When considering new niches to explore you may be thinking, “How do I know if this niche will be worth my time?” “How do I know I can make money in this niche?” Here are 5 ways to tell if a niche is profitable and worth the effort.

You probably already know several big overall niches that always make money such as, internet marketing, weight loss, dog training, etc. But how do you know if a smaller niche or sub-niche will be profitable as well? Smaller niches can be extremely profitable but you just have to know a few signs of a good one in order to avoid a lot of wasted time, effort, and money. The 5 ways to tell if a niche will be profitable listed below are good indicators that you are on the right track.

1. Are there any existing products selling in your niche? If there are several decent products already being sold in that niche, you can be pretty sure someone is making money in it. Check Clickbank, do Google searches, etc to look for products similar to what you are wanting to promote. Also keep an eye out for good products in that niche that have a good affiliate program so you can make some extra cash off of those in the process.
2. Is there any competition in your niche? You may think no competition is a good thing, it’s not! Unless you have found a truly popular untapped market (which is the holy grail of internet marketing and is getting less likely every day) or gotten in at the start of a hot trend or something, you want there to be competition in a niche. No competition normally means nobody is making money in that niche and most likely you wont either.
3. Are people talking about your niche? Do a little research and see if your niche is something people are talking about online and in person. The more word of mouth friendly the niche is the more likely it will be spread through the media and reach a lot of people very quickly. Look on forums, social media, around the water cooler at work, etc. and see if people get excited about stuff similar to what you want to promote.
4. Are a lot of people in your niche promoting the same products? If a large portion of the people promoting products in your niche are promoting the same products through various affiliate marketing methods, this can be very good news for you. First of all make sure there are a good number of people promoting in that niche, and if they all promote one big product, or a couple main products, you have a golden opportunity because this can mean there is a hot niche there that doesn’t have enough good  products in it to promote. If you offer a unique take on what everyone else is presenting, or something new they haven’t thought about yet, you can make a lot of sales very fast. Another good thing about this is that there are already affiliates out there ready to promote for you!
5. Is your niche evergreen? If you want to make long term money, you need a niche that will be profitable into the future. Evergreen niches are niches that stay popular pretty much always and aren’t just a passing fad due to media buzz. Their popularity may increase and decrease as trends develop and die but they always make money and are always going to be there in some form. These include niches such as weight loss, body building, making money, dating and romance, etc. There will always be a need for products in these niches, the type of products may change as trends change, but they will always be there as long as people need that info.

If you follow these 5 guidelines to finding profitable niches you will pick winners more often than not. The important thing is that you identify a potentially profitable niche and test it quickly without spending a lot of time and money on it. Get some fast results that will let you know if the niche is worth getting into further. There are many ways to do this, list building methods, lead in products, social feedback. Just get into it and if it returns some results then go into it 100%, if it doesn’t move on to the next niche, you won’t have spent much time on it so just keep going to find the gems.

Once again I just wanted to thank you for your reply to my post. I was so gratful that I ordered your course. I wasn’t sure if would be any good as the price was so low.  Boy was I wrong. It seems like it works the same as Andy Black’s “Article Writer Pro” which I like also.

I just got into your ” Intelligent article spinner” and so far so good.

Thanks, Tom Elam

The article spinner is great, the setup a little more involved than others I have seen but the end product – and overall time saving is much better. And it’s a very good value. I watched the tutorial video which was good, easy to follow. I already had my article written and just followed the steps you explained. Took a few minutes to come up with variable phrases and  input the info, and then started churning out the articles. Whipped out 12 for my outsourcer to start posting around the net in like 5 or 6 minutes!

Jarrod Bailey, Australia

If you are familiar with Google+ you know it is Google’s latest attempt to make it in the social media scene. They have made previous attempts without a lot of success so far but their new venture seems like it may just be a future contender.

Competing with Facebook and Twitter, Google’s new social service may just have what it takes to hang in there this time. Google+ is in it’s testing phase right now which is invite only. You must be invited by Google or a current testing user in order to gain access. I haven’t used G+ extensively yet but what I have seen so far looks pretty decent.

