Niche Profit Mentor

A friend who is looking for a career change told me this today.

And I can’t argue that internet business is EASY.

But, here’s the thing: EVERYTHING you do in life that’s worthwhile is hard to some level.

And when it comes to a career, you only have a few basic options:

1. (Not very desirable) Get a job at a company. Try to move your way up the company ladder. Get burned out, quit, find another job, start the process again.

2. (Very desirable) Start a business online in a niche you are interested in. Make a few hundred bucks a month at first. Keep going, eventually make a living, keep going, and get rich- on your own time, and doing something you like or even LOVE.

3. (Least desirable) Work for the government. Live off of other people. Get a “guaranteed” pension, be unhappy with your work, work with unhappy people who are also living off of others.

So yes, it’s all difficult. But the key here is to create financial freedom as much as you can. Running an internet business is very much one of those things where you get out of it what you put into it.

There are no shortcuts, but your use of time is much better than other options, simply because even if you are spending 10 hours a day for a while creating your business, there will be a time when this can be cut down- and the choice will be yours- live off of what your website is making, or press on and fulfill all your dreams?

You may have heard about Adam Short’s Niche Classroom website, and wondered if this is something that can help you start an online business.

I have both been a member of the site and personally worked with Adam on a project, and I have yet to find anything more simply laid out, easy to follow, and systematic in the “making money on the internet” world.

He’s not promising the world, but if you do go step-by-step in the course, you will definitely come out with a profitable niche website.

What you need to know going in is that 1) it does require work and time on your part, and 2) most people do not follow through with ideas- giving you a huge advantage if you take action!

Even just spending a couple of months going through all the training that’s provided in the Niche Classroom is well worth it. You can likely build a couple of websites in that time if you just reserve 2 hours a day to focus on it.

The ideas that can make you an extra $500-$1500 a month are practically unlimited. Knitting, betta fish, and bearded dragons are a few of the niches that are discussed in the video trainings within the classroom site. And, each one of these topics can be made into a full-time income business if that’s what you want!

This takes some dedication and interest in your chosen niche, as well as the desire to create a passive income stream or a business.

Building a profitable site within the niche classroom is as easy as 1-2-3- as long as you can follow simple directions and take the necessary action to get it done!

For more information, click here

In part 1 of this article, we discussed some of the concrete things a niche business online could do for you.

Let’s now talk a little about the psychological side of profiting online from a niche business.

When you work at a job, or IN a business, you are restricting your freedom, sometimes severely.

The reason I capitalized the word “IN”, is that, when you have a business that you have to work in or the money stops coming in (or the money drastically takes a hit), it’s really not that much different that having a job and working for someone else. Sure, you’re the boss, and you get to call the shots, and there may be some nice tax breaks.

But I’ve been there, done that. I went from being an employee to having a personal training/coaching business. I found that my income went down, I was working MORE than before, and stress levels were much higher than 8-5 with a paycheck! If your goal is to own a business, you never want to trade your job for another job- which is really what being self-employed is like.

So what is owning a business?

Owning a business is when you can walk away and your business continues to pay you an income, when you’re not there.

Online niche businesses are a perfect example of this.

-You can create 1 niche site and focus on that site, earning all your income from this source. Eventually, through outsourcing, you can put the business on autopilot and have a nice life of very little financial stress.

-You can create many niche sites and once you’ve got one to a certain point, move on to another. This can also be automated and you can have a nice life with little stress, along with multiple streams of income.

But the main point here is the amount of freedom you can achieve with even one small niche website. Psychologically, this will do wonders for your health! Knowing that you can take that trip to Hawaii for a week and be getting money deposited into your bank account all the while you’re there is a fantastic feeling! Knowing you do not have to report to a boss is even better.

And, my favorite part of niche marketing is that you can let your creativity and originality shine. No more being confined to just one line of work. You can create all kinds of neat things and profit from your ideas online, expressing your individuality at far greater levels than in a job or in a self-employed situation.

Let me know when you are ready to start!

The first thing you will need to do in starting an internet business is to have a niche plan.

Finding a niche online is not as hard as it sounds, but it does take a little time to narrow it down. Here are the 3 steps to take to plan out what niche you will go after in your first (or next) online business adventure:

1. Go to Amazon.com. Do a search on the topic you are thinking of. Let’s say you want to do something with teaching Taekwondo. Do a search on “teaching taekwondo”. Contrary to what might seem like common sense, the more books there are under the topic, the better a niche it may be.

