How long does it take you guys to develop your niche?

[kenpachi]

If you guys could so kind, as to share your experience in how long it takes on average from the time you pick a niche, to the time you turn a profit, or pull the plug and move unto the next niche.

Say for example that you have done a lot of research and found a great niche and you decide to go for it. How long does it take to get into the "game". Second, how long does it usually take to turn a profit or until you decide that it's just not going to work and pull the plug on it?

Thanks!

 

[Bryan Zimmerman]

I've had some niches turn a profit in two days and others take two weeks. Then I've had some that are just worthless. The key is to test with out doing a massive amount of work. Pick two or three niches at one time do some redirects to affiliate pages. They are eventually going to get to the products sales page anyway so why not send them straight there to begin with and see how it converts.

You can do this with articles, building rss feeds from those articles, dropping answers at yahoo answers and wikki answers. Once you know if it converts or not then start building your supporting pages and a landing page.

As far as when do I know a product is a dump? If I go about 600 hops and I don't see a sale, then I'm not promoting it any more. But up until that point I haven't done anything but the above to it so it's ok. You never know, because some times you may get lucky and still get a sale out of it later down the road. Because the content you already put up is still going to be there.

Some niches you won't get 1 sale out of 200 hops and then the next day that same niche will get you 3 sales out of 75 hops. It just all depends on who's in the mood to pull out their card that day.

 

[fitnfree]

Yes, it's kind of a gamble no matter which way you look at it. Sometimes something you least expect to go over will surprise you while something you fully expect to hit a jackpot with totally fail. Basically, you just never know until you give it a good try. But don't ever let that stop you because you just never know!!

My favorite quote for affililate marketing is short and sweet: "Never, ever, ever, quit". Winston Churchill

 

[Jimbo James]

Mate the truth is it can 24hrs or 24 days.
Of course it depends on your niche, i mean thats a given but it will also depend on how willing you are to go after it will advertisement. If its something you believe will profit then you want articles posted on many different sites, set up a web page, jump on squidoo get in to some forums. The more advertising the more chance you have of getting some coin.
BUT first of all you need to find the best angle of your niche followed up secondly by relevant keywords.
Give me a yell below for some more tips.

J.

 

[salamei12]

Hello:
Go to ODP - Open Directory Project. Why? There are over 500,000 niches right there! While there are lots of things to know about affiliate marketing, the different variables, finding niches is relatively easy. Although the categories start out broad, to answer your question, you don't want to go for the larger niches but rather the smaller sub niches. Here is where you get your smaller groups that are better to target because these groups are looking for much more specific items to fill their needs. They are much less competitive than broader larger niches.

At dmoz.org if you click on a category instantly you may have tons of sub-niches in front of you. If you don't then it's probably a good bet that this broad niche may not be a good choice but if you find lots of sub-niches then that alone tells you that there is lots of interests in the smaller sub-niches and so you dig a little further. O.K.

I just clicked on computers at dmoz.org, guess what? Instantly I found well over 50 sub-niches just like that. Some of these sub-niches have anywhere from a couple of hundred to tens of thousands of mini niches in them. What do you suppose that means? These are less competitive products that have their own audiences that you know are very active. Now how long did that take? Anyhow I went a little further I clicked on computers, software tons of stuff there, graphics. There I found a category for 3-D graphic tools!!!

After clicking on several of the 3-d graphic tool selections and running them through google until I found a product Digital Light and from the drop down from that several times I found "digital light meter for photography". There were 6-7 sponsered ads for this product. I'll monitor this for a few days to see how the ads do and if they stay or increase I'll have a good idea of whether I want to see what it sells for or if there are specific brands of this product that sells good etc. If the commission is good and are handled by a reputable source I may build a page around it targeting the audience that is known to use this item.

Point is you can find very profitable sub-niches and mini-sub-niches and target audiences that have very little competition and earn great money. Don't bog yourself down making it harder than it has to be. Keywords? go to Seodigger.com after you have a couple of top SE placement sites pushing this product, type in the site and look at the keywords that they rank for to get on the right track for keywords to rank for for your page.

Cheers!
salamei

 

[DrMarie]

Wow...this is a great thread!

Salamei...when you find a niche like this, do you set up a site even though you may not know much about "digital light photography?" I always thought I had to write in a niche where I was an expert.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I always thought I had to write in a niche where I was an expert.