The interface is simple to use, fast to post and switch between different areas, and has a kind of Twitter/Facebook feel to it while maintaining it’s own identity. One main feature I like about G+ is that you put your friends in what they call “Circles” which means you separate your friends into categories and can choose upon posting which “circles” see which posts. They also have another really cool and unique feature that may prove to be really handy, you can create “video hangouts” where you can video chat with up to 10 of your circle members at ones and create a virtual hangout using your webcam and mic.

So far I am starting to like Google+, I wasn’t too impressed at first to be quite honest but as I am starting to use it more I am starting to find more uses for it’s unique features and future promise. If you are a current testing user of Google+ please feel free to leave a comment and let me know your thoughts so far. If you don’t have an invite to use G+ leave me a comment, I may have a few invites left for the right people who leave thoughtful comments. Thank you!

Hi Les,

The article spinner rocks! I am now able to turn 1 article into hundreds of unique readable articles  in minutes, it’s worth every penny. Thanks -Kyle D. Texas

Ok, you want to make it big online right? You want to be an authority in your niche and be seen as an expert right? Well there are a few things you must have in order to make that dream come true. Without them you are just scraping by like most internet marketers out there.

The first thing you must have in order to make real money online is a web host. You can make money promoting other peoples sites but until you claim that traffic for your own, you are only making someone else rich. When you have a lot of traffic coming to your site instead of someone else’s site you can do a lot of things to monetize that traffic. Even if you are promoting affiliate products, you still need your own web pages to do it because everyone and their dog is promoting the cookie cutter affiliate pages that are provided and you need to look different and authoritative. You need to give your potential customers a reason to buy from you instead of the thousands of others out there doing the same things. The best host in my opinion is Host Gator, you get everything you need for only $10 per month with the best reliability and customer service.

The 2nd thing you need is a domain name. You need a place where your customers and potential customers can find you. Make it easy to remember, catchy, and as short as possible. You don’t have to think for days on it either, the best thing to do is to register your name as a domain name. You need to do this before someone else does. I know, I had my name registered and built up some traffic to the blog I had there and ended up losing it during a time when I couldn’t get online and now someone else has it and I can’t get it back, at least until it comes up for renewal and that’s only if the person that owns it doesn’t renew it. Big mistake! Registering your name will make you look like an authority and make your contacts and customers be able to easily remember your name and where your website is located. You can do this for around $10 per year or so. There are numerous domain registrars, but I normally use Namecheap because it is inexpensive and just as good as the rest. You can also find coupons online to make it even less expensive.

The 3rd major thing you need to make it big online is an autoresponder account. You need to build a list to market to and the only real safe and effective way to do that is to use a service that takes care of all the deliverability and reliability issues for you. Building a list is key because you can market to your list over and over. You can get those people into your product funnel and sell them on multiple products in your niche instead of just a one time purchase. Most big time marketers use Awebber to host their lists because it is simply the best. I use Profollow for 2 reasons: For one, it uses the same scripts as Awebber and has the same deliverability and reliability stats. For two, it is less expensive than Awebber and we all know that the lower your overhead, the higher your profits.

The 4th thing you need to really get ahead online is persistence. You simply must stay with it for the long term. Too many marketers are jumping from one thing to another because they don’t see results in a week or two. This business takes some time to build up and if you don’t give yourself the time to see any results, you won’t get any. You may see immediate results, you may not. It may take months of work to see big returns, but it has the snowball effect. When you start you may see little to no returns but the longer you stay with it the more results you will see, until one day your business just explodes and you have no idea why. You must plant the seeds and nurture the seedlings once they sprout in order to harvest the fruits of the tree.

You may be saying but I don’t want to spend any money, I want to get started online for free. Well ok sure you can do that by promoting affiliate products, but like I said you are just making the product owner richer. If this is the path you choose, I urge you to take your initial profits and invest in your business so it can grow and make you rich instead of everyone else! Remember, the purchases I am recommending here are very inexpensive and absolutely essential to your long term success. You can do everything I have described here for about 30 dollars per month and a once a year domain fee of around 10 dollars or so.

If you really want to make it big online, this is where you start. If you have these 4 things you are off to a great start. Persistence is key, you simply must not give up. Don’t get discouraged when something doesn’t seem to be working. You will find what works for you if you just keep at it and don’t give up. Remember this is a business and you must treat it like one, and I don’t know of any business online or offline that doesn’t require some kind of investment.

Ask any questions you may have by leaving me a comment below, or just simply let me know your thoughts. Thanks for reading!

