Scott recently wrote about saturated niches. If you missed that post, make sure and read it, especially the last paragraph. Niche marketing is without a doubt the way of the foreseeable future. Google makes that perfectly apparent. Gone are the "Wal-Mart" days of sites like Buy.com that stock everything but specialize in nothing. Here to stay are the small sites that sell a few of the best products at good prices, so how do you break into those niches?

Here are a few pieces of advice from someone who has successfully broken into niches with no budget and competed against companies that spend thousands per day.

1. Start with something you know. The easiest way to build a presence in a niche is through expertise. While you may not be an expert in the niche you've chosen, it's easy to fake if you know something about that niche. You may not have ever purchased office furniture, but if you've sat in it and used it for the last five years, you know something about different chairs, desks, layout, filing systems and more. Start with something you know and writing for and promoting in that niche is much easier.
2. Build a strong base before showing your colors. It is a common war tactic to try to lure the enemy into a trap. With your niche, your website is your trap, it's what wins the war (generating you a profit). So before you try to get those visitors to your website, have something to show them. If you're starting with an empty website and paying for customers, they'll leave without giving you a chance. I always have 5-10 pages of the website ready and waiting before doing any kind of marketing. This gives new customers something to look at and gives you a professional presence.
3. Never stop writing. While 5-10 pages of good content can get you a long way in your niche, you can never outgrow any niche. You might disagree, but I have been writing in one niche for 4 years. To date I have nearly 400 articles on a niche that is pretty small. Most of them are long tail keywords but just about all of them brought in a few visitors, and that is what you want.

In niche marketing you may never have the advertising budget of a Fortune 500, but that doesn't mean you can't compete with them and steal some of their customers!

Brandon Hopkins has websites dedicated to over 100 different niches and is currently working on a free website hosting project called 22 Gigs.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Saturated Niches: Not For The Weak

From weight loss to payday loans, there are certainly some niches that are nearly impossible to break into without some serious dollars up front. That is, of course, unless you're clever.

As you know, I've been doing a fair amount of research into organic affiliate marketing (AKA bum marketing). Quite obviously, the people who do the best with this type of marketing are the ones that have websites that already have a huge amount of traffic to a niche keyword and another thing I've noticed is that these sites are typically service-based vs. information-based.

Sure, article sites have their place but service-based websites keep people coming back and they bring people back in. And these days, service-based websites are also lucky enough to feature user-generated content. That means a lot less work for whoever's operating the website itself.

Now that's great and all but the thing is, not all of us are able to create social networking websites and even if we are able to, even fewer of us could market it well enough to make it work for us the way I'm talking about now.

So what's left? You've got viral marketing, which is never as easy as people like to make you think it is. You've also got things like e-mail marketing, putting banners on other peoples' sites (banner arbitrage) and, of course, pay per click. Only one of these is strong enough to do any kind of volume and it's the most difficult of all previously mentioned, so whether you want to spend the money to make it worth your while is up to you. For some, that could mean tens of thousands before they start doing real volume sales that bring them any kind of ROI. And even then, nothing is forever.

With that said, it's really up to you whether you think saturated areas are worth your attempts. While there's definitely money to be made (or it wouldn't be saturated), breaking in is far more costly than many are willing to bear. My advice? Focus on smaller niches from the start. Master two or three spins on products and once you have the money, THEN break into the more saturated markets. Hell, you can even pay developers to make you a social networking site and market the hell out of it. Saturated markets aren't for the weak as they are naturally the most competitive.

Keep that in mind.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Two = Better Than One

No, I'm not pumping out an article a day like I used to but when something inspirational strikes, I like to get it out to you guys as fast as possible.

Having been an affiliate marketer for quite some time now, I can tell you one important thing: what can be done by one can be done exponentially greater by two.

Sure, we are greedy by nature. We don't like to share. But, what's better -- being greedy with your measley revenue or sharing your insane revenue? The answer is a no-brainer and what's more, team work allows us to focus on our strengths and let other people take care of things we're not excellent at.

In fact, the underlying message in this post if you hadn't picked it out is just that -- playing to your strengths and minimizing use of those things that you aren't good at. Of course we'd like to take care of everything ourselves but most times, that's just not realistic. You can accomplish so much more if you focus on what you're good at and have other people use their talents to complete the rest. If that means outsourcing those tasks, great. But what's amazing about forming a partnership with other people is that they're essentially doing the work before they get paid which means you don't have to pay someone out of pocket on something that might not work. If you're good at marketing and your buddy is good at web design, don't be afraid to delegate those tasks to each other -- it'll save time and money in the long run.

