How to Build A Niche Web Site in 9 Simple Steps

By: Donna Monday Maybe you’ve been wondering how to go about setting up a niche web site. Well, here’s a quick little article that will show you how to create your very own affiliate web site. Please note: this is the cheat sheet version. There is a lot more information you should learn about this subject before you get started. Step 1. Pick a Niche Subject This may be the hardest part of your web site project. There’s literally tons of subjects to choose from. People are interested in a variety of things – from parrots to pilots. You don’t have to necessarily pick something you’re interested in, but it helps. You’re more likely to do a better job at building your site when you have some interest in the subject matter. It’s like taking a high school or college class. Some subjects are more interesting than others. Make sure you choose something that a reasonable amount of people are actually searching for online and want to find out more information about. Here’s a free tool that will help you check the popularity of specific subjects: (http://www.nichebot.com) Step 2. Do Keyword Research This is a part that many people skip. I’ve made that mistake myself and suffered the consequences – a failed web site. Even though it’s nice to think that you can write anything you want and have total creative freedom, not using keyword rich content is a BIG mistake. I’d rather lose some creative freedom and attract visitors to my site, than have a lot of flowery prose that zero people will see. You MUST include targeted keywords in your web site copy. Also, make sure you use your targeted keywords in the upper third portion of your web site pages. This is also called optimizing your web site for the search engines. Use the Overture Keyword Tool for research: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion Note: keywords must be relevant to the THEME (subject) of your site. Be careful not to over use them. Search engines don’t like keyword SPAM. Step 3. Get A Domain Name Having a unique domain name is important, although some don’t agree. However, a unique domain name makes your site look more professional and trustworthy to visitors. I use BuyDomains (http://www.buydomains.com/). They are not the cheapest, but I stick with them because I like their easy interface and good customer service. Nameboy (http://www.nameboy.com/) is also good. Step 4. Write Keyword Rich Content This may be a hard step for those of you who don’t consider yourselves writers. But, writing web site copy is not as hard as it seems. Just think of it as having a conversation with a friend about a product or service you’re really enthusiastic about. Don’t think you can extol the benefits of your subject? Tune your TV into QVC or one of the other shopping networks to see how they can spend several minutes talking about the benefits of all kinds of mundane products. This is what you’ll be doing for your web site. Your copy should feature a good balance of friendliness and professionalism. Remember, you’re passing along useful information to your visitor. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you want to know about xyz subject if you were them? Now, write that down. Don’t forget to sprinkle targeted keywords throughout your copy. I print out a list of them to use for my sites. If you simply can’t put words onto the page and find yourself staring at a blank screen, then visit Internet marketing forums like Willie Crawford’s (http://www.williecrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi) for suggestions on finding writers. Or, visit Elance (http://www.elance.com). Step 5. Build Your Web Site Ok. You’ve created your copy. Now it’s time to build the actual physical web site. I use Homestead (http://www.homestead.com/), but there are many good point and click web site builders out there. You have a lot of creative freedom on how you want your site to look (I prefer black copy on white backgrounds with photos), but remember that people are looking for attractive, easy-to-navigate sites with useful information. Step 6. Sign Up for Matching Affiliate Programs You’ve created a web site about xyz subject. Now look for affiliate vendors who perfectly match the theme of your site. Integrate your affiliates attractively into your web site copy. Don’t confuse your visitors by giving them too many choices. If you want to list a lot of affiliates on the same page, you can create a helpful “resource guide” page. Step 7. Include Google Adsense Ads Google has a great program for web site owners who wish to make a little extra money for simply displaying google ads on their web site. It’s easy to sign up and free. Just visit google (http://www.google.com/ads) and sign up for their Adsense program. They’ll give you some html code to copy and paste on your site. While google decides which ads will actually appear on your site, you can decide how the google ads will look – choose colors, borders, etc. and where to put them on your pages. Step 8. Find Link Partners I found out that exchanging links with other web site owners is a MUST if you want to improve your search engine rankings. Google especially will consider your site more relevant if your site has other sites linking to it. Also the ad copy from other sites, if relevant, can add more valuable keyword content to your own site. I use Linkmarket (http://www.linkmarket.net) to find credible web sites to exchange links with. It’s free to join. Step 9. Write Articles to Promote Your Site Oh oh. Here’s that writing thing again. Well, you better get used to it, because writing articles like this one (normally your articles will be about the subject matter of your web site) will help give your affiliate web site much needed exposure. It doesn’t matter if you write them yourself or hire others (ghostwriters) to write them for you. You’ll find that the best Internet marketers all write articles to promote themselves, their newsletters, and products and services. Remember, there’s a reason the Internet is called the “information” super highway. After writing your articles, you can post them to an article directory site like Article City (http://www.articlecity.com/). People can easily find your articles to use as free content for their sites. Now, I suggest that you print this article out and refer to it often as you go about creating the next great affiliate web site. Good luck! About The Author Copyright 2004 Donna Monday Here’s an example of a niche site I set up for job seekers: http://www.get-a-job-interview-quick-tips.com More on niche marketing here: http://url123.com/mn6dk

