by Robert Plank

Find Out If Your Niche Is Profitable Before You Make Your Website


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I know that there are hundreds if not thousands or hundreds of thousands of various things your blog and your website can be about but there's no point in going into any of these silly little niches if they aren't profitable.

Is scuba diving training profitable or surf boarding? I don't know, but by looking at these three components you can easily decide if a niche is worth going after. Figure out if you have competitors, ask yourself if you have any existing contacts in these areas and explain to me how this can help me.

First of all, you don't want to blaze a trail when it comes to marketing on or even off the internet. It's good to have competitors. Competitors mean that everyone else has already made the mistakes for you. It means that you already have some people you can contact for interviews or to promote you as an affiliate or even for you to promote as an affiliate and it's overall proof that it's possible to make money in this niche. That means that if you don't have any competitors at all or anyone to even compare yourself against, then that might not be a good niche for you.

The next thing you should think about is do you have any existing contacts in that niche. It's one thing to go on the internet one day and tell yourself I want to teach real estate, but it's quite another if you are an ex-realtor, if you know people who can recommend you or who can be a part of your product or who you can interview to capture leads. If you used to have a job in a certain industry that's perfect because it means you probably know people who can help you along the way. You almost never want to go into a niche cold. Go into something where you are already trained in that area, where you also know the players in that area so that you have an easier time not only making your products but getting traffic in the future as well.

Finally, think about the 'what's in it for me' factor because we want to make this exciting. If your niche was how to solve crossword puzzles, can you explain to me how that saves me money, saves me time, avoids pain or gains me pleasure? And if not, it's not a very good niche but it becomes a lot easier to justify any price or justify any offer if it's, for example, $100 and by buying this it saves me more than $100. If you were selling a real estate course for $1,000 and it saved me six months or a year of aggrevation, you could easily justify that to me. Think about if you can save money, save time, avoid pain or gain pleasure.

Those are the three components to figuring out if the niche you've chosen is profitable. Do you have competitors, contacts and what's in it for me?

Whether or not you have chosen your niche, I want you to use this training to set up your blog, membership site, traffic, sales that are up on page auto responder, domain name, web host and everything else at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How To Choose Your Niche Right Now Today


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One thing that bothers me is when I come across students who have a list of 10, 20, even 30, different topics or niches that they might make a website about. Guess what? If you haven't narrowed down your niche, which could be something like green energy, lawn care, weight loss or even real estate, unless you choose that topic you can't go any further because there's no domain name to make, there is no web page to create, there's no product to put up for sale. You need to choose a niche.

So how do you even think of an idea and narrow it down to just one of these possibilities? Think about what skills you have, what could you personally get paid for right now and who else is advertising in this niche.

It's funny because we all have certain skills. I know that you might have certain hobbies, you might have had certain jobs, you might have gone to school for one topic or another, you have a set of skills and some or all of them might be staring you in the face. For example, are you good at chess? Do you know how to repair cars? Do you know how to fix up a home? Any of these things could possibly be a niche where you could have an authority blog, put out articles and have some kind of membership site where people pay you to get advice. Think about what people ask you about all the time, even in person, because you are the expert on that subject.

Making the website and waiting for it to make money isn't that fun, is it? Let's think about what could you possibly get paid for right now to do a task for someone. If you're a lawyer that might mean setting up someone's business entity structure, setting up their LOCs and their S Corps and so on. If you are a writer then that might be ghost writing, but either way it's more fun to get a job right now that you bid on in a job site or get someone to pay you on an as needed basis. Do the work right now and get paid a few hundred dollars and now you have a case study or a starting point for some kind of training you might make in the future.

It doesn't matter what you are good at or what niche you decide on if no-one is making money in that niche then chances are you won't either and it's not going to be as fun unless you pick a topic where you can make money from it. That's why you need to search for that topic in the search engines, and on Facebook, and on other sites and figure out who is advertising in this niche because if people are paying for ads every single day that means they are making money with it. If other people are making money in these niches, then you can have a starting point, you can see how they do it and then you can do it too.