DrMarie,

For newbies I recommend starting with a niche you know about and are passionate about. It's so much easier to get started and also easier to stay interested and motivated to generate content, even in the beginning when not much revenue is coming in.

However once you know the ropes, know how to research and evaluate a niche, know how to pick the right affiliate programs and are skilled at a variety of marketing methods, THEN you can pretty much pick whatever niche makes sense all around.

 

[salamei12]

Wow...this is a great thread!

Salamei...when you find a niche like this, do you set up a site even though you may not know much about "digital light photography?" I always thought I had to write in a niche where I was an expert.

Hi DrNarie:;

Thanks for the reply.I have my favorite niches that I'm passionate about but my main point was that it doesn't take a long time and there are other avenues that you can pursue to find great niches.

To answer your question, I build relevant landing pages for any product I select to sell after I research it a little more. After I find a niche market that I think may pan out I research the forums concerning the product to see just what needs surround the product. that also helps target an audience as well.
If it's worth pursuing further, good commissions, great audience, sponsored ads are doing well, which brings up another point, that being you can keep an eye on sponsored ads to get some indication of how well a product might be doing.

If an ad or 2 is consistently in the sponsored section for a week or 2 then you may want to take a look at the sites that these ads are associated with an kinda see what audience that they are catering to in that digital light photography category. Obviously I may have gotten a little deep with this but my reason is that so many people want to find profitable niches and think that it takes a long time to do but realistically it doesn't. Sundays paper is a good place to look. see what's hot sellers for christmas, I say that because of the time of the year. follow trends. take notice of people around you and you may even pick up on some fads in clothing, shoes etc.

A simple page a couple of articles surrounding some relavent keywords will get your page listed if done right. Generally a 400-500 page article with the keywords in the title and every 100 words thereafter throughout your article submitted to a couple top directories like ezine articles, go articles etc. When doing your keyword research on google do it in "quotes". If results come back
less than 5,000 then you have a very good chance of a first page placement. I do it all the time. First page placements means free traffic. The right keywords means targeted traffic. whatever keywords you use thats going to be your audience. so choose wisely. this stuff can get deep!!

But like Linda says the easier ones for newbies are the ones that you know stuff about. Stuff I don't know about I research up on it some so that I at least know a little about it.

If you're going to draw visitors and you want to convert a relevant landing page is key.

I hope I don't get into trouble for writing long replies (lol)

I just get so excited when I can help!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Salamei

 

[Niche48]

If you guys could so kind, as to share your experience in how long it takes on average from the time you pick a niche, to the time you turn a profit, or pull the plug and move unto the next niche.

Say for example that you have done a lot of research and found a great niche and you decide to go for it. How long does it take to get into the "game". Second, how long does it usually take to turn a profit or until you decide that it's just not going to work and pull the plug on it?

Thanks!

Only ever pulled the plug on one niche and that was when I was a newbie

With knw how you'll find that you can make some money from almost every niche you decide on. As long as you do your research accurately

Takes about 3 to 6 months to turn a profit if you run with it.

 

[salamei12]

Hi DrNarie:;

Thanks for the reply.I have my favorite niches that I'm passionate about but my main point was that it doesn't take a long time and there are other avenues that you can pursue to find great niches.

To answer your question, I build relevant landing pages for any product I select to sell after I research it a little more. After I find a niche market that I think may pan out I research the forums concerning the product to see just what needs surround the product. that also helps target an audience as well.
If it's worth pursuing further, good commissions, great audience, sponsored ads are doing well, which brings up another point, that being you can keep an eye on sponsored ads to get some indication of how well a product might be doing.

If an ad or 2 is consistently in the sponsored section for a week or 2 then you may want to take a look at the sites that these ads are associated with an kinda see what audience that they are catering to in that digital light photography category. Obviously I may have gotten a little deep with this but my reason is that so many people want to find profitable niches and think that it takes a long time to do but realistically it doesn't. Sundays paper is a good place to look. see what's hot sellers for christmas, I say that because of the time of the year. follow trends. take notice of people around you and you may even pick up on some fads in clothing, shoes etc.