  ¶ 5:11 PM 0 comments

  Don't Fall Into This Trap.... By: Richard Grady

One of the most common problems that people make when starting their online business is creating a website or product that people don't want.

Sounds crazy doesn't it? But it's true. I have heard from several people in the past that have emailed me to say that they have built a site but despite having worked to get top search engine rankings, they are not making any sales.

Here's the thing - it is no good having your website at the number one position on Google for the keyword 'tomato soup' if no one ever searches for 'tomato soup'!

Therefore one of the most important things to do when you are considering starting any new website business is research - see if anyone actually wants what you are going to offer them.

Think of it like this, if you wanted to open a restaurant you would do some research to see if the local residents wanted your restaurant and whether they would be likely to use it. If the local residents said 'no', then you wouldn't bother opening would you?

Same process online - make sure there is a market BEFORE you create the product. There are various ways you can do this but one of the best is to use a free piece of software called Good Keywords.

In a nutshell, you type a keyword or phrase into the software and it checks to see how many times in the last month people have searched some of the main search engines for that word or phrase.

It works very well and I have used it to rule out several website ideas in the past - ideas that would have involved me spending weeks of work building sites or writing ebooks, only to find that no one was interested in the subject matter!

You can download Good Keywords at no cost whatsoever from:
http://www.goodkeywords.com
And don't forget the other piece of advice that I keep banging on about - go for a niche market - just because 5 million people searched for 'dvd' last month, doesn't mean that DVD's are a good thing to sell.

Search Google for DVD and see how many search results are displayed - that's your competition! Daunted? You should be! With a bit of research you can find a far less competitive market that still has thousands of people searching for it every month.

Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

About The Author

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html  ¶ 6:02 AM 0 comments

  Tools for Online Tracking By: Sharon Housley

In order to determine which advertising and marketing efforts are effective you must have ways to measure the results of those efforts. Alerts and instant notifications can be instrumental in monitoring search engine position, trademarked terms, monitoring competitors and staying
abreast of online occurrences.

And, of course, the notification can be used for "ego searches".
Ego Searches What is an ego search? Find out where your name or company is mentioned, view forum posts or online articles that mention your name or company.

Trademarks The best offense is a good defense. By monitoring newsgroups or search engines for trademarked terms, you often head off a future conflict. As a trademark owner, it is your responsibility to actively protect your mark. Otherwise, you could lose your trademark rights.

Monitoring tools send immediate notification should any suspected trademark infringements occur.
Search Position Statistics show that more than 85% of Internet users find web sites with the help of the search engines. Therefore, a website's search engine position is crucial to its success.

Prudent webmasters regularly check their search engine position. Monitoring fluctuations and re-indexing of major search engines affects keyword terms and phrases. Monitoring of positions will alert webmasters to any shifts before sales decline.

Competitor Watch Monitoring newsgroups for mentions of competitors may allow you opportunities to chime in and offer an alternative solution in a helpful, friendly way. Knowing exactly what your online competitors are doing provides a competitive edge that can be used to your advantage.

