There were a number of factors that went into my needing to make this post.
Before anything was my understanding of the fact that, as I’ve mentioned to you before – the selection of your niche market can be the difference between making $100 a week or $1000 a week… AND the difference between getting to that point in 6 weeks or 6 months.
The second was a meeting I had with another marketing buddy a week or so back, where he told me about a niche site he has that often gets as high as 1500 uniques per day, but that doesn’t make as much cash as some of his smaller sites that get less than 100 visitors per day.
And finally, while these and other similar ponderings were skipping around in my mind, someone wrote me an email about this very issue.
Now that you know why you’re reading this post, allow me to elaborate… 
In my mind, when you’re setting up niche mini sites like you or I do, you want to do everything you can to ensure that if you pick a niche, it’s going to be a profitable one.
Even with this in mind, if you’re smart, you know that not every site you setup is going to be a winner. You ditch the losers and hammer the winners even harder with promotional effort.
If you’re not smart, you see your first loser and think the method doesn’t work, so you go and buy another product launch, but that’s another story.
Most of the time, we base this judgment of whether we should enter a niche on the amount of searches the product phrase gets in Wordtracker, the amount of competition it has in Google, and finally, the quality, reputation, or our idea of how successfully the product we choose to promote in that niche will actually sell.
This is, I should say, putting Adsense, selling text links, and other forms of non product sale monetizations aside for just a moment.
It’s choosing that method of deciding on a niche, that results in the hit/miss result of your resulting sites, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing BUT…
What if instead… EVERY site we put up was a winner? What if EVERY site we put up, got the results that only our BEST site got in the past?
Here’s what I think is possibly the ONLY way that could happen…
And yes, I’m going out on a limb here and putt forth a philosophy that while I haven’t tried it directly, I AM suggesting that you (as I WILL be having only just had this revelation) give this a shot.
Here goes…
The bottom line, in determining how successful your niche site is, is not search competition, it’s not search volume, it’s not how you promote your product…
It’s HOW WELL THE PRODUCT YOU CHOOSE TO PROMOTE SELLS.
You can have a front page search ranking… if your product doesn’t sell, you get 0 conversions and no cash.
You can have enormous traffic… if your product doesn’t sell, you get 0 conversions and no cash.
You can be building an email list, developing reader loyalty, getting return visitors, having people link to you, you name it… if the product you’re promoting doesn’t sell, it all means nothing.
The problem is, that what product you should promote is more often than not the AFTER thought – people find a great niche and think that as long as they slap up a site and have it monetized SOMEHOW, the good search numbers will come through and they’ll clean up… it doesn’t happen!
So here’s what I’m proposing…
I’m proposing we GIVE UP NICHE RESEARCH…
Yes, I’m proposing we quit trying to find quality niches and instead try to find HIGH SELLING PRODUCTS!
Now if your a customer of my NMOC, this might not sound like much of a leap in thought, but let me assure you it is…
I don’t even mean high searched and low competitive product names like I wrote in NMOC – those are great but I think you could do even better!
I’m talking about products that people go CRAZY for! Products that sell like hotcakes, products that people HAVE TO HAVE.
I don’t even care about competition- it could be a product that has a million competitors… that might be a GREAT thing – if all those people want to promote it, there must be a reason right?
Here’s the final piece of the puzzle…
When you find a product that sells like crazy, you AREN’T going to be the only one who wants to promote it – likelihood is that there’s already thousands of competing affiliates.
So the challenge for you – instead of trying to find a great niche should be…
Trying to find a UNIQUE and DIFFERENT way to promote a product that you KNOW will sell like crazy.
Those of you who bought Chris’ Lazy Marketer at my recommendation will recognize this as something he did.
He chose to promote the popular clickbank software, but he didn’t do it with Adwords or SEO – he did it by creating a mini demo software and submitting the pad file to software directories – There was probably NO other affiliate doing that, so he cleaned up to the tune of 5 figures per month!
Is this making some sense?
What if we did things that way, that’s all I’m asking… What if?
I intend to provide more information on this in the coming weeks, as well as do some of my own tests but I thought I’d leave this one with you to simmer for just a little while before I do.
