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In my post on how to become a niche rockstar I said that in order to be at the top of your industry (in a lot of cases online) it’s important to know as much about it as possible. What your competitors are doing, how they’re making money and how they’re getting traffic are just a few things that you can discover with some in-depth niche research.
In that particular post I looked at the green industry from the perspective of a blogger and shared some of my findings. Based on some of the comments and emails I received at the time, a few of you were interested in how I collected the stats I did and how you could go about investigating your own niche further. I’m going to expand on that topic today, in the way I always do.
First I’ve highlighted a huge list of tools that serve various different functions and can be great resources to add to your marketing arsenal. After that I’m going to give two examples in different industries showing how you can use these services – and the information they generate – to your advantage.
22 Resources for Data-Mining Your Industry
Before you can use any of these tools to their full potential, it’s recommend that you grab a pen and paper (or open up a text editor) and jot down some phrases which would best describe your niche. Of course, be sure to write down anything you discover from this research as well – whether it be other sites in your industry or any marketing ideas that you discover.
Niche research is a little like viewing your website analytics where it’s really pointless checking your stats if they don’t lead to you making any site changes. In the same way, it’s really pointless using any of these tools if you don’t do anything about the little insights you’ll undoubtedly come across.
Ice Rocket Trend Tool
The Ice Rocket Trend tool is interesting in that it gives you an idea of how popular certain topics are around the web over time periods of up to three months. In the example below you can see how many people are talking about different aspects of internet marketing:
Do note though that different spellings get different results. For example there are a lot more people talking about search engine optimization than there are search engine optimisation (which is how I would usually write it).
This tool can be used for a number of things like deciding on which verticals of a certain niche to enter, right down to seeing which sports professionals in specific fields are garnering the most interest at this moment in time.
Spy on Web: Find Other Sites That People Own
Spy on Web is a neat little tool that I’ve had in my arsenal for a few years now. Basically it lets you see which websites use the same hosting company, have the same IP addresses and use the same Google Analytics and Google Adsense tracking codes. This means that in many cases you can easily find other websites that someone owns if you have the URL of just one of them.
Keep in mind that Spy on Web isn’t accurate in all cases. For example, if someone is hosting websites on a shared host like Hostgator, hundreds of domains may appear which actually have nothing to do with the owner of the original domain you entered.
I’ve found this to be a tool that satisfies my curiosity more than anything else, but when it comes to SEO research, it can be interesting to see if any webmasters in your industry are operating their own little ‘link farms’. You would be surprised how many I’ve found, even after Whois checking for verification.
Quantcast Visitor Demographics
I first came across the benefits of this tool when I started advertising on Facebook. Most people commonly try to target a huge audience with their Facebook ad campaigns where as many people have found the best strategy is to lots of ads, each targeting a tiny sub-section of users.
The tool not only tells you similar websites that people visit based on any URL, but you can also see some statistics about the audience that visits a certain site. I ran the social news site Reddit through the tool as an example and I’m told that around 55% of visitors are male (though I expect this to be a little lower than reality) and 24% of the audience are over 50 years old.
Below is Quantcast’s estimation as to which sites people visit after Reddit. None of them surprise me, so I would say it’s quite accurate here:
Run a few sites from your niche through the tool and give yourself a better idea of the market that you’re working with.
Google Reader Subscriber Counts
One tool I like to use when looking for large blogs in a niche is Google Reader, and more specifically its ‘Browse for Feeds’ feature. Though many sites proudly display their Feedburner statistics, the stats can be easily inflated with Aweber and even Fiverr users offering to boost your chicklet count by another 500 readers (of course, they’re not ‘real’ readers) for $5.
In Google Reader you can see how many people are subscribing just via Google. You can do this by logging into your Google Reader account and clicking ‘Browse for feeds’ on the left menu. Then enter any keywords of sites you know:
Strangely, a number of blogs in the IM niche which have much higher overall subscriber counts than me have lower Google Reader counts. I guess this means they’re either inflating the figure with email addresses (which could be their primary aim) or ViperChill readers have a huge liking for Google Reader compared to visitors on other marketing blogs, though I don’t think that’s very likely.
Spyfu
Spyfu is a tool that has been around for quite a while and is very popular, especially among pay-per-click marketers spending money on the likes of Google Adwords. Spyfu helps you to see which companies are buying ads for certain search terms, and even shows the exact ad copy that they’re using.
You can also see average bid prices for any phrases, such as the information below for ‘cape town flights’:
Not only do you get pricing information, you’ll also be presented with a list of domains that are most commonly advertising for such phrases. This can be useful when you want to investigate the landing pages of these sites or just want to find other companies in your industry that are actively marketing themselves.
How Often Links are Shared on Facebook
I found this little trick a few months ago and while it’s nothing really that special, it’s a nice little way to find out the popularity of any pages on Facebook if you were curious as to how many times they’ve been shared.
Simply type the following into your address bar: http://graph.facebook.com/http://www.viperchill.com/wordpress-seo/ changing the part in bold with the URL that you want to check. You’ll see a basic text interface in your browser with the number of shares that specific URL has had.
SEM Rush
Similar to SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer mentioned below, SEMRush gives you a good amount of information on specific domains, though only a limited number of results are available freely. SEM Rush actually shows you an impressive list of stats, revealing which terms are driving traffic to different domains, how many results there are for that term, and where a site ranks for in the SERP’s for a particular phrase.
Running a few sites in your industry through this can give you a good idea for other keyphrases that you can start targeting that your competitors are currently capitalising on.
Pew Facts & Statistics
Though I’ve never really used this in my own research, Pew is one of the best resources online for – as they put it – “Numbers, facts and trends shaping your world”.
For example, if I look at their ‘social trends’ category, one of the latest reports is a finding that teens on social networks that are ‘mostly kind’ make up 69% of users. While those who are mostly unkind take a 20% share.