When deciding on a niche, first think about what skill you have, what kind of activity can you get paid for today or this week even offline in person. Finally, take a look at who is advertising in this niche and that will give you an idea, not only if that niche makes money but if you have chosen one that is too broad or too narrow.

Use my step by step formula, to not to just choose the exact niche for you but also set up your entire web presence at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How To Decide On The Perfect Niche Every Time?


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I know that choosing a niche or a specific topic to make your website is a difficult choice especially because if you make the wrong choice then all the websites and all pages you make after that will also be bad. That's why you should choose a good niche the first time and when you're choosing a niche make sure that it is something that is mass market and profitable, something that is specific but at the same time something that is also appealing and fun to your target market.

What do I mean when a niche is both mass market and profitable? Mass market means that many people can use it. A lot of people, maybe not everyone, but many people want to lose weight or want to buy or sell a home and a niche such as weight loss is profitable because you see lots of infomercials, DVDs, courses and membership sites around that topic.

On the other hand, if we were to choose cable knit sweaters as our niche, that might be fun to use as a hobby but unless a lot of people are paying big money for materials or training about cable knit sweaters, then that is a niche you should stay away from.

Not just that but you need to get specific when you choose your niche because a niche like weight loss has so many possibilities that you end up looking just like everyone else because with weight loss there is different areas such as exercise or diet or specific types of weight loss such as fat loss and that means if you were to drill down one more level and make your niche fat loss instead of weight loss then now you look different than other people.

But it's not just that. We also need to make this a fun niche for our potential buyers because nobody likes to do work, nobody likes labor. We want to make whatever we are teaching something that is appealing and fun. For example, I used to teach computer programming and I would make the programming lessons very short and simple with a clearly defined outcome. What we could do if we were in the weight loss niche is not only narrow it down to fat loss but make it appealing and fun, narrow it down to fat loss without diet and exercise and you could have a series of training products about fat loss but specifically how to do it without diet or exercise.

Those are some good examples of specific niches and how you can decide on it. First of all, choose something that you know a lot about and ask yourself is it a mass market kind of topic and not only that, is it something that people are willing to pay for? Is this information valuable?

Step two - how specific can you make it while still making it something that people will pay money for and step three how can you spin it so that it is appealing and fun, making all your competitors dull and boring while keeping you exciting.

No matter what your niche is, Robert Plank wants to give you access to a site that sets you up with your own business on the internet in less than 48 hours at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

What Is A Niche Anyway?


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A niche is a unique topic where you are presenting your products, your articles and your blog post. A lot of people make the mistake of not making their niche specific enough, not having it unique enough or having it be something they don't enjoy. Avoid those mistakes entirely by following these three simple tips on choosing the right niche.
First of all you have to have your niche be unique and everything you put out including all your content, your training and your products, need to be about that exact niche. That means you shouldn't be selling one real estate product, one weight loss product and one exercise product. Focus on one area such as real estate. But not only that, you should get specific enough where you don't have too many competitors and where you can also differentiate yourself from everyone else, which means that if you were just teaching beginners' real estate or everything there was to know about real estate, then you would have a hard time convincing others why you are so special.

On the other hand, if you were specific enough to teach about foreclosure flipping, then you could show how you are the number one expert in buying foreclosure properties and flipping them and now you can become the expert in your field.

Finally, your niche needs to be something that you enjoy. After all, the reason why you are putting out your own products and your own information instead of having a day job is because you want to have something that gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning. That's why when you choose your niche, it should be something that you enjoy, something that you are good at and something where there is money in the niche where there are buyers. That's why in a niche such as real estate there are lots of people who are willing to pay for real estate training and if you are good at that and can prove you know it and enjoy it enough to keep marketing in that niche day in and day out then you have chosen a successful niche.

Those are the three things you should look at when choosing a niche. Make it a unique topic and produce all of your information in that area. Make it specific enough where you can show yourself as the number one expert in that topic. Finally make sure it's something that you enjoy, that you're good at and has money.

