Niche Marketing (Cracking the Code with JP Schoeffel)
The following is an article the JP sent me to share with you guys, and it’s a great blueprint for getting starting in your online business. Our idea was for me to make comments throughout the article and engage you in a discussion about the information covered. You’ll see my comments indented, so please post your comments and questions below…
If you haven’t met JP Schoeffel (of NichesInaBox.com) before, let me tell you that he’s one of the most stand-up marketers I know, and his integrity is second to none. In fact, when he promoted for me he was right there with his subscribers making sure their questions and support got handled quickly. He really cares about his people, so you’d do well to listen to his advice. Not only that, he knows how to make money online – he’s been one of my very biggest JV partners. Here’s JP’s step-by-step plan for you:
1. Find a topic you’re interested in…
…or something you think is funny, or a good trend. Simply head to eBay pulse, Yahoo Buzz, or Google Trends to identify that kind of hot topics:
You can also simply go to Digg, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon and see what the most popular topics are, and the kind of comments they receive. It’s a great source of information and it will help you position your site and tone.
The thing is you want to identify a popular topic that you feel could be popular for many weeks or even months.
2. Set up a blog.
You want to do it the free way. That’s easy. Simply create a blogger blog (google blogging platform), or a hosted wordpress blog (wordpress.com). I recommend wordpress as the usability is second to none.
I also highly recommend WordPress – it’s what’s running the IMGeni.us Blog! 
As you see, you don’t need a domain name, or private hosting (of course if you already have a hosting account, and want more flexibility, then install it on your server, and register a domain name accordingly). For hosting you have ‘easy’ plans with HostGator.
3. Find some keywords that will orient the content youwant to post on your blog.
- Find them with your head first: by checking what is popular on social bookmarking sites and trend report sites. You can identify the popular searches that keyword tools won’t have yet in their database. Then try to imagine, as a ‘visitor’ the kind of info you would like to find. Write them down
- You can go to freekeywords.WordTracker.com to get 100 variations on any keyword at no co*st. It could easily complete your list
- Finally, if you need some additional lateral keyword, you can go to one of my favorite tools: KWMap.net
4. Create some articles
- You can simply Google your keyword in an exact search : “bird feeding in winter” and see how you can summarize some of this. Note: use the quotes front and back.
- You can also go to wikipedia.org and find some content that you can then ‘use’ for your article (not copy / paste, but just to gather the ideas)
- The U.S. government also has some nice content sources. Here is, for example, a resource I used when I did some research for the last 4 Niches-in-a-box packages (just for stats and topics research): nlm.nih.gov
NLM stands for National Library of Medicine, from the NIH: National Institutes of Health. It’s the world largest medical library 
Government information at NLM Web sites is in the public domain, although some parts might be provided by licensed 3rd parties. But this means you can re-use the content on your site. It’s good to always give credit to the source though, especially in the medical field as it gives credibility to your site and also removes any liability from you.
But just a quick search on the web will give you access to any government sources. And they are simply awesome.
5. Post content to your blog.
At first you can create 5 to 10 articles, split them into 4 or 5 categories (you will be able to add more categories to your blog with time), and post 2 or 3 each and every day during the first 3 to 4 weeks.
Then you can feed it with say 1 article every 2 days or so.
If you’re concerned about starting a blog, don’t worry. It’s easy and using WordPress makes so simple. If you can type an email you can create a WordPress blog.
6. Now, if you look back to what you have.
You might be delighted, but you might also be frustrated: you have a good site, using a robust and reliable blog platform. With time, you have even added some affiliate links to your posts or sidebar to start monetizing it.
You even tried to add adsense blocks to it.
But No traffic! Nada! Well, it’s normal! What you did is a bit like if you had written 10 pages in your office and were wondering why no one calls you to congratulate you about these wonderful articles.
Of course the world does not know about your site, your articles, your concept…
7. To start driving traffic.
You need to inform the World Wide Web that you exist. To do so, you have 2 ways:
- Put some links on other sites: those ‘backlinks’ link directly to your site, and someone could click on them.
- Let search engines spread the word about your site. But please be nice to them or they will ban you immediately.
Of course it’s a big summary of what traffic generation is… but that’s pretty much all.