2. Next, head to Clickbank.com. Go the ‘marketplace’ area and search for “taekwondo”. Here, the fewer listings there are, the better your odds are that there may be an opportunity waiting for you in this niche.

3. Finally, go to adwords.google.com. Click on the ‘Keyword Tool’. Do a search on “teaching taekwondo”. Check out the ‘Competition’ column and the ‘Global Monthly Searches’ column. You want to look for search terms that have low competition and high (over 500 searches/month) monthly searches. Once you find this combination, you’ve got a niche!

There are other, faster ways of doing this, such as through the Get Niche Profits website, but this is a great niche plan to get you started.

If you have checked out Adam Short’s Niche Classroom site, you may be pondering if this is the right thing for you in launching your own web business. The answer may depend on what you are trying to do. Last night, I hosted a webinar, and Adam gave his presentation on what one needs to do to get started.

It’s a simple process, but does take a lot of time and effort at first. To quickly summarize the presentation, here’s what was covered:

1. Pick your niche. Use Amazon.com and clickbank.com to find popular topics that may not be saturated with products already.

2. Design your site. Simple is good, hire someone from the Philippines and pay very little. Use an opt-in form with an offer, and make your site article-rich.

3. Build your product. Ebooks are great. You can get one written on your topic for as little as $150

4. Write on-site articles on your topic. Use the 21-day article marketing method.

5. Write off-site articles on your topic and submit them to directories. Make sure to have anchor text links back to your site, or more specifically, your article on the same topic.

6. Write your own sales copy. A tool for this is provided in the Niche Classroom site where you can easily write a simple sales page yourself.

It’s great to see a system that’s broken down into easy steps to follow. It’s one of those things where if you do x, y, and z, you will get a profitable niche website, plain and simple. There is no hype or promises of millions of dollars, just something anyone can do.

For more on this you can check out the Niche Classroom.

How much time would you invest in something if you knew it could get you an extra $500 a month, without having to do much after an initial intense month or two? What about $1000 a month? Or $2000?

These days, it’s hard to find investments that kick off numbers like these. And, if you’re short on cash to invest, it becomes very difficult to take advantage of any investment opportunities that involve cash!

But we can all use time to our advantage. Sure it’s going to be tough to find much time if you are balancing a full time job with a family. But there’s always a way. I know a guy who was a medical doctor and built an internet empire, starting by waking up at 5 a.m. to work on his web business for 2 hours every day before work!

But it doesn’t have to be THAT hard.

You can start working towards your goal by just taking 1 hour a day. Sometimes, this is a great way to build your first website, as it makes you really focus for that 1 hour. And this leads to 5 hours a week and 20 hours a month. This is starting to turn into significant time! And the results can be:

1. An asset that pays you month in and month out with just a little maintenance.
2. A full time business that you can run from your home- or anywhere in the world
3. More time to spend with your family, traveling, working on your favorite hobby, or just relaxing

The best way to achieve all of the above is to get niche profits by building a business out of a passion or interest you have.

Ok, I may be exaggerating by using the word “easy” in the title of this blog post. But writing an ebook is likely easier than you think! I’m going to assume for the purposes of this post that you are not going to be outsourcing the writing of your book (another excellent way to get it done!). Here are the basics to get you off and running on your first ebook:

1. Pick a topic. This will either be a topic you are passionate about and want to teach (the best method), where you have a somewhat unique take on the information (I say somewhat, because it’s actually not necessary to be completely original here…you can take an aggregate of already available information and present it in your voice).

2. Do your research. Start with actually going to the book store! Pick out 3-4 books on your chosen topic, and get a grasp of what authors are talking about. This will help you zero in on the scope of your book, and give you ideas for topics to cover.

3. Outline your chapters. Just make a list of major points you would want to cover, 6-10 chapters (+ an intro and conclusion) work well for most books.

4. Write one chapter at a time. Devote 2 hours to just sitting down and doing nothing but writing for each session. If you can do 2 hours a day, you can have your book completed in 12 days (unedited)! The most important thing each time you sit down to write is to not worry about how it sounds, your grammar, or how to make it perfect. Just write all you can each session, and make it conversational- or, geared towards 8th-grade level reading.

