Starting Out

[supergriff]

Tweet

I know you're all probably very bored with "help me I'm new" threads, but I lack imagination and it sums up my situation pretty well.

I'm a web developer, I know ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, CSS, HTML, XHTML, MYSQL, etc etc etc.

I have a good grasp of SEO (in theory). I understand how to get affiliate links, how to start adwords campaigns, and how the whole affilaite marketing thing works.

What I don't know, is how to start. I have "the dowser" keyword research software - but I don't know how to use it properly - how can I find niches with it? I bought it a year ago (i got distracted for a few months ), and they seem to have "the dowser niche database" now. Do I need to buy that now!? Is the dowser any good in the first place??

How many searches are required on a keyword phrase to classify it as a niche, and not a deserted town with tumbleweed rolling around?

All the keywords that get returned by this software (and I assume by keyword analsyer, adwords analyser, keywords elite etc) - how should they be properly used? I mean - how do you select one keyword phrase over another - simply on the number of times it has been searched for?

I hear / read people saying they have XX keyword phrases for this niche. How do you use them - especially when you have say a few hundred, or thousand?
- Set up PPC campaigns, after having grouped them and written relevant ads for each group? Is there an easy way to export a list straight into an adwords campaign??
- Set up a page on your niche website optimised for each group of keywords? OR just whack all the keywords wherever you can in the text with no real strategy (don't pick pages around the keywords, just work them into the text where possible)


I have 2 website ideas that I would like to start - but i'd like to have some sort of benchmark or way of evaluating them - I don't want to waste my time and find out im in a super competitive field / field so small its not even a niche.

How do you judge your fields??

Thanks in advance for your help, and sorry for the number of questions I have asked!!

[morleymouse]

your right there are lots of threads on this, but ive got some time to kill before lost starts

if you are competant with the skillset you stated, your onto a winner. I've never heard of "the dowser" and cant be bothered to google it, but im feeling quite judgemental and will say its rubbish.

i've always just used my better judgement for keywords, think about you yourself, what would you type into google to find something? then search for it, see how many results come back. but dont be put off by that, I have recently flucked a new site in at number 3 for a 103 million result term.

its half luck of the draw and half knowing what your doing, obviously the more you know and the longer you stick at it the luckier you get.

anyway ive shot off on a tangent, with the skills you have you want to be looking at product feeds, you should be able to create huge sites with loads of pages to cover a whole range of keywords from data feeds which many merchants (including Alpha Rooms who are bloody amazing) now provide, ask around or just check some of the networks to see whats on offer. But with a few scripts set up you can start firing out very optimises pages and sites.

Dont get too tangled up in the whole niche not niche debate, get some pages up, get a site up, get it indexed and watch the stats. Once you have a site up see if visitors are coming in, and if you know SEO in theory, and have created product specific pages the visitors will come in. Then its just a case of checking your stats package to see what the users are searching for so that you can optimise that site better and have a better view for your next site.

So to start if I were you id pick a merchant, or a few merchants, get their product feeds and think how best you cna use them. Yo ucan either go down the price comparision route which adds to the user expereince of the internet. Or just take a merchants feed and make some highly optimised pages from it to rank well in search engines and pull in sales from free listings.

not to say you cant do both mind

Best of luck with it all anyway, if you get stuck along the way i msure folk on here will help

[futureweb]

Big help to me to thanks Dan great post.

[supergriff]

Thanks for your reply, thats given me something to chew on for a while.

It's thrown me a bit though, for these reasons
- I've read the datafeed sites are not the way to go (though I can't remeber the exact reasons why)
- I had been thinking more of content based sites, with associated affiliate links, rather than product based sites. Building up an opt-in list & using email as way of selling.
- everyehere I look people are talking / selling the idea of niches, that that is the only way to be successful now - are they all wrong??

What are your thoughts? Are datafeed sites where the money really is now?

Also - this is something I am looking at from a spare time perspective at the moment, as I am in full time employment - on what kind of scale do those sites need to be (and therefore can I do it with 10-20 hrs a week?)

Thanks again for your reply, cheers

[Frostie]

I am in same boat as you, work fulltime and am scared when my websites take more than 5hrs a week to keep up to date. Having said that, if you choose something you are interested in it makes it a lot easier in keeping it up to date - less of a chore.

Agree with Dan. I do a fair bit of keyword research but the best tool is the brain

Now in my 5th.... make that 6th year of AffilMktg and still not found the answer, but the secret is keep plugging away