Robert Plank will get you started on choosing a niche and building an entire business around that niche at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Is Your Niche Too Broad Or Narrow?


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When you were deciding on what the topic of your website and your marketing is going to be, you always have that danger of choosing something that is either too broad or too specific and there is no clear cut formula to figure out if your niche is specific enough or not specific enough.

But you do know that your niche is not specific enough if your solution doesn't write itself. And what I mean by that is if you decide that your niche is going to be weight loss then what product would you make it in weight loss. It's not immediately clear. But if your niche was weight loss from running, then it's pretty clear that the topic you would make would be possibly a 30 day video course about how to train for running and how to lose weight by running or jogging or doing those kinds of exercises, but it's not as general as weight loss.

If you decided your niche was writing, well then what product would you make about writing? It's suddenly not very specific but what if the topic was article writing as a freelancer? Now you know that the product you are going to make is how to get work as a freelance article writer.

On the other hand, you might make it a little too narrow. And you know that a niche is too narrow if no-one is looking for that information. Many people probably are Google searching or asking on forums or looking on your blog for how to lose weight from running or how to become a freelance article writer. But if you can't find anyone looking for someone to write a legal contract for buying 1850s antiques then that is definitely a niche that is too specific. Someone who is experienced with buying and selling antique items, that might be a niche, but narrowing yourself down so much that no-one is looking for it and no-one else is selling that solution means that it is too narrow.

So how do you know that the niche you've decided on is just right? The big give-away on this is if you can easily think of a 'how to' product. In other words, a product that starts people at one position and takes them step by step to the end. If it was freelance article writing, then the step by step is first of all someone needs to decide what kind of article writer they will be, then figure out how to bid on jobs, then take a job, then write the articles and figure out how to get paid. That is an easy step by step process and you can justify why others would pay for this information because you can show how writing a certain number of articles can get you a job that pays a certain number of dollars which means that that is now worth the price of the course.

And that's how you choose if a niche is too broad or too narrow. Does the solution write itself? In other words if you think of the topic can you immediately think of what your information will teach? Do people actually want this information and do you have competitors selling it and is this a 'how to' step by step subject?

Figure out how to get into your niche, register a domain name and set up a website from start to finish at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Specific Headlines And Bullet Points To Place On Your Opt-In Page


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An opt-in page is very simple. Just have a web page, add a headline to it, list three bullet points under it, and place your opt-in form under those to make a very simple offer that people can understand in a short amount of time that is also detailed enough so that your new email subscribers know exactly what they are getting into. But if you have not seen many good examples of opt-in pages or you have not set up very many opt-in pages of your own, you might be confused about what kind of headline and what kind of bullet points you should be placing on this opt-in page. We'll talk about that today.

For your headline, just keep it simple. We are not going for any silly phrases or clever words. We're just saying exactly what people are getting. For example, "Free Video Shows You How To Learn To Swim In 5 Minutes Or Less." Very simple. They know exactly what outcome they will be at as soon as they're done watching the video and at the same time they know what the video is about. Probably showing how to swim the proper way.

One extra bonus you could add on this headline is state the dollar value of it. For example, if the video is worth $97 for someone. So learning how to swim in 5 minutes, instead of paying a swim instructor, then it's worth that amount but it's free. So the headline might say, "How To Learn To Swim In 5 Minutes With This Easy Video, $97 Value, Yours Free." That will grab attention and state the value of this free gift they are about to get. Because we don't want them to think that just because this gift is free, then it's worthless. It has a value, but they are getting it for free in exchange for signing up to your list.

Now, below that headline, we want to list some specific bullet points so people will know what it's about. And if you haven't done this, it's easy to get stuck. But I just want you to tell me what I can do with this video. Do you talk about the front stroke and backstroke? Then one of your bullet points might be, "Master both the front stroke and the backstroke." Another bullet point might be that anyone at any age can use this training and a final bullet point might be that it works in ocean, in a swimming pool, no matter what. So, three bullet points saying what I can do with it. I can do it right away in any environment.

