I had lost hope at finding reasonable domain names after the dot-com bust, but now I’m realizing you just have to be creative and current. You have to be agile – jumping onto each fad early before it saturates. Sometimes all it takes is a little widget, like a Jersey Shore name generator that people can post on Facebook and their own blogs. Twitter is another great way to spread the news about your site. Twitter search is a perfect way to find popular people who might be interested in spreading your new site.

So how do you come up with the next big viral marketing idea? Look at life through a marketing lens – watch for trends, pick up on comedy in everyday things that people can relate to, watch TV and stay current. Follow Digg, Reddit, and other social networking sites to monitor what’s hot. Google trends is another great way to find hot topics.

Once you find your great idea and successfully go viral, you still have more work to do – make sure you have a game plan to make money. Sell adspace? Adsense? T-shirts? Relevant affiliate deals? Build your SEO network? Sell your site? If you really hit it big, you can always sign a book deal.

The nice thing about this stuff is you can usually rubber stamp it. Once you build a name generator, you could use for for every hot MTV show, video games, and movies. WordPress blogs are pretty easy to mass-produce too… and it certainly easier if you have some lackeys to do some of the grunt work.

Keep the dream alive – going viral may not be a realistic expectation for anything, but the sites you can build may keep things interesting in comparison to boring, thin, affiliate sites and other stereotypical money-making sites.

If you’re able to code, or if you have some great ideas and are able to find a reliable programmer, there’s even more potential. Freeware can work on many levels – everyone’s looking for free software, so the traffic potential is enormous. You can distribute your software to the thousands of freeware sites (there are great automated ways to do this), and benefit from the thousands of great backlinks to your site. You can also experiment with bundling some pay-per-install applications with your own software. And of course, if your product is useful enough and there’s enough demand, you can sell it at a reasonable price. If people are willing to buy your software, you have even more opportunities, as you can advertise with PPC and banners ( on relevant niche-targeted sites, of course ).

I do like to support people who make great software that I use on a daily basis. One such product, and a perfect example of taking advantage of the software niche is Format HTML. Format HTML is a code beautifier that you run against your messy HTML (or even Coldfusion code) and it will instantly format and indent HTML. It inspects all your mark up tags (HTML, CFML, XML, etc.) and will indent them according to which tags you decide should be handled by modifying a config.ini file. You simply drag and drop your files or folders onto Format HTML and the program will make backups of all your files first and then clean up all the file types specified in the config.ini file. Lastly, it can be easily used with CFEclipse, Eclipse, DreamWeaver, HomeSite, or any other editor for tidying up your code. I use it on a lot of my websites (especially the ones where I spend a lot of time tweaking the html) and it has worked out great.

We spend so much time on computers these days, surely you have some good ideas for software that would make your life easier. I’ve only scratched the surface on the software niche marketing, I have plans to go more in depth over the next couple months. Stay tuned!

Energy efficiency and products that promote greater power savings are still a growing niche. I know this is related to my recent green niche marketing post, but there’s so much money here I just can’t pass this up! The increasing cost of energy prices coupled with our insatiable thirst for oil and other energy producing sources is fueling greater demand. We are currently exploring new alternate energy sources and efficient green power generation technologies such as wind power, solar power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power, and newer technologies such as wave power and tidal power, to feed this increased demand while lowering costs. What this creates is a heightened awareness of energy costs and household energy draws. Consumers have different ideas why to conserve energy, whether to lower their monthly bills and save money, or to preserve the environment, they both lead to a new ‘energy efficiency’ niche.