Website Downtime Accessibility is the most critical measure of your website's performance. If customers can't access your site, they can't shop; and if they can't shop, they can't buy. More important, your business could gain a bad reputation among your customers, which translates into negative word of mouth and even worse, if you're highly visible, negative press.

So regardless of what else you monitor, you want to monitor websites for downtime.
Take a look at the various tools available and how they can be used to keep you current on relevant issues.

WebAlerts - Recieve email updates of the latest relevant Google results based on your choice of query or topic. Alerts can be sent based on information in Google News, Google Searches or both. http://www.google.com/webalerts

PubSub - PubSub matches your requests against new information as it appears real time. Searches can be categorized to search, blog entries, SEC/EDGAR Filings, press releases, news group posts or flight delays. http://www.pubsub.com

Ego Alerts - Google news search turned into an RSS feed. http://www.justinpfister.com/gnewsfeed.php

Ebay Alerts - Ebay Alerts monitoring will create an RSS feed to monitor Ebay auctions for specific keywords or phrases. When a new item that contains those keywords is added to Ebay you will receive notification via your RSS feed! http://www.freebiddingtools.com

Amazon Alerts - Generate a URL which you can use to automatically search Amazon.com with your favorite RSS news reader. It will automatically update you when new items meet your search criteria. I personally use it to look for new books on topics I'm interested in, and I have the defaults set to do the same, but you can adjust it to search any of Amazon's stores. You can also adjust the search order and what kind of items you wish to search.
http://www.oxus.net/amazon

Internet Seer - InternetSeer remotely monitors your website to insure that your site is available 24/7. If InternetSeer is unable to reach your site, we will send you an immediate e-mail alert that your site is unreachable. http://www.internetseer.com

NetNewsTracker - NetNews Tracker is a clipping service for Usenet newsgroups. Newstracker searches newsgroups twice daily for any specified words or phrases and delivers alerts via e-mail. Newstracker can be used to monitor newsgroups for names, company names, products, URLs, or any other topic of interest. http://www.netnewstracker.com

Other Suggested Resources -
Monitoring Tools - Monitoring Tools is a directory of online monitoring tools and applications http://www.monitoring-tools.net

Monitoring Software - Monitoring Software is a collection of downloadable monitoring software solutions. http://www.monitoring-software.net

Copyright 2005 Sharon Housley

About The Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com.  ¶ 5:54 AM 0 comments

  6 Ways To Get Valuable Feedback From Your Website Visitors And Customers By: Tal Fighel

You can learn many things you didn't know about your website by getting valuable feedback from your visitors and customers.

Some of your visitors may think it's too hard to navigate through your web site. Some may think that you have too may links on it. Some may even want to see who is the person behind the website.
Some visitors may even think that there are not enough payment options on your site.
What ever they think about it, knowing these types of important information can improve your products/services, website, and other valuable information that may help your website be more effective.
Below are six ways you can use to get valuable feedback from your website visitors and customers:

1. Stay in contact with your visitors on a regular basis who have actually left you their name and email address. You can do this by offering them the chance to subscribe to your e-zine for free. Just make sure that they see where they can subscribe. After every sale, follow-up with the customer to see if they are satisfied with their purchase.

2. Use surveys and questionnaires regularly to improve your business. Offer visitors free stuff for filling up your surveys and questionnaires. Create a pop up window or a link that they can click on so that it is easier for them to fill out the form. Although some people won even bother to fill out the form, some will do. This will be very valuable for you and your website.

3. Go on any online forum and subscribe to it. When you go on, ask other webmasters to take a look at your site and leave any feedback about it. I have done this in the past and it has been very helpful.

4. Make it easy for your customers and visitors to contact you if they choose to. Make sure to offer them as many contact methods as possible. Allow them to contact you by e-mail. Hyperlink your e-mail address so customers won't have to type it.

You can also offer them a toll free number so that they can call you and give you some feedback about your website, the products that they purchased, or just any comments that they may have.

