A niche is an area of demand for information. Niches are usually small, but the size really doesn’t matter as long as it’s specific. This will be your bread and butter for all of the opportunities in this book. Most IMers live and die by niches, and a few are rewarded heavily for using them correctly.

How do you find good niches?

Well, here’s what I do – I think about everything from a marketing aspect. Yeah, sounds pointless, right? Wrong. I analyze everything now. In order for a company to spend thousands of dollars on a TV, radio, or print advertisement, there has to be a need (or they have to think there is a need). So I assume that a commercial that runs frequently, and for a long period of time is catering to a particular target market, and they’re eating it up, otherwise the company would stop advertising to them.

I take that information and think about how I could use that it online. I think about where the target market would be at on the ‘net, and what they would be doing. Then I try to find out what I could do to monetize that information.

Niche Research

When I think I have a popular (and profitable) subject, I use Nichebot.com to check on its search volume. Nichebot will look at the searches for the past 60-days and give you the most searched keyphrases that relate to the keywords you entered. Then, you can use the # of searches (for Wordtracker results, it is the average searches per day, for Overture results, it’s over the past 60 days) and the competition ratio to determine if I want to build my site around it. Basic rule of thumb is the lower the ratio, the better the keyword.

The first thing to do is know your subject. If you have to research to get good, fresh content, do it. If you have to research offline, DO IT! Actually, you can generally find more “unused” content offline than you can online, because most articles and information on the web is rehashed crap from other sites and articles. The key to great content is to provide the reader with things they haven’t heard or thought of before.

Offline? Come on, no way!

Yes way. The true value still lies within the brick and mortar library. Granted, if your list is about something completely brand new, you probably won’t find it in the library, but pretty much every other subject that dates back more than a year or so has found its way into a library, and you can research it there. So get out of your house (how long has it been since you left your computer room, anyhow?) and get down to the library to do some digging. If you forget how to use one (it’s nothing to be ashamed of, I did too) the librarians will be more than happy to help you out. If you’re a smooth talker, you may be able to talk them into helping you find the books you need to do your research!

The next best way to come up with new ideas and keep your list happy is to ask them what they want. Invite them to post questions to your website, or email you with them (careful with this one, large lists with a lot of activity will kill your email account) and you’ll have enough topics for God knows how long. And each answer will be more personal than just a “This is what I feel like telling you” newsletter, because someone on the list asked that question. I suggest using the name of the person who asked the question in the newsletter, but make sure you ask them for permission before you do.

This is the buzz right now in IM: the right to resell someone else’s product and keep all of the profit for yourself. Think about it. Would you rather be an affiliate for a product and drive traffic there for 50% commissions, or drive traffic to your own site and make 100% commissions? Yeah, I’d go with 100% too. But what’s the catch? Most of the time, you have to buy the rights.

Before I get into the details of the rights, I want to stress this: Always make sure you know what you’re allowed to do with your rights! If you are caught doing something you’re not licensed to do, you can be prosecuted for copyright infringement, and that’s not something you want to get into.

All of the types of resale rights that I’m going to discuss allow you to sell the product and keep 100% of the profit. That’s VERY appealing to most people, because you’d rather make $47 than $23.50 any day, right? Right.

Because you have to sell the product yourself, you’ll also need to be able to accept payment, but that’s easy enough to do by visiting Paypal or Stormpay and setting up a business account (both free to set up). Stormpay isn’t as tough on their Terms of Service, and they operate in many more countries than Paypal does, but they charge a higher percentage for accepting payments than Paypal. I generally offer both as payment options to ensure that my customers will be able to make the purchase, regardless of their country or payment processor.

Resale Rights

You can sell the product, and keep 100% of the profits! So if you think you can sell some copies of the product, go for it. Keep in mind that the initial cost of resale rights is generally 3-5 times the price of the product.

You may also have to create your own sales page and graphics. If you can’t do this yourself, it will cost $100+. If the product does come with a sales page, you’ll want to modify it to fit your target market.

With resale rights, you can’t do anything but sell the product; you can’t sell the resale rights to anyone else. You can’t change anything, and you can’t put your name on it.

Master Resale Rights

With master resale rights, you can sell the product, keep the money, and also sell resale rights to the product. The initial cost of master resale rights is generally 5-10 times the price of the product or more.

Keep in mind that you can’t sell master resale rights to the product unless you get a “transferable” master resale rights license. With transferable master resale rights, you can sell master resale rights, resale rights, and the product itself.

The biggest bonus of master resale rights is the fact that now you can upsell by selling them the product, then offering to “upgrade” them to the resale rights for $xx. (Or, if you’re allowed, master resale rights for $xxx) Keep in mind that by selling the resale rights, you’re creating competitors for yourself.

Private Label Rights

With private label resale rights, you can pretty much do anything, unless the license specifically states otherwise. Sometimes, you won’t be allowed to sell resale or master resale rights, other times, you will.

You have the chance to sell “your own copy” of the product, and you usually have the opportunity to change the links inside to your own sites/affiliate links and/or edit the copy. That’s a huge deal, because now you make back-end profits too. And remember the branding aspect I was talking about at the beginning of the book? That comes into play here too. Buying private label rights adds to your brand, provided you use your name or business name on the product.