEO professionals to backlink every single product on their entire site to make sure it sticks to the front page. They are ranking based on the authority of the site itself.

    You should be able to outrank these bigger authority sites if you do proper SEO and backlink building. You won't outrank them with just an exact match domain alone and no further work, but it shouldn't be too difficult. I know a lot of people that have said they can outrank Amazon pretty easily.

    I haven't really used Micro Niche Finder, but I know Market Samurai can be pretty inaccurate with their SEO analysis. I like to check the first page manually and then decide if I will go for it or not.
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  • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
    I always check the first page manually now. I guess I'll make a few x.wordpress.com sites and see what ends up happening after writing some articles for EZA and doing some backlinking.

    Another quick question: can a blogger, wordpress, squidoo, etc. page get a ranking just from backlinks? I imagine it would be much better to get article traffic as well as high PR backlinks, but I was just wondering about this since in the future I could just do some lazier minisites for adsense by just adding five backlinks to each one per day

    I'm not sure about affiliate marketing anymore, I've seen adsense work for other people and I think I want to stick to it, but I might mess around with affiliate stuff again sometime
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    • Profile picture of the author chas08
      I also would encourage you to get your own WordPress site as soon as you can. With all of the plugins available, it is easier to get ranked, if you know a little SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ricky Parker
    Here is my advice. Don't waste much time with keyword research. Find something that looks like it has buyers and decent traffic and go for it. The more you get these sites out there the more data you will have for more keywords.

    I have chased a ton of niche keywords that these tools and others said had traffic and once I got the top spot I soon found out they were total crap keywords and did not have the amount of traffic these tools said.

    And other times I went after keywords that looked WAY to saturated with competition and actually was able to still rank well and pull some nice converting traffic.

    So I guess the point is less keyword research and more site building. Because these tools can only do so much. And they are wrong at times too. But the more failures you have the more success you will have too.
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  • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
    Yeah, after this thread I'm gonna very quickly look up keywords in these tools and build sites. I don't know much else about keyword research beyond what these tools say, so my new plan is to build up a bunch of wordpress sites on wordpress.com, bumming it out until I can afford to have my own domain and hosting.
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    • Profile picture of the author Barry Patterson
      Have you tried Google blogger (blog spot)? It is quite simple and my impression is that google likes it.

      Barry
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      My Personal Site
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    • Profile picture of the author Ricky Parker
      Originally Posted by Obmotomom View Post

      Yeah, after this thread I'm gonna very quickly look up keywords in these tools and build sites. I don't know much else about keyword research beyond what these tools say, so my new plan is to build up a bunch of wordpress sites on wordpress.com, bumming it out until I can afford to have my own domain and hosting.
      I HIGHLY suggest if you can to pick up some hosting and a domain ASAP. There are coupons to get Hostgator and others for really cheap. HG even has one for a penny for your first month.

      And as far as the domain just grab one like (topicsyoulike.com) And then throw Wordpress 3 on there and use the mulit-blog (mu) feature they have added and start writing about all the niches and topics that you personally really like.

      Your efforts will go A TON further a TON faster putting content on your own site rather than putting it on free platforms. Not saying don't use the free platforms but to get the hosting and domain name first.

      Like I said HG has coupons for the first month for a penny and GoDaddy has coupons/specials all the time for a 99 cent domain name.

      If you work hard then you should have no problem covering the cost of hosting come month 2.
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      • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
        Originally Posted by Ricky Parker View Post

        I HIGHLY suggest if you can to pick up some hosting and a domain ASAP. There are coupons to get Hostgator and others for really cheap. HG even has one for a penny for your first month.

        And as far as the domain just grab one like (topicsyoulike.com) And then throw Wordpress 3 on there and use the mulit-blog (mu) feature they have added and start writing about all the niches and topics that you personally really like.

        Your efforts will go A TON further a TON faster putting content on your own site rather than putting it on free platforms. Not saying don't use the free platforms but to get the hosting and domain name first.

        Like I said HG has coupons for the first month for a penny and GoDaddy has coupons/specials all the time for a 99 cent domain name.

        If you work hard then you should have no problem covering the cost of hosting come month 2.
        Aren't the 99 cent domains on godaddy .info domains? I definitely want to go for a .com, but if I can get hostgator and a domain a dollar for the first month I'll go for it starting today or tomorrow, depending on how fast I can build the site up.

        Also, can you explain this multiblog thing a little further? I'll probably follow your advice on writing about things I like, but a lot of those niches are probably saturated. Maybe I can find some long-tail keywords within them, I dunno. I'll try.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mary Green
    I would look for less searched and longer keywords, they tend to be more specific. And choose a niche you like, you are going to be writing an awful lot about the niche so make sure it is a little interesting. I agree with others though, you just have to build, and brand your site. Post comments on blogs, get backlinks, write articles to get more backlinks, build your rankings, etc, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
    I made an extremely lazy site on blogger. I went out looking for adsense optimized templates for blogger and I couldn't find any, so I went with some black theme and slapped about eight terribly spun articles on it. To this day it hasn't been indexed, probably because of how horrible the blog is altogether and maybe because I put adsense on it too quickly. It's just so obviously a noob attempt to make some quick cash, when that just won't work. It takes hard work, I know this now.

    Maybe I'll try a default theme on blogger and see how it goes. It'll be on my list I guess.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ricky Parker
    I have seen GD offering .com's too with coupons for 99 cents. Just gotta dig around.

    The multi-blog feature is like MU but is built into 3.0. Gives you the option to expand your site if you want now or down the road.

    Here is a post on how to set it up. Activating Wordpress 3.0 Multi Site (Formerly Multi User, MU)

    If this sounds like too much now then just use the normal install of WP. The main thing I am just suggesting is using your unique good content on your own domain that you host and have control over. Rather than giving it out to free sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
    Alright, thanks a lot. I'll probably buy hosting and a domain as soon as possible if I can find coupon codes then. I can't wait to start working on this, though I kinda hate writing so much
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  • Profile picture of the author iWork
    Originally Posted by Obmotomom View Post

    I thought this was going to be one of the easiest parts about IM. I have MNF and according to it, I find some great niches. One I just found has .com, .org, and .net domains available (though I have to bum market and use squidoo or wordpress), 720 searches per month (not so good, but I thought it would be fine for bum purposes), 13600 exact phrase count, 99% OCI, and zero SOC. So what's the problem?

    When I search these phrases in Google, I get nothing but big names in the search results. About.com, Best Buy, Amazon, etc. Not directly to those pages, but to products within those domains.

    I have no idea what to do about it. I found one niche before that made me about $15 total in more than a year, and it was the only one I could find that didn't have this big name competition. I made a squidoo lens with it and got it up to #7 in google, and it's been there for a long time, making me no money despite getting about 100 visits per week. You'd think it would make at least $20 per month or something.

    Anyway, I'd like some advice with this. MNF says it's okay to start a page in that niche, but Market Samurai's SEO Competition feature is basically telling me that the competition is too much. Any help?
    For some reason, this tool stopped working for me since the recent Google changes. I keep getting popup (captcha requests). So I was forced to not use it for a while and what I've discovered is that I can find niches just as well as NOT having MNF. In fact, I don't feel the need to use MNF anymore, I feel its not where the focus should be.
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  • Profile picture of the author Obmotomom
    I can't find niches on my own like that. Maybe I'll start looking for ways.
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