If anyone is considering starting an ecommerce business then what's the most crucial step? Please remember, the first step is always identifying a profitable niche to start with. In this guide, I am going through Chapter 1 of my own hand written book for more chapters you can see them here later in few days http://www.extremecommerce.org/free-online-ecommerce-training Please note this is free as long as you using this for your ownself and I guarantee you that you just follow the steps I tell you and you will have a profitable good ecommerce business in no time. CHAPTER 1 - IDENTIFYING A PROFITABLE NICHE TOPIC 1 - UNDERSTANDING GOOGLE KEYWORD RESEARCH TOOL ==================================================== This is the one of the most crucial step before getting into building up your own online ecommerce business. At the end of the day you want to be selling profitable products in a profitable niche. I am sure you don’t want to be ending up having a bad experience of trying ecommerce business when you are exhausted in a tough market competition, not able to have enough markup for yourself and yet selling products at very low margin and not being able to have a reasonable profitable business. Ok. So what’s the first step? Basically for me personally I use 2 major tools to identify profitable products to sell. I ask Google and Ebay because when it comes to ecommerce, you want to ask these 2 guys and they will tell you exactly on what people are looking for, what products you can sell, how much margin you have. Please note there are many specialized tools you can use for this work. So it’s entirely upto you if you want to use those tools or you want to use simple free tools. Let’s start our first step from google keyword tool. We can ask google what keywords people typing and looking at and what is the demand and supply against each keyword. Before asking this question from google, let me clear to you what are these keywords and how they work? Basically keyword is a word or sentence that people may type on any search engine to locate their subject or product or anything of interest. For example, if you are looking to buy a pair of shoes on internet, you may type “Buy shoes†or “Buy shoes online†or “where to buy shoes onlineâ€. Now remember, “Buy shoesâ€, “Buy shoes online†and “where to buy shoes online†are 3 different keywords. They are not referring to one subject in general but may be referring to different articles, different pages or different websites on internet. However search engines now a days are smart enough to relate all of them with each other assuming that whoever is typing any of these keywords must be looking for buying a shoes. Now, if I have a website and I sell shoes then I may want to get my website showing up on page 1 of google if anyone type any of those relevant keywords. But that requires me to ensure that my website rank on page 1 for those keywords and that requires me working on all of those keywords and invest heavily on Search Engine Optimization exercise where we work hard on building relevant links and publishing relevant content related to those keywords and slowly those keywords will start ranking and eventually my website will be coming up on first page of Google when people look for those keywords. Why getting your website to page 1 is so important? Remember, 80% of people make their decisions on page 1 of google or any search engine. There is hardly another 15% visitors going to 2nd page and another 5% going to 3rd page. So how much business do you get unless you are on page 1 of google? And if you want to be on page 1 of google for the keywords that people typing then this is where you work on optimization of your desired keywords. But remember one thing. Every keyword is different from each other in terms of it’s monthly search volume and the competition. For me I like to call it Demand and Supply in simple language. So every keyword is representing different amount of demand and competition. For example one keyword could be high in demand but extremely high in terms of competition whereas another relevant keyword could be high in demand with low in competition. So If I invest more on keyword which is in extremely high competition then I could be looking at many months just to get my website ranked for that keyword whereas If I spend same amount of energy and resources on less competitive keyword then I could be ranking much more quickly for that particular keyword and get enough traffic to my website and could start selling much more quickly.   Ok, so you now have an idea of what keywords are and how they work. Now let’s find out what keywords are suitable for my website and what’s the current demand and supply related to each keyword and which keyword I should select for my website so I can invest and work on those keywords which are less competitive and can give better yield for my business. Let’s go to www.googlekeywordtool.com and click on the first tool on left most called Google keyword tool. Once you get to google keyword tool, type the first sample keyword that you believe is most likely what people may be typing on google. So let’s type “buy shoes†Now look at the 3 circles I have made for you so you can understand the key components of google keyword tool. Can you see according to google currently we have 673,000 searches for this keyword “buy shoes†this month and local searches are roughly 4400 (Currently I am writing this from Malaysia). You can see the search result is showing you a broad search result. This means, buy shoes may have mix results including some more words right or left. If you want to see more accurate result, then let’s make our search to show more EXACT result instead of Broad. Well this time you see the results turned out to be 8100 searches a month. Do you notice the competition showing MEDIUM. Do you believe that could be real competition? Ok, let me clarify something here. Remember this is Google adword research tool. So basically this competition is reflecting google Adwords competition means, how many of google’s customers are using Google adword to advertise their products using this particular keyword. So the competition from natural google ranking could be entirely different from this result. Now let’s check google natural search ranking competition. We also call them SERP (Search Engine Results Page). So let’s click on any of the keyword and click on Google search. Now here you go. Let’s have a look at how many results do you get when you get this keyword on google page? Wow, it shows 501 Million results. Now ask this question yourself, would you like to target this keyword for your SEO campaign? I mean, would you like to work on this particular keyword in order to sell your shoes when there is a whopping competition of 501 Million pages which are currently ranking for this keyword and how many pages finally make to first page? Now let’s