5. Create an online forum for your visitors and customers. Let them chat with each other. Once in a while, ask them for their feedback. Many will reply back to you since you are the moderator and they know you by now.

You can regularly moderate this forum to see what your visitors and customers are saying about your business in general.

6. Offer your website visitors one of your online products or services from your web site at no cost to them. It could be web designing, an e-book, search engine submission, etc.

In return, ask them to fill out a short survey about your web site. Ask them if they find it is easy to navigate. Ask them what they think about the color. What they think about the price of the product or service etc.

You could use a couple or all of the ways listed above to get some valuable feedback from your visitors and customers. These aren't the only ones. In fact, there are many more ways, but these are the most common ways to get feedback from your website visitors and customers. You can always come up with your own ideas. You just need to put your mind into it.
Copyright 2004 Tal Fighel

About The Author

Retired? Unemployed? Laid-Off, or Insufficient Income? Tal Fighel, the editor and publisher of home business tips newsletter, can help you start your own Internet business from home. Build residual and leveraged income to create real wealth.

http://www.talfighel.com/sfi.htm  ¶ 5:51 AM 0 comments

  Top 10 Traffic Building Mistakes To Avoid When people look to submit their sites to the major search engines, there are some key mistakes that should be avoided for successful promotion.

Spam
The surefire way of getting your site blacklisted from the major search engines. Many people see creating thousands of cloaked or doorway pages with hidden text as the quick route to ranking success. It isn't.

Untargeted Traffic
It's one thing to generate lots of new traffic to your site, but is it the right traffic? If you're selling DVD's for example, you want potential buyers to visit, not people who are searching for pictures of a certain movie star. Best to make it clear in your meta information exactly what your site does, then you'll get the type of clientele you're after!

Single Keywords
Unless you're in some incredible niche marketplace where a single word can only be identified with your product with few competitors, single keywords aren't going to hit the bullseye in a traffic sense. Multiple word keyword phrases are the key to traffic success. Instead of going for "books", go for "thai recipe books" or whatever your target market is. You'll have far less competition for that keyword phrase than just a single word. Believe us, we've worked on a bookseller's site.

Poor Design
There's no way around this one. You can have the best rankings in the world, but if your site looks bad, you'll lose that traffic as soon as it arrives. Good, simple, clean design always wins - sloppy design and gimmicks don't!

I Don't Need Links
Oh yes you do. Links are crucial to the traffic building game. Without links to your site from others (if they're competitors, even better), good meta information won't be enough. Most search engines will rank your webpage according to its popularity with its peers. if a lot of sites link to yours, it must be good, so Google & Co. will boost your rating (link popularity algorithms). Read our dedicated article here.
Messy Meta Tags

It's worth spending a bit of time getting your meta tags in order - they tell search engines what your site's about, and act as a basic marketing tool to attract visitors to your site. Check the spelling and make them relevant and you'll be off to a flyer. Read our dedicated article here.

Stickiness
Page design and marketing are inseperable. Once you've attracted your visitors, your traffic building exercise has gone well and your site looks good, what are you offering which will encourage return visits? Regular site updates are very useful since your site will appear active and worth revisiting. The most successful sites we've worked on have been regularly updated. After all the effort you've gone to in gaining traffic, it's worth considering how to hang on to it.

Messy Code
After the search engine robots have visited your site, they'll see the meta information first, then they'll scan your page for the first chunk of relevant text. A large number of sites have cluttered code (Javascript usually) after the meta tags. This will not help your search engine ranking since the relevant text will be too far down the page. Try hiving the Javascript code (or similar) into another file and refer to it from the HTML.

Beware of Rogue "Experts"
Before handing your hard earned money over to "Site Submission Experts", be sure to find out exactly what you're getting. They may claim to be able to submit your site to "30,000 engines", but let's be honest, there's only a handful which create almost all the search traffic on the web, so you can submit yourself. Some firms claim to guarantee you a Top 20 ranked page - yes, if your search phrase is 8 words long. It's not that easy in reality. Reputable firms can help you optimize your pages, and advise you on how best to market your site to your target audience, so best to do some homework first.

