Untitled

Interested in starting an affiliate marketing business? Good for you! Now Step One is to choose a niche.

Affiliate marketers never seem to tire of talking about niches: I’m in this niche, I’m in that niche, the health niche, the make-money-online niche, the dating niche the blag-blah-blah niche. 

“Don’t even think about starting an online business without first choosing your niche and then niching down further!” I mean, what on earth???!  Well, the thing is this: if you don’t choose your own little niche in the vast expanses of cyber space, then you’re just not going to get heard or seen. It’s like trying to shout to get your friend’s attention when you’re standing next to the track at a Formula One rally. Might as well forget it. 

So what is a Niche, and why are marketers so obsessed by them? 

Well, I found this definition for you: Adjective: denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population

And I think that defines it pretty well: you need to figure out what products and services are going to appeal to your chosen target market; your ideal audience. How can you capture their attention and give them what they are looking for? And what are they looking for? 

A Good Place to Start 

Is a personal interest of yours: something that you know about yourself; something that you find yourself reading about online, or watching You Tube videos about. Even better if you’re already an expert in the subject, because then you’ll be able to enthuse your audience and they’ll love gobbling up all the content you produce to learn more about your subject. Plus you’ll find it easier to build that magic ingredient of online marketing which is authority. If you can establish yourself as an expert in your particular niche, then people are far more likely to buy from you, than from someone who comes across as not really knowing what they are talking about.( Winner, winner, chicken dinner, as they say. )

Yes, that’s all very well, but my area of expertise is in creating knitting patterns for mice.

Well, this is where you’ve got to get your commercial head on and do the research. You’re going to need to ask our wise friend Google how many people are searching for knitting patterns for mice, or juggling balls for frogs, or whatever obscure area of expertise you may have. The harsh fact is, is there are very few people searching for answers in your niche, then don’t waste your time, because it would be super difficult to make any real money out of it. 

Some Unusual Niches to Consider

Ok, so the mouse mittens niche is way too tiny, I’m sure you appreciate that. But here are a few more unusual niches for you to contemplate which can be surprisingly profitable. Think of it this way: you don’t need zillions of visitors to your site to be profitable; it’s not so much a numbers game as a motivation game. Your ideal audience consists of people who are passionate about your niche, and happy to spend money in that niche. 

Have you considered starting your business in any of these areas? 

Elder care- lots of middle aged people are researching this topic as their parents are getting on in years and needing more help

Virtual assistant business- there’s a huge demand for virtual assistants as the number of people who are setting up their own home businesses has increased massively due to the pandemic

Gluten free eating- the food intolerance sector is massive

Get into college- tips on preparation for college, including advice on finance and accommodation, as well as academic courses

Haircare- there’s a huge potential for a home business here, especially if you really niche down: specialise in Afro hair, or vegan hair products, for example

Crochet- since the pandemic hit us and we all had to spend more time at home, the whole crafting industry has really expanded. Think knitting, crochet, painting, card-making….the list goes on. Here you are going to be thinking about creating videos ( how to..) selling craft supplies, patterns etc. Think about creating your own courses, or selling someone else’s. 

Language learning: Arabic, Japanese, German…..the language niche is massive, and people are prepared to pay to learn them. You could create your own course and run a subscription business, including producing and selling your own course materials. 

Deep sea fishing- the fishing niche has a highly-engaged audience who are willing to whip out their credit card to spend money on fancy fishing gear. If you’re passionate about fishing, this is a great niche for you, but there are already plenty of well-established fishing sites out there, and remember that, as a beginner, you’re going to be a very small fish in a very large pool. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) 

So…..think deep sea fishing, or salmon fishing, or fishing in Scottish rivers. In other words: specialise, so that your site offers something that all the others don’t. 

Learn Wordpress, Python or Java. Sites which involve teaching a specialist skill have great potential for profitability. If you can teach someone a skill that they really want to learn, then they are prepared to pay for it; especially if that skill is going to be  something that your students are going to be able to recoup their spend from later down the line. If you can teach someone the skills required to be a mortgage adviser, for example, then they will know that they won’t need to find too many clients to easily pay back the course fees that they originally paid to you. 

Is This Niche Really a Viable Business Proposition?

Ok, so now perhaps you have a good idea about which niche you’d like to start your business in- but is it really a viable business proposition? Let’s look now at the factors you need to consider before you launch.

High Search Volume, but Low Competition

The golden rule is to find a niche which has high search volume, but low competition. What that means is that there are plenty of people interested in the niche- researching it and asking questions- but low competition. That means that there aren’t so many people producing content about the niche- especially established big players- that you can’t compete with them as a fledgling business without a million pound advertising budget. 

How To Research 

There are lots of paid tools for doing this research, but you can do it for free by opening up an account in Google Ads and then use the Keyword Planner tool. In order to do this, you’ll have to set up an advert, but  don’t worry, because you won’t have to run it. Just fill in the boxes within Google Ads but don’t publish the campaign.

Once you’ve done those steps, then type in some words which describe your niche, and then go to ‘search volume and forecast.’  This will show you the numbers of searches for your niche topics and give them a score, as to whether they are high, medium or low competition keywords. It’s not an exact science, but it will give you a good idea. 

