EasyPeasy research = MicroNicheFinder

Keywords are the exact word or phrase surfer’s type into search engines to find what they are looking for on the Internet.  They are the essential elements in your website’s profitability and in many cases, keywords will largely determine how much revenue you earn from the web.

Finding profitable keywords is not a difficult task.  Anyone can use popular online sites and tools to find valuable and profitable keywords with a few minutes of work.  Quick, easy and simple.  You just have to know how to find the answers to these three questions:

How Many Searches Are Made Each Month For Your Keyword?
How Much Competition Does Your Keyword Have?
How To Know If Your Keyword Is Profitable?

A keyword that receives no searches is worthless.  A keyword that receives just 10 to 100 searches each month may be very profitable.

Your first task is to find out or discover HOW MANY SEARCHES are made each month for your keyword or keyword phrase.  You can use sites like Overture (Yahoo Search Marketing) or WordTracker and they will give you the number of searches made each month and variations of your keyword phrase.  I also use this site: http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/

Once you know how many searches are made for your keyword you can determine how much traffic you will receive if your site lands on the first page SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).  The closer you are to the number one spot will determine the percentage of these monthly searches you will receive.  Most of your traffic will come from Google, even if you get Number1 spots in all three major engines, Yahoo and MSN will return less traffic – at least this has been my experience but do not overlook these last two.  They behave more like Google used to before the so called “Google Slap”.

Keep in mind that even keywords with low search numbers may still be profitable.  For example, ‘unique corporate gift ideas’ only has around 400 searches but this may be very profitable for companies or websites that cater to corporate gifts.  Also remember that some keyword searches are seasonal. i.e. The number of searches made for ‘valentine gifts’ in July will greatly differ from those made in February.

2. How Much Competition Does Your Keyword Have?

You must know the level of competition for each keyword phrase you target with your online marketing.  Extremely competitive keywords may or may not be worth your investment because you will have to spend a lot of money per click to get on the first Search Engine Results Page.

If you are relying solely on Search Engine Optimisation rather than Pay Per Click for very competitive keywords, it may require months, usually years of content/link building to get results.  Unless you use a PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising system such as Google AdWords or Yahoo Marketing, you will not get any traffic from extremely competitive keywords.  It is best to target keywords with little or no competition.

One of the best sites to use to find your keyword’s competition is Google itself.  If you type your keyword phrase ‘corporate gift ideas’ into Google search you will see there are 7,660,000 pages/listings returned.  To get the number of pages that have your exact keyword phrase, you need to search your phrase within quotation marks “corporate gift ideas” and you will see it has around 275,000 pages featuring your keyword phrase.  As a guide:

keyword = broad match
[keyword] = exact match
“keyword” = phrase match
-keyword = negative match

If you check out the sites on the first three pages of listings, you can determine the level of your competition.  I use the professional keyword research software Keyword Elite to determine my competition.  However, here is a quick way to check the PR (Page Rank) of the listings for your keyword phrase.  Let us run through an example.

First, do a search in Google for ‘corporate gift ideas’ and then highlight and copy the return URL.

Next go to this site:
http://www.iwebtool.com/visual_pagerank

and paste in your Google keyword return URL:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=corporate+gift+ideas&btnG=Search

This will give you a quick visual page rank of all your chosen keyword’s Top 10 competitors! 

3. How To Know If Your Keyword Is Profitable?

One quick and simple way to tell if your keyword is profitable, i.e. that people are making money from promoting and optimising your chosen keyword phrase, is take your keyword phrase and type it into Google, Yahoo and MSN.  Just count the number of Sponsored Links at the top of the page and at the sides.  If your keyword phrase is profitable, you will see many sponsored links, which means sites/businesses are advertising.  Where there is advertising, there is profit!

You can use Yahoo Search Advertising (Overture) to discover the amount each advertiser is willing to pay for each click or visitor to their keyword phrase – this amount can range from $.10 to $10 to $100 per click!

I use the keyword software mentioned above to monitor the different sites promoting my keywords.  If my competitors are buying PPC advertising month after month, I can reasonably know that this keyword phrase is profitable for them and there is a good chance it can be also profitable for me and you likewise.

Many perceptive Internet Marketers find a niche market and target a whole string of related keywords that have little or no competition.  This Long Tail marketing method can prove very profitable.  How profitable will largely depend on what you do with your keyword traffic, how well you can convert this traffic into a sale or how well you can monetise it with affiliate programs or Google AdSense?

Just follow these three easy steps for finding profitable keywords and you will have a simple system for adding valuable keywords to your site and online marketing effort.  

Good luck!
PS  You can always get Google ads for free!

Amazing logic and common sense, which is not so common, has led a retired doctor to make millions online and he shares his secret with you.