Patience
Building traffic is an ongoing activity. After your initial hard work, you should check your pages on the engines and "tweak" them if the results aren't as you expected. Traffic is the oxygen of the Internet and your site is dead without it, so regularly give your code a tune-up and resubmit if necessary. Don't oversubmit though. If you look at your server logs, you'll see the major engine robots visiting on a regular basis, they'll pick up your changes soon enough if you can afford to wait a week or so.

All the best with your traffic building efforts!
James Leckie is editor of http://www.bytestart.co.uk - the small business portal and http://www.trafficgeneration.com - the web promotion portal  ¶ 9:50 PM 0 comments

  Free Web Hosting Options - Syd Johnson

Where can I find free web hosting? There are hundreds of free web hosting services on the web. You can type “free web hosting” into any major search engine and get an expanded list. However, when you sign up for free hosting account, you are basically signing an expanded advertising agreement.

What exactly is free hosting? In exchange for free hosting, the company can place ads your website. The ads can be placed on the top of the main page, the top of every page, or on the sides.
The ads are usually not targeted. It is possible that they won’t match the demographics of your web visitors. In addition, they are not customized to match the content on your web page. This is a very expensive exchange program if your goal is to build up an online business. The area above the fold, everything that is visible without scrolling, is the most effective advertising area on the entire site.

This is the area you should use for your affiliate links, Google Adsense, paid links and expanded site navigation. Some free web hosting contracts go a step further and ask for your participation in their email marketing campaigns. You will receive emails that require a click through to a merchant site, and/or fill out endless surveys.

This can be very time consuming and annoying. Before you sign any free hosting contract ask to see sample sites. You want to get a feel for the types of ads that are being shown on other website. What do you want to look for?
1. Do you see pop-up ads? What about banners?
2. How large are the ads?
3. Are they just off topic or are they inappropriate?
4. Where are the ads? Are they on every single page or on selected pages? Even if the ads are not on every page, watch out. It could mean that the hosting service has figured out which pages bring in the most revenue and they can afford to ignore everything else. Guess what? If it brings in lots of revenue for them, it could probably bring in lots of revenue for you.

There’s free and then there’s FREE If the space is free, what about the domain name? If your new site will look like http://yoursite.freewebhost.com you’re getting a subdomain for your site. It’s not really your unique domain name. They are simply loaning you a space for your stuff. This is not a unique domain name that you can use to brand your business. You can’t use it anywhere except with this particular web hosting company.

Ditto if the new domain names is http://www.freewebhost.com/yoursite/. So what if they offer a truly unique domain name? How long will it take before you actually own the domain name? Even the cheap web hosting services will require that you stay with the company for thirty to sixty days before you can keep a free domain name.

What happens if you want to switch to another company before the period is up? Sometimes there’s a charge to keep the domain name or to transfer it. This should be clearly stated in their FAQ's or in the text of the hosting contract before you agree to use their service. Do you have enough bandwidth? Many free web hosting services are providing their services in such a way that you will need to upgrade your hosting package if your site has any degree of minor success. The tipping point is usually bandwidth.

That is a measure of how much text, pictures, ftps etc. you can send to your web customers every month. The Bandwidth in your contract is measured on a monthly basis. Check the contract to see if there are any fees for going over your monthly amount, or if you will lose your free hosting privileges. Free host today, no host tomorrow There is a very high turnover for free web hosting services that heavily depend on advertising revenue. Even the most successful web companies will find that their advertising revenue varies on a monthly basis.

Will the company suddenly go out business if they hit a three month slump? There should be a written policy on what happens to your content if they site suddenly goes out of business. Can you still access your files? Is there an alternative URL or login site with your information? How much time do you have?

You are only as reliable as your hosting service Check out the statistics on the uptime for their servers. This applies to any hosting service, whether you are paying or not. If their uptime is in the low 90’s and below, then try to find another hosting provider. You are taking a big risk if you use a free web hosting services for your business site.

The inability to control your advertising, high turnover rates among the free hosting providers, and variable contracts usually spells disaster for e-commerce sites. To run a successful online venture, 24-hour live customer service, high uptimes ratios and control of your advertising space is a must.