Hmmm… Something to think about
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Thanks for the post Andrew
Hi Andrew,
I’d say that products sell well BECAUSE there are hungry markets looking for them. So the market isn’t a non-factor..
Rather, the beauty behind looking for hungry markets is that if you know people ARE looking for things but things are selling, it could just be because they haven’t found them yet.
And that’s where you come in
Definitely sets the wheels to spinning. Anything slightly unique does much better usually and this will take a bit of out of the box thinking.
That is both the good and bad part. Good for those of us that are willing to expend a bit of effort using our mind and bad because too many will want the uniqueness without any effort and we know how that works.
Andrew, Yes I like it, and I think you’re on to something with this.
A similar thought has dawned on me before, it’s not necessarily the number of searches, its the crowd. Even if you only get 100 searches per month but that crowd is hungry, then conversions will be high. And if the product is a real winner, then it’s even better!
Cheers,
Stuart
Andrew,
I agree, and as both Mike and Stuart mentioned, a unique hungry market is key to selling anything at all. It is not entirely new, if you consider Mark Joyner’s Great Formula. If you can find a thirsty crowd, you give them a glass of water, and then sell them a second drink. So the uniqueness will come with a meaningful product that has high perceived value, and one that has emotional pull in how it is presented.
But we already know this, or do we?
Thank you for your post!
Best,
Paul
Kang,
You’re on the right track, however I think there’s a flaw in that thinking…
The words “a hungry market” aren’t really much help unless you know EXACTLY what they’re hungry FOR…
So many people see the term “Dog Training” get searched X,000 times a day and they think that’s a hungry market – but you don’t know what they’re hungry for, so it’s easy to spin your wheels.
You’re right in that those high selling products sell well because there is a hungry market chasing them – but that’s a different hungry market – that’s a very specifically hungry market – one that you don’t usually realize you’re seeing when you use traditional niche research methods.
Mike,
You’re right man, it’s good and bad. Bad for those who want the quick and easy fix to finding a niche and getting traffic – good for those who like to be creative and think up something unique!
Stu,
Great minds think alike dude.
Andrew
Good post, Andrew. One great thing about ideas like this is they lessen your own competition. The more “work” involved, the fewer people there will be that follow all the way through. Just look at the number of people that spend a grand or two on the latest and greatest and never use it.
I think it also depends a lot on what your goal is with regard to a site. If you’re looking to create a content site that ranks well, gets decent organic search traffic and makes you some cash on autopilot from contextual advertising or affiliate links, obviously, keyword research and the supply’demand numbers, as well as the quality of the other sites is a big factor. If you’re looking to build a list and maybe create and sell your own products, than the internet becomes a direct market media channel and other things are more important, like the thirsty crowd Stuart mentioned. Some marketers even market only offline but send people to a web site to get them in their funnel. Those marketers really don’t need the keyword research but they do need to know what sells like crazy in that niche and where those buyers are.
Thanks Andrew.
Gregg
Andrew, I think you’re onto a hot tip there.
I have been unhappy with the keyword centred approach for ages but I could not articulate why.
I’m pretty sure I’ve asked you about that in the forum.
Next question: How do you judge a best seller? Movers and shakers in alexa? Tarot cards?
I Ching?
Alex,
I Ching? haha, no.
The topic of another blog post, yes
Gregg,
Feelin ya mate
Andrew, you’re turning things around here and as someone else mentioned ‘out of the box’ creative thinking is required which most of us do anyway for headlines so this sounds like a path we can follow.
Thanks
I think Andrew is onto something. I don’t know about you guys, but after creating a few dozen niche sites, I’m finding it difficult to predict what market will actually pay for product. Only one in 5 or so site that I build actually produce any consistent profits. I would probably go as far to say that the most challenging phase of the NMOC system is finding an EXCELLENT affiliate product, and picking the right keywords.
This new idea of picking top converting affiliate sites sounds great. Although I think it reminds me of the old Rich Jerk method of affiliate marketing, where you pick the top selling products and try to market them better then the competition.
