I'm not sure if I could find a bigger topic if I tried - Niche Marketing could fill several books and those of you who know me are in danger because I have been known to write some epic posts in my time. I will spare you today though as I want to lay some groundwork first.
Before I start I want to narrow the field somewhat and point you towards a few projects that you can follow along with or better yet join in. Vic's money making blog "Blogger Unleashed" is a busy place lately and among other things (like raising money to help a blogger in need) Vic has been explaining the advantages of creating local niches. Read his article and then hop over to Monika's new local niche blog Yeppoon Chronicle to see how you can do this yourself. Neena is also giving this a go in Westport-Kids. Both sites are great examples of how you can target your local communities.
In a similar vein you can follow along with Court's Internet Marketing tutorial which combines keyword targeting and local niches in creating his Colorado Lasik Surgery Guide.
If that's not enough links for you then I have a few more. Justin over at "Blendworx" is currently walking his readers through a niche experiment for "Butt Implants" (Seriously) and if you want step by step instructions for creating a niche I suggest you check him out.
My final link goes out to Elliot at "Blog Explosion dot Net" who is assisting Vic with a Local Niche Site Support Group that all are welcome to join. It's a place you can all get help and just as importantly make friends - networking with others always pays big dividends.
I will take you through my methods for finding niches in the next post. I want those of you who are interested to read through the blogs listed above first in order to get a feel for what is entailed as well as an understanding of just how broad a subject this is.
Some Asides...
For Pablo at The Tao of Blog who along with Divinyl's music review blog have been discussing what to do about all the scrapers who steal your blog content and post it as their own. If any of you are encountering this problem then do the following; add a link back to your site in the first paragraph of each post you write. The first line of this post above has the term "Niche Marketing" linked back to this blog. Most people who scrape content from others use an auto program that steals your RSS feed snippets - usually just the first paragraph so make sure the link is in the first paragraph. Scrapers don't as a rule read what they have scraped and by adding your link they will post your content on their site and unknowingly give you 1) The credit you deserve. 2) Link juice in the form of PR from the scraper site. In this way you can use the scrapers to your advantage - a backlink is a backlink even from a thief.
This question has come up frequently...
Hi Grizz,
I have been reading you and Court and I am confused over smart pricing. Court says if you have low CTR then you are smart priced and will get low clicks which will lower revenue on all your Adsense sites. I noticed that you said in the comments on Vic's post Page Rank vs Traffic that smart pricing happens if you have poor conversions. I'm not sure I understand this and you seem to say that low CTR is not a factor in smart pricing. Can you clarify smart pricing for me? Thank you so much for helping us noobs.
Sincerely,
Erin K.
This is confusing a lot of people so I will give it another go. First go and read my comment on Vic's blog using the link above. (It's long of course.)
Court has tried to simplify smart pricing in such a way that while not technically correct it is a common guideline for running Adsense on your site. I don't blame him for choosing the low CTR method as it is pretty accurate in most cases and works as a general rule. Technically speaking however, you can have low CTR and not be smart priced but this is a tricky subject to explain.
Smart pricing is based on conversions. Have you ever checked your Adsense and noticed that you have 2 clicks and a payout of $.30. An hour later you check again and still only have 2 clicks but now the payout is $.50. What gives? It is not uncommon to see your CPC (cost per click) change during the course of the day while your number of clicks don't change at all. Adsense is on a delay system and calculations are continualy being made behind the scenes. One of the calculations involves conversions and I can't say I know exactly how Google works this out but to understand the process I wrap my head around it this way;
Google charges the Advertiser a higher per click rate when the site his/her ad is on is a high conversion site and a lower rate when the ad is on a low conversion site. If I run an ad for "Making Money Online" and it appears on a blog like this one then I will pay top price per click. This blog gets highly targeted search engine traffic for terms like "make money online". Because my traffic is looking for this type of information then they are more likely to convert into sales for the advertiser.
Conversely if I run the same ad and it appears on let's say Divinyl's music blog - it could if there was a "Make Money Online with Music Reviews" type of post - then I will be charged a lower amount per click. This is because Divinyl doesn't get targeted traffic for this term and her visitors will be less likely to convert into sales for me.
Now how Google works this all out is beyond me but it isn't important. The easiest way to ensure that you don't get smart priced is by writing highly targeted posts. I have explained this in detail numerous times but by using your main keyword in your post title and then as your first header you can pick the ads that Google sends you. The post title is the biggest determinant in how Google selects ads for your page. Make sure the rest of the post is relevant to your title. This will ensure that all the ads are relevant. If you get a variety of ads on your page then you are poorly targeted and likely smart priced. If all your ads are related to each other and relevant to your post then you are not smart priced. Public service ads and blog ads are usually a bad sign - Google has either blacklisted you (the PSA ads) or the bot can't define what your page is about. (The post is poorly optimized.)
Rather than rely on low CTR you are probably better off using CPC as a gauge. I have a lot of very low CTR sites but my clicks still pay me $1.00 or more. I may only get one click in a hundred impressions but the click converts well for the advertiser. Conversely I have had sites that get 200% CTR (this is possible when one person clicks several ads) and yet I only get $.01 payouts - usually a sign of smart pricing but not always as some ads just don't have a lot of competition and the advertiser can buy the minimum.
It helps to use a tool like Keyword Elite (or open an Adwords account and use Google's tool) when trying to determine your CPC. Keyword Elite will give me a rough idea of what advertisers are paying for various terms. I know that anyone targeting "Make Money Online" will pay Google between $2.56 and $3.20 for one of the top 3 spots on the right hand column in the search listings. This means that they will pay $.60-$1.25 in the content listings which appear on websites. (You get about half this amount) As long as my CPC falls within this range on this blog (and it does) I know I am getting top dollar per click. If I suddenly get $.10 clicks on this blog then I know something is amiss and likely it's smart pricing.
This is complicated and quite frankly there is no way to know for sure if you are being smart priced so it is common for people to just assume that a low CTR means you are smart priced. In General this is a safe assumption but combine it with your CPC. If you are getting high per click payouts - $.30 or more - then don't worry about your CTR - you aren't smart priced. The exception to this would be that you know an ad like "plumbers" should be paying $5 - $10 per click and you are only getting $.30 clicks.
A word to the wise - know your niches. I never worry about smart pricing as I know what all my keywords should be getting as far as CPC goes and I write relevant highly targeted posts to get the ads I am after. On the few occasions that I have been smart priced (see I Just Doubled my Income)I knew it immediately as my whole network started showing low payouts. I quickly backtracked to the last new site created and removed the ads and within a week I was back to normal.
Ok, I have a lot more questions sent that need answering but that's enough for today. More next post.
Update Oct 2008 - If you need help tracking down backlinks (good keyword anchored backlinks) then check out several resources I am providing on my other blog Make Money Online with Grizzly. In particular you should look at the Niche Support, Link Resources and Friendz of Griz pages. You can also read this article Finding Links for those Niche Blogs These resources are free and I encourage all my readers to join in.
A favor if you would...
It looks like 1 year and 26 days later my site is finally lodged on page 1 of Google for the term "Make Money Online". I have been there for a while in most data centers except the US center (Google.com) and the UK center (Google.uk). It looks like I am in 10th spot on the US center but since I don't live in the USA I was wondering if some of my American and UK readers could do a search and let me know if I am indeed on page one in their region. This was my whole purpose in starting this free blogspot experiment and I want to know if I can finally crack open the Champaign.
Thanks for the help and just leave me a comment if you would be so kind.
Cheers,
Griz
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