Avoid Keywords With High Search Volume

Strangely enough, although high volume words are those which are being searched for most, these are the ones you want to avoid as a beginner. This is because they are search terms which are the most competitive, and as you are starting off as a very small fish in a massive pond, you simply don’t have a chance of achieving so much as a nibble. Those words are dominated by the huge companies which have been around for years and have mahoosive amounts of cash to spend on advertising. 

No, you’re looking for the words with high search volume ( lots of interest) but low competition. 

What Next? 

Let’s take the next step. Following your keyword research, let’s imagine that you have managed to  find a niche you’re interested in that has a high volume of people searching it out, but low competition. Sounds promising….but can you actually make money from it? This is your next topic for research: what are you actually going to be able to sell to generate a good income? 

Courses: these can be extremely profitable, as your ideal audience will be prepared to spend to learn the skill you’re offering when you have convinced them that you know what you’re talking about. The knack to this is to publish plenty of free content on your chosen platform ( your website, Facebook page etc) to build your authority and gain the trust of your audience, but then to ask for payment if they want to know more. In other words, if they really want to know how to do it, they need to buy your course. 

If you have worked hard on building your authority and gaining the trust of your audience, then you won’t meet with too much resistance when you ask them to get their credit card out and pay to learn more. 

Creating a Digital Asset

Creating your course involves a fair amount of effort and time on your part, but once it’s done, then you can sell it time and time again; tweaking it where required. Therefore your course will pay you back many times over. If the idea of designing and writing your course scares the pants off you, then you might wish to engage the help of the free artificial intelligence tool, chat.openai.com and choose the ‘One click course creator.’ 

You will need to enter your prompts for what you want your course to look like, but the result will at least be a great starting point for you, and avoid the dreaded blank page of terror. 

Speaking of digital assets: these can be a real money generator for you. Think about what downloadable assets you can create in your niche: e-books, how-to guides, quick-start guides, recipes, instructions….the list goes on. You can create these and offer them for free as lead magnets to entice prospects to sign up to your email list, and then offer them your paid downloads when you have won over their trust. Again, once you have gone to the trouble of creating these, they are going to be able to create income for you for years to come.

Create a digital asset business: you could create a very profitable business purely by creating and selling digital assets. Have a look at Etsy.com and see the massive potential that exists there: huge traffic and a huge variety of products you could create and sell.  

Stressing about how to create digital assets? Go to Copyai and get them created for free! 

Selling Services:  there is a great demand for freelance services. You may wish to read this article: https://wearecityliving.com/blog/top-5-most-in-demand-freelance-jobs-for-2023

This discusses the top 5 freelance skills which are currently in the highest demand: 

Social media management

Web app development

Translating

Videography and photography

Admin tasks

I Can’t do any of Those!

Perhaps one of these ideas sounds like a great business prospect to you but you don’t currently have the required skilset. Don’t worry! You’ll be surprised how quickly and cheaply you can learn to perform many tasks, so don’t let that put you off. Let me suggest popping over to Udemy.com and browse the recommended courses: they’re amazingly cheap and high quality. Then get to work learning the skills you need.Depending on your commitment to acquiring the skills and knowledge required, you could have learned everything you need to start your own business within the space of a few months. 

Getting Started as a Service Provider

You may wish to start off your freelance career by setting up your profile on the freelancing websites such as Fiverr, Upwork or Freelancer. There are pros and cons to be considered here, including the fact that all of these sites take a slice of your profits as their fee. However, they do have massive traffic and will give you the chance to get started with working with clients and learning the skills you’ll need to get your business off the ground. 

Research whether your chosen niche has any high ticket affiliate programmes for you to promote. You’ll find that, surprisingly, it isn’t actually any harder to sell products with a high price tag and those with a low one, and it’s those high ticket items which are going to get the money rolling in for you. 

Low ticket or free items are handy for getting people to sign up onto your email list, but they’re not going to pay your bills. However, once you have those interested people on your list, that’s when you can promote your high ticket offerings to them through your email sequences.

Value Ladder 

You may have heard of the term ‘value ladder.’ This is the process whereby a lower priced product brings someone into your sales funnel easily, and subsequently offers them other items at increasingly higher prices. You may get someone to download your free ‘how-to’ list in exchange for their e-mail address, and then make them further offers, until finally you’re inviting them to your one:one coaching programme, for example.

Recurring commissions: these are the programmes which earn you a monthly recurring commission, such as email auto-responders, web hosting etc. Supplements also often are pretty good at paying out monthly, as want to renew their supplies regularly. See whether there are any such programmes within your chosen niche, as these can build up to bring in a healthy monthly income for you over time. 

Evergreen Products

Be cautious about setting up a business purely based on a current fad as it may have a very short lifespan. Think fidget spinners: at one point, not so very long ago, all the kids wanted one and businesses were selling them left, right and centre. Yes, I am sure that at the height of the craze there were savvy businesses coining it in selling them, but when the craze was over then there were also plenty of businesses left with a shedload of unsold stock that nobody wanted any more. 