Ok, I don’t normally post too much personal stuff here since this is a marketing blog but I thought this was well worth sharing. If you are a smoker you know all too well it is very hard to quit. There are aspects of the addiction that most remedies just don’t deal with. In addition to the chemical addiction, there are physical as well as psychological aspects that must be dealt with in order to quit successfully. When you smoke you are getting satisfaction not only from the nicotine, but also from holding the cigarette in your hand, putting it to your mouth, feeling the smoke in your lungs, etc. When you go drinking you almost always crave a smoke right? I don’t know anyone that goes drinking and says, “Man I’d really love a patch, or a piece of gum”. No! You say, “Man I’d really love a smoke”, right? You don’t roll over after an intimate encounter with a significant other and slap on a patch. It just doesn’t work to stop the cravings properly. I found an excellent way to stop “smoking” and still satisfy all the cravings without ruining your health in the process…

You have probably heard about electronic cigarettes by now and how they are helping people deal with their addiction. You have probably seen the ads, heard others talking about them, seen the stores selling them etc. I want to take a few minutes to tell you about my experience with electronic cigs and what I have learned about them.

There are basically 2 types of electronic cigarette, the 3 piece design and the 2 piece design. All brands fall into one of those 2 categories. The difference is that the 3 piece design has an external atomizer and the 2 piece has it built into the cartridge. With the external atomizers you have to keep a couple extras in stock because they do fail after a bit of use, so that’s an added expense you really don’t need. With the 2 piece design you get a new atomizer every time you change the cartridge because they are built into the nicotine cartridge and they don’t tend to fail during use of the cartridge. All of the stores I have seen offline that sell e-cigs sell the 3 piece design and some of them are just plain cheap crap.

I chose to buy the 2 piece design and I have been extremely happy with it. It feels like a cigarette in my hand, it tastes like a cigarette and feels like smoke when using it. There is no smoke, it is just water vapor with nicotine and flavoring but it feels very real as opposed to the other stop smoking methods. I have had mine for about 5 months and I have had no problems with it at all, it is very reliable. The battery charge typically lasts me a couple days and I have a spare battery and portable charging case to back it up. The cartridges, known as cartomizers with this model, are the equivalent of about 20 traditional cigarettes. The 3 piece design manufactures claim this as well but their cartridges typically last only about 7 to 10 real cigarettes. This model really does what it says, it ends up only costing me the equivalent of about 1 dollar per pack of traditional cigs and even less if I refill the carts myself.

This really is the way to stop smoking without quitting. Yes, you are still addicted to nicotine but you are getting just that, the nicotine without the 4000 carcinogens and chemicals that are found in traditional cigs. I love mine and would recommend it to anyone wanting to quit smoking. Ok, you may be asking what is this e cig model and where do I get one?

I have found one site that offers this remarkable product as well as the accessories and it is the only one I have found that backs it up with a lifetime warranty on the batteries. Yes, the batteries won’t last forever so this company will replace your batteries for free if they ever go bad. Mine have shown no signs of giving out but if they ever do, I know I won’t have to spend my money to replace them.  Here is the link if you want to check it out and get one for yourself www.youdonthavetoquit.com

If you decide to pick one up for yourself from this site I will get a commission from your purchase, just being completely honest and up front with you on this. It won’t cost you any more, I just get a small percentage of your purchase. This is not why I have written this post. I want you to know that I would have promoted this product even if I made nothing off of it at all, this is just simply a superior product that I believe in 100%, but again I want to be completely transparent about this. Go check it out for yourself, pick one up if you want, and let me know your experience. This is the best electronic cigarette I have found with the best company backing it up.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

Scarcity in your copy and on your offers is by far the best motivator for someone to buy your product. People want what they can’t, or soon may not be able to have. It’s a fact! Why do you think as soon as you have a steady girlfriend, all the other girls you have been chasing for months are suddenly calling you? Or, why do you think people buy one time offers and upsells so readily? Scarcity!

If you tell someone, “here is my offer, the price will never change, the product will stay the same, and you have forever to buy it” they will do exactly that, take forever to buy it. When you don’t build scarcity into your offers you are doing just that, telling everyone they can come back years from now and get the same thing for the same price. A majority of buyers will simply put it off.