Also, something that you combine forces on is more likely to be a success. If you think about it, when you're accountable to someone, you're much likelier to complete a task and get the work done -- and sooner! The faster you can pump out successful products/campaigns, the less failures you'll endure and the more profit you'll enjoy in the long run.

Be aware, trust is a big factor when choosing partners and for either partner to breech that trust is a point of no return. So when choosing people to collaborate with, make sure that A. you trust that person, and B. you never breech the trust of that person. That means you don't go behind your partner's back and use what you're building together for your own personal gain. As long as you're up front and clear about what your intentions are, none of this should be a problem.

To conclude, I just wanted to point these things out to those people that are struggling to get ahead in the affiliate marketing game. This is for all you people who are wasting time and money on projects that keep failing. Focus and think big.

Popularity: 3% [?]

So I'm about a week into my experiment and I actually have ranked for some long-tail keywords. The particular keywords I've chosen are high volume so they're naturally going to be difficult to break into. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this difficulty has been the rumored 'sandbox' that Google places new websites into when they're related to high volume (and therefore, high spam) topics.

I've gotten a trickle of traffic from Google for the long tail keywords and I'm on page four for both. I can definitely hear the rushing rapids of pages one and two coming up soon though. It just pushes me foreward. The funny thing about this is - I've only paid for a few websites to advertise my link. Other than that, I've been writing articles, posting in topical forums and manually submitting unique descriptions to directories (although none have kicked in yet). Oh, yes, and I've been paying people to post on the website's forum.

All this and I get page four for long tail keywords! Ouch. This could get rough.

So now I'm researching other bum marketing methods as well as just methods that just flat-out help you climb the rankings. I'm also trying to think of a few clever ways as well, like link bait articles or some sort of side service that gets people to back-link the site. It works well for my Myspace Layouts site.

So that's where I am right now. I'll keep you posted on the status of this project.

Popularity: 6% [?]

$10,000.

How many people can say they've generated that much revenue in one day? Not many. In fact, you might not even believe people make that much or anything close in the affiliate marketing business on a daily basis. You'd be wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion. Your next logical question should be something along the lines of "well, Scott, how do you know?" Let's just say I know from experience that it's achievable and maintainable, but achieving that much revenue every day isn't the problem.

The problem is keeping it.

Depending on a lot of variables that I won't touch on right now, your profit margin for these types of sales can be anywhere from 15-50%+ if you do it right. While that might sound, taste and even smell like what you might imagine a million dollars would, think again.

What most seasoned affiliate marketers know and what many of the greener affiliates are starting to realize is that profit is never cut and dry in this business. Sure, you might profit $5,000 out of that $10,000 but where are you going to get the money to maintain your sales the next day? What about growth? What about variations in your profit margin? What about unforeseen expenses and things of that nature? Yes, it can be confusing. It's expensive.

Despite your large buffer of money, you always need more money to spend on ads the next day, and the next day, and the next day. This is a never-ending cycle that's hard to break free from. Don't get me wrong, you'll start building up a nice chunk in the bank account but it won't be what you expect. And all because for the business to work, you have to keep re-investing in the business on a daily basis. PPC (pay per click) is certainly not free.

Some people might be satisfied with a business like this despite the aforementioned drawbacks but if you're like me, you like to fix what isn't broken.

What if you could go from that 15-50%+ profit margin and take it up to about 95%+? Would you do it? I certainly would. And as I was doing it, I would tell other people about it in my blog. Not that it's some big secret, but it definitely needs to be discussed and utilized.

You guessed it. I'm talking about the golden goose, the holy grail, the cat's pajamas: organic traffic.

Now before you angrily hit the back button on your browser and talk about how much of a hack that Scott guy is, just bear with me. The people with the most successful affiliate marketing campaigns are doing three key things to be successful:

1. Bidding on short-tail, high-volume keywords
2. Paying much less than you per click
3. Getting paid more than you per lead/sale

I know; it's enough to make you want to curl up into the fetal position and cry. It's not impossible to out-do these guys, but it's going to cost you.

Here's the good news: you don't have to out-do them on pay per click if you can rank for the same keywords organically. Sure, it's a no-brainer but have you seriously considered it? If you ranked in the top ten results for a short-tail keyword or two and funneled that into your same marketing campaign, your profit margin would go from measly to grizzly.

