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Which Niche To Conquer?

by: Russell Brunson

I'm sure that you've heard about how many start up companies fail when they first begin, and the reason that most (if not all) of their failures is because they don't create a good fountain to build on.

If we start right, it is easy to go right all the time. But if we start wrong, it's much harder to go back and get it right. So please pay close attention, get out your pen and pencil, and let's get to work.

When you first start, you need to decide which niche are you going to conquer.

When I first started my online business, I made the same mistake that 99.9% of people make. I read an ebook about how to make money online, and I decided that I would...

can you guess...?

I wrote my own book about "how to make money." I compiled all of the regurgitated information I could find, put a twist on it, and started to sell it. After 2 weeks and a little over $30 in sales I started to think:

"Why am I selling a book about how to make money... when I have NEVER in my life made any real money!?!"

You may laugh, but it took me a few weeks before I realized that there was a problem there. I decided to stop selling my book, and started to look for other ways to make money online. What I stumbled upon next really gets exciting.

I was going to college at the time, and my degree is in "Computer Information Systems." I knew some things about programming, but not enough to create anything real. What I did know is where programmers spend their time online.

So I started visiting places where you could hire programmers and got to know a few. I then started to search for a market that needed something.

What I came upon was the "Resale Rights" market. Basically this was people buying and selling digital products (ebooks and software) that they could then go and sell to other people. This concept really excited me. I purchased a lot of these products, but struggled to sell them because all of the products had links back to the author's websites.

These authors were making money every time I sold these products... on the backend. When I realized that, the first thing I thought was,

"I wish that had a way to brand all of these files with my own links."

And there the idea was born. I just needed to create a product that would brand these "resale rights" products. I wouldn't be competing directly with that market, but make a complementary product that would benefit them all.

I went back to the programmers that I had been building relationships with, and gave them my idea. Within a matter of weeks they created a product that is now known as Zip Brander. (You can see the product at www.ZipBrander.com)

I'm not going to go into how I marketed it in this lesson (I'll save that for another day), but with the one product I made over $1,000 my first month with it, and it made us over $50,000 in 2004 alone.

Since then I've been able to branch out to a lot of various niches and have had amazing success in most of them. In other issues I will share exact case studies of these that you will be able to model in your businesses.

How To Pick The Right Niche

I want to show you now how to choose your niche. Just follow these 3 simple steps.

Step 1 - Do not choose the "how to make money" niche. I'm not sure why, but I made this mistake along with thousands of other people. This is the most competitive niche in the world. If you want to fight against the marketers, good luck. But there is a lot more money (and it's made a lot easier) in the niches I'll explain below.

Step 2 - Look at your personal talents, and start from there. I have had this conversation more then once - usually every time I discuss an online business with someone.

I ask them what their hobbies are that we could market, and they almost always they tell me that they don't have anything they could sell. The problem is that people usually look at their current job, and can't think of ways they can market that skill.

Don't look at your current job, but look at what you do on your free time. The thing that is your passion. This is where you'll find your niche.

Here are examples of the last 3 conversations I've had:

Friend #1 - works construction, and couldn't think of a marketable skill. After 3 1/2 minutes realized that he has twin girls. Found there was a huge market for informational product in this niche and him and his wife are now working on their first product.

Friend #2 - works as a manager at Office Depot. One the weekends loves to shot guns with his dad. They are creating a software program that helps people to increase their accuracy when shooting. They are also creating video demonstrations on how to improve your accuracy.

Friend #3 - came to me asking for help promoting a "how to make money online" course. He had to call me using a video relay because he's deaf. I told him that he was going in the wrong direction with what he was promoting. He had no experience making money online. I asked him what his hobbies were, and surely enough told me he didn't have any that he could sell. Before I even asked that question I knew what his niche was. He's been speaking through sign language his whole life, and there are thousands of people searching every month on how to learn sign language.

What do you do in your free time when no one else is around? Are you good at video games? Are you a good cook? Do you play any sports? Do you throw dinner parties? Do you collect anything? Can you play an instrument? What is your passion? When you can answer this... then you know what your niche is.

