Work Yourself Up!

Find a Niche for Your Membership Site

What do some membership sites have over others? They have found a profitable niche to base their site upon. If you want to drive traffic and increase membership numbers, find a topic that people are interested in.

Finding a topic is not that hard but it does require some research. That is always the most important first step in any business venture. If you don't know what else is out there, how can you compete? How can you improve on an existing model?

Finding Your Topic

Start with what you know. English teachers always tell you to write what you know. That philosophy goes for business as well. If you are interested in fitness, begin your research there. Are there other membership sites on the topic of fitness, nutrition or both?  If there is, find out what makes them stand out.

Within each topic there is room to move around. You can choose a niche within that general topic (fitness for example) to specialize your membership site. Maybe the site will offer fitness tools for women or men's fitness. One advantage that your niche membership site would have is a more focused approach to fitness for that particular gender.

Choosing Your Price

What is it about $0.95 or $0.99? It's almost as if people are saving a lot with only a few cents. Someone is more likely to pay $9.95 than $10.00. It must be a psychological thing but it works. Knock off a few cents and you are in business.

Your price will depend on two things: competitive prices and your offerings. If another fitness site offers membership for $9.99, you will have to have something spectacular if your price is higher. And, that might be possible if they offer the basics for their members. Choose membership tools that make life easier for your potential members.

Testing the Waters

If you already run a website or a blog, use that forum to gauge how much interest there is in your niche topic. Poll visitors; send survey links to customers and post engaging blog entries that beg feedback on your possible new enterprise. You don't want to sink money into a venture that won't even get off the ground.

Want to start a membership site that will make you a profit? Research topics for your site and explore niche possibilities that will bring you the traffic and the money. But, when you find a worthy niche, you will see a recurring income each month from your hard work.

Site Stats: Measuring Your Results

When you start planning your business, you have a business plan that will help map out where you see your sales going from one year to the next. With online businesses you can do this through website statistics. These are measurements of various activities on your website that directly relate to your business.

Site Statistics

One of the things that you want is traffic. Without traffic you won't get any sales and your business won't grow. Your marketing plan outlines how you will proceed with getting that traffic. But, it is not foolproof.

You won't know if your efforts are working unless you measure it. That is where statistics come in. What do you measure? Here are a few examples:

- Unique visitors (how many different people visit your site)
- Keyword analysis (which keywords bring in traffic and which don't)
- Conversion rates (how many visitors go from reading to buying items)
- Web page analysis (where visitors go when they are on your site)
- Page views (how many people visit each unique page on your website)

These are just a few of the stats that you will be interested in knowing. When you first begin marketing your site, statistics can help you find out if you are on the right page. Do the keywords you use drive traffic?

Statistics are gathered on a monthly basis but it can take a few months to see trends. Trends are a measure of the way that your current plan is taking shape. Because of the lag time, it's not wise to make changes to your plan for several months to give it time to work or not work. When a business is in start-up mode, it will take that long to get an accurate measure of sales.

Site stats give you a starting point. Without some way to measure your business efforts it is like shooting in the dark - you don't know if you've hit or miss. Looking at all the statistics together gives you a better idea of what to change first in an attempt to improve your business.

So, if you have not instituted a way to measure vital information pertaining to your website business, it is time to do so. There are software tools (both free and paid) that can help you compile these statistics. You can also hire companies to measure that information for you and analyze the data to anticipate the next more that you need to make. But, for small businesses, using software to compile the data and your own brain to analyze it will suffice.

Choosing a Niche for List Building

People are interested in a variety of things. As a business owner, you want to find the people who are interested in your product or service. To help you in that process, choose a niche before you do anything else.

Part of selling a product is in knowing who you are going to sell it to. The worst thing to do is to have a great product that no one wants. Before you do all of that work, start off defining your niche.

Do Some Research

Yeah, no one wants to hit the books (or in online business - the search engines), but it is necessary if you want to be successful. Just like you would research keywords for your articles, blog posts and other areas of search engine optimization, research is important for narrowing down the best niche for your product.

Where do you start? Some have a product and then look for the niche. Others have decided on a niche that they would like to pursue, but don't have any idea of a product or service to offer. In both cases, see who is interested, if there is any interest at all.

Let's say that you have decided to do something with pets. Well, there are tons of pet species. Maybe you like dogs. Even then, there are still hundreds of dog species that people all around the world have as pets. Since you know that you want to pursue dogs, choose a specific dog. Is there interest in pugs? How about schnauzers? Who will you look at, those who already have that specific type of dog or potential owners of the breed?

