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.

If you’re like me and have been using BANS (Build A Niche Store) for a while, then you know that finding resources is vital to your affiliate success.  Many of you BANS users may already know about The Niche Store Builder The The Niche Store Builder is run and owned by Mark Hansen.

Mark Hansen has been around website development since 1994.  His skills revolve around web application development and search engine positioning strategies, specifically focused on e-commerce in ASP/VBscript.

Mark created The Niche Store Builder to help individuals learn and apply the necessary skills needed to run a successful eBay affiliate website. Though this community is built around the BANS script/software.  There are plenty of tips and resources any affiliate marketer can use and benefit from.

Mark provides a ton of quality content.  From the basics of uploading files to step-by-step tutorials showing you how to run a successful affiliate website in 12 weeks. Mark’s content is truly valuable.  Not only will Mark show you how to fix bugs and errors,   He will also show you how to succeed with BANS.

Mark also provides solutions to some of the most popular questions with integrating WordPress and BANS.  He provides step-by-step videos showing you exactly how to implement BANS with WordPress. Mark provides these detailed step-by-step videos on his blog free of charge.

That’s the one thing that blows me away about Mark.  Most other webmasters/Internet marketers would charge an arm and a leg to access these videos.  Mark provides all this plus outstanding interaction and support for free.

Make sure you check out www.thenichestorebuilder.com

Great job Mark and keep up the good work.

EBay pulse is a great site to go to in order to find the next hottest niche market. Simply go to this website and it will give you the top 10 most searched for items. Thanks to this site, you now know the top 10 products that people are buying. There is also a drop down box for each category on eBay. You can use this in order to find the top 10 most searched for products in each of these groups. With this information, you have a better idea of which products you should try to sell using affiliate programs. For example, maybe the most searched for product is a cell phone; go to websites that sell cell phones and cell phone accessories and see if they are offering affiliate programs.

Next on the list is the Google keyword tool. There are multiple uses for this tool. It is most commonly used in order to find the best keywords to use when marketing a site-so keep this in mind for when you are trying to get your site listed on search engines. All you have to do is type or word or phrase into the box, and it will give you a list of the most searched for phrases. Just like with eBay pulse, you can use this tool to find out what people are searching for; and if you are planning on running a successful niche marketing business it is crucial that you know this information. You can see how easy it is to learn what people are searching for by using these sites. The best part is that it will only take you seconds.

If you are going to be a successful niche marketer, it is important that you understand the basics of marketing. One of these basic marketing fundamentals is that the market is always changing. What was popular last year may not be as popular this year. It takes a lot of work to discover what is going to stay popular and what is going to be a passing fad. Remember, it can take up to a year for you to start getting serious traffic to your niche marketing web pages; if your niche isn’t still popular, then you are out a lot of time and may be even money.

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Golfing has been around for a while and continues to grow in popularity. Golf is a $62.2 billion dollar industry in the U.S and has about 8.2 million golfers that  played an estimated 33 million rounds of golf last year. If you think this niche is flooded, think again.

There are plenty of ways to profit from the keyword list I’m about to give you, but before we dive into the list I’ll give three quick examples on how to monetize your site/blog.

1. Clickbank- If you have not signed up for clickbank’s affiliate program, I suggest you do so now. There are lots of golf related products to promote for excellent commissions.

2. Niches in a box- If you don’t already have your own information product, don’t worry. Niches in a box does all the work for you. The website, graphics, free report, and the products are all done for you. They even have a golf product to purchase and claim full authorship of the ebook. It’s definately worth checking out.

3. Build A Niche Store- I know you most likely have a BANS site or the script to setup a site. This script will come in handy and is easy to monetize for profits. Incorporate all three strategies into your BANS store. Add the free report from Niches in a box to generate a list and gain leads, promote clickbank products for commissions, place adsense ads, or sign up for adbrite and sell advertising on your site.

KEYWORDS:

“golf lesson dvd”

• 880 searches per month
• ****656 competing websites****
• PPC $1.31

“golf training dvd”

• 880 searches per month
• 2,260 competing websites
• PPC $1.45

“help with golf swing”

• 720 searches per month
• 2,720 competing websites
• PPC $1.91

“golf swing guide”

• 720 searches per month
• 6,720 competing websites
• PPC $1.13

“golf swing dvd”

• 1,900 searches per month
• 6,810 competing websites
• PPC $1.49

“golf instruction dvd”

• 1,600 searches per month
• 7,310 competing websites
• PPC $1.24

“golf swing problems”

• 1,000 searches per month
• 7,720 competing websites
• PPC $0.61

“golf swing software”

• 3,600 searches per month
• 8,690 competing websites
• PPC $1.84

“golf swing help”

• 3,600 searches per month
• 16,500 competing websites
• PPC $1.88

“golf swing guru”

• 4,400 searches per month
• 10,200 competing websites
• PPC $0.76

“free golf swing”

• 8,100 searches per month
• 30,600 competing websites
• PPC $0.89

“free golf swing tips”

• 1,900 searches per month
• 5,700 competing websites
• PPC $0.69

“golf swing mechanics”

• 6,600 searches per month
• 31,000 competing websites
• PPC $1.34

Remember, the key to showing up in the search engine results page is to frequently create fresh content.