check google natural search ranking competition. We also call them SERP (Search Engine Results Page). So let’s click on any of the keyword and click on Google search. Now here you go. Let’s have a look at how many results do you get when you get this keyword on google page? Wow, it shows 501 Million results. Now ask this question yourself, would you like to target this keyword for your SEO campaign? I mean, would you like to work on this particular keyword in order to sell your shoes when there is a whopping competition of 501 Million pages which are currently ranking for this keyword and how many pages finally make to first page? Alright, so what’s next? Let’s explore other keywords now and see which keyword may work well for us in terms of demand and supply. Ideally we are looking for keywords where enough number of people are searching them but yet competition is lower. There are too many keywords for this particular niche, however I have come up with following few for analysis. Keyword Number of global searches SERP competition Buy shoes online 18000+ 269 Million Where to buy cheap shoes 390 134 Million Buy cheap shoes 720 162 Million Where to buy shoes online 590 208 Million Buy online shoes 880 325 Million Buying shoes online 1000 20 Million Now, let’s analyze them. So if I ask you that you select keywords which can give you reasonable amount of traffic if you reach page 1 for that keyword but yet competition should be lower enough for you to sustain your optimization cost then which keyword are you going to select? If I ask you to choose between these 2 keywords “Buy shoes online†vs “Buy online shoes†so which one you choose? First one being searched 18000 times a month? Second one being searched 880 times a month? However in terms of competition first one has a competition of 269 Million web pages and second one has competition of 325 Million. So which one is the good one? Obviously the one with lower competition but yet with good amount of traffic whereas second one is searched less but yet too competitive. So our vote goes to first keyword. Now analyze other keywords. “Where to buy cheap shoes†vs “Buy cheap shoes†First keyword is being searched 390 times whereas second keyword being searched 720 times almost double in searches compare to first one. However first keyword is less competitive being 134 million web pages vs second keyword which has a competition of 162 Million web pages. So which keyword you would like to invest in for your SEO campaign? First one or second one? Ok, if you ask me, I would go for second keyword because it is yielding enough monthly search but slightly higher in competition than the first one. You do have to keep a balance of search volume vs competition. Now let’s analyze all keywords at once and select 1 best keyword that you should invest in. Ok, my vote goes for the keyword which is least competitive “Buying shoes online†the competition is 20Million web pages compare to all other keywords and the traffic amount is 1000 searches a month. Great. So you now have got an idea on how are you going to select the best keyword to invest in compare to so many keywords. But are we done now? So you have finally got a profitable niche that you want to invest in? Are you a pro who is ready to go in? Wait….. Let’s explore some other niches. Keep clicking around, keep typing for more items, keep coming up with new keywords, products after scanning through your house. Let’s look at your family member, see what items they have in their hand, what are they wearing. Ok, I have just seen my mum having some jewelry. Ok, now let me start typing more and more jewelry related keywords such as necklace, earrings and then google keyword tool will keep giving me more and more similar keywords related to these keywords and I’ll keep exploring. Wait. I found something. Let me show you. Here is a keyword I found “Magnetic Necklace†There are 1600 searches for magnetic necklaces every month. Now I check Now let’s look at the competition on Google SERP. What?? 1.7Million web pages only? Woww, that’s absolutely cool. So now I have found a very good profitable keyword which I can invest little and yet rank much more quickly because this keyword has got a very descent amount of monthly search traffic being 1600 searches and yet competition is very little. 1.7Million web pages is considered very little competition on google SERP and if a little amount of resources is invested in optimizing this keyword then you can easily rank your website for this keyword within 1-2 months time instead of months and months. web pages only? Woww, that’s absolutely cool. So now I have found a very good profitable keyword which I can invest little and yet rank much more quickly because this keyword has got a very descent amount of monthly search traffic being 1600 searches and yet competition is very little. 1.7Million web pages is considered very little competition on google SERP and if a little amount of resources is invested in optimizing this keyword then you can easily rank your website for this keyword within 1-2 months time instead of months and months. So what is the final conclusion? Would you like to explore your options of selling shoes or magnetic necklace? So below are the 2 keywords in 2 different niches “Buying shoes online†– 1000 searches – 162 Million web pages in competition “Magnetic necklace†– 1600 searches – 1.7 Million web pages in competition So, now ask yourself what niche would you like to explore further and what keywords would you like to invest in? In my next topic, I will teach on how to take this research to next level by doing research on ebay and finding out how much is this magnetic necklace being sold on average for and how much margin do we have and how much profit we can make by selling this product. Please note, I am currently recording a video of this whole chapter and all videos will be located in my site and youtube. I will also be adding more chapters and topics on my site and also in the forums to help as many people as possible. More chapters at http://www.extremecommerce.org/free-online-ecommerce-training
Very nice Tut will bookmark, One point I would like to say is to also look for the average CPC if the average is lets say for example you found a keyword "dogs like cats" and it had lets say less than 1000 global visitors and less than minus 10 local visitors and the CPC average was $5.96 I would bid on this.... Why? because there are people spending big money on this, so it's defo a niche that will improve over time, so get in early Hope this helps Enjoy Thanks Op P.s try aiming for longtail keywords also, consider this how often do you type in your search engine "product search"? Do you not find you are now typing longer word searches like "how do I buy/fix/trial product name" get an exact name domain as a longtail keyword and your ready to roll serious golden nuggets in these guys