Step 3 - Research your market. Don't worry - this part isn't nearly as hard as you'd think. Within about 5 minutes I can usually tell if a niche is worth looking at. There are 3 things you need to do, and you'll know if it's the right niche.

First - Check out the search engines. There are a lot more advanced tools then this, but this one is completely free to use. Go to http://inventory.overture.com and type in your niche. This will show you how many times that word was searched for that month on their search engine. If there are a lot of people searching for it each money, the it's likely a good niche.

Second - Search for online communities related to your niche. People with similar interests migrate to the same places online. Wrestlers hang out at wrestling forums, poets hang out in poetry message boards, etc... Go to www.google.com and type in "________ forums" or "_________ message board" or "_______ groups" (put your niche in the blank). Visit these forums and see if they are active and how many members they have. You can often find forums with 10,000+ members in it. If you find good communities focused around your niche, then this is another good sign.

Third - Search for similar products. If you can find others selling products in your niche, then it's usually a good sign that there's some life there. Purchase their products and get to know your competition (because they are going to become your JV partners in another lesson).

After getting this far, you should have a good idea about which niche you would like to conquer, as well as some idea about if it is a profitable niche.

In the next lesson we are going to discuss how you can turn those talents into a product. Product creation is one of the most exciting parts of the game for me, so look out for that lesson coming soon.

Thanks,

Russell Brunson

About the author:
Written by Russell Brunson editor of newsletter.

Discover How I Earned A High 6-Figure Income In Spite Of My College Education at

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How To Make Money Online Without A Website
by: Melanie Mendelson

You don't need to have a website to make money on the Internet. Here is a proven strategy to make money online without a website:

Step 1: Find Affiliate Product

Find a product to promote where you make good commission on each sale. Generally, you will get the biggest commissions on digital products. Digital products are defined as something that is downloaded directly to a customer's computer after purchasing, like electronic books or software.

Since there is no extra cost per unit, no inventory and no shipping, the commissions are much greater than on regular "physical" goods. The most common commission on digital products is 50%. The best place to find such products is Clickbank.com.

Sign up as a reseller (also called affiliate) for a product that looks the most appealing to you. After you sign up, you will get a unique affiliate link where you need to send people to purchase the product.

Your affiliate link will have a special code that will tell the product owner that it's you who referred the customer. The affiliate link code will allow your commissions to be tracked correctly and assigned to you.

Step 2: Get Domain Name

Get a domain name to redirect to your affiliate link. A domain name is a .COM name (like yourproduct.com). You can get it for under $9 at GoDaddy.com. GoDaddy.com will allow you to redirect your domain name to your affiliate link at no extra cost.

So when someone types in your .COM domain in their browser, it will go to your affiliate link. The visitor will see the website with the product you promote, and the commissions will be tracked correctly.

The reason why you need a domain name is that it's memorable and it makes you look more trustworthy. Affiliate links tend to be too long and arouse suspicion. For example, most people would rather click on the link bestwidgets.com as opposed to abcwidgets.com?reseller=john

A domain name will make your affiliate link look like it's your own website. So basically, you will have a product to promote and a website to send people to and get commissions - without really having your own website.

Step 3: Drive Traffic

In order to make sales, you need to get visitors to your domain name (which will forward them to the website of the product that you resell). You can pay for advertising and hope that your profit will be greater than advertising cost, or you can use free ways to generate traffic.

The most effective way to get free targeted visitors to your domain name is by writing and submitting articles. You can write short articles on the topic related to the product that you promote. At the end of the article, you include your author bio and your domain name link.

You will then submit your articles to various websites, and allow them to publish your articles as long as your link is included. Your articles will get published in many places on the Internet, and will be advertising your affiliate link at no cost to you whatsoever. People will read your articles, like what you have to say and click on your domain name link ready to buy.

Once you start getting regular sales from your articles, you can go back to step 1 and find another product to promote using this strategy. After a while, you will build up a nice source of Internet income - without even having a website.

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