Other categories you can look into further for stats include Religion, Economics, the Environment, Legal, News & Media and Politics.
StumbleUpon Buzz
A little known feature of StumbleUpon is their popular (buzz) pages for different subjects. These pages show the most viewed articles that the StumbleUpon audience voted for and enjoyed. I’ll be the first to admit that StumbleUpon visitors aren’t the best traffic source in the world, but there’s something to be said for writing articles that capture their attention. I have a large in-depth guide to StumbleUpon as a service if you want to learn more about it here.
If you can occupy the attention of someone who is randomly clicking through websites via a browser toolbar, you can occupy the attention of anybody.
Not only will you see the pages that are the most popular, you’ll also see exactly how many visits StumbleUpon sent to them which is perfect if you have lots of ideas from this source but just want to focus on a few. I obviously don’t recommend that you copy titles or ideas directly, but instead think you should use this as inspiration for titles that work well, angles that people in your niche are taking, and the type of subjects that people want to read about.
You can find ideas in literally any niche, with some examples being their finance, gadget and humour sections. Simply change the tag in the URL to whatever you write about and you’ll find popular content around that topic.
Most Saved Delicious Links
After being sold for around $10m back in 2005 to Yahoo, Delicious is now back in the hands of its original owners and is sporting a new redesign with a slightly new focus. As interesting as that may be, I don’t personally have a use for the service any more other than for content inspiration and overall niche research.
Type any relevant phrases into their search engine and you’ll find popular sites, blog posts, videos and images which have been saved the most by the Delicious audience. This will give you some insights on how to create your own popular content.
Top Site Posts
I’ve mentioned Open Site Explorer a number of times on this blog and for good reason: It’s a fantastic tool built by a fantastic company. Though you do get far more features with a premium account (it’s not cheap at almost $100 per month), you can still do some basic research with the limited results that you’re shown.
I know that many people use this tool for checking backlinks to competitors in great detail, but what I particularly like is the ‘Top Pages’ section you can view on any domain. If you run a few sites from your industry here you’ll likely find some type of content that was very popular for them – since they have the most backlinks – giving you inspiration for your own content creation efforts.
The People of StumbleUpon (Influencers)
I have put this in a separate section to the StumbleUpon Buzz resource simply because I think this is a great way to find active participants in your industry and in many cases…influencers. When browsing StumbleUpon via their toolbar you’ll be able to see the people who are submitting the stories that are related to your niche.
For example, if you run a gadgets website then you can set-up StumbleUpon to show you gadget related articles and websites. Every time you hit the Stumble button you’ll find new articles and new submitters. A lot of submissions will be from the content owners themselves (which gives you a chance to make some solid connections) but others will be simply from people who really care about that topic.
Click on their username via the toolbar and you’ll be able to go through other submissions that they’ve made to the site, often resulting in the uncovering of not only great content, but major players in your chosen industry.
Compete Details
Compete offer a nice little service which lets you compare analytics (traffic volume, referring websites & search terms) between different websites. While it only gives you an idea of how much US traffic a site is getting – though it’s not entirely accurate like many traffic estimation tools – it does give you a good indicator as to which sites are popular in your niche.
As you can see from the screenshot above, Compete has registered around 3.2 million unique visitors for Pinterest last month. The results page also shows you traffic stats over time and, like Quantcast, displays ‘similar’ websites.
As with other similar tools, the results you get here in the free version are quite limited compared to their PRO offering.
Alexa Site Information
Like Compete, Alexa also gives you a good idea as to how much traffic websites are getting and some of the search terms that are sending them traffic. Right now Alexa claims that the top terms driving traffic to ViperChill are:
- Viperchill
- Viper Chill
- WordPress seo
- viper chil
- building backlinks
- guest blogging
- viral marketing
While the top results in Alexa are not the same as my actual analytics stats, some of the phrases are definitely there. And, as expected, spikes in my traffic do tend to line up with spikes in Alexa as well.
Shown above, another nice feature of Alexa is the ability to compare the traffic levels of sites that belong to the same industry. If you don’t already have the Alexa Sparky extension for Firefox then I highly recommend that you install it. You’ll immediately see a traffic graph and Alexa rank for any website that you visit in the Add-on bar (footer) of your browser.
Technorati Top Blogs
Many of you will know about Technorati and their blog directory already but it’s still worth mentioning them here. The most useful part of their site for me is their top ranked blogs section, which shows you the most talked about blogs in specific categories.
This allows you to see which sites are hot at this moment in time. The top overall blogs are what I would call superblogs and tend to write dozens of posts every single day.
Backlink Sources
Looking into the backlinks of your competitors can give you an idea of other sites operating in your industry, how competitive search results will be for different phrases and you can sometimes even find multiple sites which tend to be operated by the same people. That last point is especially common in more obscure niches, I’ve found.
I would usually recommend the Yahoo Site explorer for backlink counts but sadly in the last week they’ve terminated the service. Your options now are tools like Open Site Explorer, the link:domain.com command in Google (limited results), BacklinkWatch.com (pop-up & lots of ads), and software like Market Samurai.
Google Trends
Another tool many ViperChill readers will be familiar with is Google Trends. Google Trends lets you see the popularity of words and phrases over a period of time in terms of both search volume and news reports. This can be useful when trying to find which segments of your industry are the most popular or which seasons produce the most searches for which terms.
Visual Inspection
You can have all of the tools in the world at your disposal but I would hesitate to suggest that any are as good as your own personal browsing and creativity. Things I look for when looking around websites in a particular niche include:
- Which social services they’re encouraging with people to connect on
- Which type of share buttons they’re using
- The types of content that seems to get shared the most
- How they’re monetising the website
- What are they trying to get visitors to do?
