June 13, 2008
Researching Your Hobbies and Interests – Part 1
Last time we spoke about getting a list together of all your hobbies, interests, skills etc. and narrowing it down to your top 3 choices.
Today’s post is all about keyword research and deciding whether anyone is actually interested in your niche.
In Part 2 of the research phase we will look at how to determine if anyone is willing to spend money in it.
Once you’ve chosen your niche, it’s time to do the knitty gritty, keyword research.
It’s a step in the process that if carried correctly, should mean you can eliminate certain niches because they are either too competitive, there’s not enough interest in the subject, or no one’s willing to pay any money for the information.
But the ones that do meet our criteria should make us around $2000 - $3000 a month.
This is a vitally important step that’s worth doing well.
I always enjoy this part of the process because you never know what gems you’re going to discover!
For the purpose of this exercise, I will use a niche that I have on my own long list of potential businesses.
I used to study and practice hypnosis. I even used to hypnotize my friends at parties!
This would be quite an exciting online business for me if I were to pursue it, and so is a good example to investigate.
So until I do the necessary research I won’t know if there is a big enough market searching for hypnosis information.
Keyword Research Tool
To find the level of interest in our niche, we must use a keyword research tool.
If you’re not entirely sure what a keyword research tool is, it is simply a piece of software that analyzes search engine traffic. More specifically, what words people are typing in to a particular search engine like Google.
There are 2 good keyword research tools you should use and they are both free:
SEOBook - http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook
WordTracker - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
So our niche is hypnosis and that’s the keyword we’ll use for the keyword research tool.
I personally like Word Tracker, so that’s what we’ll use.
Here’s what I get after I type in hypnosis and hit the hit me button:
7,742 searches (top 100 only)
Searches Keyword
2930 hypnosis
365 self hypnosis
320 hypnosis therapy
287 hypnosis home study course
220 feminization hypnosis
161 free hypnosis scripts
137 hypnosis gallery
128 hypnosis orgasm
125 history of hypnosis
90 free self hypnosis
90 weight loss hypnosis
89 hypnosis training
85 hypnosis for weight loss
75 forced feminization hypnosis
72 hypnosis cds
64 hypnosis to quit smoking
64 self feminization hypnosis
63 hypnosis weight loss
63 sexy hypnosis
62 free hypnosis downloads
62 sissy hypnosis
57 quit smoking hypnosis
56 free hypnosis online
54 hypnosis enchantress
51 conversational hypnosis
51 self help hypnosis
49 guaranteed hypnosis cds
47 stage hypnosis
46 free hypnosis
44 hypnosis in psychology
43 sexual hypnosis
43 stop smoking hypnosis
41 hypnosis downloads
40 free hypnosis mp3
40 hypnosis stories
38 mistress hypnosis
37 hypnosis girls
37 hypnosis slaves
36 hypnosis pioneer
36 hypnosis to stop smoking
36 mistress kay hypnosis
34 orgasm hypnosis
33 how does hypnosis work
31 hypnosis cd
30 hypnosis instruction
30 hypnosis stop smoking
30 positive changes hypnosis
30 stage hypnosis scripts
28 adult baby hypnosis
28 children and hypnosis metaphors
28 hypnosis scripts
27 diaper hypnosis
27 does hypnosis work
27 self hypnosis downloads
27 subliminal hypnosis
25 adult hypnosis
25 free hypnosis feminization
25 hypnotherapy classes hypnosis training
24 covert hypnosis
24 hypnosis and children and enuresis
24 hypnosis download
24 instant hypnosis
24 lose weight hypnosis
24 weight loss by hypnosis
23 cuckold hypnosis
23 hypnosis lose weight
23 hypnosis spiral
23 hypnosis wheel
23 mistress hypnosis online
23 pantyhose hypnosis
21 hypnosis & hypnotherapy
21 hypnosis articles
21 hypnosis seduction
21 learn hypnosis
20 free feminization hypnosis
20 how to do self hypnosis
20 hypnosis and golf focus
20 hypnosis schools
20 phobias hypnosis mp3
20 quit smoking hypnosis mp3
18 forced male feminization through hypnosis
18 how to do hypnosis
18 hypnosis tarzana
18 stop smoking hypnosis mp3
18 transgender hypnosis
17 free hypnosis inductions scripts
17 free online hypnosis
17 girl hypnosis
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17 hypnosis training school institute hypnotherapy
17 hypnosis video
17 lesbian hypnosis
17 paul mckenna hypnosis tapes
17 seduction hypnosis
17 self hypnosis instruction
15 facts about hypnosis
15 feminization mistress hypnosis
15 free diaper hypnosis
15 free introductory lesson on self hypnosis
Clearly the keyword ‘hypnosis’ is extremely popular!
