You plan to create new affiliate, AdSense or e-commerce web site. How to find if it will be profitable, or not How to estimate your future earnings How to find the most profitable niches Here is a quick and easy method based on keyword research, real experience and common sense.
Sample research is based on the real data - I was running web template business in 2003. All numbers are real, I proved the efficacy of this method number of times. The method itself cant be used to write a business plan or take business decisions - its just an estimation that helps you to decide if any particular niche is worth its further research, or not.
Warning: manual research can take much longer than 12 minutes. I used free tool from http://www.thedowser.com/ to automate it.
Lets say you plan to open web template store (sell web templates for $39). You want to know how much you will be able to earn.
1. Open Overture Keyword Selector Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), enter web template. You will find that people searched for web templates 41,113 times last month. In fact people used not only web template keyword, but html template, web site template, web site layout, etc.
2. Find other popular keywords people use to search for web templates. Open Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/maincmd=KeywordSandbox), enter web template. You will get a long list of keywords. Leave good keywords only, remove misspellings, company names and other junk keywords.
3. Discover keyword popularity for all keywords in your list using Overture Keyword Selector.
4. Sum up keyword popularity numbers - you will get about 250,000 searches per month. This number is for searches in Overture network only. Number of Google searches is about 5 times higher, therefore you get about 1,250,000 searches per month. Its 1,250,000/30 = 41,600 searches per day.
5. Calculate how much traffic you will get from AdWords. If you are AdWords master, your CTR will be about 10%. If you are a newbie, your CTR will be close to 1%. Lets say you are not a guru, therefore you will get 41,600*1% = 416 clicks per day.
6. Calculate how much sales you will get from AdWords. If your templates and sales copy are great, you will get 1% conversion rate on average. It means that every 100th visitor of your web site will actually buy your templates. You need 100 clicks to get a single sale, therefore you will get 416/100 = 4 sales per day on average.
7. Calculate how much profit you will get from AdWords. Your templates cost $39, therefore you will get $156,00 in sales per day on average. You pay $0.10 per click on average, therefore you will spend 416*0.10 = $41,60 per day on average. Your profit will be $115 per day, or $3,450 per month.
8. Calculate how much traffic you will get from natural listings. Imagine that you are SEO guru and you optimised your web site to be on the third position in Google search results for 10% of keywords you found on step 2. CTR of this position is about 70%, therefore you will get 2,912 clicks per day.
9. Calculate how much sales you will get from natural listings. Search engine traffic is a bit worse than AdWords traffic, therefore your average conversion rate will be 3-5 times lower. This way you need 300-500 clicks to get a single sale, therefore you will get 2,912/300 = 10 sales per day.
10. Calculate how much profit you will get from natural listings. $39*10 = $390 per day, or $11,700 per month.
11. Calculate how much profit you will get total. Your AdWords profit estimation is $3,450 per month, natural listings will earn you $11,700 per month. You will end with $15,150 per month.
12. Be realistic. Our life sometimes differs from our plans, therefore you can easily reduce your estimation by 50%. $5,850 per month is what you can expect to get.
Max Pastukhov
Software Developer
Avoid selfishness. It causes problems everywhere, and the e-biz world is no exception. To succeed, you must know your audience, care about them, and go the extra mile to meet them where theyre at.
Maybe youre brainstorming a new website: My website is about me, my services, and my products
Maybe you dont go around saying that explicitly, but it still might your subconscious attitude. Most of us can identify with the joke, Im not much, but Im all I think about.
Yes, you should think about your services and products their benefits and limits. Think about yourself - your own limits as an entrepreneur. And if you want people to buy, think about these things in terms of your prospects.
Our pervasive selfishness, also known as bias, is hard to escape- a big blind spot to see around. The best way to get around it is to survey your prospects, and, if you can, watch their behavior around whatever you sell or do or make.
For example, Ive been planning to write an ebook about public speaking for six months now, but havent gotten to it yet. I knew it was further down my priority list, so I put an offer on my most popular public speaking webpages: Answer this survey and Ill send you a free copy of this $25 ebook when it comes out! Ive got about 50 responses already. When it comes time to plan the books contents, Ill already know whats most interesting to my target market.
Likewise, I did a survey when it was time to title my first alternative medicine book- I brainstormed about 100 of them, chose my 10 favorites, and let my online health readers choose their favorite. The one they preferred was the winner by far. It wasnt even close. It also was NOT the one I liked. See
Maybe youre writing copy: Im going to describe my offerings in the language most natural to me.
Sometimes that works. If theyre looking to grab them with a particular flavor, you might use, for example, folksy language or tech-speak. But that doesnt always work. What if they dont know your jargon What if they dont know your favorite words and concepts
We get so comfortable with the words, phrases, and metaphors from our business and social circles, we forget not everyone knows them. You can keep your jargon if you define it. Otherwise, translate it into everyday language. Even better, find out what the most popular keyword equivalents are, and use those.
Trust me as an experienced writer and public speaker. Too many times, Ive been surprised to reap confusion where I swear I had sown clarity. I no longer underestimate how much my audience will misunderstand my meaning. The burden of clarity is upon me, not them.
Maybe youre building a website: Im organizing my website around my ideas about my business.
That may work out just fine, but if when doesnt, visitors get confused, dont find what theyre looking for, and leave without regret. On a website thats new to them, there are only so many times theyll click before theyre gone
What you think about your offerings doesnt matter if you dont know what your prospects need, what they care about, and what their problems are...
Your prospect may have the problem you solve but not be looking for your kind of solution, or they may not call the solution or the problem by the same names you do. Jargon again. Find out what they call it and how they think about it. Find out what they actually search for, and call it that on your website
Make a bridge between your prospects minds and your own, and theyll stream across in droves.
Since 1999, San Diego SEO Consultant Brian B. Carter, MS, has reached more than 2 million readers online. His most popular site ranks in the top 1% of all major websites. His second book, How I Made $78,024.44 in Six Months Using the Carefully Guarded Secrets of AdSense and Overlooked Keywords will be available in October, 2005 from .