A perfect example of a website that aims to profit off this niche is the Green Efficient Guide. They have information for various efficient, green products, and make commissions off sales through sites like Amazon. With energy calculators for each individual television model that calculate both annual energy uses and energy costs based on both the on power and the standby power, you get the actual cost to run the device. By making this available to the consumer along with the other efficiency data for each electronic device is helpful in making an informed decision about efficient electronics. It’s pretty cool-  all of the efficient televisons listed are energy star rated for excellent power savings, as are the home electronics and audio video devices. With the incoming recession, everybody is trying to pinch pennies where they can, and energy efficiency is no small potato. Five percent of electricity used in the United States goes to standby power resulting in a whopping $4 billion a year in wasted energy costs. And it’s no wonder, how many electronic devices do you have plugged in at home? Cell phones charging (once the phone is charged, most charging devices continue to draw power), DVD players, televisions, gaming consoles, electric toothbrushes, etc, all can add up very quickly to compose a decent percentage of your electricity bill. It’s a great idea for a website – now it’s your turn to profit off this niche!

Example seasonal niche – Black Friday shopping:

Black Friday Ads - Search Volume

(Check out my post on google insights to learn how to research search trends)

You might think it’s a wasted effort to get into a market that’s only viable once a year. But that’s just the beauty of it – you only have to put time into it once a year. You could have several seasonal niche websites up and running, such as a Halloween niche site, a couple Christmas sites, maybe even an Easter site. The final few weeks before the holiday mean a massive influx in search traffic, and people love to spend money during the holidays. In the 2007 Christmas holiday season, people spent almost $30 billion dollars shopping online. Granted, this year will likely miss that mark by a lot given current economic conditions, but people are still spending money – what’s wrong with taking your piece of the pie?

Yes, the holiday markets are highly saturated and it can be extremely hard to compete with all the big players involved. You have to be more specific, more obscure, and more creative. An easy way to find your niche would be to think of all the little things you like about a holiday. Take Christmas for example. Everyone celebrates Christmas in their own way (or not at all… and that could be your niche!). We all have our own traditions – what little things do you love the most? Maybe it’s the Christmas lights, building gingerbread houses, creating little miniature towns, finding new Christmas recipes, or coming up with creative gift ideas – the possibilities are endless. You want to get into a niche that you enjoy.

Christmas Miniatures

How will you make money off your niche? Well of course that depends on whether you’re creating a niche blog, or a store, or whatever kind of resource you have in mind. You can always make money off the proven combination of Adsense, eBay, and affiliates.

The nice thing about having a seasonal niche site is that it keeps things interesting and should keep you from being bored. You would only have to worry about each site no more than a few weeks each year.

So this is your homework – list out the holidays you enjoy and celebrate. Write down every little thing you like about them. Now highlight the niches that you think could have some money in them, research some keywords in Google Adwords, narrow your choices down, and get started. What are you waiting for?

Reading your local newspaper is a great way to find a niche that you can turn around and use to make money.  Take 20 minutes a day to read and you will soon have a number of prosperous niche blogs and websites.

Scan the headlines for some general topics that are of interest.  You will find excellent topics in the special sections of the paper – fashion, religion, etc. – and you can look at the specific articles for more refined niche ideas.

Jot down 5 or 10 ideas while scanning the paper.  Once you are online, do some research:

What are people saying about the topic?

Is this a topic that lots of people are discussing?

Is there a lot of competition?

Then ask yourself how you can make money from this idea.  Are there products that are related to it?  Are there books or reports that you can sell?  Do a Google search of the topic and “affiliate” to see if you have some ideas.

You can also create a product for your niche topic.  Write up a short report or guide that provides a solution to whatever problem your niche might have.  Offer it for sale on your blog or website.

As a quick example, let me share with you what I did:  I was scanning the paper and saw an article that discussed how local school kids had issues with head lice when they went back to school.  (Ick, right?)  So I found a Clickbank product that cures this problem and became an affiliate.

I put together a blog, added content and a link to the product and found some parenting forums.  I put a link in my signature and then became a participating member in the forums.  (I did not spam!)  People saw the link in my signature and went to my blog.  Hooray!

Take a few minutes to look around you and you will find all of the ideas you need for niches.

There are tons of niches in the world today, and there are many more being created each day.   There are niches that stay around for years (such as credit repair) and niches that don’t last as long (like music from singers that turn out to be one-hit wonders).  The important thing is to find a niche and make money from it.

Look on forums, message boards, etc.  A good way to find out what is on the minds of average people is to visit some moms’ forums.  (Do a Google Search for “moms + message board” to find them.)  What are they talking about?