So now we have a long list of related keywords, what do we do now?
This is a key factor and an essential step to deciding if this market is worth building a business around.
The way I precede with my keyword research is to look at all the keywords that have 50 or more daily searches and the number of competing websites on Google to be around 75,000.
This isn’t an exact science but I’ve found that to make between $2000 and $3000 a month from a niche business, these figures seem to work.
Then what you want to look for, is any keyword phrase that contains certain words like:
‘How to’
‘Learn’
‘Tips on’
‘Techniques’
‘Instruction’
‘Help with’
etc.
Basically anything that looks like the searcher is looking for help or information that they can use.
Going through the list we see that ‘hypnosis’ has 2930 hits a day and would be far too competitive to rank for.
But further down there is a good looking phrase – ‘hypnosis to quit smoking’ that has 64 daily searches, well above the 50 minimum.
This is a good keyword because it is a phrase that people are typing into search engines looking for specific information i.e. how to use hypnosis to help them quit smoking.
In the second part we need to go to the search engines to see how much competition we have in our chosen niche.
So let’s head over to Google, our search engine, and see what the competing sites are.
In the search box, type in the phrase “hypnosis to quit smoking”
making sure you include the quotes to get an accurate number of sites.
Here’s what came back:
Results 1 - 10 of about 28,000 for "hypnosis to quit smoking"
As you can see, there are 28,000 sites returned. That means
that there are 28,000 sites that either have something to do
with using hypnosis to quit smoking or at least the keyword phrase somewhere in their title or content of their site.
This is a good number and well below our 75,000 maximum. So in our first shot we’ve found a niche that looks like it could be possible to monetize.
Now, we may have not been so lucky. We may have had to go through dozens of keywords to find one that had potential.
But even when we find a keyword that ticks the boxes, the numbers still don’t guarantee that the niche itself is capable of being monetized. There’s more to it than this.
What we don’t know is if the people searching for ‘hypnosis to quit smoking’ are willing to spend money to find the answer or not.
That’s where we need to do further digging. And I’ll cover that in part 2 of the research phase in my next post.
But this is an excellent start and is how I personally conduct my initial research when looking to build a new business.
If the initial research is done correctly there’s no reason why you can’t make around $2000 to $3000 a month with your online business.
And the best part of it .. you’ll be enjoying the process because you’ve chosen a topic that interests you!
Here is a summary of Part 1 of the keyword research process:
· Use a Keyword Research Tool:
Wordtracker - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
· Look for any keyword phrase that contains certain words like:
‘How to’
‘Learn’
‘Tips on’
‘Techniques’
‘Instruction’
‘Help with’
Anything where it appears that the person doing the searching is looking for information on the topic itself that they can use in some way.
Make a note of as many keyword phrases in your chosen niche as you can that look promising.
Formula:
Number of daily hits – 50 minimum
Number of competing sites – 75,000 maximum
- Use WordTracker or SEOBook to determine number of daily hits.
- Use Google to determine number of competing sites (search using “quotes”)
~ Peter Tremayne
Filed under Blog, Internet Marketing, Recommended Resources by Peter Tremayne
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Comments on Researching Your Hobbies and Interests – Part 1 »
Eric @ 2:02 pm
I believe the numbers in Wordtracker are the number of searches in the last 60 days in their database and are not daily numbers.
Peter Tremayne @ 2:43 pm
Hi Eric,
The free Wordtracker Tool returns a daily estimate.
~ Peter Tremayne
Marc @ 3:32 pm
Always appreciate your posts. Thanks.
Email Marketing Course @ 4:15 pm
Hi Peter Tremayne,nice tips for niche and keyword research. Can you give some tips on how do you monetize this niche? Do build blog to promote clickbank products? Build adsense websites? $2000 to $3000 a month from one niche is really great.
Patio Mist @ 12:34 pm
Peter,
Great post. My big question, how do you get traffic to the site.
Peter Tremayne @ 1:06 pm
Personally I would monetize this niche by creating an info product that teaches people how to use hypnosis to help them quit smoking.
Alternatively you could set up a blog or website that has information regarding hypnosis to quit smoking and recommend one of the products from Clickbank (which you will be an affiliate of).
More info about this in my next post
As far as traffic to the site is concerned, there are dozens of effective ways. Too many to mention here, but look out for the next post, I let you into a big secret at the end!
~ Peter Tremayne