That last question is important because of how you market your product. If you have a special dog collar or a pet bed, the target market will be people who already own that particular dog. Offering content on your website about how to get a schnauzer to sleep in their bed won't necessarily interest someone who wants to buy a dog but hasn't decided on a schnauzer.

Join a Niche Forum

Are there a large number of schnauzer owners out there? If so, is your product unique? Find places where schnauzer owners hang out online and investigate. Don't just ask questions like a reporter or an investigator, but get involved to find out what they really want.    

Use your research information to fine tune your product or service and your marketing plan for building your list. You don't want your marketing plan to hit too general an audience or the wrong focused audience. Choose a viable niche first to help develop a successful list and increased chance of profit later.

Using Site Stats to Your Advantage

A website can be more than just your window on the cyber world. It is your base of operations and can also be a source of rich information about your business. Use site stats to help you improve how you run your business.

What to Look For

There are lots of website stats for you to look at to improve your rankings with the search engines. Each one can tell you something useful about how your business is currently doing.

1. Page views - How many people look at each page of your website? You can check page views on a monthly basis to see what portion of your website is the most popular. Maybe certain pages are more popular at different times of the year due to seasonal product offerings. You can also learn what items are doing well and which ones are dragging down the bottom line.

2. Unique visitors - Your site may get many visitors each day but they could be the same person coming back more than once. Unique visitors are first time visitors to your site and not repeat ones. The more unique visits you get the more potential customers you are coming in contact with.

3. Links - These can be outgoing links. If someone clicks on your Digg icon to bookmark one of your articles or blog posts, you can find that out as long as you have the right software set up on each page of your site. Any ads you post can also be tracked to see who clicks them. Programs like Google AdWords will track those stats for you so you can get paid.

4. Sales - You can track how well your shopping cart does each month. See when sales do down or up and see how many people used the shopping cart but didn't make the sale. Compare statistics to track product buying trends to predict future sales.

5. Keyword analysis - Each page can be dedicated to one or two keywords. By looking at page views you can analyze how well your keywords are working. Using a different page for different keywords also allows you to know which ones are underperforming for you so you can try a new tactic.

Google Analytics is a free program that you can use to measure these and other website stats. Having so much information at your fingertips can help you rise to the top of your business niche and stay there.

Take a Genuine Interest in Your Readers

When you check the stats you are always looking to see how many unique visitors you have to your website. To see those numbers go up every month, you need a method for attracting new readers. This same method will also keep current readers coming back for more. So, what is it?

Who are you?

Every person wants to know that they matter to others. They can matter to their families, friends and even the people they do business with. Why do you think barber shops and hair salons are so popular? The business is based on delivering a finished product AND building a relationship.

As an online business owner, you readers want to know that their presence matters. They have come to you looking for something. Again, what is it?

It would be naive to think that each person that visits your website or blog is there because of you. They may not have known your name before they clicked on your link in the search results. After they leave your site, they many never remember your name again unless you do something to change that.

What do you want?

You have interests. You started your online business because of an interest or a passion for something. Your readers also have passions. The informative content that you supply could be the final link to someone realizing the dream of entrepreneurship, home ownership or even buying a new car. The best way to find out what you readers want is to take an interest in their likes and dislikes.

Now, your website is about the business that you are building, but knowing something about the people who are getting you there can help your business to evolve. For instance, you may provide information about how to stay organized in business and in life, but the majority of your readers are interested is personal coaching. Starting a personal coaching line of products will meet their needs in a new and more focused way because you took the time to find out about their interests.

How do I help you?

Here are a few ways that you can get in touch with your reader's interests:

- Surveys
- Offer contests for guest blogging spots
- Create a "reader spotlight" or a "customer spotlight" on your website
- Send out feedback emails with purchases

Readers have interests too and they are important for you to know. Now that you know who your readers are and how you can help them, use those tools to find out what they want. Then, give it to them! You'll see an increase in readers, customers and sales because you took the time to find out what they needed and provided it to them.

How to Trick Out Your Entire Website Using Stats

Your website is a gold mine. It can take your business from so-so to wow. All you need to do is learn how to use your statistical information to help you get it done.

Website stats tell you a variety of things. You can find out where your products are booming and busting. You can learn what visitors like and dislike about your site. Are your keywords working? That can be explained also.