If you tell someone, “here is my offer, now the price is gonna double here in 5 days, no joke, and starting today I’m gonna take away 1 bonus from the package every day until the price goes up, then no bonuses anymore”. People will be chomping at the bit to give you their money! They want to get something at a bargain and you have to give them a narrow window do do that in order to motivate them to take action right away.

Whatever you do, when you build scarcity into your offers, stick to your word. If you say the price is doubling in 2 days, then double the price in 2 days, no exceptions. If you say only 50 people can get in, then close the doors at 50. You may initially tick a few people off but you will be training them to believe you when you give them a deadline. They will be more likely to buy sooner next time. If they don’t buy, you didn’t want them on your list anyway.

Now, you may be saying, “…but I want to sell my product indefinitely, how can I use scarcity and still keep my product alive for the long term?”

Here are a few suggestions:

• Remember, even if you completely close an offer at one price, you can always open it back up later at a higher price.

• You can always update a product or add to the package to make it more appealing at a higher price.

• If you close an offer at 50 seats, you can always open it back up to more, later on, at a higher price.

• If your scarcity is that you are pulling the bonuses after so many sales, you can always offer different bonuses for a short time later on as part of another scarcity incentive.

• You can always relaunch a class or product as an updated product with new info and new features.

• If you offer a live class at one price and your scarcity is that the recordings will be sold at a higher price later, you also have scarcity for your next class, because people will want to be a part of the live class next time to get the benefit of live training with the lower price point. If the recordings are cheaper than the live class most people will wait around for the recordings. Always reward your original buyers and train future buyers to buy faster next time.

Can you see the pattern here? You offer something then take it away. You offer a lower price up front with more bonuses to make the sale a no-brainer then start to take it away a piece at a time. People want what they can’t have, so make it so they only have this opportunity right now to get it at this price with these features. Always include scarcity in your offers and your sales will increase exponentially.

What is your USP? USP stands for Unique Selling Position. It is the one thing that sets you apart from all of your competition. It is the thing that lets your potential customers and clients know that they should pick you, it lets them know in a minute or less who you are and exactly what you can do for them, your elevator pitch if you will. In this article you will learn what a USP is, and how to create one for yourself. You need to have a USP if you want to be remembered in the massive sea of marketers out there.

Anyone can say they are an SEO expert, or an article writer, or a product creator, etc. But, if you can say, “I’m the guy that can teach you how to get 500 unique hits to your website over night” or “I can show you how to write a high quality article in 5 minutes or less” or “My product creation method will have you creating 5 new high ticket products per week” or whatever. You want to be that guy, or lady. You want to be the one that your potential customers say, yeah I know that guy, he’s the one that can do……

Your unique selling position needs to be something memorable to your clients but also something that gives them clear and immediate benefits. If you say “I’m the guy that can help you double your business 5 years from now”, they are gonna think then I’ll find you in 5 years. You need to tell them in just a couple sentences what you can help them with right now. “I’m the guy that can get you 500 PR 5 backlinks in 7 days or less”, something like that works much better don’t you think?

How do you create your USP? Well you simply take a few minutes to think about what it is that you do and how you want your business to appear to your clients. Create a few sentences that will convey the nature of your business to your potential clients while building intrigue and interest. If I said to you, “I can SEO your site in a week or so and get you a few back links” you would think yeah whatever I can do that. But, if I said to you, “I can show you how to leak proof your sites SEO and get you 100 .edu back links in 48 hours or less” you would be a lot more inclined to listen to what else I have to say. Just think, if I was in an elevator with my perfect prospect, what would I tell them in a minute or less that would have them reaching for my business card and have them excited about meeting me.

You may even have several unique selling positions, one for each type of client or situation. You would want to pitch differently to someone at a marketing conference than you would at a supermarket. You may even want to have one for each of your products, that way you can ask somebody when you meet them, what they do or what they would like to do with their business and you can whip out the one of your USPs that most closely matches the customer. For instance, if they say that they are a real estate agent looking to advertise more online, you may say well I’m the guy that can show you 5 ways to get new clients online this week. Or if someone said to you, I’m a marketer but I’m stuck at a plateau in my income level and I would really like to break through that, you may say something like, I can show you 5 ways to turn your current products into high ticket items to be able to charge more for them and get you more income from the same basic products.