A simple page a couple of articles surrounding some relavent keywords will get your page listed if done right. Generally a 400-500 page article with the keywords in the title and every 100 words thereafter throughout your article submitted to a couple top directories like ezine articles, go articles etc. When doing your keyword research on google do it in "quotes". If results come back
less than 5,000 then you have a very good chance of a first page placement. I do it all the time. First page placements means free traffic. The right keywords means targeted traffic. whatever keywords you use thats going to be your audience. so choose wisely. this stuff can get deep!!

But like Linda says the easier ones for newbies are the ones that you know stuff about. Stuff I don't know about I research up on it some so that I at least know a little about it.

If you're going to draw visitors and you want to convert a relevant landing page is key.

I hope I don't get into trouble for writing long replies (lol)

I just get so excited when I can help!!!!!!!

Cheers,
Salamei

I should also mention that you could direct link to a product page if available but those are not as good as one that you yourself may build. Fact is some of those product pages that comes ready made get terrible quality scores if you use Google to gauge their relevance to the keywords, and content thereof. Also your page won't be unique in that tons of other people maybe using that same page over and over again which is like duplicate content to Search Engines. One thing that stands out when using serach engines is "Originality" Uniqueness. Something different, new! Get a domain name, something relevant and not necessarily so tight, so you can use other pages with it, and a unique page, nothing spectacular, just presentable, appealing and relevant content and I've seen page quality scores jump from a 3 or 4 to excellent. I generally build a page for all my products if for no other reason to be unique. Just for testing though using article marketing to help establish who is looking and who is buying.. The buyers are the stats I'm after, (get those stats from your server) You are after the stats that keeps track of the keywords typed in to get to your page. Find the buyers if you are making acceptable sales, build a PPC campaign, page, around each audience that
purchases and check to see how well it does.

Cheers.
salamei

 

[TheLight82]

How are you guys making money so fast? I have had many niche sites for months and have not turned large profits on them. I gotta get some inside information from you guys!

 

[salamei12]

How are you guys making money so fast? I have had many niche sites for months and have not turned large profits on them. I gotta get some inside information from you guys!

Hello:

Well My answer to this leads me to ask you several questions. One is what are your niches about? What methods of advertising are you using?

Niches are a dime a dozen and finding ones that are profitable is the very first step in earning money with them. To do this requires research. How did you choose your niches? You do know that just one profitable niche is all that is needed to earn a great income. jumping back & forth can be very distracting and less productive when looking for a profitable niche.

Niches that are highly competitive, in terms of trying to target audiences require lots of work. Try and scale down your niches by researching sub-niches. Broader niches tend to be much too large to focus on for earning as an affiliate. i.e. Only as an example I'll try and show what it is that I'm trying to convey. lets say cars was a niche and you wanted to make money with it. Well we already know that cars is a very big industry (Google search drew 470,000,000 searches) so to make money with it we'll need to scale it down some.

So we'll try car tires why? isn't it obvious? Tires will always be a resource that people will always be searching for. A search for car tires drew (34,100,000). Now to get a even tighter niche we'll search for a more specific type of tire like vogue car tires in quotes (33,000 searches a month using google keyword tool, and 5,320 search results using Google) now that is good for earning commissions. But first you'll have to establish yourself with an affiliate program of which to earn from. Go to Google search affiliate:vogue tires. you'll find lots of major auto accessories companies willing to pay you from 3-10% or more from people that come to their site, and spend money. When signing up for the affiliate program be sure to make sure that they do indeed sell the vogue car tire. Some sites use these phrases just to get traffic without actually selling the tire.

Remember the 5,320 search results I found on Google?
You can write simple articles a couple every 3-4 days about vogue car tires, look up vogue car tires and get some particulars about the characteristics on the tire, and submit it under vogue tires keywords. Build a page on vogue tires with useable images of the tire probably through their affiliate program. Get a domain and link from your page to the affiliate site you signed up with.

Important! Also use the mis-spelled words. When searching keyword tool I found several thousand searches for this product under vogue tyres as well as all the singular spellings too! Great traffic for that tight little niche.

Now as your server captures the visitors pay close attention to the ones, look into your server history under keywords, and see the keywords that people are using to get to your page. after a while a few weeks or so see which keywords are buying, clicking-thru, and maybe build a page targeting that group or audience and build a PPC campaign for the page.

