Amazon Affiliate - Domain Name Research

When you're planning on creating a niche website to make money from one of the biggest factors in how quickly you rank well for your chosen keyword is the domain name you choose. Its extremely important that you get your keyword in the domain name and that the domain name be a.com,.org or.net.

There are a lot of questions and arguments out there about what is actually needed in a domain name and from my personal experience I'll just say that the best format for a domain name is "http://www.keyword.com" instead of "http://www.keywordstore.com" or "http://www.mykeyword.com". It ALWAYS best to have your exact keyword as the domain, nothing more and nothing less. I've had great success by sticking to this practice.

There's also a lot of talk about the.info domain names. Well to be honest you could get and you could rank with it however in my experience.info's aren't give as much authority as the other three (.com.org and.net). Also when you get ready to sell your sites for a nice chunk of change having one of the other three will always help your sale.

My favorite way to quickly research my keywords for domain name availability is to use the free software, "Domain Name Analyzer. Please follow the link and check it out. It allows you to put in an unlimited number domain name possibilities and then choose which extensions to search for (an extension is the.com or.org). The software makes this process go much faster and is much much easier than pounding everything out in GoDaddy.

Amazon Affiliates - Competition Research

Competition research is an essential part of doing thorough market research. When it comes to doing competition research for an amazon affiliate site you need to several things. First of all head over to Google and type in your keyword. Just below the search input field you'll see a number of competing pages often times in the millions.

What you need to do is put your keyword in quotes so that you only search web pages that are optimizing for that keyword on their site. This will make the number of competing pages drop dramatically. I usually shoot for keywords with less than 100,000 competing pages when I search for my keyword with quotes around it.

Next you want to do a search for how many pages are optimizing for your keyword in the title of their page as well. To do that type this into Google's search field. "allintitle:your keyword". By doing that you'll get a reading of how many web pages have your keyword in their title. I usually try to get keywords that have less than 20,000 competing pages with their keyword in the title.

After you've gotten past those two requirements for your keywords its time to check the top results for your keyword. If they're strong websites you'll want to avoid them and if they're weak you'll know you can rank well for that keyword. I recommend using the SEO for Firefox plugin by SEO Book to do my analysis of competing websites. This will allow you to see how many backlinks these sites have, what their PR is, how old they are and how many different sites are linking to them.

Mainly you want to look at how many backlinks there are to the page thats ranking. If its over 500 then you now have a target for how many backlinks you need to get. 500 can take a little while but its very doable. For me if find that my competing sites have 500 backlinks or less I get very excited and you should too. Thats a keyword you should be able to rank well for in 2-3 months.

Amazon Affiliate Program - Market Reseach

Doing market research before starting a business is like having an accurate flight plan before you go on a trip. If you don't have anything planned out there are a whole slew of hazards that can endanger your flight, make it failure and take you somewhere you don't want to go. Imagine an eager young pilot who wants to get out and be free like the birds but who has no plan. He gets up in the air and immediately has a rush of adrenaline. He's away from civilization doing his own thing.

However that rush soon fades and He finds himself a little lost. He frantically searches for landmarks or cues that will show him where he is. Instead He decides to just keep going in the same direction because he figures he find some city or airport. Unfortunately His freedom is taken right back and he is a slave to his aircraft. He soon begins to run out of fuel and has to make a crash landing. If only he had made a flight plan he could have traveled somewhere exciting. Instead he was just thrilled to be up in the air.

So it is with business. Eager young entrepreneurs romanticize about owning their own business so they rush in and find out quickly enough that they're lost and too far invested to just stop. With a business if you're just winging it even if by some slim chance you turn a profit you will most certainly end up in a place you dont want to be. You may even need to make a crash landing by filing bankruptcy. If only you had made a flight plan. If only you had done thorough market research.

In this Course we're going to review the elements of market research as it pertains to creating and profiting from websites based on Amazons Associate program. With proper, in depth research you'll discover niches that will make you consistent money by selling Amazons products.

1. Keyword research
2. Product research
3. Competition research
4. Domain name research

Before we go in depth into the "how" and "what" of each element we will discuss the "WHY". Understanding why will give you the motivation and big picture perspective necessary to really make this course successful for you and will help you realize your personal financial goals. This is going to be specific stuff that will really help you in the long run and many of this can be applied to a lot of different business models as well.

1. Why Keyword Research?

Simple. People use search engines to find what they're looking for on the internet. Search engines use keywords to organize the results they deliver to their user. Some keywords are used more than others and therefore it would be very profitable to convince the search engine that you're worthy to be served up as a website for the higher volume keywords. Why keyword research? If you choose the wrong keywords you wont get any traffic to your website. And in this game traffic=money.


2. Why Product Research?

After some keyword research lets say you come across the keyword "chocolate candy bar". The next step would be to check out what products would be relevant. Obviously chocolate candy bars would be a good thing to sell if that was your chosen keyword, however people don't buy candy bars on the internet. Not only that but candy bars are very inexpensive so even if you were able to sell any each sale would amount to pennies. This is why you do product research. You need to find products that will pay well and that people will buy online.


3. Why Competition Research?

If you were to pit a mouse and a rottweiler against each other who would you bet on? The obvious choice is the dog. He far out matches the mouse. In one swing the dog could break the mouses neck. When you're just starting out you want to choose small niches where you'll be able to reasonably compete. Don't go after the electronics industry. You'll go up against behemoths like best buy, circuit city and Walmart. The more narrow your niche market the less competition there will be and because you're just starting out you'll want to go small.

4. Why Domain Name Research?

This is what your website will be known by. You want to make sure you can get a reputable domain extension and a reasonable keyword rich name. Doing proper research on potential domain names can dramatically effect how soon you start to see sales.

Tip of the Week: How to Target Your Market Niche

Okay, so you have your website set up and you have been getting traffic for a few weeks but hardly anyone is making a purchase, what do you do? Starting a business is not as easy as it appears in a textbook or from watching your neighbor make a lot of money out of their garage. Anyone who has marketed a business or a product for a business knows that a company needs to specify their target market in order to optimize on marketing efforts.

Think of your product, determine what niche it falls into and then decide what demographic and psychographic are a part of that niche market. Once you have done this, you can research that particular group and design a marketing plan structured around their needs and wants.

For example, a company specializing in camping equipment is going to want to post articles about camping and possibly create a blog focused on camping and other outdoor activities to draw in their target market.

Narrowing your marketing strategy will help you better focus your marketing efforts in directions that will be most beneficial to your organization. You will also want to include emotional and product images on your site as well as putting your logo in a prominent location to help with business recognition. As always if you have any questions or concerns about this subject give Thrive Learning Institute a call