Anyway.. Keep us posted!
P.H.
Hey Andrew…this really clarifies the contradiction between niche keywords vs niche product popularity. I bet this applies to PPC and Adsense site monetization too.
One could be running a PPC campaign based on great niche keywords for a “dud” product. Tracking reveals this, of course, but the money is still down the drain.
Great stuff!
Jim
Hmm.
Here is my point of view:
The MAIN and the Most important thing is to find the people who Do Have and are Willing to Spend money online!
= this is alpha and omega from my experience.
‘coz you can have those zillion “searches” (= see that Dog Training as an example) but people are not going to buy a ‘dog training book’ readily, ‘coz they are lazy! “They” would actually Have to Do something.
And it doesn’t matter you have the “Perfect Product” either! This ‘market’ is simply shitty, no matter who is washing your brain to.
(You have to Push 100x harder in this market if you want to make some decent money, then you would have to f.e. in some recent new gizmo for Apple fanatics)
Andrew, great thoughts..but how to find the top sellers, and..if a product sells like crazy, why would the merchant need to set up an affiliate program??
Hey Andrew,
You are right on the money – literally.
Once you’ve found a high-converting product, then what you want to do is plan a way to capture part of the niche through some kind of leverage.
You CAN go the mini-site route, eventually having them feed into an authority site (or network), and as you also mentioned, some of the viral models often work as well for capturing traffic initially, and possibly long-term.
The search engines will send you crap-loads of traffic, especially if you’re creating info-pages or reviews for *every* product/solution in the market on your site. (Becoming the official “whitepages” for your niche can be very profitable, by the way…)
But the important thing here is to have an action-plan in place for when this happens so that you can create a DIVERSE range of taffic assets.
If there’s thousands of affiliates promoting products like mad in the market, then the thing to aim for is to enter the market YOURSELF as a merchant, creating feeder products that lead the buyer to a natural upsell.
Again, a creative twist based on the same “reason for buying” can help to set your product apart and make a splash.
This, in addition to list-building and the natural organic traffic growth that will occur by creating an actual resource worth talking about in your market’s perspective, creates a business that is destined to succeed based on its very design.
You let the product prove the market as an affiliate.
Then you capture that market in a variety of ways so that you’re NOT dependant on any one source.
Getting Google traffic is great, but getting Google AND YouTube AND affiliates AND your list AND viral marketing and so on and so forth is what you want to eventually strive for.
Allen Says once said “The #1 rule of internet marketing is to make everything you do self-perpetual”.
That’s not always possible in every market or with every project, but making it your AIM will lead you to do things that will give your business an edge.
And this can even include things like sorting out an effective ROI for a given activity (such as creating squidoo pages or something) and then outsourcing that activity for less than what you’ll make back.
But you only do this once the market proves itself to you.
Until then, it’s only “worth” the effort of a mini-site, or a PPC tester campaign if you’re comfortable with adwords.
Rock solid post, dude.
This is exactly how it’s *really* done…
-Chris
P.S. Traffic diversity – especially through feeder products – is something that most affiliates are too lazy to do.
This is how you get an edge on even the stiffest competition in almost any market.
Intriguing post. So the trick becomes identifying those hot products early in the game… Incidentally I just used the software submission idea with a toolbar and picked up about 700 one way backlinks to my site from the software directories. It’s a bit of an untapped area I think.
I agree with you also Andrew. The secret would be to identify the hot products early on and finding a unique idea to capture a portion of that “hungry market, ” possibly extra special customer service and ongoing support, and/or bonus incentives for future purchases. This can create customer loyalty built on trust and customer satisfaction.
Great post!
Mary
Hi Andrew. It’s Andrew from Sandy Beach in NSW.
I not only agree with your premise but to do it any other way is nuts.
Anyone who builds enough sites knows that some sites pull visits but no sales and that’s totally useless unless you at least secure an email addy.
Wouldn’t the simplest method of findind high converting products be by using clickbank and any other large portal who gets enough traffic to test products. I mean why be the guinea pig at all?
Just let the portal tell you what is hot and what has sold for long periods as well.