5. Edit. You can hire a professional to do this, ask friends or family who may have expertise in this area, or do it yourself. I recommend getting some help, and a few eyes on your work.

6. Compile & Format. Make sure to do this last. The best way to start out is to convert your Word document into a pdf. There are free templates out there to add a little design to it as well.

See how easy it is?!

Kevin

p.s. please add your comments below!

There are so many things to know in the world of creating and running online businesses. Keywords, blogs, podcasts, articles, pay per click, opt-in boxes, squeeze pages- the list goes on and on.

Starting out can be completely overwhelming- especially if you purchased one of those courses that promised that everything would be EASY, and showed you countless examples of people who knew nothing about marketing or technology going in but are now earning $50,000 a month spending 2 hours a day on their business!

I was one who bought one of those courses. I fully expected things to be simple and for me to be earning at least a living within 30 days. Well, it did not happen- but the course was a high quality one, and a good part of that is that it was very organized- a step by step plan that I just did a little each day on (however much time I could afford that day). I did manage to make my first sale within about 60 days of starting the course and probably 6-8 months later was sailing along with my online business, able to scratch out a living online (which was a thrill for me after many years in corporate cubicle life!).

So the thing you need to do before anything else is…get organized! Buying and following a course is sometimes a good way to do this, if you stay focused and don’t let yourself get distracted by “shiny little objects”, or other paths that may or may not lead you to accomplishing your goals.

Finally, you need to have a system that works for you to “get things done”. There are many options out there as to systems and books you can buy on this topic. However, they all contain these elements that should be your priority before even thinking about task #1 on your business:

1. A system to file physical paperwork
2. A task management system, organized in categories, days of the week, and times of the day
3. A way to manage email, so that you don’t feel like you have to check it 32 times a day

I can get into specific recommendations for all of the above later, but the main thing here is to pick or develop a system that works for you, and stick with that system every day. After doing this for a month or so it will become a habit, and things will fall into place naturally, and you will know exactly what to do each day instead of using the “will power” approach of haphazardly jumping from one random task to the next on your list.

I just got back from a 9-day trip to Costa Rica, where I was on a tour with 14 other people, checking out the jungles & beaches, and doing a major amount of activity. I opted not to bring my laptop, despite the many things I have going on with both of my websites.

Since there were numerous internet cafes along the trip (3rd world countries tend to have tons of internet cafes since few people can afford their own computers), I never had any problem accessing my email. However, I was so busy and having so much fun, that I rarely had the desire to connect to my work! And, in the 9 days I was gone, there were a total of 0 work disasters, and 0 problems that had to be dealt with. I managed this by:

1. Changing my voicemail greeting to indicate that I would NOT be checking voicemail until I got back.

2. Setting up an email autoresponder indicating that I would only check email on occasion, and to contact my support person for any emergencies or tech support.

I wasn’t at all worried about anything going wrong. If it did, I already had the support team in place to handle it, and whatever else happened could wait! This was the first trip I have taken in a while and I realized when I got back how important it is to get away on occasion- both to experience completely different surroundings, and to put all the systems I have in place to the test. I would say both were definitely achieved in the last week.

So many people I talk to that want to start their own business online are overwhelmed at the idea of starting something.
Even when I meet people who are just starting out in internet business, they seem discouraged and constantly make the mistake of comparing themselves to others who have been at it for much longer- and have established businesses and income.

If you are new to doing business online, your first goal should be simple- make 1 sale!

The difference between having sold nothing, and having made 1 sale is HUGE. I’m mostly talking about the feeling and the momentum you will get from making that first sale. This will give you a big lift in motivation to go out and do more!

How it worked with me is, I created this little product (a pdf file with some workouts), and uploaded it to my site for sale. I had no idea how long it would take to make my first sale, but in the first week I sold 3 of these things! I then was motivated to bust my butt to see what else was possible. In my 3rd month I remember I made 19 sales and was completely blown away.

It’s VERY easy to get caught up in the comparison game- comparing yourself to others who make $thousands per month, and thinking how far “behind” you are. Nonsense! If you keep following the formula, sales keep getting better. Niche Profit Classroom has a great plan that allows you to get your first sale within 30 days- and that’s even if you have 0 knowledge about internet business already.