Their are tons of ways to market products and the more of those ways that you arm yourself with the more positive your affiliate marketing results will be because of all of the different variations and options you'll have. Most affiliate marketers have poor results because of 1. Trying to promote a niche that they aren't familiar with and or a lack of internet marketing experience. I'd have to say moreso the latter because if you understand how to research niches, and audiences, you'll be way ahead of most business owners and affiliate marketers.

Lots of marketers are taught to just throw a heap of keywords together when PPC advertising and then scale downward but unless you have a lot of money to burn or throw around you have tons of people coming to your page that #1 don't even want to be there in the first place, #2 won't find what they are looking for, #3 you'll be spending hundreds on needless clicks. Incidentally lots of search engines are cracking down on the use of thousands of keywords being used for a single niche, Why? I mean you'd think that they would love it wouldn't you? Fact is the campaigns aren't leading to relevant pages and information than what the consumer is searching for and that is concidered a bad SE experience.

well hope this is of use.
Salamei

 

[lexdino]

let me continue with your languages.
you can get on the game within a month and start making profits within 2-3 months.
Hope that helps.

 

[Adammo]

Hello:

Well My answer to this leads me to ask you several questions. One is what are your niches about? What methods of advertising are you using?

Niches are a dime a dozen and finding ones that are profitable is the very first step in earning money with them. To do this requires research. How did you choose your niches? You do know that just one profitable niche is all that is needed to earn a great income. jumping back & forth can be very distracting and less productive when looking for a profitable niche.

Niches that are highly competitive, in terms of trying to target audiences require lots of work. Try and scale down your niches by researching sub-niches. Broader niches tend to be much too large to focus on for earning as an affiliate. i.e. Only as an example I'll try and show what it is that I'm trying to convey. lets say cars was a niche and you wanted to make money with it. Well we already know that cars is a very big industry (Google search drew 470,000,000 searches) so to make money with it we'll need to scale it down some.

So we'll try car tires why? isn't it obvious? Tires will always be a resource that people will always be searching for. A search for car tires drew (34,100,000). Now to get a even tighter niche we'll search for a more specific type of tire like vogue car tires in quotes (33,000 searches a month using google keyword tool, and 5,320 search results using Google) now that is good for earning commissions. But first you'll have to establish yourself with an affiliate program of which to earn from. Go to Google search affiliate:vogue tires. you'll find lots of major auto accessories companies willing to pay you from 3-10% or more from people that come to their site, and spend money. When signing up for the affiliate program be sure to make sure that they do indeed sell the vogue car tire. Some sites use these phrases just to get traffic without actually selling the tire.

Remember the 5,320 search results I found on Google?
You can write simple articles a couple every 3-4 days about vogue car tires, look up vogue car tires and get some particulars about the characteristics on the tire, and submit it under vogue tires keywords. Build a page on vogue tires with useable images of the tire probably through their affiliate program. Get a domain and link from your page to the affiliate site you signed up with.

Important! Also use the mis-spelled words. When searching keyword tool I found several thousand searches for this product under vogue tyres as well as all the singular spellings too! Great traffic for that tight little niche.

Now as your server captures the visitors pay close attention to the ones, look into your server history under keywords, and see the keywords that people are using to get to your page. after a while a few weeks or so see which keywords are buying, clicking-thru, and maybe build a page targeting that group or audience and build a PPC campaign for the page.

Their are tons of ways to market products and the more of those ways that you arm yourself with the more positive your affiliate marketing results will be because of all of the different variations and options you'll have. Most affiliate marketers have poor results because of 1. Trying to promote a niche that they aren't familiar with and or a lack of internet marketing experience. I'd have to say moreso the latter because if you understand how to research niches, and audiences, you'll be way ahead of most business owners and affiliate marketers.

Lots of marketers are taught to just throw a heap of keywords together when PPC advertising and then scale downward but unless you have a lot of money to burn or throw around you have tons of people coming to your page that #1 don't even want to be there in the first place, #2 won't find what they are looking for, #3 you'll be spending hundreds on needless clicks. Incidentally lots of search engines are cracking down on the use of thousands of keywords being used for a single niche, Why? I mean you'd think that they would love it wouldn't you? Fact is the campaigns aren't leading to relevant pages and information than what the consumer is searching for and that is concidered a bad SE experience.

well hope this is of use.
Salamei

Great post! Mind if I ask you where you are writing your articles? I have only written one for my niche so far on Squidoo, but am not sure if it has helped me at all.

Thanks!