And if you're still kind of stuck, tell me what results I can see from it and why I should get it right now. Obviously, if your video shows me how to swim in 5 minutes, the results are I can go from nothing to being a basic swimmer in just a few minutes from your video. And why get it now is the urgency. So, the urgency might be that you will be taking the page down later. Or that if they don't learn this information right now, then a week or a month will go by and they still won't know how to swim but if they had just given you 5 minutes, then they could have gotten that issue out of the way.

Watch as I set up an opt-in page step by step using a template you can place on your site at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

The Best Email Service To Use To Build A List


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If you want to get more people to your website, which means more participation in your blog and forum community, if you want more people to read your information and most importantly buy from you, you need to be building an email list no matter what type of website you have. Luckily, it's perfectly okay to create a permission-based or opt-in list, which means that somebody chooses to subscribe to your email newsletter. You can send messages to them anytime you want and they can choose to unsubscribe from these messages anytime they want as well. But choosing the best email service changes depending on how long you have been in business and the size of your budget.

The two choices, as far as I'm concerned, are basically MailChimp, which is free, and Aweber, which is $19 per month. MailChimp is a free email service which is a good place to get started and is useful if you have no budget and you don't think your email list is going to grow to a very large size. These both work the same way. You get an account, they give you sign-up code or a sign-up form to copy onto your blog or your web page and then people can then sign up to your list.

MailChimp is free and they limit the number of subscribers you have until you can begin paying. But the idea is you have a few subscribers and you find a way to monetize them either by bringing them back to your site to click on ads or just to buy something.

On the other hand, Aweber costs $19 per month but I believe it's worth it and the reason for that is they provide telephone support. As you're setting up any part of your autoresponder, you can pick up the telephone, call the number and they will walk you through the things you need to do. Also, Aweber has better deliverability which means that when you send a message to your email subscribers, chances are they will get it and it will not be blocked by the email filters.

Whichever one you choose, MailChimp or Aweber, make sure you actually use it. Because there's no point in paying $19 a month or letting a free autoresponder account sit around if you're not actually using it. So decide. If you can afford $19 a month, sign up with Aweber. Otherwise, use MailChimp. But above all, set up your account, make a subscriber list, and put your sign-up form somewhere on your website so that when people visit, they can join your list and receive updates from you.

Let's set up your entire funnel including the opt-in page and the autoresponder at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Build Your Email List With A Free Gift


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The best way to get somebody to join your email subscriber list, which you can then use to send them updates and promotions, is to offer them a free gift. Many times, someone comes to your web page and they are not yet ready to buy and on top of that, they are about to leave your site. On the internet, many people have low attention spans, sometimes of even a few seconds. That's why the best thing you could do for cold traffic, which means visitors who don't know about you, is to offer a free gift in exchange for signing up to your list. Someone is registering to get this free gift but in order to get it they have to type in their name and their email address. After they sign up, they get this free gift but you can then send them emails.

A free gift is something that you get for signing up. You can offer them something like three of your articles rolled into one PDF file or even a 10-minute video. Don't overthink this. You are going to be solving someone's very basic solution. Maybe people want to know what the best WordPress plugins are. Or they want to know what simple way to lose 1 lb. of fat every month. You're going to present what your solution is to their problem and give them the most basic solution possible.

Afterwards, feel free to give them extra tips or send them to a sales letter or your blog, but you're only giving them the equivalent of about one blog post or one or two articles in exchange for signing up. Just take a few of your articles, dump them into Microsoft Word, save as a PDF file, put it on your download page, and that's your free gift. Or use a desktop recording program such as Jing Project and record a video lasting a few minutes, paste it on the download page, and now you have something to offer people in exchange for signing up.

I want to show you how to set up your free gifts, autoresponder, opt-in page, website, domain name and more at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

The Best And Worst Sources Of Traffic To Your Opt-In Page


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The problem everyone on the internet has is that not enough people are looking at their web pages. If you can get even a few people to your website, get them on a list and send messages to them. Then you can get your visitors to return to your site over and over again. But this issue is how do you get them to your site that first time? You need to focus on traffic and get other websites on the internet to link over to you. But not all traffic sources are created equal. Let's talk about the best and the worst places to get traffic.