Google Trends is a useful research tool here, as it will show you what search terms are trending at any one time, and which are fading out. It’s easy to feel that a product is still very much in demand when in reality it’s actually beginning to die out, and is therefore not a great idea for an evergreen business. 

When considering signing up for affiliate programmes, make sure that you research the commission rates they offer and do some maths: ask yourself just how many sales you’d need to make in order to generate the income you desire. You don’t want to be busting a gut to make just a few measly pounds: that’s not the lifestyle of financial freedom you’re aiming for!

Looking for programmes which offer a great affiliate commission? 

Consider selling luxury items- the luxury watch market pays out great commissions, for example. There are also affiliate programmes for companies that offer private jet flights and luxury yacht sales and cruises. Look for where the money is and do your research. 

Private Boat Charter Programmes

You may wish to include this article in your research: https://highpayingaffiliateprograms.com/yacht-affiliate-programs/

As the author of the article writes: 

“Boat affiliate programs may be an opportunity you’ve never thought of before as an affiliate marketer.

The boat sale and rental business is doing very well and it’s not just for the ultra-affluent.”

Bill Burnice

Now, there’s an interesting niche, that most people wouldn’t have thought of. 

Conclusion

Well, that’s it from me for now on the subject of choosing a profitable niche for your online business venture. I really hope that I’ve given you some useful guidance on finding the one that suits you the best, and will grow into the business you dream of. I certainly wish you all the very best, and I’m off to knit some socks for mice now- let me know if you want the pattern, won’t you?!

Struggling to improve your website’s visibility in Google search ranking? There’s nothing more demoralising that spending hours hammering away at your laptop only to get no returns. If you publish an excellent article but no one notices, then it’s perfectly natural to wonder why you even bothered.

Google Loves On-Page Optimisation, and You should too!

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Stick with me, and read a few more of my articles and you’ll soon get the hang of the jargon. ‘On-page optimization’ is all about formatting your page in a way that Google likes: in other words, finds easy to navigate. There’s no magic to it, but there is a kind of a rule book that you should know about, in order to give yourself the best fighting chance of getting your content found and ranked in the search engine results.

To Start: Register Your Site with Google Search Console

This is a free service that allows you to submit your website to Google for indexing. By doing so, Google will know that your site exists and can start including its content in search results.

You can also use Search Console to check if Google is having any problems crawling your website and identify areas that can be improved from a technical SEO standpoint. It’s also useful to monitor the number of visitors your site is receiving, which is super-helpful. After a while, you’ll be able to see whether certain kinds of posts cause a spike in traffic, and then you’ll know what kinds of posts got the best reaction from your audience and produce more of that sort of content.

Next Up: Register Your Site with Google Business

If you have a bricks and mortar business, or perhaps if you’re a local service provider, then creating a Google Business profile is a real shot in the arm for your site. This will ensure that your business is going to appear more frequently in the local search results, and if you can get it to appear in the golden ‘three pack’- the first businesses that show up in the search- then you’re really going to start to see some traction.

Careful Keyword Research will improve your Google Rankings

Think carefully about the purpose for your website: to solve a major pain point or problem for your target audience- right? So your task is to ensure that your site provides the answers and information that your folks are searching for: this is crucial. Get this wrong, and no one will visit your site!

How to…..choose the wrong keywords and therefore fail miserably (and invisibly.)

There are different ways of failing miserably at keyword research. The first way is by doing no research at all, and just assuming that people want to read about just what you think they want to read about. Hmmm….not necessarily the case.

Or….

You could find keywords that lots of people are searching for- which is good, very good, but which also lots of people are already writing about, on their much more powerful and authoritative sites than yours. Depressing. When you’re starting off, there’s absolutely no point in trying to compete with the giants who have massive audiences, as Google will send traffic to their sites while yours sinks down into the doom that is page 37 of the search results. Depressing, very depressing indeed.

The other route to failure is to create a site where you write about a subject that no one gives two hoots about. Don’t create content about your knitting patterns for socks for mice, for example. Or make-up tips for turtles. Because, frankly, no one cares. Not even turtles.

High Search Volume, but Low Competition

There- I’ve said it: this is the magic formula for the keywords you need to find to get your site found in the Google rankings. These are the words that plenty of your target audience are searching for, but are not too hard to rank for.

My Favourite Keyword Research Tool

There are different tools you can use to carry out your keyword research: some are free and some are paid. My favourite is Tube Buddy which helps you to identify great keywords using You Tube.

Rank on Google with Killer Content

Time to create great content using the those you’ve identified using Tube Buddy. This means writing about topics in considerable depth and ensuring that your content satisfies key user queries about them. As part of this process, look at what’s already ranking highly for a particular search term and craft your content so that it is bigger and better than the number one search result.

Produce Top Ranking Content in a few Minutes

If the idea of writing your own content scares you to death, then don’t worry- help is at hand in the form of friendly robots who will be very happy to write all the quality content you need at very little cost. Open up a free account at Copyai and you’ll be amazed to learn how much content you can have written for you at absolutely no cost. After all, if you think about it, robots don’t have much to spend money on, do they? Don’t eat, don’t drink…they’re not bothered about driving fancy cars. Correct me if I’m wrong!

