As many of you know, my main source of online income are Niche Sites. I love building these for a LOT of reasons but the biggest reason is that they produce a Passive Income. I am working my tail off now so that I can someday sit on the dock on the bay kind of thing.

Build a Niche Store

If you haven’t heard of Build a Niche Store then you probably are living under a rock. It would seem that everyone has heard of it, is using it, is pumping it or pushing it in one way or another. This is the script that I am using and I am very happy with it.

Build a Niche Store makes it extremely easy to have a niche store up and running in less than an hour the first time and once you are a pro, I can have a store set up in probably 10-15 minutes now. This would seem to be a PERFECT tool for beginners, but. Why is there always a But?

LIke any tool, it’s only as good as the person using it. I frequent the forums that the BANS community has created and I must say these forums offer some good advice and some very poor advice at the same time. Like any forum, many of the people answering your questions, don’t have the first clue what they are doing and can often give some very poor advice.

One of the most frequent subjects I see that contains very poor advice is regarding Niche site selection. I can’t count how many times I read someone telling a noob to check how hot an item is on Ebay. Checking the number of search counts on Ebay is a ridiculous waste of time.

Niche Research

The very first key to being successful with any niche site is to research and select the correct one. If you pick one with too much competition then it will be very hard to rank well in the SERPS and if you select one that is too narrow, you won’t have any traffic.

If a searcher goes to Ebay and then searches for their product then you are out of the game. A BANS store requires you to intercept the searcher BEFORE they make it to Ebay in order to be successful. The only search counts that matter are Google. That’s it, Ebay searches are as irrelevant.

The only thing you need to research on Ebay is that there actually is a market for your items. The more items for sale in the niche that you are targeting then the better your opportunity. A higher number of items will also give you more pages to index in Google, which in turn will increase your chances of drawing traffic as well.

Starting Point

A good starting point for niche analysis can be found reading “Hunting the Perfect Niche Site.” The goal is to find as large of a quantity of daily searches combined with the fewest amount of competitors. That will get you started.

I like to look for 100-200 searches per day and less than 1million Google results for the exact keyword match that I am targeting. If I can find that combination then it’s a good bet that I can rank pretty well for that keyword.

One thing to remember, is that just because one particular keyword match doesn’t fit these guidelines, doesn’t mean that it’s a poor niche. You need to look for all of your primary keywords and some of the more common longtail combinations as well. It isn’t as simple as just applying a quick ratio.

The next factor is how strong is your competition. Who else is after that keyword? I use SEO Elite so I can practically tell what my competitors ate for lunch that day. I will write more on that tool in the future, for people just starting out, you may not need it.

If you plan to do this professionally then SEO Elite is a must have tool and will simply allow you to kill your competition.

Conclusion

I touched on a lot of things, that we will expand on as this series progresses but let’s summarize. When you are researching your niche sites, compare Searches to Competitors for all of your best keyword matches first. If this ratio meets your goals then take a look at Ebay to make sure the marketplace actually exists there.

Ebay searches are irrelevant, it’s Google searches that matter. Your goal is to insert yourself into that search process, by ranking well for whatever they are searching to buy. Once you convince them to click onto your site, then you have the potential to make money.

And last but not least, the Internet is full of bad advice. Take most of what you read with a grain of salt, apply some common sense to it and see if it works for you.

Happy Hunting.