Though sometimes rare, many sites will encourage you to share their posts or connect on platforms that aren’t the typical Facebook or Twitter offerings that you would expect. In the design and home crafts niches you’re likely to see some examples of this which you can then incorporate into your own marketing efforts.
The main aim with this exercise is to see what probably works well so you can integrate it into your own site, and then to discover what everyone else is doing that you can do better / differently.
Board Reader
Not all niche activity happens on the big social networks, of course. Forums have been around for as long as I can remember and it’s not surprising to see some with tens of thousands of members in various fields. Board Reader is simply a specialised search engine for finding posts about different topics on forums.
As you can see, there are over 20,000 posts about the best team in the premiership (no bias…honest) in just a three month time period. Tools like this can help you find new sites for marketing engagement in your respective industry and even help you find reactions to competitors and their products.
Search Queries
We don’t have to use the latest and most advanced tools of course to get some insights about an industry. Simple searches on Google or Bing can often unravel most of what you need to know. Search terms like:
- Related:[competitordomain.com]
- Top [niche] blogs
- [niche] forums
- site:ning.com [niche]
- site:youtube.com [niche]
These should give you a good starting point and can easily see you draining hours of your time if you really want to look at the results in-depth.
Youtube Superstars
Every industry tends to have their ‘Youtube Superstar’ as my friend Alex likes to call them (and himself). I’ll be the first to admit that I have used video very little for my own sites, besides hiring an FHM model and working on a video competition with Hewlett Packard.
Videos were viewed over 20 billion times last month – a record for Youtube – and I’ve seen plenty of people who put a lot of focus on the platform to gain a large audience, especially in the health industry. If you’re not shy about getting in front of a camera, it’s definitely something you should look into.
Twitter Search Results
Just like with the individual inspection of StumbleUpon users, you can use different search terms on Twitter to find which individuals are active in your niche. Additionally, searching for the names of your competitors and their products will give you a good idea as to how popular they are and what people are saying about them.
A Guide for Product Owners
To take things further I decided that I would give you actual examples of some of these tools in use and show how they could help me based on the specific results I find. I asked on Twitter for some random niche ideas and received a few replies. One asked me to look into the surfing industry.
Since there are people who need marketing tactics that don’t just apply to bloggers or affiliate site owners, I decided I would try and give an example for product owners (and the marketing guys who are trying to sell them via the web). The most obvious product that comes to mind in the surfing industry is a surf board, so let’s go with that.
The Actual Product
I’ve never created a physical product to sell online before so don’t take the next few paragraphs as fact; especially in an industry where I have pretty much no prior knowledge of the market.
Though I haven’t made a product, I think it’s fair to say that if you’re making something a little more than ‘another surfboard’ then it’s going to be a lot harder to market yourself than if you were to come at the industry in a different angle and create something entirely new. Something remarkable.
There’s always room to market and/or manufacture every day products in a totally different way. Two examples that come to mind from the investment program Dragon’s Den are relevant here. The first idea was from Andrew Harsley who spent twenty years of his life trying to perfect a new kind of cable tie. You know those thin plastic things used especially for binding together electrical wires and cables.
The problem with cable ties is that you can only use them once and this results in a lot of wastage. Andrew’s invention, Rapstrap, is a simple cable tie that is mostly reusable, which makes his product 4x more efficient than a standard cable tie when it comes to cost and wastage. He went on to make over £36m for his efforts.
Or what about Levi Roots who launched “Reggae Reggae sauce” in the UK. When was the last time you thought about putting a Jamaican sauce on your food? Probably never. When you hear about it you’re probably a little curious. That curiosity leads to people buying the product, and, people loved it (this is important). He too is now worth over £30m (though he is currently in a legal battle about product ownership, but I’m getting away from the point).
So what does this have to do with my surf board? How can I make it something worth talking about? Well, maybe it could come with engravings of the surfers name in the board as standard, shipped directly from the factory. Or maybe it only comes in one style and distinctive colour – kind of like Apple white earphones – so anyone who loves surfing would know which brand of board it is automatically. You don’t need to see the Apple logo or even an iPod to have a good idea what those white earphones are plugged into.
There are lots of ways to go with this, but hopefully you get the idea. What matters more than the product of course, at least in this instance, is how you would get it out there.
Data Mining the Surfing Niche
Armed with just a few basic tools, I started my research into the market.
Google Queries
Some sample phrases that I used in Google include:
- Top surfing brands
- surfing championships
- Famous surfers
- surfing forums
Not only did I come across a information that will help me with the next sections, I also came across this interesting page with a lot of surfing market related stats. Some that interested me basically stated that surfers are willing to pay more for an environmentally friendly product (which could help in the creation stages).
Another finding stated “53.5% indicated they’ve purchased hardgoods online. Among those who haven’t, 81.6% say they’d rather go into the surf shop“. You could view this as a downside if you’re marketing online or you could use it as inspiration to look at other ways in which you could bring the offline experience to the internet.
Facebook Fan Pages
Armed with a list of surfing brands I decided to see how many fans they had on Facebook and how many people were talking about certain pages. My findings are below:
- Billabong: 1,320,810 (6,120 talking)
- Billabong Girls: 1,103,003 (4,014 talking)
- Hurley: 419,375 (2,757 talking)
- Oneill: 254,682 (2,252 talking)
- Quiksilver: 1,297,435 (7,981 talking)
- Rip Curl: 708,519 (6,194 talking)
- RVCA: 140,791 (1,839 talking)
- Volcom: 1,535,929 (7,495 talking)
Surfing Professionals on Twitter
After that I took some surfers I found on the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) website and decided to check how many Twitter followers they have:
- Kelly Slater: 128,941 followers
- Taj Burrow: 29,708 followers
- Mick Fanning: 61,168 followers
- Joel Parkinson: 33,233 followers
- Adriano de Souza: 11,817 followers
What Does Quantcast Say about the Audience
After finding a few seemingly popular sites in the surfing niche, I decided to run them through Quantcast to get a better idea of their traffic levels and visitor demographics:
- Surfermag.com: 140,000 monthly uniques. 66% male. 39% are 18-34
- Surfing-waves.com: 112,000 monthly uniques. Hidden demographics
- ASPWorldTour.com: 89,200 monthly uniques. 68% male. 28% are 18-34
- Surfline.com: 692,000 uniques. 61% male. 40% are 18-34
- MagicSeaweed.com: All stats hidden
As you can see, information wasn’t available for all of the domains that I looked into.