Whatever is unique about you and your business that can provide benefits to your clients will be your USP. Just think and you will find something that is unique to you. Everyone does things their own way so there is always going to be something about your business that is unique to you even if you are doing the same things everybody else is doing, you can present it in a totally unique way.

I hope by reading this article you have an understanding of what a USP is and how to create one for yourself. Here’s a challenge I want you to do right now to take advantage of this info immediately…

Take out a piece of paper, or a notepad file, or whatever you use to take notes on. First write down the nature of your business. What is it that you do in a nutshell. 3 sentences max, ok? This can be a general statement about your business. Then, under that, write as many USP statements as you can think of, number them and just keep writing for 5 to 10 minutes if you can. Keep them to a few sentences each if possible. Then, once you can’t think of anything else, go back and read your list. Pick out the best USPs that will pertain to a majority of situations and memorize them. This is what you will say to people when you meet them and they ask what you do. Pick your top 2 USP statements and keep them always on the tip of your tongue. If you only want to have one USP that’s fine, just have it ready to use when you need it. You can always expand on it later, just have something to tell people.

Another good idea is to put your main USP on your business card and website. People will remember you more when you are the guy that can do….

Thanks for reading! After you do the exercise, post your USP in the comments. I would love to hear what you came up with. If you would like a critique, say so in the comment and I would be happy make a comment. Thanks!

Let’s face it, most PLR stuff sucks! Not all of it of course, there are high quality PLR products and articles available, but for the most part PLR products suck because they are not written for the end consumer. They are written to be sold as PLR products. They are often outsourced and contain a bunch of fluff to make them look better but in actuality they are just created as something to sell to other people looking for products to sell.

PLR can be a great way to create products and provide value to your customers, subscribers, and followers but using them as they come out of the box is a big mistake. When you sell PLR products as they come, you are immediately setting yourself up for hardship because there are hundreds or even thousands of other people out there selling the exact same thing with the exact same sales letter. Do you think it is easy to sell the same things everybody else is selling without a ton of extra work? NO! You are left with adding a bunch of bonuses, or discounting the product below everybody else’s prices, or something to make you look different and unique, and a lot of the time you end up adding some of the exact same bonuses as everyone else because those also tend to be PLR products.

Here are 5 ways you can use PLR products properly to increase your sales, optins, and credibility with your audience.

1. Rewrite the PLR product. Most of the time when you buy a PLR product you get an ebook, some graphics, and a sales letter. Sometimes you get more and sometimes less but that’s really not important. What IS important is what you do with the information contained in the product. Pick the report apart and rewrite it in your own style making it 100% unique to you. Change the title, the graphics, the sales letter, and present the content in a new way. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, just find the main points of the product and present them in an easy to read, easy to implement style. Give your readers a step by step plan to use the info in the product and you are 80% there.
2. Cut up the PLR product and use it as content. Remember you can do pretty much anything you want with most of these products but check the rights first. Take the product and dissect it into parts, each part teaching a different aspect of the whole. Turn the parts into articles to publish on article sites, blog posts, autoresponder messages, etc. If you struggle with content creation than this technique can save you a lot of time and headaches. Make the articles/posts/autoresponder messages link back to your sales page of the complete product or to your blog or other product you are promoting.
3. Turn the PLR product into an e-course. Cut the product up into parts teaching different aspects of the whole just like I explained in number 2, but structure it as a complete course. You can use autoresponders for this or you can put up a private membership site or whatever method you choose. Drip the content out to your members on a weekly basis and in between lessons, give them ways to use what they have just learned by using step by step examples.
4. Use the PLR product to build your list. Use the PLR product as bait to get people to optin to your list. Offer them your PLR product for free and show them ways to consume the info. Then, you can go on to provide more value to these people to get them to put money in your pocket.
5. Use PLR as upsell bait. Give your readers the PLR product as a freebie or bonus, whet their appetite, then show them your original product on the same subject. To make this work your original product needs to cover more info than the PLR did and it needs to include much more value. After all, you just gave them a product explaining what they want to learn so why would they buy your original product unless it is much better and contains stuff that wasn’t included in the PLR product.

There are many more things you can do with PLR products, these are just a few to get you thinking of the possibilities and some strategies to make your PLR offers more valuable and profitable. Thanks for reading and be sure to comment below or tweet this post if you like it.