Create a Compelling Page Title

It’s really important for your on-page SEO score to make sure that you create a compelling page title. A top tip is to place your target keyword near the start of your title and keep titles relatively short and to the point. Remember, you want to grab attention quickly and you’ve only got a moment in which to do that.

Now the process of coming up with a catching page title can easily involve tugging out your hair and beard- if you have one-pacing up and down, drinking ridiculous amounts of coffee, and smoking the cigarettes that you swore to yourself you’d given up years ago.

Better still- let Artificial Intelligence do it for you!

However- yes indeed- help is at hand! Once again, there are artificial intelligence answers to this awful conundrum- so step away from those dark evil temptations and fire up Copyai and let the robots figure out something irresistible. If you’d like a little demo of how this works, then just click here to be taken to my You Tube short,( and leave me a like and subscribe to my channel while you’re there.)

Grab Attention with an Engaging Meta description

The meta description is a brief summary of your web page which is displayed as part of the search snippet in the search engine results page. It gives the user an idea of the content of your page, and therefore how relevant it is to what they are searching for.

The recommended length for your meta description is between 50-160 characters, so you don’t need to write too much, but you do need to ensure that your target keywords are in there. Think of it as being like a mini advert: the intention is to capture and entice users into opening up your page and consuming your content.

If you’d like further advice on writing quality meta descriptions, then here’s a great article by the experts at The Hoth for you to check out: https://www.thehoth.com/learn/seo/on-page-seo/meta-description/

Your Page URL needs a simple structure

 An important tip is to make sure that the URL you create for your page has a simple structure. Aim to create short URLs that include your target keywords and are easy for humans and search engines to understand.

Google loves fast-loading sites

If we have to wait for a site to load, our instinct is to click away and resume our search. Therefore, it’s absolutely crucial that your site is Mobile-Friendly and loads quickly: Google prioritizes sites that display correctly on mobile devices in search results. So make sure that you are using a website building tool that produces responsive, mobile-friendly websites. Use a fast hosting provider and a website building platform that lets you create speedy websites.

Build Backlinks

 A backlink is a link from somebody else’s content to yours, and generally speaking, Google treats each backlink to your site as a vote for your content. So the more backlinks that you can earn for your pages, the more authoritative and trustworthy your content will appear to Google.

To learn more about backlinks, see my article by clicking here

In Conclusion

Implementing these tips will see an improvement in the ranking of your website, and using them will cost you nothing, beside the price of your own time. Don’t expect success overnight, organic SEO is definitely a marathon, not a race, as the saying goes.

However- yet again- help is at Hand!

Now, look, before you get depressed and overwhelmed, let me suggest a short cut for you. This is not free, but the small monthly cost of this service could easily be offset by the fact that your site will be found much faster, and will therefore be able to generate an income for you much quicker. Also, you will be using a team of professional SEO geeks who really know what they are doing, and can be getting on with ranking your website while you utilise your time working on all the other myriad of tasks involved in running your own business.

Check out: SEOmatic , by clicking here

THIS MEANS WAR!!!

We all look at the world in a different way: what I find fascinating may bore you, what you think is beautiful, I may see as ugly.

Therefore when people come together in any business setting, what your pitch needs to do is to make the prospect look at the world through your eyes- through your window frame on the world.

And that’s not easy! After all, everyone has their own perspective; their own set of values which may well not initially align with yours. And if you can’t shift them to see things the way you do, then your pitch is sunk. 

So a pitch situation can be a battle: the person with the strongest perspective is going to win- you have to make sure that the victor is you, and not the prospect. You have to convince them that your view is the correct one,or the prospect holds the power in the pitch, and not you.In this scenario you are never going to sell anything, and you will leave the meeting deflated.

Understanding how to harness the power of framing any interaction with your prospects is the most important skill you can ever learn if you want to succeed at pitching. You need to impose your frame, your perspective, on the prospect in order to get them to view your product in the same way that you do, and to view you as the stronger person in the meeting. 

To illustrate this more clearly, imagine a situation where you get pulled over for speeding by the police. In this scenario, you know fine well before the officer even says a word to you that you’re stuffed: that they have the power and the status and you’re in trouble.

You know that no matter what farcical and weak excuses you’re going to use to try to excuse yourself, the battle has already been won. And not by you. 

So you can see that in this interaction the officer had the most powerful frame; the most powerful perspective: you were breaking the law and the officer’s job is to pull you up for that.

Simple- both you and the officer can see how this situation is going to play out and that resistance from you is pointless and humiliating: the officer has the power and the status, and you just feel like a bit of an idiot. 

Tip 1: Have a sign. Might sound simple, but signs work! You may well have one on your place of work, but do you have a portable one to take out on site with you, with your contact details and business name? These signs bring in business without costing you anything besides the initial cost of having the sign made. Make sure it’s clear and easy to read from the road for passers-by.

Tip 2: Post content where your potential customers hang out. For example, if you want to appeal to an audience who are aged around 25-35 years, then they are most likely to be using Facebook. 

59% of internet users who are on Instagram are aged between 18 and 29. Food for thought! It’s worth joining Facebook groups within your niche as well, to see what your prospective customers are talking about and looking for. Then you can post what they want on your Facebook page, and attract them to your business.