In fact, if you're already sending PPC traffic to a website, you're already getting ranked organically for those terms. Now if you start getting other people to backlink to your site, you're going to start climbing the search result ranks. After a while, you can start diverting your direct marketing campaign money (PPC) toward getting more and more back-links. At some point, you're going to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000-10,000+ backlinks and at least a few of those will be from authority links. Eventually, you can cut off your PPC spending altogether if you so choose.

Of course, at this point you'd be fully maintaining a website full of high-quality information and resources with a nice marketing funnel. Google would love you, Yahoo would love you and even I would love you. And you would love your profit margin.

Now whether all of this is 100% accurate is still up for debate. Call it another case study I'm doing, but I'm definitely gunning for some short-tail keywords with a couple of my landing page sites. If it fails, it fails and I'll definitely let you know (after a reasonable period of self-pity and self-loathing), but if it works, you'll definitely be the first to know.

Stay tuned.

Popularity: 6% [?]

As promised, I ran a one-month case study on a particular offer. In fact, it was this particular offer-

Consumer Incentive Promotions - $250 Grocery Gift Card - ZIP SUBMIT

This is offer #553 from NeverblueAds.

Here are the final stats for sales-

CPL: $1.20
Clicks: 9,689
Conversions: 2,228

Total Sales: $2,673.60

Advertising was done solely with Google AdWords on the content network to keep the study simple.

Here are the final stats for ads-

Starting bid: $0.50/click (Beginning of study)
Ending bid: $0.35/click (End of study)
Average CPC: $0.24 (Overall)
Average Ad Position: 3.3
Total Clicks: 7443
Total Impressions: 7,005,653
CTR: 0.11%

Total Spend: $1,758.60

And the ending total-

$2,673.60 - $1,758.60 = $915.00

And for the gritty details, here is the ad I ran:

Grocery Content Ad

As you can see, there's nothing amazing about the ad and the URL itself is a redirect. With a little updating, this ad can be improved significantly to increase the low CTR and increase the honesty factor of the ad (as it was slightly misleading).

Keywords: food stamp, food stamps, recipe, recipes

Popularity: 52% [?]

What is it that separates you from success? It's not for a lack of trying, that's for sure.

Like many, you've probably been beating your head against a wall for quite some time now. You've got dark circles under your eyes from lack of sleep and like a drug addict, you can't wait until your next fix. You live from sale to sale and that's why you'll never get ahead.

If there's one message I've been preaching since I started ATB, it's that you should use your traffic to its fullest extent.

That doesn't mean terrorizing each user you get with an insane display of crack-pot ads and pop-unders for them to see later. It definitely doesn't mean pop-up messages when they leave your site. What it means is this: if you pay a search engine to send a click your way, you should find multiple ways of using that single click not just to push sales but to create potential sales.

Potential sales are sales that haven't happened yet. They're sales that neither you, nor your customer know will happen. But given the right opportunity, they're almost guaranteed to happen.

Here's why.

A few years ago, I had a job as a store salesman. To train us for the position, our instructors told us that there is no such thing as "I'm just browsing." They drilled that into our heads because they wanted us to believe that no matter what, a sale had to happen. If a customer walked into our isle with that curious look but says "I'm just browsing," that's when we started really "helping" them because to us, "I'm just browsing" means "I want to buy but something is standing in the way." Usually, that something was either that they had no idea what they needed or .. their wife.

The funny part is, whether browsing in a store or browsing the web, you're usually facing the same obstacles. That's why it's important to keep the same determination in mind when selling to eyes on a web page.

Of course, you're no dummy. You are fully aware that some people are literally just curious to see what's on your site. Your competitors will look, they might even have a mean streak and click on your expensive ads. It just comes with the territory. In fact, it's all the more reason to work on your squeeze.