Is Surfing Big on StumbleUpon? Who are the influencers?
The final thing I did for this example was browse the top surfing related content on StumbleUpon at the moment. I found the following post titles and have listed how many views StumbleUpon sent them:
- 9 Hottest Female Surfers – 30,000 views
- Mark Visser Rides JAWS at night – 64,000 views
- Indo Board workout for Surfers – 38,000 views
- Beautiful Freaky Surf Shots – 29,000 views
Final Analysis
Even after looking at just a few resources in limited detail I can already start to learn a lot more about this market. First of all, the Billabong fan page has almost double the fans of Rip Curl yet there are more people talking about Rip Curl. It would be worth investigating this to see if I can figure out why.
Also, the Billabong Girls page (I wouldn’t originally have thought of splitting pages up by gender) has well over 1 million fans yet Volcom’s attempt at a fan page for women only has 20,108 likes. It may just be because they haven’t promoted it heavily, or that it’s just not worth the effort.
I couldn’t gather too much from my initial Twitter research. Surfers didn’t seem to have that many fans, though 50,000+ followers for two of the five shows there is definitely a decent-sized surfing audience on the network. To put it into perspective with Facebook though, Kelly Slater only has 1/3rd of the followers on Twitter and the Billabong Girls brand only has 16,908 Twitter followers compared to their 1million+ on Facebook.
Based on this I can assume that if I only really had time for one social network, Facebook would be the one I interact with the most.
After just a few minutes on StumbleUpon I was left with dozens of content ideas I could use on my own site to help get my awesome engraved surfboards noticed. I also found a couple of StumbleUpon ‘power users’ that tended to submit most of the popular surfing related content. Now I know to stay in touch with what these guys are doing and maybe reach out to them at some point.
Finally, the Google queries which revealed popular surfing sites gave me a number of places that I would be able to advertise my product, a social network for surfers that I could interact on, and thanks to Quantcast I could get a good idea of how active they really were.
In just a short period of time I’m infinitely more knowledgeable on what I’m dealing with.
A Guide for Bloggers
Two other people on Twitter suggested that I write about designer hand dryers in toilets and taps. I decided to zoom out of those specific categories and for for this blogging example look at the home decor / interior design industry.
Niche research in the blogosphere can help you to generate new post ideas, find link sources, obtain new design ideas, find how people are making money and much more. If you’re serious about your blog and aren’t picking up tips from your surroundings then you’re really missing out.
I first went to Technorati to find some of the top blogs in the home decor industry, since I’m only familiar with my friend Mihai’s site, Freshome. To be honest, the suggestions that Technorati gave me were actually pretty bad, with only a few of the top 10 results being real authorities in the niche.
I then performed a few blog related Google queries and found a list of relevant sites. I’m pretty sure they’re the biggest in the industry, but even if they’re aren’t, they’re still really big.
I decided to look at five things at once: 1) How many likes their brand pages had on Facebook 2) How many people were talking about them on Facebook 3) How many Twitter followers they had 4) How many subscribers Google Reader showed them as having and 5) How many backlinks they have according to Open Site Explorer.
I’ve charted my results in a table below, highlighting some of the more impressive numbers:
| Site | Facebook Likes | Facebook Talking | Twitter Followers | Google Reader | OSE Backlinks |
| CasaSugar.com | 7,575 | 102 | 12,402 | 4,096 | 31,634 |
| Freshome.com | 159,701 | 9,462 | 25,007 | 18,847 | 110,467 |
| LivingMontessoriNow.com | 3,741 | 197 | 6,558 | 945 | 4,809 |
| YankoDesign.com | 62,865 | 1,196 | 23,107 | 20,571 | 177,041 |
| Design-Milk.com | 48,991 | 1,393 | 429,163 | 20,230 | 126,320 |
| DesignSpotter.com | 19,387 | 208 | 20,437 | 6,852 | 96,848 |
| ApartmentTherapy.com | 69,217 | 1,109 | 42,435 | 96,438 | 60,056 |
| WebUrbanist.com | 22,852 | 274 | 12,436 | 10,663 | 117,925 |
I can first of all see that all bloggers are utilising the two big platforms, though their audiences are noticeably larger in some instances on Facebook. Though that may be the case, I would clearly be trying to connect with people on both networks. Freshome is far and away the most popular site in terms of Facebook fans, so I would definitely spend time looking into why that is. I’m thinking the Facebook box in their sidebar which keeps scrolling when you do has a little something to do with it.
Another thing I noticed was that WebUrbanist seems to have almost 500,000 feed subscribers but only a tiny portion (10,000) of those are actually registered for any URL’s I can find in Google Reader. I decided to put some of the URL’s into FeedCompare to see how they’ve been growing over time in case there was anything abnormal. I then noticed something pretty amazing for another site, Design-Milk:
As you can see, Design Milk has grew by almost 400,000 subscribers in just one year. Similar to the Freshome Facebook likes abnormality, this is far more than the average growth of the competition so they’re clearly doing something right. A little more time spent looking at this site would again be highly recommended if you’re operating in this space.