Tip 3 Post what your customers are searching for. A good idea is to create a post offering your prospects something they’re looking for in exchange for their email: then you can get them to sign up to your email list and win them over on the longer term. 

Let’s say you have a building firm. Create a post offering visitors to your page an information leaflet about the rules around planning for an extension. Easy enough for you- it only needs to be short- and really useful for prospects who may be considering getting an extension built on their house. 

Ask people to say in the comments if they’d find that useful and then ask if it’s OK to dm them. If they say that’s alright, then you can send them a dm, asking for their email address so that you can email your leaflet. Then you can email the leaflet to them, and they join your email list. After that, you can send them emails and gradually they get to know you, and trust you, through seeing that you know what you’re talking about, and somewhere down the line they could become your customers. 

Exciting

Novel

Non- threatening

Clear

Simple

Intriguing

Get to the point fast

Give only two, clearly explained options

Give strong, summarising points throughout your pitch to keep attention

Give concrete facts- verified evidence

Avoid abstract concepts 

This is the only way to capture people’s attention, because most people simply don’t have the time or energy to devote to a new, complicated project. It’s just way too threatening, when we already have so many things to do to simply keep surviving every day.

Present your prospect with several new, complex tasks involving pain and learning, and they’re going to run a mile- even if they really do want the end result your product promises.

So, what is the formula for successful pitching? 

Oren Klaff, in his book ‘Pitch Anything,’ gives this acronym: 

                                     STRONG

Is your prospect really listening to your pitch? She’s looking at your face and nodding…so that’s a good sign- right? Hmm…not necessarily. You see, it depends on which part of her brain she’s employing to process what you’re saying.

Unfortunately, if she’s using the most primitive part- the ‘crocodile brain’ as it’s known, what she’s actually doing is making some simple judgments while you’re pitching which go like this:

“Is what this person is saying a danger to me?” (Fight or flight)

Or…..

“Can I mark it as ‘spam’ and pretty much ignore it?”

“Is this idea new and exciting? And can I still find a way to ignore it?”

Finally, the primitive ‘crocodile brain’ is telling your prospect to not send anything up to the neocortex for proper analysis and problem solving unless what it is hearing is so very exciting and interesting that this process simply can’t be avoided.

Really?

Yes, really. If you only manage to engage the simplest part of your prospect’s brain, then that is what’s happening to your pitch.

The biggest barrier to your pitch filtering through to the neocortex of your prospect is complication. You make a complicated pitch with lots of abstract language and no picture clues, then you are likely to quickly lose the concentration of your prospect and she’ll send your message straight to the spam box in her brain.

Yes…I did say ‘the spam box.’ We all know what happens there, don’t we? Content rusts, decays, and dies; tragically unseen and unheard.

You don’t want that to happen to your pitch, do you?!

So, clearly, we need a new way to pitch- a way to express our messages so that they are not being processed by the ‘crocodile brain’, which is very simply designed to figure out whether to fight or to run like the wind. Both of those reactions are bad news for your pitch and send it into oblivion.

We have to devise a way to bypass or shorten the period with which your prospect is using her crocodile brain to listen to you and lengthen the time she’s using her neocortex; where the problem solving and genuine, logical and emotional processes are going to sift through your presentation properly- instead of feeding it straight into the greedy jaws of the spam box.

Want to know how to do this?

Ever wondered why you sometimes get the feeling that although your prospects may have agreed to a meeting they’re not really listening to your pitch?

That instead of wanting to hear how your product or service can help them, they’re really trying to convince themselves that you’re not on their side at all? Instead of responding to the positive points you’re making they’re actually distracting themselves by thinking up objections and problems-however irrelevant they may seem?

This is the BS filter- the filter with the tiniest holes that somehow we have to squeeze our marketing messages through. The filter which we have all developed, trained, practised and evolved in order to protect ourselves from those who wish to fool us; to make us look and feel stupid and inferior.

Every time we encounter something new, we are conditioned to view it with suspicion and caution.

What’s in it for me?

What’s the catch?

How is this going to hurt me in some way?

All these instincts are working against you as you deliver your pitch, so that instead of approaching the whole meeting with a ‘how is this person going to help me with their product or service?’ attitude, instead the majority of your prospects are bringing a ‘how is this person going to rip me off?’ attitude. And that’s what you have to work with, and learn to overcome.

In his book ‘Pitch Anything’ Oren Klaff explains that there are three sections of the brain, which he calls the crocodile brain, the midbrain and the neo- cortex. Klaff explains that the crocodile part of the brain produces strong basic emotions and its reasoning power is basic, and Klaff says that this is the brain that your prospects are first going to be bringing to your meeting. They’ll be looking for traps; for reasons to bring up objections and to run away.

Your pitch needs to penetrate this filter to reach the midbrain, which Klaff says we use to determine meaning and context, and then reach the neocortex which is used to reason, problem solve and process information.

When your pitch starts to be heard by the neo- cortex of the brain- the highest logic centre- then you are going to see success. When that starts to be triggered to listen, analyse and accept what you’re saying, then, and only then, you have a real chance of closing the deal with your prospect.

