"Archives Page #014"

Hi Friend and welcome.

These archives have been stripped of all non-essential info to leave you with the more important articles. Read and enjoy.

***The Newbie Trail***

Why Marketers Must Adapt To A Business Change And Win Win.
By Ed Bellamy.

Home based Internet entrepreneur's work with many faces;
publisher, site technician, web master, etc., but still must
keep their eye on everything else as well. Unless you're very
lucky, you are more than likely going to run several business sites.

These businesses won't perform equally and you cannot put the
same amount of effort into each one neither. But you still must
keep your eye on the ball.

Let me give you a lesson in the form of a real life example.

For those who know me personally or read my rambles, you know
that I play in a band. The bands name is "After Eight"
(cool init, yeah baby - rriiight). Anyway, the band was out again
on a gig this weekend, playing in a huge - tin shed.

The venue, as the other lads like to call it, was (so we discovered
after arriving at this tin shed), meant to be a Candlelight Dinner
and Dance. Well! Not so much dinner, more like paste sarny's.
But it's all about promotion, isn't it?

The type of music they were expecting was slow ballads, waltzes,
fox trots and maybe a little gentle line dancing at the end of the
evening.

We however, are a sixties and seventies pop rock band. We had
a dilemma! Could we adapt? You see, we had too, to survive.
Well survive, we did!

So what's the lesson here then. It is: be prepared to adapt to
your clients ever changing needs. For the small business
entrepreneur, having many and varied niche money streams is
the best way forward. So as the growth potential is lost from one,
you can either adapt to it or adapt to another - it's a win, win
situation.

============================================
For more tips and tricks visit dotBASiCWorld
http://www.dotbasicworld.com Copyright (c) 2004. Ed Bellamy.
============================================

You are most welcome to reprint this article.
Please include the Resource Box.

---------------------------------------------------------

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>>>>>>>>>Titbit of The Week<<<<<<<<<
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Zip Files

A zip file is basically a "package" of one or more compressed
files. If you download software, you will run across these.
You'll need an "unzipping" program in order to access them,
something like Winzip is a good choice.

Once unzipped, you simply run the install program (if there is
one) and you're all set. Winzip will automatically run the
installation program for you if it finds one!
You can download Winzip from: http://www.winzip.com

If you have Windows XP, you don't need a program, just double
click a zipped file to open it. A menu will appear from which you
can save individual files to your computer. Just click & drag or
copy the file you want and drop it in the desired location . It's
that easy!

Also, in the left-hand column there is a link to "Extract all
files". This will open a wizard to guide you through the
extraction process. You can choose where you want the files to
go.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>>>>>>>> Featured Article <<<<<<<<
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Niche Marketing - How to Find Your Perfect Niche Market
By Herman Drost

If you don't find a niche market for the product or service
you offer, you will have a difficult time being successful.
Most newcomers who wish to do business on the Internet
often market to everyone they can find with the expectation
that everyone will do business with them. This is the same
as throwing mud against the wall and hoping some of it will
stick. They have not yet found their niche market.

What is niche marketing?

A niche market is composed of individuals and businesses
that have similar interests and needs, which can be readily
identified and that can be easily targeted and reached.

Finding a niche for your business means finding a great
product or service for a highly targeted audience.

Here's the process to find your niche business

1. Find a niche product or service you are passionate about.
This will greatly improve your chances of being successful.
Why? Because it's the only way you're going to be able to
devote the kind of time and effort to create a meaningful
web site, build up the right traffic, generate worthwhile
income, and enjoy what you're doing.

2. Choose a niche product you are knowledgeable about.
Reflect on what skills, hobbies or products you know the
most about. If you don't have the knowledge yet, then
choose a niche product that you would love to promote,
then spend the necessary time to research it, so you can
eventually become an expert in your marketing field.

3. Define your niche market - do the necessary research to
see if there is a market for your niche product. To create a
profitable business for your niche product, you need to ask
yourself these questions:

a) Is there sufficient demand for it? - if you choose a field
that is too broad it may be hard to stand out from the
competition. For example, camping equipment could be your
niche product. Well, unless you are a large corporation such
as Sports Authority (a large retail store in my town), you won't
stand out from the crowd. However, a more highly targeted
niche product could be Coleman Camping Equipment.

b) Keyword research - use keyword tools such as the overture
suggestion tool
(http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion)
or wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to find how many people are
searching each month on keywords related to your niche product.

Here's an example:

According to overture (at the time of writing this article), the
keyword phrase "camping equipment" was searched 76164 times
in one month. If you do a search on Google.com for camping
equipment you will find 1,610,000 web sites show up - heck,
that's too competitive.

However "coleman camping equipment" generated 1242 searches
in one month according to overture. Google.com shows 93,200
competing websites. That's much better though still somewhat
competitive.

Tip: Notice there are not many web sites (even the top ones)
that have "coleman camping equipment" in their titles. This is just
one of the ways to obtain a high ranking on the search engines
for your newly targeted web site. This will then provide lots of
targeted traffic to your site.

c) Take a survey _ you may already have products or services
that you selling to your customers. If so, ask questions within
your survey about what product or service would help your
customers business. If it can help them save time by gaining
more knowledge or automating tasks, you could have a winner.

d) Create Your Own Unique Selling Position (USP) - study your
competition to find out what they emphasize about the product,
which makes them stand out from the crowd. Then decide on
something that will make your business unique from the others.
It could be something unique about the product
(ie discount coleman camping equipment) or you could choose a
more highly defined target market (ie boy scout organizations and
clubs throughout the USA that use coleman's camping equipment).

4. Build and promote your web site - to develop a profitable web
site for your niche product you need to create a number of
informative pages that will not only attract visitors from the
search engines, but inform and move them to purchase from your
site. Read my article, "How to Create a Web Site That Sells"
(http://www.isitebuild.com/buildingA.htm).
Niche marketing is the key to developing a profitable business
that will make you stand out from the crowd. By doing the
necessary research and building an informative web site, you will
become an expert in your niche marketing field.

Resources ebook - "Strike it Niche"
http://www.isitebuild.com/niche/nichemarketing.htm

*****************************************************
Herman Drost is the author of the popular ebook:
"101 Highly Effective Strategies to Promote Your Web Site"
http://www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion
Subscribe to his _Marketing Tips_ newsletter for more original
articles. mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com You can read more
of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles
*****************************************************