Other things you should look at when it comes to niche research for blogging include:
- How are sites making money? (Visual Inspection)
- Who is linking to each other? (Open Site Explorer)
- What kind of terms are sending traffic? (SEM Rush & Alexa)
- What kind of blog posts are the most popular? (Visual Inspection, Delicious & StumbleUpon)
Another pro tip I’ll give out for those of you who have managed to keep reading this far is to look at the advertising pages of the big sites. You’ll find that many of them are happy to share their traffic stats which can help give you a good idea as to the true size of your audience.
I don’t operate in either of these industries but I was willing to put in a little time to come away with some insights. Keeping that in mind, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be doing the exact same in your industry. Do make sure you check out the niche rockstar post for the green blogging niche example as well if you haven’t yet seen it.
It’s good to be back writing again a little more frequently so I really hope you enjoyed this post. There’s been a little delay on my $7K/m case study that is coming but it will hopefully be live next week, as will a post on how to create a ‘listening hub’ so you can keep up to date with your industry looking forward, rather than looking at stats of the past and present.
I appreciate any comments…
RSS Subscribers: 
You are insane!
I just wanted to be one of the first ones to comment one of your best articles! I mean, almost every of your article is a viral marketing and content treasure article with nothing you can compare it in the internet!
If I had more than two thumbs, I would show them!
Sebastian
Haha. Your comment is insane!
Thanks Sebastian, much appreciated
I agree with you. Both Glen and his post are insane. Reading only one post from Glen (one post per month haha) is worth more than reading hundred of crappy posts (from some “expert”) out there.
@Glen: Thanks for the post. I really like it!
Holy crap this post was long! I didn’t read all of it but I did skim the whole way down and pressed the button to bookmark it with ReadItLater so I can read it on my commute home. Thanks for this though. I needed more ways to research niches and this is a-plenty!
Hah, indeed. They seem to get longer every time (it’s unintentional…honest).
Thanks for the comment. Enjoy!
Nice post Glen. I have been using some of these, but found some new tools as well!
Much appreciated
Thanks Jeremy
Hi Glen,
Great post, as always!
Thanks for alle the info you are sharing.
P.S.
Tim Krul is the best keeper in the world, isn’t he?
Hey Mels,
Good to see you here. Hah, of course! No bias from you either, right?
I really like that you are keeping true to the viral marketing nature of the site and not just focusing on blogging. Very useful.
Tyrant
Cheers BT
Appreciate the support!
What is there to say other than that this is another goldmine of a post.
I really appreciate you going out of your way to add so much freshness to such a stale niche Glen, I can’t remember the last time I learned so much in a single post.
Keep killing it.
*I can’t remember the last time I learned so much from a single post.
Apparently I CAN’T type today
PS: That Google Reader trick, so useful and yet so simple I had to laugh for not already knowing it.
I’ll edit the comment for you.
And yeah, that’s a cool one. I tried to put the lesser known steps towards the top
Thenks Gregory,
I’ll do what I can
Good to see you over here again!
Glen,
Epic content as usual. I’m having to learn that this IM niche is constantly changing. As soon as you get comfortable with a strategy, you have to tweak and change to keep up. It’s dynamic, which also is what makes it fun.
You are on the leading edge of finding those new ways to do things. Thanks and keep up the great work!
P.S. Tony Kroll WAS out his mind. That last 15 minutes of ManU pressure was insane. Good point for the ‘Toon.
Hey Matt,
Thanks buddy. Just trying to keep my VIP’ers up to date
Appreciate the comment.
woooooo!!
The guy who always has the most to say in person leaves the shortest blog comments
Hope all is well Ally!
Thanks for the mention Glen.
Appreciated !
No worries buddy. I’ll take you up on that Twitter offer. See you on Skype later today?
I’d be more than happy to update the post based on some of your feedback
Wow, just wow …thank you Glenn , much appreciated and the timing could not have been better for this newbie just entering the niche markets – I just finished your video series last week and loved it , can’t wait to take action
You’re welcome Ron,
I’m glad that you enjoyed the post!
This post is off the hook. Wow.
It took long enough to write
Thanks!
Dude, gotta say rockstar quality as usual!
PS.
SEO Spyglass is a great tool for backlink analysis of sites, would definitely recommend
Can’t believe I forgot about that one, I used to use it a few years ago.
If it’s still mostly free I’ll add it to the post once there are a few more suggestions
Thanks Usman!
Wow!, I am stunned at the amount of content in this post.
All relevant, all useful and all extremely educational.
I can even forgive the fact that you follow the ‘Toon. (Just joking)
You’ve just got yourself another follower.
Cheers
Mark
Haha. I take it you’re not a Newcastle fan?
Thanks Mark, much appreciated!
Awesome Glen, great guide and good to see you back blogging again. You went dark for a while there, we were worried you’d gone off to some pacific island and forgotten about us! Ha!
I especially enjoyed the product section, I think this is very applicable to online products like my own as well. Will be looking into this deeper tonight.
Hey Josh,
Hah not quite. Just working hard on way too many things.
Good luck!
Excellent post, Glen.
It’s funny because I just had an idea for a new niche site and then I came home and read your post. I’ll be using it as I get farther into this.
I know this question is a little off topic in terms of the subject matter of the post but it is related: How do you recommend monetizing a niche where there might not be any sort of affiliate programs and such in place and the industry is fairly large?
This may not be a good example but let’s say that I had figured out a niche in commercial real estate. And after doing the research I determine that I can rank well for some keywords/phrases that should get plenty of traffic.
Since most commercial real estate companies have no affiliate programs (I’m assuming . . . I know nothing about the niche) what would be the best way to monetize that? Go directly to the companies and offer to sell them leads?
TIA for the advice.
Hi Bill,
Yeah to be honest Leads was the first thing I thought of before reading the rest of your post. I know Shoemoney used to collect leads for a dentist in Nebraska and did very well with that.