You can find lots of additional information about generating traffic right here on the IMGeni.us Blog.
But to make this a real blueprint, here is what you could do drive traffic almost instantly to your site:
- Submit all your posts to 4 or 5 social bookmarking sites (digg, stumbleupon, technorati, furl, …): try to be creative there for your Title and stories so that people want to read them
- Find some blog related to your niche and comment on them (I did not say ’spam them’, but comment, bring value to them and do not forget to link back to your site)
- Find forums related to your site, join them, read them, and then start contributing
- Submit your blog feed to feed directories
- Submit your articles to ezinearticles.com and articledashboard.com for more long term traffic
8. TRACK!
Don’t do any of the above without setting a tracker on your site
StatCounter.com is a free traffic tracker that you can easily plug into your blogger blog or wordpress blog (they give you step-by-step instructions to do so).
Another amazing tool that’s also free is Google Analytics. This is what I use on all my sites.
This is fundamental – generating traffic is simply useless if you don’t know
- where it comes from
- what keywords are currently generating traffic (your live site is your best keyword research tool)
- what marketing efforts (social bookmarking, forum, blog commenting, etc.) generated the most traffic, to what kind of article
- how long your visitor stays on your page
- what they do on your page
As you see all this does not cost a dime: just a little bit of your time.
But, if you want to go the extra 10 miles and find tools that will automate things for you then you might also look for:
- a script to automatically post to your blog
- scripts to automatically submit your posts to social bookmarking
- a site generator
- niche packages to upload and start marketing
- a PLR membership that will do the market research, keyword research, content creation, site building…
Thus removing 6-7 out of 8 steps in the above process…
JP Schoeffel
Incidentally, JP site, NichesInaBox.com does provide you with the majority of the resources, tools and work done for you. I’m not sure why he doesn’t plug his site in this article, but it really does 99% of the work for you. I encourage you to check it out Niches In A Box today.
Please post your comments and questions below and either I or JP will respond to you as quickly as we can…
Thanks so much for all that information Dustin,I’n really impressed coz it’s not everyone who give free on the net
Warm regards Andre
Thanks for the great article. You have made this all sound so easy. I will have to check out Niches in a Box, it sounds interesting.
Thanks,
Cindy Bolley
Skype ID Abeque
Sir,
Thank you very much for giving me tips to do a good blogging. I appreciate it.I am a writer. You can visit my site guddiladdi.com and see some specimens of my writings that have been published in leading newspapers and magazines of India. Your advice and suggestions will go a long way in helping me to utilize my potential in a big way.
Thanks once again.
Anjana Datta
I can not thank you enough for the wealth of information that was provided and I am going to incorporate some of it right now…I will be in touch Thanks again
Dear Dustin,
What a surprise! I do like your the article! So many very useful
information! Yes, I should, I should follow all the steps…
There is however something that causes that I lose motivation to write. What is the purpose of writing?? Satisfaction? I can find it somwhere else and much pleasant, much stronger…
Please “google”: who is Wacek Kijewski and then visit my website to see why I am disheartened.
Kind regards,
Wacek
Great information. Tried to sign up but kept getting script error, so tried to get an invitation, still kept getting script errors, please advise as I really want to sign up to this, even thou it is still in Beta, I am very, very interested.
Yours Most Sincerely
Mr Terry Gwilliam
Thanks for your information,
This is god guide to blog . I wait in any article for you in the future. Once again, thanks a lot.
dindin as
Hey Dustin thanks for the invite buddy, i see what you mean by Niche Marketing and the blue print tips, often handy for anyone just learning how to market online. I wish you guys well, keep up the good learning techniques!!
Can I add a “squeeze page” or “Opt-in page to “Wordpress.com” blogs? If so, how do I do this? Please describe the EXACT steps to take to accomplish that. I’ll bet all the tea in England that the inability of newbies/nontech-geeks like myself is what holds a lot of people back from making money online.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Jennifer Forest
I checked out JP’s site & it sounds awesome. But as I got further down the page, it looked more like a 5yr/full time adventure … Or am I just letting the HUGE amount of info/vids included with the system scare me unnecessarily?
Wonderful WEBSITE, Great content and easy to read instructions!
Very imformative blog. Keep up the good work.