…is golden!

Your perfect offer:

Gets you more customers

Gets them to pay more

Gets them to buy from you more times.

Worth working on?

You bet it is!

So, how does the perfect offer work?

Well, for a start, it allows you to differentiate yourself from the marketplace.

Craft your offer correctly, and it will allow you to sell your product based on VALUE and not on PRICE.

Craft your offer correctly and you will be selling in a market of one: because yours has the most value.

Look at it this way: if all products are equal, then the cheapest one will necessarily be the most valuable. If a prospect compares your product to another and thinks that they are pretty much the same thing, then they will naturally make their choice based on price.

So how do you avoid falling into that trap?

You need to devise an offer that cannot be compared to any other product or service available.

What are the winning ingredients of such an irresistible offer?

Kitchen Fitters In Manchester

Here are some useful tips: Tip one: always remember that people buy with their emotions and then justify their decisions with logic. this is central to effective copywriting. People need to know the features of the product, but it's the benefits that really do the selling for you. Say you needed to write some copy to sell a black bike.

How to Use Low Ticket Price Points to Sell High Ticket Items

So you want to make your money online? Sell high ticket items! Everyone can tell you that: no point in selling stuff for £7 or £20 a time- you’ll need to sell zillions of those items before you can even make enough money to buy yourself a fancy coffee!

The thing is, selling high ticket items can be hard.

You’re not going to come across many people who are just wandering around the internet wondering which stranger they could hand over three grand to. It just doesn’t work like that. And yet…..you need to make those high ticket sales in order to have a viable business online! So, what to do?

The Value Ladder

Now, if you’ve spent any time at all trying to make money online you must surely have come across the fast-speaking and extremely wealthy marketing wizard called Russell Brunson. Young Russell invented a piece of software called Click Funnels, which you can use to create your marketing funnels and all that malarkey.

Now Russell is a highly intelligent marketer, and I very much recommend that you read his best-selling books and watch his high octane videos. His grasp on the whole process of sales is indisputably smoking hot.

Propel Yourself To Sales Mastery

But I am not here as a Brunson groupie, but to tell you about his concept of the value ladder, which, once you’ve grasped it, will propel you to sales mastery. Russell has his own way of explaining it, but I am going to explain it like this:

A day comes in your life when you wake and look at the walls in your bedroom and simply can’t believe that they are still painted that colour you never really liked when you put it on. So you elbow your partner and say, “Hey, let’s paint the bedroom today- it won’t take five minutes if we do it together!” and he says: “Humph…” and rolls over.

Soon after, alone, you are buying paint in the DIY store and you’re quite pleased with yourself when you realise that just one can will probably do the trick. And then you think: “Hmm…. the ceiling…it’s going to look a bit grey when I put the fresh paint on the walls….”

And so you buy a can of white emulsion.

Heading for the tills, you pass the baffling array of painting equipment: brushes of every size, paint trays, masking tape, dustsheets….and before you know what’s happened you’ve now got quite an array of products in your trolley.

Well, you go home, you kick your partner out of bed and you paint the bedroom. By teatime it’s looking nice and fresh. Thing is, the lampshade is now the wrong colour, the curtains don’t match, nor does the bedding and the carpet has pesky paint spots on it.

So the next day finds you in a homewares department store piling all sorts of ever-increasingly expensive items into your trolley and the whole shopping trip finishing up with you buying new bedroom furniture and choosing out a new carpet.

So the moral of the story is this:

Did you set out to do a complete bedroom refit, costing thousands of pounds? Had your partner told you not to go because it would end up costing £3500, you would have thought he’d finally lost the plot. Whereas in actual fact, although you may not wish to admit, he would have been correct.

That’s how the value ladder works

And that’s how you can persuade people to make big ticket sales with very little resistance. Your low ticket product is like the can of paint- it can be bought without fear of overspending. If, when you put it on the wall, you discovered you didn’t really like the colour, then no biggy.

Get Prospects To Buy High Ticket Items

And once you start buying, then research has proved that it’s easier to keep buying than to stop. If you buy the curtains, then you have to buy the matching bedding- it just goes with them, even if that doubles the spend. Then the carpet- more expensive again, and finally the really high ticket items: the bedroom furniture.

Create A Buying Progression Which Feels Natural

The trick for you as a marketer is to lay out a series of logical steps, leading from your initial low ticket offer graduating up to your high ticket one; each step feeling like a natural progression, as I showed you in the story.

It’s All About Creating the Right Mindset

Going straight out to buy the whole new bedroom suite is quite a different mindset to go to buy a tin of paint. The resistance is high: it’s a major financial commitment...can we really afford it? Do we need it? What if we find we don’t really like it?

How To Create Your Value Ladder

So have a look at your offers and put them in order of value. What you’re aiming for is to create a forward momentum, so that each offer seems to logically follow the other. That way, there’s little resistance between buying the more expensive offer each time.

Start by Catching Your Prospects’ Attention

Your lowest offer at the beginning of your funnel could even be completely free: a cheat sheet, pdf, a video- it may not even ask for anything in return. Your first offer is all about awareness- catching someone’s attention.