Some people are making a solid six-figures on Clickbank with their real estate guides as well, though I’m not sure how good the advice in them is. They have the marketing side down pat.
In the real estate market, if you’ve got targeted traffic, there’s not a single company I would expect who don’t want you to send it their way. Is it location based? If so, definitely try and make some connections in person. You could of course just sell ads to some of the home interior sites featured here
- G
Hi Glen,
I appreciate the response.
The niche wasn’t in real estate. I just used that as an example since like real estate, it has a long sales cycle and no formal sort of affiliate program.
And yes, it is location based. In fact, from reading your bio you seem to be familiar with the location, Thailand. I’ve been visiting the country for years and was living in Bangkok for about 2.5 years but just moved back to the US.
I’ve done some niche websites in Thailand in the past (and still run a few) but mostly aimed at products with existing affiliate programs. I have some Thai friends who work in the industry niche I want to hit so I’ll contacting them up and see if I can’t speak to their marketing people about arranging some sort of referral program.
I only wish I would have thought about the idea a little sooner. I’m here in Thailand on holiday and I’m kicking myself I didn’t think of the idea before I got here so I could have set up appointments.
Again, thanks!! Not just for the answer but for the entire website. Always on the top of my list for reading.
Bill
Ah yeah, I’m jealous that you’re there. No flooding I take it?
Send out some emails. I speak to a lot of webmasters in Bangkok and they’ll all get back to you within 24 hours. Lots of guys want to meet up with like-minded marketers.
Enjoy the trip, and thanks for the support!
- G
Awesome Glen..
I utilise most if not all your articles in some way or another. Also have no better site to point my clients too.
Thanks
Very kind of you to say Ben, thank you!
Good to see you here
Another great article Glen,
Dont think ive ever read a bad one on viperchill, nor bought a bad product from you.
Thanks!
Thanks Stuart
I try not to make them
Appreciate the comment. Just an FYI…it was caught in spam so you might want to send an email to Akismet
Thanks Glen will do! ;oD
Great post Glen! I got to learn very interesting tools related to IM from your post.
That’s the plan!
Thanks Sri
Great article, very good and so full of informations that I had to print it to read it well as it deserves.
Thanks.
I’m curious…how many pages?
Glenn, did you recieve my email about the blogging niche research? Would a blog on spirituality and personal development make money as blogging is hard-work and if there is no monetary reward then it’s not worth it. I used Google Keywords Tool to search terms like “spirituality” but it comes up with low results, is it still worth pursuing it?
Honestly? I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
See: http://bloggingcasestudy.com/blog-niche/
Hi Glen,
This post came right at the best possible time for me, I’m working in a very challenging area and trying to take elements of radical transparency and open information sharing to try and approach a very closed and highly sceptical market with that. I’ve actually entirely underestimated the keyword traffic and it was only recently that I have thrown a lot into competitor research and found SEM Rush as well as Open Links. You’ve just filled in the rest of the gaps for me and saved me a lot of work.
Hope all is well in my favourite city of Cape Town.
All the best
Chris Wandel
Hey Chris,
That’s awesome to hear! I hope it starts getting you some more traffic & $
All is good…nice and hot! Though…I’m heading to the airport very soon.
Thanks for the comment!
Great stuff Glen!
You can also get some good back linking info from majestic seo
God bless buddy
Hey Bruce,
Thanks buddy. That’s another tool I totally forgot about. Thanks for the addition. That’s SEO Spyglass & Majestic SEO I’ll be adding
That looks tremendously informative and valuable! I’m sure everyone who reads it really appreciates your help here. Thanks.
Glenn, I get it so you must have an interest and try to help other people by providing valuable content. In that case I would think that yeah, I think this could work!!!
Glen,
Thank you mate for all this work that you are doing for us.. This is another one great article..
Thanks for this inside information..
One question i have for you is if you use an automate tool for link building please inform us for this..
I have read all of your articles and i am doing myself the link building process but i want to know if there is something for automation..
Thanks in advance…
Great timing on this one. I am just about ready to start up in some new niches. Thanks Glen!
Awesome!
You’re very welcome
Thanks for taking seo spyglass into consideration. There is another relatively new tool that I’ve come to like…… That others may enjoy, check it out at http://www.ahrefs.com
Ahh. I’m going to sound like I’m lying now but I actually use this as well. Amazing that I can forget things after writing 5,000+ words!
Good to see you here as always Usman
Glen,
WOW, doesn’t do the article justice. Been following you for a while and I have to say this puts it all into perspective. No more info overload for searching niche info as you have it all in one place.
With over 145 different niche sites, I was getting ready to re-do a bunch of them and this article will be an immense help. Although not in the ‘Surfer’ niche, I have a lot of friends down here at the beach that are and I am forwarding the info as we speak.
Keep it up.
Best Wishes,
Abi
Hey Abi,
Great coincidence. Let me know what they say if I missed out any huge brands
Thanks for the kind words!
Glen,
This is such an informative post and very inspiring for my own work. I’ve taken up a challenge to rank up a niche site to first spot in Google by January 2012. It’s a tall order but the insight on the competition and how they have ranked themselves is invaluable in understanding to how get myself there! Thanks so much for this.
Andre
Hey Andre,
You’re welcome buddy. Good luck!
Nice article thanks for sharing this with us
Another amazing guide.
It is really amazing the level of detail and how much valuable information you share with every post you write. It seems that every post of yours should be bookmarked and used for reference in the future every time you do something that talks about the same topic as your post.
Thanks for yet another masterpiece.
Cheers Dave!
Haha, thank you
Yes… Double That Thanks!
Could come in real handy for me now actually
What’s up Dave!
Hey Glen,
I just wanted to take a moment to ditto the commenter above : “Thanks for yet another masterpiece.”
My face seriously lit up this morning when I saw a new notification from ViperChill in my Google Reader feed. Now, to go and research what other people are subscribing too…
Thanks again for all in the help, insight and effort!