 

[salamei12]

Great post! Mind if I ask you where you are writing your articles? I have only written one for my niche so far on Squidoo, but am not sure if it has helped me at all.

Thanks!

Hi Adammo:

I submit to ezinearticles.com, many people do. You don't have to but they are ranked pretty high and thats what you want. You want to try and submit to article directories that are ranked high with the search emgines, why? because your article, if prepared properly, will inherit (acquire) that high page rank which in turn means to you that your article will beat out other submissions for a better ad placement on Google, Msn, and Yahoo as well!
Ideally you want to get in the top 10 page results, preferably first page. I use others as well like go articles.com, articlesbase.com etc. I have a rank meter on my browser, their free just go to google and type in free rank meter and download it and install it, that way when you pull up a page you can see instantly what it's ranking. These may be sites, if they are relevant of course, that you may want to link to as they're popularity helps to pull your page up to better positioning much in the same way as article directories do explained above. So linking to a relevant page thats ranking high is a good thing, "get permission from the site owner before you do this though". There are other benefits for doing this too but as with all of it, it's a skill.

It's exactly why I stress getting internet market skills. They teach marketers these and thousands of other techniques and strategies for in many cases fairly instant results. I write articles and get first page placements everyday!

Techniques and strategies don't take that long to learn. Article marketing techniques can be learned in just an hour or 2. Implementation just takes as long as it takes to submit your article to directories. I really don't understand why people waste time struggling when the information is readily available that can dramatically change marketing results.

Many marketers think that it takes months to get top SE placements. NOT TRUE! I know how unbelievable this may sound but with the proper know how an article can be written now and have first page (organic) listing in several hours. Now lets say that you have done a great job researching your industry and know the problem that many are facing etc. You have a product and are now going to target an audience. The keyword phrase that you would use should be apparent, it needs to be something people are already searching for as well as popular. I would use phrases variably (many different ways and combinations including mispellings). This is what keyword tools are good for. Seeking out these variations and mispellings that are what people are known to use and not necessarily for targeting. Targeting can only be done, effectively, through research!!! It takes a lot of guess work out of who you are going after, saves time, money. Ahhh the power of skills!!

Cheers,
Donald

 

[mla16]

this is an excellent thread guys, with some really useful information..... I have now been marketing my site for around a week with only 40 views and around 18 hops through clickbank with no sales (yet!!) and was wondering how long it might take before that elusive first sale. it gives me the belief that if I continue to do what I am doing the sales will eventually come, and gives me the knowledge that I need to continue for a while before I might see any sales at all

 

[Linda Buquet]

I have now been marketing my site for around a week with only 40 views and around 18 hops through clickbank with no sales (yet!!) and was wondering how long it might take before that elusive first sale.

It really varies but getting that 1st sale can take awhile. Average conversion rates are around 2% but some products convert lower or higher than that. Also sometimes when you are new your traffic isn't targeted enough or you don't know all the things you need to do that help conversions. So getting your 1st sale could take a couple hundred clicks. After that as you learn sales tend to come easier.

Just keep doing all you can. The more TARGETED traffic you get, the more clicks you get, then eventually you will start getting sales.

Note: You mentioned clickbank and are we talking about the site in your sig? I've said many, many times, trying to start in the make money online market is not a niche. It's a huge market, about as competitive as you can get. All the sharks play in that market that know tricks like how to steal your commissions.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but if that is the site you are talking about, you may want to consider doing some really good niche research to come up with another niche. A good niche that isn't too competitive for starters. You could keep this site up and continue to market it a little, just focus on the new site if you come up with a good niche. Let me know if you need help getting started with finding a niche.

 

[Adammo]

Ya Linda brings up good points. I believe that no situation is the same and there is no set time. If you are promoting $500 products, you may get less sales, but your commission will be higher. If you're product is only popular during specific seasons, you may also have to wait until the demand is higher.

Good luck, still waiting on my first as well!

 

[Adammo]

One more question from me...besides article marketing, would creating a blog help as well to promote your site? I've noticed when searching for some of my terms that blog sites like blogspot pop up once in a while.

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

One more question from me...besides article marketing, would creating a blog help as well to promote your site? I've noticed when searching for some of my terms that blog sites like blogspot pop up once in a while.

But your site is already a blog, right? So you don't need blogspot, you already have a blog.