Next, Aim for the Opt-In

Your next offer may be somewhere in the £7-£35 price range; the objective here is to get people to hand over their details by signing into your opt-in form to gain some piece of value from you. A nifty trick used by most successful marketers here, is to make the next offer immediately after the prospect has opted-in, as they are waiting for their purchase to arrive into their email inbox. This third step in the funnel is generally in the £35-£95 price range.

Establish Liking and Trust from the Start

Subsequent offers in the funnel could include done-for-you traffic or funnels and then membership courses and coaching, which is usually the most expensive product in the value ladder. The important element in driving your customer from the initial interest in what you have to offer to the big ticket product at the top of the funnel is liking and trust. Establish that at the very beginning and you have a firm foundation to balance your value ladder.

I’m going to show you some of the best SEO techniques for beginners to get their new sites up through the rankings to the top of Google.

Now, look, it’s unlikely to work for you overnight, but with persistence and consistency you will find that the top positions in Google searches are not only the dominion of the big budget businesses, but you can push your humble new site up there too.

The best SEO involves the application of a range of different techniques- way too many to deal with in this single article. However, I am going to help you to understand an important deciding factor for whether your site is going to be discovered by the search engines or languish forever, far out in cyberspace, unloved and unvisited.

SEO Optimized Content

If your site isn’t being found, and your online store is currently a ghost town, the chances are that your content has not been optimised for SEO. What this means is that the content of your site is not signalling to the search engines to come and find it. As the internet is such a vast and crowded space, your site has to be structured in such a way that Google can funnel your target audience to the virtual door of your website. Therefore, you need to craft your content to make it as specific and relevant to the interests, needs and pains of your target audience so that when they are searching for what they want, your site pops up in the search engines.

Relevancy

The bottom line of effective website search engine optimization is relevancy.

Your site content has to be absolutely relevant to the needs, pains and interests of your target audience, or those visitors are not going to be arriving, let alone consuming your content or making sales. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to be successful.

Have You Created a Website About Cats?

Cats are great, aren’t they? They’re funny, they’re clever, they’re cute, they’re cuddly. Millions of people own cats, don’t they?

Yes, that’s true, and there are millions of cat-based searches entered into the search engines every day. But the thing is this- because there are millions of people interested in cats there are also already loads of well-established websites about cats already. In other words, it’s a way too crowded market for your new site to be found in.

It’s the same with weight loss- most people I know would like to shed a few pounds- or the ‘make money online’ niche. Who doesn’t want to escape the daily grind and the gruelling commute?

Don’t Expect Your Site To Appeal To the Masses

It’s unrealistic and unnecessary. Instead, break down your target market as much as you can so that you have a smaller, but much more engaged audience who are more likely to find your site.

Take the weight loss example. People want to lose weight for a range of different reasons: take one of those reasons and write articles based on that one reason – then that’s your unique selling point- that’s what will make your site stand out.

Interrogate the motivation that you have identified and see whether you could break it down even further- then you’ve identified a pain point for an even smaller niche market who are going to be looking to the internet to find answers and are more likely to find your site, as there is so much less competition.

For example: take two women who are both 24 years old and both wishing to lose weight. So, you could present them both with a daily nutrition and exercise plan which would help them achieve that goal. But what if one of the women was diabetic? Then your plan isn’t going to suit them both.

One Size Fits No One

So, I hope you can see what I’m driving at: the more you steer clear from the ‘one size fits all’ approach to creating your website, the more likely you are to be able to get your site ranked in Google.

Don’t Write About Jelly

When you are creating content for your website you can’t just go wild and creative and write just anything. Sadly, no. Unless, of course, your website is purely for you and your own amusement. If that is the case- go mad! Write a million articles about jelly. It’s fine, because, in all likelihood, no one else will ever read them. (Or will they? You may prove me wrong….)

📷

Oh….turns out there actually is an audience for jelly articles…..Even ‘the serious side of jelly’ has lots of searches….

📷

Well, what can I say? Perhaps I’ve inspired you!

Anyway, back to the subject of creating SEO optimised content for our Websites

Let’s start with words- keywords.

The number one thing to understand is that keywords hold the key to a special form of magic which is known as ‘organic traffic.’ Now, when one thinks of organic, one immediately thinks about vegetables, compost heaps and green wellies, but this is not the case when we are talking about organic traffic online.

No Kale Here

No, we are talking about visitors to our site (traffic) who are coming in a nice, free, natural way. Notice that the word ‘free’ is in italics? That’s because free organic traffic is good quality traffic, which has been funnelled to your website or offer. Not only that, they have arrived at your site without you having to spend any money. GREAT!!

These targeted visitors find themselves on your site by a special kind of magic, of which they are blissfully unaware. What they have done, without realising it in any way at all, is they have entered search terms into a search engine which you have already predicted, by gazing into the crystal ball of SEO.

Targeted Keywords

Yes- they have innocently keyed in the keywords which have unlocked the doors to your website or offer! Amazing and magical, indeed!!

Well, not really. It goes like this:

Keywords are the words that people type into their keyboard when they are searching for specific content that interests, educates or amuses them.