These features are also the major weaknesses of the average free hosting provider. A better option for you company would be to sign up for an affordable or cheap web hosting provider. You will have many service options in this category and can usually avoid the limitations of the free hosting companies.

Syd Johnson is the Executive Editor of RapidLingo.com, a Financial Solutions Website. This article may be freely distributed as long as the author's bio is included with an active link to http://www.rapidlingo.com  ¶ 9:35 PM 0 comments

  What is RSS? RSS or Really Simple Syndication was the first technology developed that allow user to select and choose certain message or news that they feel are suitable for them and have that chosen content of text or particular subject sent to their computers by internet.

RSS is sent to a feed reader where all the updates that they have requested display in one place. This technology has been around quite a while and is increasingly expand beyond the bloggers and newshound who first embraced or used it.  ¶ 7:58 PM 0 comments

  4 Different Ways of Submitting your Site There are a few different ways you can announce your URL to the different search engines:

1. Use a free submission service. These automated submission services allow you to enter
your information once and submit it to 50 - 400 search engines with the click of a button.

2. Go to each search engine individually and manually enter information for your webpage(s).

3. Hire a professional submission service to announce your URLs to the appropriate directories
and search engines.

4. Use search engine submission software that you purchase to submit your URL.  ¶ 8:50 PM 0 comments

  How Search Engine Can Help You in Web Business Search engines will be a way for you to generate from as little as 20% to as much as 60% of your business online (depending on what other marketing techniques you use). Since there are over 130,000,000 webpages in existence (yes that is 130 million!), it is extremely important to understand how they work and how to increase your chances of being placed in the top 20 of the search results. For example, if you were to type "music" and "CD" into the AltaVista search engine as a keyword the result would be over 1,000,000 related site URLs.

Search engines are a very powerful tool if you are in the top 50 results (preferably the top 20), but are completely useless if you are listed further down. You can bet that if you are further down than the 50th result, the searchee will not even see your site listing, much less be able to visit it.

As we all know, the beauty of search engines is that they can bring you a large amount of targeted traffic and it will not cost you a cent!

It is crucial you understand the basics of how search engines work if you want to get traffic to your site from them. There are three main types of search engines/directories. The first is a directory (sometimes called a category database). This is not a true search engine, but a listing of webpages by category. Many directories allow you to enter in the description and keywords for your site exactly as you would like them to appear. You usually have to select the category you want it cited under, too.

A directory will not list your URL and will never become aware of your site if you do not register with them. They do not make use of "indexing software" (robots that crawl the web looking for new sites and indexing them). An example of a directory is Yahoo.

Search engines (also called crawlers, spiders, robots, and worms) vary to a large degree. They will automatically index your site using "indexing software" or "indexing robots".

Depending on the complexity of the software, here is what different search engines might do:


Index the webpage (not the entire "website") you give them.


Index every word of every page at that site.

Visit external links to crawl through the web looking for any new sites 24 hours a day, 7 days a week going from URL to URL until they have visited every website that can be found on the Internet.

By simply telling the search engine what your URL is, its software robot will go there automatically and index everything they need. Every search engine has different criteria for returning search results which makes a difference on how you want to submit your site as it can drastically effect your ranking in search engines (we discuss this quite extensively in the course, but it takes up over 30 pages, so we will skip it in this newsletter).

It is important to realize that many search engines change their algorithms on a regular basis (i.e. weekly, monthly, etc.) - if you're listed prominently today, that may no be true tomorrow.

There are also META search engines. These perform searches on multiple search engines simultaneously. In this instance, your ranking for the keywords inputted is calculated by the combined ranking of all the search engines simultaneously used. The key to getting ranked high is to make sure you're listed in all the search engines used by the META search engines (They use: OpenText, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek , Excite, AltaVista, Yahoo, HotBot, and Einet Galaxy).

It is not necessary to submit your site to META search engines since they use the results of the major search engines (not their own).  ¶ 8:14 PM 0 comments