The sum total of your website is not content. While content is still king when it comes to providing useful information, it is just one aspect that can be optimized on your site. So much has been written about keyword optimization in content that some might wrongly believe it is the only important part of website optimization.

That is what we are really talking about here - website optimization. Start with the content but don't leave it there. Search engines bots will crawl the entire page for keywords not just your content. Let's take a look at other options for tricking out that website and making it sell itself.

1. Anchor Text - Anchor text is the text that is displayed over hyperlinks on your content. If your article refers to information found elsewhere on your site, don't just say "click here" to find more information, use keywords from that page as your anchor text. Not only are you getting credit for the keyword but it links to another page that also is keyword optimized (or it will be once you are done).

2. Picture Text - People love pictures especially on websites and shopping carts. It can be a big mistake to buy sight unseen. Each picture can have a tag associated with it. When someone runs across the picture with their mouse, they can again see relevant keywords for that page. 

3. Links to Other Website Pages - One technique for creating your webpage is to list what services you offer or what your product can do on the homepage. That homepage can be doing more. If you have dedicated a separate page to each unique feature, place those links on the homepage as well. In your list of product features, use keyword-rich anchor text to describe them and have each description link to a different page. Search engines love that.

Are you getting the idea? Your website can be more exciting to the search engine crawlers with just a few changes.

Find out What Your Readers are Thinking with Surveys

Have you ever received one of those surveys in the mail after visiting a store or having a surgical procedure? One of the most prominent questions is "What did you like and what can we improve on?" It is worded differently in each one you receive but the point is that they want to know your opinion of the job they are doing. Use surveys to get in touch with your readers.

Surveys are quite helpful. Anyone can sell a product online and get a few sales, but not everyone can tap into what their readers want to create lifelong customers. This would mean repeat business which is better than one-time hits.

The Point of Surveys

The point of a survey is to gauge the reader's opinion of something. The information is useful for creating things like:

- Better customer service protocols
- New products
- New programs
- New services
- Improve sales

But, you must do something with them for all of this to happen. Don't just let those metrics go to waste. Some sites use survey companies to distribute and tally website surveys and polls. It makes the job easier for you and they will also give you a breakdown of what they discovered with the surveys.

Now the rest is up to you. Start by creating a spreadsheet that includes all of the responses given. It would be best to use a survey that has lettered choice instead of just write-in boxes. Now, rank the responses. Use this as a framework for coming up with ways to try and make changes in answer to what your readers would like to see.

Reader Response

You may have to do a few surveys to get readers to take them seriously. As an online customer you know that sometimes surveys are simply for show. The companies who ask for your input never do anything about the suggestions that you give. But, all of them are not like that.

This is where the relationship building begins with your readers on this front. Try to change one thing at a time. If you can, bring attention to it so that readers know you took them seriously. In the future more people will take the surveys and help you to make your business a success.

Give it a try. Your readers are as ready to help you as you are to help them. After all, you can't always read their mind and if you can give them what they want they'll be more apt to stick with you for the long haul instead of finding someone else who can.

What Site Stats Can Tell You

Why do some websites do well and others just crest for a while and then sink under the surf? It could be the big picture view. Website statistics can teach you a lot about how your online business is doing. Take a minute and look at those stats.

Getting Set Up

When you roll out your website, it is going to be important to monitor your progress. You can't visit the site every day. You may want to but there are other tasks to tend to. Besides, if you automate most everything, your site will be able to run itself with very little interference from you except for site upkeep and adding new content and products.

This will require a well thought out plan on your part. Basic to that plan is a way to measure what goes on during the course of a day on your site. People visit, read articles, click on ads, view products and use the shopping cart. Each of these activities will help you to determine how your business will proceed in the months and years ahead.

You can add files to your web page yourself to capture certain stats. An easier step would be to get involved with a website stats program to do the work for you. Choose something like Google Analytics. If you already use other Google services to help promote your business then you are already familiar with the variety of tools they can offer you.

Google Analytics lets you analyze several things:

- Traffic
- Marketing strategies (ads)
- Keywords
- Conversion rates

This is only a sampling. You sign up and the program will walk you through the rest of what you need to get be ready for business.

Making Changes

Now that you have a way to track changes on your website, it's time to see how they can help you over not using anything at all.

