I know finding a Niche can be hard. I gave myself a headache earlier today trying to find something to promote on cj, but I guess that’s fine. If it was really easy to find a niche, then everyone and their dog would do it and the market would become overcrowded resulting in low profits for everyone.

I’m still not sure how to go about finding a niche, but I think I have something that’s going to help. I received an excel file with over 15,000 niche ideas. I performed a little preliminary research using some of the possible niches. The results for a few were promising.

I have a concern though that I don’t know what I’m doing when it actually comes to researching a niche/market. Let me breakdown how I performed my research and you can comment if you think I’m on the right track or completely off the wall.

1. Checked Niche keyword in Overture’s Keyword lookup tool.
2. Took note of the search volume and copied the additional search phrases listed.
3. Used the Google Keyword tool to find additional keywords.
4. Also used the Google Keyword tool to view the Advertiser Competition and Search Volume.
5. I then switch to the Cost and ad position estimates and view the Estimated Avg. CPC and Estimated Ad Position for each of the keywords.
6. Once I check this, I go to the Google Traffic Estimator and paste in the keywords from the keyword tool and get the Search Volume, Estimated Avg. CPC, Estimated Ad Positions, Estimated Clicks / Day, and Estimated Cost / Day for each of those keywords.

From this research and I can get a feel for the niche and see if people are searching and if there’s a lot of competition.

This information can then help me determine what type of site I want to create. In theory anyways. I have yet to put any of this into practice.

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Ok, I now have a headache.  I just spent / wasted a lot of time on cj.com trying to find a merchant and/or niche to promote.   Finding a niche is frustrating.  How will I start making any money if I can’t find anything to promote.  Everything seems way too competitive ($10+ per click on adwords or millions of other sites to compete against).

Not to rant, but it really irritates me when I’m given a bonus for something and then told that I can’t have it because I’m Canadian.

I have a developer’s package with 1and1.com and part of this package I’m given coupons for MSN, Adwords, and SearchCity. Totaling $400 in free PPC advertising.

1and1.com is not an American company and my account is setup with Canadian information (ie Country, City, Postal Code, etc). I was given the coupons because of the package I had chosen with 1and1.

I thought the coupons were great. Especially where I am trying to get into internet marketing and using PPC can be very profitable if done correctly. A couple days ago I went to redeem the MSN coupon for $200, but come to find out that I don’t qualify for this coupon because I don’t live in the United States.

To me it’s a form of discrimination and it happens all the time. If a company is going to accept customers from all over the world, then the coupons should be available to all customers. Or as a minimum if the coupon is for US customer’s only, then it should be only displayed to US customers. If I don’t see the coupon, then I won’t be irritated when I can’t redeem it.

Just my 2 cents.

Although I consider myself to be a complete newbie to internet/adsense/affiliate marketing, I do have a couple sites online that I’ve tried to make a little money from.

One site used to work very well before the parent company went into receivership. This wasn’t really an affiliate type site.  More of a representative type business.  The site itself is still up and running, but I don’t do any sales or anything with it and I don’t update it. I have Adsense on it so it has been bringing in about $20 a month.

The other two sites I have online are affiliate type sites, but they have not done anything in over a year. Few Adsense clicks, no affiliate purchases, nothing. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the sites. The layout was good, the information was detailed (not quite unique, but Google didn’t seem to mind as thousands of pages are indexed), the affiliate link called to buy the product, but no sales. It’s a popular product online and offline and popular on eBay also. I’m not sure why I’m not seeing the click through.

Yesterday I noticed that in 2006 there has been a steady increase in traffic over all my sites, but my average monthly adsense income has remained about the same.

From tips received via the Adsense Immersion, I changed the location and size of my Adsense ads.  I didn’t go all out with it.  I just took a few of their suggestions and rearranged the ads on my pages.

Lets see if I notice an increase in my CTR.  I’ll keep you posted.

Remember in my previous post I said that I don’t think I have the “balls” necessary to succeed online? I’m beginning to feel this is true.

Over the last 3 months I have concentrated my studying to Adsense, Underachievers, and Adwords. I wanted to focus more and liked the underachiever’s method (because of Frank, Ed, and John). I also like Adsense because I have a little success with it now (about $20/month).

The reason why I feel this is true is because I’m sitting on $400 worth of free pay per click (ppc) advertising that I haven’t done anything with. I don’t have the balls to just take it and jump in head first and hope I can swim. I’m afraid of drowning and losing it all.

I know the $400 is an advantage I have over others trying to start off in this business, so I don’t want to blow it by wasting it away.

It would be great if I could find a mentor to get help and guidance. Mentors are an important aspect of any new business startup. Everyone needs help and mentors are a great resource of “balls”, so to speak.

I know that once I overcome the initial resistance and get the ball in motion (no pun intended), things will continue to improve (with practice, testing, and improvement) and over time I will be comfortable that my efforts have been worthwhile.