JW
What a post!
I lost myself while reading (this is the first blog post which i read word by word,first time! No kidding!)
Thank You Glen! You are AWESOME!!
I really need this.I was looking for post like this these days which will help me to start a niche website from beginning (It’s very important to follow the right path for a newbie like me)
Thank You Again Glen!
Have A Nice Day
******Nishat*****
Hey Nishat,
Hah that’s awesome. You’re very welcome buddy.
Thanks for the comment!
- G
OMG, Glen. This post is a whole program within itself. Thanks for all of the great information. It’s bookmarked so I can refer to it often.
Thanks for all of the great material!
Thanks Dave!
I will concur with everyone else , that you are a crazy writing fool! Man, the content is F$%^ng Bomb!
Feels like I’m reading an ebook, again thanks man, you definitely kept the scales high for content writing.
cheers!
Hah, thanks Jon!
I’ll do my best
This guy is awesome, probably a marketing alien coming from Mars. Top articles here. Thanks for sharing.
L
Actually this is a f*cking hot article! Great resource Allen!
Allen?
Thanks John!
This was a great post until the mention of Newcastle United, you know they’re only the 2nd best United in the top 3 right?
Good post though, people will need this kind of info now that Yahoo site explorer has been shut down.
Only the 3rd Newcastle mention. I’m surprised
Thanks Dan!
Thanks for the kick ass post! This is definitely one of the best I’ve come acrossed all year. Here are a few more market research tools to add to the list:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/ – Google Insights
The Kombat tab over at Spyfu
Xmarks
Thanks for the additions Amanda!
@Amanda Google insight always shows different data than Google keyword tool.
Google Trends( http://www.google.com/trends) is more reliable.
Great post Glen and I the tool resources are brilliant, especially the “Spy on Web” tool got endless potential.
Thanks again
I’m glad you got some value from the post, Frans
Thanks!
Glen,
Awesome resources! Thanks! Puts things into perspective and you are a great writer.
Will
Thanks Will!
You’re welcome
AHA!!
I found you out, Glen.
Through your suggestion to use spyonweb, I find that you may or may not own arabianperfumes.com and albaniasite.org
…and a few other questionable sites listed there too, that I won’t write here
Maybe it’s time for viperchill to get a unique IP
Great article, as always… Really. You keep out-doing yourself.
Now stop showing off and being such an over-achiever. You’re making the rest of us look bad.
Thanks, DJ. (Can I still call you that?)
Dave
I wouldn’t mention it if there was anything to find out about me
Hahah…sorry, I can’t stop just yet.
And yes, please do!
- G
Wow Glen – your posts are unbelievable! Every time I read one of your posts I learn a lot, and I’ve been in this business for a couple years now.
As long as you keep writing great posts like this one, I’ll keep coming back to your site – thanks for all the great info!
Thanks Rich,
We’ll see!
- G
CLEARLY YOU ARE MY INTERNET ANGEL & I LOVE THE WAY YOU SPREAD YOUR VIRTUAL BLOGGING WINGS!!! THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH!!!
YEAH THIS POST IS SIMPLY INSANE!!!
I LOVE IT!
THANK YOU SO MUCH GLEN FOR ALL YOU DO 4 ME (Us) & MY ONLINE EMPIRE, I AM JUST STARTING.
I have had my site for a year and it took that long to tweak it and get over being excited that I had a blog, and now that I am over it, I am ready to make some real money and strides, hence thrive online.
It’s time to make some serious POWER MONEY MOVES, so again, I love your POST & they aren’t too long, but rather thorough, concise and detailed.
Thanks for not being afraid to share with us, truly you are amazing in what you do, glad you are here.
I had your VIPERCHILL Plug-in last year, and was really unsure of all its benefits because I use to be the shiny syndrome blogger, I want it all and then BAM nothing … lol
I wasn’t making anything either way I was a broke blogger lol but true and because of you and a few select others I am making some money and now I am going to leverage you and VIPERCHILL so I can Write, & Chill by traveling and living a wealthy lifestyle.
I love to share too, I am finally learning that their is a market for those who have a passion for helping others achieve greatness online, but first I must get it, research it and then apply it. because you have a wealth of content, I may print it and put it in my go to bloggers book (just made that up lol).
Peace,
Daphne D. Williams
Hey Daphne,
All I can really say is “Wow”. What a comment.
Thank you!
Thanks Glen!
Really lekker article! I use SEM Rush and I love it, so many tools in one tool. Can’t wait to give these other tools a go. Keep up the great work. Always the highlight of my month (depending on how often you post).
Cheers,
Sheldon.
Lekker bru!
Hey Glen, good stuff as usual. Google updated their search queries apparently, and I felt down to about 16 for one of my top queries and thus am now getting about 1/10 of the traffic for that one.
Could you do a post on targeting search queries and getting to the top of them?
Check out the ‘SEO’ category in the sidebar. There’s quite a lot on how to get more search traffic
Glen,
Thanks for a fantastic post and for continuing to be one of the few “good guys” in the internet business. You truly give more than expected and I hope you’re repaid with goodness in spades!
Much appreciated!
Rich B
Hey Rich,
Thanks for the kind feedback! You’re very welcome
Thank you for this excellent post! I am especially grateful that you took the time to show us research you would do in different niches.
You’re welcome Anne!
I have read a lot of your posts, and never had the decency of commenting or thanking you, but this post is just too much…thanks a lot!
Thanks for taking the time to do so, Miguel!
I have to say that a lot of what I do for my part time job is website research on competitors. Before, Google was my favorite tool but you have just opened doors for me with all the great tools you’ve mentioned. After one day of applying Alexa to my research, I’ve noticed a huge increase in relevancy to what I’m researching. Thanks for the great tips Glen!