If you want your content, your website, to be found by your particular audience, then it’s vital to spend some time figuring out what words they are going to be using in their searches so that you can ensure that they are found on your website.

Let me explain more clearly how this works:

Before you begin writing articles for your website, go through the process I discussed earlier: identify your niche (ie ‘weight loss) and then identify a niche within that ( ie weight loss for young women with diabetes.)

Research your topic thoroughly

Find out as much as you can about your target market and list down all the questions you think that those particular people might be asking in the search engines.

This is crucial to the success of your website, indeed your whole online enterprise.

If you can accurately identify the needs, wants, pains and interests of your target audience then you are going to be able to provide the solutions they are looking for. You need to identify the questions that they are asking online so that your site can provide the answers.

Identify 10 questions or topics that are of real interest to your target audience.

These are the topics that you are going to work to optimise for internet searches, to attract your target audience like a magnet! Remember, the more visitors you have on your site, and the longer they stay on your site, the higher it will rank in Google. So it’s worth spending time figuring out what really interests and pushes the pain points of your target audience so that they will come to your site and hang about for longer.

Time To Write Your First Article With SEO Optimized Content

Here goes! Start by planning and researching. Your piece of content should target one primary keyword and then target 5-10 additional keywords.

To identify your primary keyword, you need to ask yourself what your audience is looking for and what questions they are asking online. Remember-the more specific you get; the less competition you will have in the searches.

Next you need to find out what the search engines can tell you

You need to open up a keyword tool to do some research. This will tell you whether your ideas are indeed what people are searching for, or whether no one gives a monkey’s uncle. There are lots of these tools, some are completely free, some will show you so much information before you have to pay.

I like to use this one: https://ads.google.com/home/tools/keyword-planner/

As it gives me everything I need and it also suggests other keywords that are worth considering. You will need a Google Account and to add a payment method, but your card won’t be billed unless you’re running advertisements.

If you don’t want to use the Google ads one, there are plenty of other keyword analysis tools on the web: here are some examples:

https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer

https://secockpit.com/

https://keywordtool.io/

https://moz.com/explorer

https://keywordseverywhere.com/

https://keywordsnatcher.com/

https://trends.google.com/trends/

https://www.semrush.com/

https://kwfinder.com/

https://questiondb.io/

https://serpstat.com/

How To Make Sense Of What You’ll See

You put your intended search term into the tool and see what happens. This is what to look for:

Searches

In the ‘searches’ column, avoid any term that has less than 10 searches per month. The ideal is a minimum of 10-100 searches per month, but the sweet spot is words which have 100-1K searches.

It is possible, but difficult, to rank for terms in the range of: 1k-10k/ month, but it’s best to avoid searches with 10k+, as it will be hard to compete.

Low Competition

Look for terms which have ‘low competition.’

Now search for the competition

Having identified your keywords, perform a Google search for the keyword and assess the sites on

the first page. Are they big, established sites all over the front page? Are there small blogs and outdated websites on first page?

The number one question is, are there sites on the first page that seem to put very little effort into their content and design? If so, they will be easy to outrank.

Let me show you the Keyword Research process in action:

When writing this article, I did my KW research.

First I put “search engines can’t find my site” into Google KW planner.

Results: 0-10 searches per month. Hmmm….back to the drawing board.

Google KW planner made some suggestions for me, which got more searches:

“How do I make my website get found by the search engines?” gets 10-100 searches per month.

Better! But I’m really looking for 100-1K monthly searches.

So I’m going to try: “Get my site to rank in Google” and see what happens….

The results are better, but medium competition….hmmmm……

Now I am trying: “How to get my site to rank in Google using search engine optimization.”

Let’s see what happens!

📷

Hmmm..results aren’t great. The ones that are getting reasonable number of searches are medium difficulty, whereas I’m looking for low difficulty.

What happens if I put a ‘power word’ in- such as ‘quickly’. Everyone wants things to happen quickly, don’t they?

Let’s try “How to quickly get my site ranked in Google using search engine optimization.”

Nope….still too competitive.

What if I just enter the search term “Search engine optimization”?

📷

Bingo! Now look at these results- rich pickings here!

I am going to choose “Best SEO for beginners” 100-1k searches. Notice the top of page bid estimate is £20.36. This is the bid you likely need to set for your ad to be shown among the ads at the top of the first page of search results- if you were going to pay for Google ads. I’d say £20.36 is pretty good, so I am happy with that.

Other keywords I like are: “SEO optimized content” 100-1K Low competition- highest bid £5.12

I am also going for “Website Search Engine Optimization” 100-1K low competition highest bid is £16.25, which is pretty decent.

Great! Next job is to come up with a catchy headline which includes my target keywords: ‘Best SEO for beginners. ‘

To get some help, I am going to head off to a free ‘headline analyzer’ tool.

I’m using this one: https://headlines.sharethrough.com/ because you don’t have to set up an account or anything.

There are quite a few of these tools online, and again, most are free. They will analyse your headline for you and give you a score, letting you know where your headline needs to improve in order to make it catchier.

To Conclude

I really hope that I’ve managed to give you some useful pointers if your site isn’t attracting the amount, or kind, or traffic that you’d like.