Thanks to my friend Lynn Terry I found out about this video The Internet Marketing Nightmare. It was created byTahir Shah & Chris Freeman, I found it a little dark for my liking, but it makes some very serious points about getting caught in internet marketing hell. It’s worth it to watch and after you watch it you can download the free report about it.

You can watch the video here.

You will find that some Internet marketers choose to work exclusively with niche marketing.  A niche market is a highly targeted group of people.  For instance, if you sell cosmetics, a wide target market would consist of people who use and buy cosmetics.  A niche market may be people who use and buy mineral cosmetics.

There is a big difference between the two.  If you do not carry mineral cosmetics, the smaller niche market will not buy from you.  And if you only carry mineral cosmetics, there will be people in the wider target market who will not buy from you.

The reason Internet marketers like to work with niche markets is having the opportunity to be the only carrier of a product that will fit that niche market’s needs.  It may take some work, but if you can find a niche and offer a product or service to them, you have the opportunity to sell a lot of products or services.

Start researching your own interests and see what comes up.  Or take your target market and find out if there is a product or service that a highly targeted number of them need, but can’t seem to find.

You can use services like Wordtracker to determine which keywords and phrases are being searched the most often.  For instance, if your target market is people that home school their children, and you plan on having a niche site about creating lesson plans, you can use the service to see which type of lesson plans are the most sought after.

Not only will you want to take notice of how many searches are being performed, you will want to see how many competing pages there are.  Your best bets in niche marketing will be to find a phrase that is searched on a lot, but doesn’t have many competing pages.

In addition to this type of research, you can also set up a campaign amongst your own customers and mailing list and simply ask them what type of products or services they would like to see you offer.  This can give you some great ideas that you may not have thought of yourself.

As you start to develop ideas about which niche you would like to focus on, start taking notice of your competition.  Study the products and services they offer, the features and benefits of these products, and their price points.  This will help you develop your product.

• What are the things you can improve upon?
• How can you make your product more unique?
• How can you provide more benefits to the user or how can you make your product more affordable?

Once you have settled upon a niche and developed a product or service, you will need to develop a website and start promoting your item(s).  You can then think of more products and services to offer to this same niche or you can start the process over and find a new niche to market to.

A busy blog gets more traffic and wins faithful readers.  So what can you do when you start to run short on ideas for your blog?  You could consider making your blog a ‘community blog’ and invite a few others who share your interest in the subject matter to post on the blog alongside you.

There are large community blogs that actually pay individual bloggers to post on a regular basis.  Most of the time, though, bloggers accept the invitation and post for free just to gain the extra exposure — especially if they’re going to be blogging alongside people they know and enjoy.

An example of a community blog can be seen at BecauseMomSaidSo.com.  This blog was started by just one mom but after struggling to keep up with posting for several weeks, she invited a few other Moms to join her.  Each mom blogger is free to post on whatever topics interest her. 

The blog owner has placed a few affiliate program recommendations and ads on the blog and she also encourages the individual moms to promote products that they would like to personally recommend.  The overall flavor of the blog remains personal and visitors don’t feel like it’s a big marketing fest.

One of the great benefits of a community blog is that the bloggers tend to comment quite a bit on one another’s posts.  This helps to encourage commenting from visitors. 

If you target a specific topic for your blog, you can recruit other bloggers who have specialized knowledge on the same topic.  Everyone involved will benefit from the traffic that flows through the blog.

The key to success with a joint blog is to have clearly defined responsibilities.  You could set up a schedule for each blogger to follow, or require that everyone post once a day or twice a week.  Whatever works for you.  Lay out the rules for self promotion and linking out of the blog. 

The more generous that you are, the better response you’ll get from other bloggers.  Make sure everyone involved understands your expectations about duplicate content, cross posting and other issues like crass language or flaming.

If you would like to gain publicity for your business, you might want to consider writing a press release. A press release is a document that contains information about a business, product, or event and is then submitted to the media.

You can submit a press release to your local newspapers, as well as radio and television stations. You can also submit them to news services you find on the internet. Press releases follow a general format. The following are some basic tips for creating your press release; however, if you want specific instructions, you may want to consult a style book.

If you would like the media to publish your story immediately, write the words “For Immediate Release” at the top left hand corner. If you are submitting the press release ahead of an event, and you want the media to wait until a certain date to feature your story,  use the phrase “For Release After [insert date].

You will want to make sure the media know how to contact you; your contact information goes directly below the release date. You’ll want to include all relevant data, such as your name, phone number, email, and URL.

The next section is known as “the body” of the press release. This area is where you include all the information the media would need to feature your story. Keep this information focused; if it doesn’t relate to what you want publicized, leave it out. Answer the basic questions, such as who, what, why, where, when and how. Let the media know how your business, product, service, or event will benefit your target market.

If your press release is more than one page include the word “more” at the end of the first page. Try to keep all of this information under two pages. The media receives plenty of press releases each day; they do not have time to read something that goes on for ten pages. At the end of your press release insert three number symbols (###).