Finances, parenting, weight loss, beauty – all of these are seen when you visit these boards, but look at the specific questions, too.  You can also post a question on forums, as well, and find out what people need or want.

Here is an example of how I used this idea to find a niche in less than 20 minutes:

I went to a parenting message board and found about 10 threads asking about potty training.  Moms were at the end of their rope about this!  They were literally begging for help!

I created a blog that targets parents who need help potty training their children.  I created 10 posts with general potty training tips and topics.

Then I went to Clickbank and found a product that helps with potty training and is guaranteed to help train the child quickly.  I put an affiliate link in the sidebar.  Done!  (If I wanted, I could add other child-related products such as potty chairs, etc.)

It really is simple to find a niche and make money from it, if you take a few minutes to look around you.

If you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Creating a niche blog is your answer!

Creating a niche blog is simple, quick and costs very little (and can be free).

First, find a topic. Get ideas from online forums, magazines, etc. If people are talking about it and writing about it, then it can make you money! Start with something big – like “moms” – and then work down until you find a niche. “Moms” is so broad of a category that you can’t make much money with it (too much competition), but “work at home moms” is better. Even better might be “Montana work at home moms.” See how it works?

Second, set up a blog. You can get a free one from Blogger or WordPress (but spend a few bucks and upgrade to one that has your own domain name). Choose a blog name, select your template and boom! You are in business!

Finally, set up your blog with about 10 blog posts, and set the dates on the posts to look like they have been posted every 2 or 3 days, starting about a month ago.

Now that the blog is set up, you need to make money from it. This can be done in several ways:

• Place Adsense ads on your blog (very easy with Blogger) – you get paid when someone clicks on the ads.
• Find paid advertisers to place ads on your site – they pay to be placed on the blog and pay every month after that. You can also charge by the year or every six months.
• Find products and services that pay you a commission when you make a sale – you get paid when someone buys the product.

These are just a few ways you can profit from a niche blog.

So what are you waiting for? Get started!

“wide baby gate”

• 5,400 Searches per month
• 8670 competing sites

“extra wide baby gate”

• 3,600 searches per month
• 5,000 competing websites

“retractable baby gate”

• 1,300 searches per month
• 2,030 competing sites

“evenflo baby gate”

• 1,000 searches per month
• 3,050 competing website

Create a separate page for each keyword. One for “wide baby gate”, another for “extra wide baby gate”, etc. Within each page I would recommend you write some information based on your products.

camouflage bdu pants

Finding niche market ideas can be tough to do, especially if you’re like me and have no clue where to look. Well, I’ve seen the light and am here to tell you that niche markets are everywhere!

Look at this pair of ACU Army pants I had packed in the garage. Well I took them out of the box, listed them on ebay and they sold for about $40 bucks. Well big deal right? Right, it is a bigh deal!

I crunched some numbers and found a little niche market you could profit from. Here are the goods! The numbers were calculated on Oct. 2nd 2008.

KEYWORDS;

“army pants”

• 9,900 Searches per month
• 62,600 Competing websites

“camouflage bdu pants”

• 2,400 Searches per month
• 6,150 Competing websites

“ACU pants”

• 590 Searches per month
• 12,000 Competing websites

One good way to profit from these keywords is to start a blog using the PHPBAY Pro plugin and pull items from ebay using these keywords. The blog could include posts about the proper wear and washing of the army pants. Try to have the blog revolve around the army uniform. You’ll be better off in the long run with the search engines.

What do you think?

KEYWORDS:

“car bike rack”

• 4,400 Searches per month
• 48,100 Competing websites

“car bike racks”

• 3,600 Searches per month
• 22,300 Competing websites

“bike racks for cars”

• 1,900 Searches per month
• 2,860 Competing websites

Here are some of the items on Ebay that can be promoted via Phpbay Pro or BANS:

The car bike rack niche market can also be added on to an existing bike blog or site, which would help drive organic targeted traffic to it. Hope this has helped. Let me know what you think.