There are several mainstream ways to go about squeezing sales out of your customers after that initial click:

• Collecting Emails - I won't go into it again but suffice it to say, it's absolutely necessary. If you aren't doing this, you aren't serious about making money.
• Offering Similar Products - If you've ever spent ten minutes browsing through Amazon.com, you'll notice they'll always tell you what else customers bought when they purchased the particular item you're looking at. That's because they know it increases the likelihood that you'll buy it on impulse. Think about it.
• Building Your Organic Rank - That's right. Keep your customers coming back to a site they can actually use and link to. You give your customers something to talk about and suddenly, you won't have to pay so much for people to click your ads because they'll be coming on their own and bringing their friends.
• Offering Free Things - As long as the free things you're offering are of some use, people will typically come back. They'll say "where did I find that one thing? Oh yeah!" and suddenly, your customer has returned. And that means a chance for more money.
• Updated Content - Regarding 'free things', if that same customer comes back and sees updated content they're more likely to see what else is happening on the site just because they're curious. If you get people to subscribe to an RSS feed that's attached to the blog that's attached to your landing page, then you'll have a full list of people that you can actually give information to. Just make sure it's decent information and hopefully information they can't get elsewhere.

I could think of more, but I just wanted to get you thinking about what else you should be thinking about when you're building your landing pages. This sort of determined frame of mind will lead to more sales and less sales withdrawals (those periods of depression and insecurity you feel between sales).

So take a step back, take a good look at your sites and think: am I doing all I can do to squeeze my customers?

Just don't squeeze too hard.

Popularity: 4% [?]

So like I was saying, lately I've been testing the content network out on a few campaigns. And to my surprise, the profit margin isn't actually that bad. I mean, I'm not unhappy with any profit margin but so far, it's been around 25% for the ones I've been running.

What does that mean for you? Keep an eye out, because I'm going to be telling you what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. That's right, boys and girls. I've been conducting this experiment for you people.

Why? Because I like you and because there's plenty of love (money) to go around on this one. So keep an eye out in the next couple of weeks for my how-to post on content-based campaigns. It's going to rock your socks, my newbie friends.

Anyway,  I'm pretty happy about all this because I can afford to pump some decent money into these little offers before I hand them over to you fine people.

For now, I'll see how they scale.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Lately, my peeve has been people who are ruining the good image of internet marketers. Everyone knows we are a highly respected bunch. Hey, I kid, I kid.

But seriously -- as far as internet marketing goes, the people who want to "get rich quick" make the rest of us look even worse. So my advice to you is: put some effort into it.

I'd venture to guess that most of those who just throw up some crappy site in hopes of  wrangling in some extra bucks don't end up making the kind of money that people like my friends and I do. That's because they end up getting Google Slapped or some business like that or their site gets swiped because it's so simple.

And the worst part about it- in the past, it's caused Google to crack down on sites that are low in quality or even slightly low in quality. A good analogy would be to relate it to the real estate market. One site goes down and because that was closely related to another, the sites around it get penalized for having similar qualities, even if they are technically within guidelines.

My point is simple: create quality and you most likely won't get slapped. The side benefit is that your minimum bids will get lowered for more competitive terms and you'll be able to compete with the big boys.

To create quality, I recommend writing articles or having articles written for you on the topic you're marketing. Additionally, you should provide a contact page and ideally, a blog to house the aforementioned articles. (Note: You may want to turn comments off). This will get your site indexed a little more thoroughly. On top of that, it's good to have things like a terms of service document as well as a privacy notice (if you collect information). This will help in a few ways: Google likes sites with more pages, Users trust sites with more pages and it's just a better way of doing business.

Remember: it is an actual business, so things like this matter.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Well, I'm 25 now. Yesterday was my quarter-century mark and I am realizing how little time I've had for this blog in the past couple weeks and it's annoying the hell out of me, so I thought I'd post.

Lately, what's been on my mind has been the B.S. posts that people keep spewing out to keep people interested (you know who you are). Those posts aren't fooling anyone. They're trite and boring.

So let's cut straight to the chase with this one. What people ask most often .. the number one question .. the big cheese of questions is: how do I choose offers? Well, how about I choose for you? That's right, for those of you just getting started, I'm just going to pick an offer I'm trying right now or that I have tried and I will tell you all about it. Sure, it might get a bit more saturated as a result, you might have even tried it already, but remember- my intentions are to benefit you. My only catch is that I want you to report when you try it, if you do, and let us know how you're doing. It helps inspire people and plus, I get more comments that way which makes me happy inside.

Beach Bum Systems (2236 on Neverblue)
I've been running this for a long while now using email to promote it. I recommend you do the same. The conversion rate is above 1% and, as I always say, e-mail conversions are free after you've paid the first time. So take advantage. The best crowd this converts for (for me) is the make-money-online crowd but you might try another angle.

Anyway, let me know how it works out if you do try it or even if you have tried it.  Good luck.

Popularity: 6% [?]