I have to say JP Schoeffel , is my new best friend, I have just purchased his video niche builder site and it is amazing.
I will have so much fun with this software, his tutorials are clear and to the point, I will buy is niche in a box very soon also.
no affiliate links here just a very happy customer.
http://www.peter–marshall.com
Thank you for this article, it is quite informative. I have not been receiving any comments from my blog, so I will implementing the advice given.
Regards
Lucius
Hi Ijust checked out Niches in a box. Is there a coupon code available?
All sounds pretty wonderful but unfortunately I don’t understand a word of it. Is there anyone out there who gives complete step by step instructions, i.e. click on this, click on that, type this or type that for the complete beginner because I can’t find anyone anywhere who gives instructions in plain English everything appears to be for computer experts.
Thanks for your comments and thanks to Dustin for publishing this article.
Johno, Niches-In-A-Box can cope with different level of skills. It can be setup in less than 10 minutes (or we can do it for you), and then start learning how the system works, and how to market it. This is the goal of our extensive training center. You should consider it as an asset and not as something scary
I operate this membership for more than 2 years now, so I have listened to thousands of members regarding their needs and expectations.
In summary, if you’re completely new to this, you can have a complete niche business setup in no time, and then learn all the bells and whistles of Niche Marketing. If you’re more advanced, then you can start implementing more advanced technics to make your site more unique and market it more effectively.
JP
Hi Jennifer,
You can do pretty much anything you want with a WordPress installation that’s on your domain. As far as the hosted version, I’d suggest using the “Write” –> “Pages” option in the. You can make static pages in there and put whatever you want on them, including an opt-in form from your Autoresponder Service.
Great stuff Dustin…Thanks or sharing it!
I also agree that the pages function of Wordpress is not used enough. In fact, if your blog is targeted enough to one single product, or even just a couple different products in a single niche (not to broad now) then you SHOULD be using the pages function.
Just some advice for everyone as this has dramatically increased my income and traffic from the SE’s…
Decide what action you want your web visitor to take. If you want to generate an opt-in and follow-up with that opt-in for the sale, then create a page via the pages function and create a simple squeeze page there.
The same goes for if you are trying to make the sale immediately…if that is the case then have your sales page on the page.
What this allows you to do is isolat ethe action from the actual posts on the blog. Then when you are adding content to your blog via the posting function, you always point your posts to the page.
Really…this simple change in your blog’s functioning will drastically increase your organic rankings. Your individual posts will get ranked and you keep the traffic on your site.
I hope this makes sense.
Dustin,
Thank you for this awesome info and that it’s set up is ABC is outstanding as well. I for one appreciate the “free” info and techniques that you share with us on a routine basis. Many marketers are takers in this high tech realm but not you and I applaud you for it.
Great information ,,i look forward to reading this every chance i can keep up the great work and ideas,,
I always respect JP. He provides excellent products and he knows how to help people make money. I can’t afford his membership site at this time. But in the warrior forum, he provides some free and very helpful information on nich marketing and Internet Marketing in general that is worth its weight in “gold” Keep up the good work
This was so easy to absorb. Thank you !thank you !thank you. !I will use this to guide me through setting up my blog
Ta
Sir,
Thank you very much for providing this valuable information to me through your video. I have noted the contents and shall follow up your suggestions to make my site more interesting and effective.
Thanking you,
Anjana Datta
It’s always interesting to read these nice articles written by persons like you and JP, that bring to us a new knowledge. They say that one learn something new every day. Well, reading your article made my day. Thanks alot.
Jesus Moreno
Great information especially for newbies Dustin. I personally use most of your suggestions now but it came about by trial and error. Yes I did it the hard way I guess mainly because there is just so much information available now it’s hard to work out the good stuff from the not so good stuff.
I like to keep it simple and not over complicate things myself. Your article did just that.
Keries
I wish I was as up as the others but I have never did a blog so thats a new one on me, read it today and forget it tomorrow, But am thanking you for the good advise,
Great information. Thank you. I am trying to learn to do blogging and this will be a great help! Thank you. Thank You.
This information makes the blogging/traffic driving process so easy to understand, and the site suggestions are much appreciated! Thank you!
I just wanted to say that I love this site