The best places to get people to sign up to your list and to get to your opt-in page is from forums, articles and blog posts. This is good because we're not asking for them to buy anything right away. They're curious about you from your forums posts. Or they trust what you have to say from your articles and blog posts and they want to know more. So they came to your opt-in page from any of these places and see a certain offer and they're not ready to buy yet but they want to be 100% sure that you know what you're talking about and that you can help them with whatever their problem is. Maybe they want their car to drive faster, they want to write articles faster or wants to set up their website. They've come to your opt-in page. They're not buying anything yet, they are signing up.

One thing I see happen that's kind of silly is that some email marketers will send their existing subscribers to an opt-in page to get a gift. Which is silly because these people are already on their email list. Once someone is on your list, it's your job to get them to buy, not to sign up for more free stuff. If someone is already on your list, I recommend that you link them directly to whatever new gift you have to offer or even better link them to something to buy and don't try to get them to sign up for something else all over again.

And a questionable and not so great sources of traffic to get to your opt-in page are pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. Pay-per-click advertising is fast if you can get it right but it's easy to waste a lot of money on it and many of the ad networks have rules against linking directly to opt-in pages. They want you to link to pages with lots of content on them and it's kind of difficult to have a certain page rank highly for specific keywords if there's nothing on it other than your opt-in form. Search engine optimization or SEO is slow traffic and with SEO, you are hoping and guessing that your page will rank highly in the search results. SEO is a good afterthought because you might get lucky and rank for certain terms. What I prefer to do is have my blog rank highly in the search engines and then link from my blog onto my opt-in pages.

The best place to get lots of people to sign up to your opt-in page is from forum, article or blog post. If someone is already on your list, don't get them to sign up for something again and don't count on paid pay-per-click advertising or free SEO traffic to get a lot of subscribers in a hurry. They're good afterthoughts and there are good advanced methods, but you will get the most and the best traffic to try you out and join your free list from forums, articles and blog posts.

Having traffic to your opt-in page does you no good if your opt-in page is not even set up yet. Let's get it set up together at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How To Get The Most Number Of People To Opt In


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Maybe you have an autoresponder service and you have a simple web page already set up. Now, we want to make sure that the most number of people sign up to our list. How do we do that? We do two different things. We make sure that as many people as possible see the page and you make sure that those people who do see the page sign up. What you want to do is deliver a free gift, make that gift easy to download and get as many links to that web page as possible.

You can try offering all kinds of things in exchange for signing up to your list. It can be a multi-day e-course, updates to your blog, a newsletter, but nothing converts quite as well as a free gift. But this can be very simple. It can be a 5-page PDF report or a 5-minute video or a simple piece of software. Just have something that solves a very common and desperate and specific problem. So we're going to say on the opt-in page what that free gift is and yes, actually deliver it on the other side after somebody types in their name and email address and joins your list.

The next thing you want to do is make sure that it is easy to download this gift. Someone enters their information, you send them to another page where it's very clear in giant text exactly how to get access to this video or this download. If you can make an audio or video automatically play, that's great. But it's far to call off people to have a download page with tons of links to all kinds of different areas and it's not clear where the original gift was. Make it easy to download, try it out, make sure the link is working properly, and even have a friend sign up to your list just to make sure that anyone signing up can easily get to this free gift. Because you want people to stay on your list once they've joined so build that relationship and give them the exact same thing they signed up for.

And finally, there's no point in creating the best gift or the best opt-in page if no one sees it. So get lots of links back to that opt-in page. Post articles, make forum posts, get others to promote it. But make sure that as many as possible are visiting that opt-in page so they can see your free gift and sign up for your mailing list if they decide they want it.

Look over my shoulder and follow me step by step as we create a free gift together and set up your very own opt-in page today at www.newbiecrusher.com.