- Improve Keyword Optimization - The keywords that you decided to use may all not perform well. Using stats on page views and visitors, you can tell which of your keywords is bringing in the most traffic. For the ones that are not, consider exchanging keywords on that web page and see how that might improve sales.

- Improve your Content Offerings - The low number of page views for a specific page could signify that people aren't finding your content on the first page of search engine results. Take another look at your content. Is your keyword density within the right range? Are you using too many? Search engines don't look kindly to keyword stuffing and will not rank your work favorably. With content, provide useful information using only as many words as you need to get your point across.

What are your site stats telling you? Remember to change one parameter at a time to find the right mix that will help your website succeed.

Follow the Problem

A well known catch phrase from a popular movie is “follow the money.” For Internet marketing, the best advice is “follow the problem.”  The most effective online products are those that address problems.

How to break into Internet marketing. How to lose weight.  How to avoid foreclosure in a down market. These are problems that drive people to search engines desperately looking for answers.  How do you know what people want and need to know?

You have to research and listen into the online conversations in your niche. Start with keyword research for your topic.  Check in with Google Labs and find out what the trend of online interest is based on up to the minute searches.  Over days or weeks, you can see when the trend shifts and a new hot topic rises.

Another expanded Google tool, the Google Talk Labs, lets you get involved in conversations about trend topics. You have a chance to interact and possibly influence the conversation. At the same time, you want to drop into several discussion forums that focus on your niche.

Don’t be a lurker, be involved. You can use a different name - just make sure that you contribute to the conversation. Nothing will get you barred from a forum faster than showing up with a sales pitch instead of being a participant.

Once you make several posts and join the conversation, then you earn the to right to offer suggestions or recommendations. That’s another reason why you want to use a name other than your own name so that you aren’t obviously recommending your own site.

When you get a hint of a problem from comments in the forum, be bold and ask, “Does anybody have a good resource for how to . . . ” If no one has a suggestion, there’s a product waiting for you to develop.

You can also get a feel for problems by scanning major blogs like Technorati and Boing Boing. Subscribe to blogs that are popular with followers of your niche interest. Chances are they will comment on those blogs.

If you find that there’s a product to address the problem, take a look at it. What can you do to improve, simplify, expand or add a new twist to that answer? Is it a high priced product? Then you need to develop something at a slightly lower price point.

Is it too cheap and vague? That’s your cue to add more substance, get endorsements from reviewers and position your product as the premium solution. Millions are made online by solving simple problems where the public is using the ‘net to find a solution.

Get Green Online

The renewed interest in green living opens enormous opportunities for online marketers. With a constant stream of news about global warming, damage to the rain forests and escalating oil prices more people are searching on line to find “green” answers that make life easier and better without damaging the environment.

Cater to this green living revolution and you’ll have a wealth of product possibilities. Start by searching ClickBank and PLR article sites for “Green living” topics. Whether you find eBooks or a set of articles that can be combined into eBooks, you want to provide information on how the average person can go green. 

You can also take some of the ideas and create videos or podcasts to explain the methods. Many people live in housing built without green living in mind. Show them how to adapt their current home with simple and cost effective means.

Search for products that are “green friendly” and low to moderately priced to go with your low cost green theme information products.  Become an affiliate marketer for these products. Some excellent green products come from entrepreneurs who may not know about affiliate online marketing. 

Explain to them how you can help each other. Offer to add some free articles or an eBook to their website. You’ll open up new markets where both of you benefit financially. Create a “green” website.

You can even find web providers who claim to use mostly green equipment. Thinkhost.com uses wind and solar energy to power of its server capacity, recycles, sets up commuting plans for employees and donates generously to environmental causes. 

You can brag about this hosting service and make money as an affiliate marketer. While you’re at it, borrow from their concept about giving back. Designate a featured product on your site and pledge to donate 15% of each purchase to a nationally or internationally known environmental protection organization.

Use your information to create a “Green Home” mini course. Offer the 5 lessons as an eBook or on video. Each lesson is a chance to promote your other products. Connect with as many environmental product sites as you can get to add your free course.

Do the keyword research on various environmentally friendly products. You’ll find so many options - from hybrid cars to bamboo fiber clothing (which is soft and luxurious to wear). There are big ticket items such as home sized windmills, solar panels, solar water heaters, low flow showers or toilets and building products. 

Increase volume sales potential with eco-chic clothing, sustainable gardening, reviews of energy conserving appliances, low VOC paints and other practical ways to live “green.” This is one evergreen niche that you can feel good promoting!