Targeted Mini Niches and Content
Every day thousands of new wannabe internet marketers jump into the fray. And every day nearly as many give up. If you’ve been online for a few months and have read some how-to books or bought a program or membership, you probably have concluded niche marketing is the ticket for a newbie. And your conclusion would be correct. Niche marketing is and will be hot for many, many years to come. You may ask, if so many people are getting into online marketing, won’t the internet become saturated? I suppose it will someday but I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime. Sure things will change. They always do. New marketing techniques, new technology. Who was even thinking web 2.0 just a few short years ago?
But I digress. The easiest way for a newbie to get into business online is to select a targeted mini niche and build a blog. That’s it. Seriously. Build a blog, fill it with relevant, fresh content and they will come. Oh let’s back up a minute. Did I say content? Yes I did. And not just the same old rehashed PLR in sub-standard English or cut and pastes from Wikipedia. I said relevant, fresh content. You can try to cheat your way out of this one but all you will accomplish is maybe a trickle of income and the conviction that internet marketing doesn’t work. Or there is no place for the little guy. Rubbish.
So why do so many people try to avoid the content component? Well mostly because it involves work. No short cuts unless you have deep pockets and can hire a proper writer. Most new netpreneurs are working on a shoe string budget. It makes sense to outsource some work if you have a spare $50-$100 a week. Or if you are like me and could not get off the ground without technical support. But you simply will not get the content writing you need for those prices. I have joined a number of PLR memberships at various price points and exclusivity. Only one comes close to providing useful, original content with good writing.
So what is a newbie to do. Well you could do the research and writing yourself. I do about 80% of my posting exactly that way. And I do not limit my research to the web. Remember that quiet place called the library? It is still a great place to do research. Pull some books off the shelf. Immerse yourself in a topic. Jot some notes. Go home and stew on it for a day or two. Then sit down and write from your notes and your memory. Maybe you are already an expert on a particular topic. That is fine but if you want to be a niche marketer, eventually you are going to run out of your own expertise.
So the next step is to turn to PLR. I use PLR mainly to inspire me. Occasionally, I will rewrite an article but more often I will use the article as a jumping off point for a personal, fresh perspective. You don’t realize how much you know or have experienced in life until you start trying to write content. If you are not very familiar with the topic, check the facts. This is one area where Wikipedia is useful. It’s not perfect but for a quick fact sweep, it can’t be beat.
So why all this blah, blah, blah about content? Content is king! If you remember nothing else about internet marketing, remember that. You can put up hundreds of mini junk sites. You can add to the already teeming net of spam sites. You can take all the short cuts you want but you will wind up with little to show for your efforts. And wasn’t that the point in the first place. Effort —> income?
One last point. Time is on your side. If you can ride it out long enough, you can emerge on the profitable end of an internet business. No matter how many sites you have, if you add fresh content to them on a regular basis they will in time rise in page rank and develop back links. You will have to do some basic traffic techniques but they are really easy and we will talk about them at another time. So how often should you post new content? I would say pace yourself. When you first develop your targeted mini niche blog, you should post several times a week. After that, several times a month is probably sufficient. And if your blog has been up for 6 months or more, you can probably slow that down to a couple of times a month. The idea is to keep the blog alive.
No doubt you have done keyword or domain name research and looked at the first few websites on any given search page. Some sites clearly belong on the first page. Others will have you scratching your head. A blog post from 2003 with top page rank. Preposterous. Yet what if you wrote that post in 2003? And six years later it is still attracting organic traffic? Home run doncha think? The good stuff will rise to the top and stay at the top. The garbage will sink to the bottom.
When it comes to targeted mini niches and content I am reminded of one of my favorite TV shows, Survivor.
Outwit – Outplay and most of all Outlast.