Simply click on the image to find out what it is all about or there is a link below the image.
http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/GetGoogleAdsFree

PPS  If you didn’t want to bother with any of the above, and wanted a website to run Search Engine Optimised in automatic mode then there is a real no-brainer in SiteSell…
http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/SiteSell

Just In:

Micro Niche Finder
http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/MicroNicheFinder

PPCClassroom2.0 ~ Doctor of Physics Shows You How To Make $2.4Million With PPC
http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/$2.4MillionWithPPC

Dominating ClickBank 2.0
http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/FreeDominatingClickBank2Video

To rectify this abominable confluence of bad info and terrible services, I’m going to clue you in on two sure-fire ways you can actually make real, spendable, negotiable cash from your Website. Not surprisingly, both methods of earning money involve actual products, and while not necessarily falling under the “easy” category, they both find their roots in the “no bullshit” category, which I happen to love.

Method One: Sell Your Own Product

It’s no coincidence that the best way to make money offline also happens to be the best way to make money online. Selling your own product and living by the objective economic laws of supply and demand is by far the best way to generate cash and to protect yourself from all the crap that goes on in the world.

Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware of the fact that the USstock market is currently tanking. However, if you own a business and sell your own product, this shouldn’t make any difference to you. After all, you’re selling a product that has a nice demand behind it; you support your customers; and you’re still making sales and forging your place in the market.

Best of all, selling a product online has tons of ancillary benefits:

• You’re insulated from Google to some degree, so “big brother” can kiss your sweet ass. You literally own a piece of the market, and your vertical will persist regardless of Google’s opinion or influence (or anyone else’s, for that matter).
• You get to build your business by developing your product and responding to the marketplace, and the Internet is the most feedback-oriented marketplace there is. Talk about a harmonious situation—I hear doves chirping and violins playing in the background when I eventhink about this.
• You don’t need to compromise your site – or your users – with ads. Even beautiful ads are ugly, and given the choice, I don’t think anyone who would choose to fill up the real estate on their Website with someone else’s crap when they could be using the same space to promote their own stuff. You want absolute control over every pixel of your site while still making money? You need to sell your own product, my friend.

Now, I realize that not everyone has their own product to sell, so from the perspective of ubiquitous application, this isn’t a great solution. Fortunately, this is where the second sure-fire moneymaking method picks up the slack.

Method Two: Affiliate Product Sales

If selling your own product is the best way to make money online, then it should come as no surprise that selling someone else’s product is the second best way to make money online. In nerdy marketing circles, this practice is known as affiliate sales, and there are tons of average Joes out there who are doing this and making sustainable incomes.

As for the people who are a little more clever than the average Joe?

They’re making a killing.

If you want to find success as an affiliate marketer, the “secret” is simply to pimp a product that you not only use, but also genuinely like. The more knowledgeable and transparent you are, the better you’ll do; but if you can only be one thing, be genuine.

There are countless affiliate programs available online, so which one should you promote? The short answer here is to promote as many programs as it makes sense to promote! For instance, as a Web developer, I routinely deal with a few merchants who also offer affiliate programs:

• aMember — payment and subscription software that I use to manage my customer database on DIYthemes, my WordPress theme marketplace
• vbSEO — a clever collection of PHP scripts that turns vBulletin forum software into an SEO powerhouse
• Shared Hosting ~ Midphase



• SingleHop — Dedicated server hosting for larger, more demanding sites (for instance, DIYthemes is hosted here)

Given the nature of my work, it makes perfect sense for me to promote these programs wherever appropriate. Now, I don’t really go nuts with these promos, but then again, I’m by no means a hardcore affiliate marketer. Despite this, 7% of my income in 2007 came from affiliate sales, so I’m living proof that even a half-assed effort in this area can produce a decent return.

How About a Hot New Affiliate Program?

If the dating game has taught me anything, it’s that hot and new are always fun, at least for a little while. Interestingly, the affiliate marketing industry exhibits a similar trend—new programs will get hot, generate tons of cash for those involved, and then slowly level off or die out depending on the quality of the product.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the new thesis theme affiliate program: http://www.bestaffiliateatm.com/recommends/BestWordPressThemeThesis
which I’ve opened in collaboration with Brian Clark of Copyblogger (and affiliate marketing) fame. Brian is literally the most genuine, transparent, and intelligent marketer I’ve ever met, so obviously, getting him on my team for this one was a no-brainer. He knows what it takes to be a successful affiliate, and I wouldn’t have bothered to open this program unless I knew I could help a lot of people kick ass.

We’re paying out 33% commissions, and based on initial sales and user testimonials from our flagship WordPress theme, this program is going to be hot.

So seriously, head on over to DIYthemes, sign up for the affiliate program, and replace that damn AdSense already. What have you got to lose, two dollars… this month?

See you on the site!