Finding Profitable Niche Markets: Step 4: Test Traffic Potential

You now have a micro-niche, or a product with which to work.

Here's the bad news: it's unlikely to be the right one. At least, not the first time that you come up with it.

Here's the good news: you are about to learn a technique that will let you pick out the right micro-niche and the best way to phrase it for the search engines, based on two imporatnt factors:

• Niche Volume
• Niche Value

These are very important criteria, as they are both indicators of an existing market for you to tap into.

Niche Volume vs. Niche Value

Volume simply refers to the volume of people searching for a specific micro-niche search term. Niche value is more complex, but we can estimate it here by looking at the amount of money people are paying to advertise in the micro-niche.

(The more money available for advertising, the more margin is being made, and the more valuable the micro-niche.)

You need to know if there’s a market: both in terms of Volume and Value. To estimate this, go to the AdWords Keyword Planner, and select the following option:

• Search for new keywords using phrase, website or category

In the "Your product or service" box, type in a single phrase that describes your micro-niche (i.e. raspberry ketone supplements).

Make sure that you set up your geographic target, language, and set the match to “close match only” to ensure that you only get very specific results.

Then, click "Get Ideas"... and wait.

Download the result into Google Sheets (or your own favourite spreadsheet application), using the "Download" button. Remove everything except the keyword, the Volume, and the Suggested Bid columns.

Replace all the ranges with a numerical index from 1 (for 1 - 10 searches) to 6 (for 1M+), and add a heading "Value" in the fourth column. Add the following formula in the second row (the row directly below the headings):

• = if(C2>0,C2,0.01)*B2

Depending on which of the two you want to favouritise, you can meddle with the formula; for example, to prioritize volume over niche value (available money in the niche for advertising):

• = (if(C2>0,C2,0.01)^2) * B2

Pull down from the bottom corner of the cell to the end o fthe sheet, so that all columns are filled with the formula.

Now, filter so that you have the top 10 in either volume or value (your choice), and add a fifth column called Competition, and a sixth called Topics.

Your spreadsheet is now ready for the final step in the process: Step 5: Determine the Root Keyword Phrase.