That’s great to hear!
You’re very welcome Amanda
Superb list of resources & tips Glen (as always!)
FYI: Levi won his case for the Reggae sauce
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-15887273
Wow, What a killer list! I’ve only used 6 or 7 of those sites for research. The rest i’ve never used before. If you could find the perfect balance of all of those sites, you’d definitely be 1 step ahead of your competition! I’m gonna bookmark and share this.
Thanks for sharing that SpyOnWeb tool. I’d never even heard of it before
Awesome post, Glen. This is the reason why ViperChill stays in my “Check Daily” folder in Google Reader. No matter how long we have to wait, you write these pillar articles that set the standard for the rest of the blogosphere.
All of these tools are excellent. Now that Yahoo Site Explorer is gone, Open Site Explorer is a great alternative as is Majestic SEO. Unfortunately OSE now sets a limit to the number of reports you can run for free (though that might just be a temporary experiment by seomoz).
FeedCompare is the one tool of this list that I hadn’t heard of. It is very impressive. If anyone is looking for guest post ideas, this is the place to start. Subscribers are a much more important metric than Facebook Likes and Tweets if your goal is to grow a blog through networking and guests posts. However, in many niches building an email list on MailChimp, Aweber, etc. is much more effective than using Feedburner so don’t get to excited about the numbers. I wasted a year chasing a high Feedburner count when what I really needed to do was create an ebook and build an email list. Now the email list is six times as large as my Feedburner count. Most people don’t use RSS.
One last thought. When you start to do a competitive analysis of the other blogs and products in your niche, it can get depressing. I’ve found a lot of success in embracing the numbers strategically and focusing on my unique position in the market. Numbers are great, but they have to influence action.
Finally some common sense Jared.
Thanks so much for including Design Milk and saying we’re doing something right
Hah, you’re welcome! Good to have you here
Feel free to share any secrets
Hi
This is another valuable post from you Glen.
Something I am interested in knowing the answer too is – does the location of your hosting effect google search results.
i.e. I have a .co.uk site targeted for uk users. My UK hosting is costing me a fortune and I am desperate to reduce my hosting cost, yet worry that this will effect my serps.
I think this is an interesting question, because if there is an effect it would be an important data mining consideration, looking at where other sites are hosted if you are looking for a particular country / area for traffic.
Your thoughts…
Dude, u r good in analyzing and writing about internet marketing stuff. Though I never read such long posts, but ur blog is an exception. I always wonder after reading each if your posts if you are a programmer or designer or web analytics expert or an excellent writer. I loved ur post on use of twiends to add twitter followers
Thanks Anil,
Such a kind comment
Great post and as always it helped me. The link:domain.com command is one I should have known but didn’t till you posted it.
Which part of Market Samurai do you use for back links stuff now that yahoo site explorer is defunct? It seemed like that was what Market Samurai tapped into to get the anchor text analysis and pr analysis of other sites in the top 10 SEO competition….now it just says (unavailable)
Was just wondering since for ‘Backlink Sources’ you mentioned Market Samurai.
Anyways, top shit Glen and cheers for all the hard work you put into these epic masterpiece posts.
Good lord!
This post is epic. Some really great stuff I hadn’t found before.
Will be taking some of this cheers Glen!
You’re welcome bdudy
I’m not even halfway through this and I’m completely blown away. Came to say a big THANK YOU before I forget.
As all the other commenters, im completely blown away by this post. AWESOME stuff! Thank you so much!
Incredibly useful!
All the best (and a very merry Xmas)
Thomas
Hi Glen – Do any of the tools you mention analyze or profile the top keywords used by a specific site? Do you look at the keywords of top ranked sites within a niche? Thanks for the awesome post!
That is so true, Glen. Keeping a tab on what your competitor is doing is to rack in business is quite important. One thing sure, it keeps you and your business alert. One thing I learned before I became a bestselling author and long before Inc Magazine voted my company as one of the fastest growing companies is gathering and understanding data and metrics is a very important part of understanding the market.
Awesome post. But strange you didn’t the by far best research tool secockpit.com. I haven’t found anything coming close to this tool if it is about researching and evaluating keywords and competition to rank. Have a look at it.
Glen, i cant just imagine you sat down all to write this
great content wtout having affiliate stuff in mind. you are the
bomb man.
Sheyi
Thanks for sharing this, very interesting.
VC, this blog post has so much info I’m probably going to have to read it several times through just to absorb it! Thanks for letting us know about all these great tools!
Ooops, I didn’t mean to double post.
Wow, anything and everything you would ever need to know/use when starting your own niche website. Thanks, I will definitely refer back to this post numerous times in the future. Thanks Allen!
By the way, I know this is a bit off-topic, but how are you finding South Africa? I live in Pretoria and it is great to see another successful blogger living in SA – there aren’t too many around here (yet)!
Too much stuff. Sorry, short attention span. Have thirty-eleven things to do today to keep bringing the money in, including writing articles for my own blog.
Obviously you are doing very well with this blog but I would like to point out that for most people a brain dump of this size is not going to enthuse readers. It’s generally better to break a very long piece into separate posts.
But like I said, everyone seems to go gaga over these novelettes you write. I just wonder how many put the information to good use.
Hey Charleen,
Long articles definitely aren’t for everyone, but there’s no way I’ll be like everyone else and take the easy road.
You would be surprised how many people read them all. Just look at the comments on any post and see people quoting different sections.
I’m not going to change, but thanks for a different point of view. I’ll stick to being an outlier for now
Information OVERLOAD! Wow a lot to absorb for a Saturday afternoon.. I’ll be breaking this into 1/4′s and then attacking… Thanks for the work and the research, it obviously took some time to piece all this info together..
Agreed, Mike! I don’t know how he can write all this stuff. I don’t even want to think about how long it would take me to write all that!