42 Comments »

Ben said:
Hi Mark
Looks like a great service, certainly saves me sitting for a few hours myself.
As for the Mallet niche, well I can’t pass up the chance to build a niche site with that much info can I:)
Cheers
Ben
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Post Comment #1, 28 July 2009 at 1:34 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Ben –
Good deal on grabbing it up Ben! I was somewhat surprised the market had not already been filled, but using the guide, I have found that on MANY of the markets I have been researching lately!
Mark
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Post Comment #2, 28 July 2009 at 1:42 pm

Caroline said:
Wow, Mark. This is a tremendous service you are offering! I’m a bit confused though – if we decide to purchase a report, is the niche one that we, personally, choose? Or is that left up to you? And everyone will get the same report, same niche, etc?
Caro
P.S. I bet you are learning alot about golf putters!
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Post Comment #3, 28 July 2009 at 1:45 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Caroline –
Thanks for the nice comment!
In ref to the report – Once ordered, you will have a box to complete, asking what your desired niche market is. You fill in the niche… I take it from there.
The report is sent directly to you, and only you. If during the process of researchng it, I find that its just not a great market to get into, I will let you know, along with lateral suggestions in the same market.
I will also let anyone know if it is a niche I am already in, and send over my own domain for you to view AHEAD of time. (Rare, but it has happened in the past)
Mark
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Post Comment #4, 28 July 2009 at 1:56 pm

Ben said:
Cheers, Mark. Looking forward to getting started with the site. I have a few on the go at the moment but would certainly like to purchase a pack from you, that will make my life a lot easier as I have a few other sites on the go.
Great service!
Ben:)
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Post Comment #5, 28 July 2009 at 2:02 pm

Caroline said:
Thanks for clarifying about the Niche Site Project Report. This will be great for those of us who HATE to do keyword research! When you consider the earning potential a good niche site could possibly have, this is well-worth the cost.
Caro
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Post Comment #6, 28 July 2009 at 2:30 pm

Ottidid said:
Well that is freaking awesome… as always you deliver more to your readers than anyone else.. This service will probably keep you busy(more than usual)…
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Post Comment #7, 28 July 2009 at 8:56 pm

Tao said:
F’ing cool!
Well done.
I was thinking of offering a similar service!
Looks like you beat me to it!
Well done!
Tao.
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Post Comment #8, 29 July 2009 at 6:11 am

Rochelle said:
This is an awesome (and very affordable!) service you are offering. My only concern is that you are going to be overwhelmed with requests for RankSpankers (love the name!).
Rochelle
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Post Comment #9, 29 July 2009 at 6:19 am

Mike said:
Hey Mark
Great service and a good idea. I think you’ll get a lot of takers. I’m not a great fan of this whole review site thing as products date so quickly these days. It would be pretty easy to get to the point where everything you make on a site would have to be reinvested to generate fresh reviews and keep the site current. I tried it a while back and it sucked.
Because only 3 out of 10 niches are likely to be profitable I still prefer to throw up a test site first to see how it makes money in the first couple of months. Only if it does well would I invest in a fully blown content site.
Yeah that was a bit negative but I’m pi**ed at the Microsoft/Yahoo tie up for search today.
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Post Comment #10, 29 July 2009 at 11:05 am

Shawn S said:
Just wanted to drop a note and say thanks for the RankSpanker report. It’s exactly what I was looking for. If anyone is on the fence, Mark’s new service is a no-brainer in my opinion. Just a few days ago, I finished doing the same work on another site and it took me 3 nights working two to three hours each night before going to bed to come up with the same research Mark gave me in his report. The RankSpanker has saved me 6-8 hours of work and I’ll be back for more Mark.
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Post Comment #11, 29 July 2009 at 6:39 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ All –
Thanks for the nice words – Its actually fun for me to do this type of stuff, since it helps with the hardest part… which is determining the market.
I have completed several in the short time its been live, and actually walked several people AWAY from non-profitable markets! (Subject of a tomorrow post)
@ Shawn –
Thanks for the review man! It was fun completing your report… and really shows just how many sub-markets can be found within a single topic!
Mark
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Post Comment #12, 29 July 2009 at 7:16 pm

Rochelle said:
I just put in my order. Can’t wait to see what you come up with in my requested niche!
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Post Comment #13, 29 July 2009 at 7:24 pm

Verlyn said:
Hi Mark,
I just ordered a Spank Ranker for a niche I did some preliminary research on according to the new guide. It looks good but wanted to run it past your expert eye and see if I am processing research correctly. This site along with your other site(that I have been following for a few years) is helping me a lot to get started.
I was just wondering if in my Spank Ranker report is the Terapeak information that you research included? This also would really help to get some kind of idea for possible returns or if the niche is worth putting in some extra effort to get better rankings if needed.
Thank you for all your help…
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Post Comment #14, 29 July 2009 at 9:16 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Verlyn –
Terapeak info is definitely used as a measure of the sites overall worthiness, and I will include brief info on the overall market from the terapeak data as well.
I got your payment and niche market (Great market BTW) information a short bit ago, and will work to complete this for you tomorrow.
Mark
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Post Comment #15, 29 July 2009 at 9:21 pm

Verlyn said:
@Mark – Thanks for the quick reply Mark. From your initial comments it sounds like I picked a winner if I set it up correctly.
I’ll be waiting for your report and am all excited as I know that the new guide and all that it suggests is exactly the way the Internet is developing. We need to get our land claims in now before it is too late. Not to mention the assets we build now will pay off nicely in the future.
Thanks…
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Post Comment #16, 29 July 2009 at 10:03 pm

GMoney said:
I just purchased a report, but it didnt take me to page to enter my niche. Will I get something via email? Thanks!
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Post Comment #17, 30 July 2009 at 10:40 pm

Mark (author) said:
@GMoney Yes, I will send you an email in a moment.
In case anyone else runs into the same thing, on the Paypal checkout page, I have added a text field for sending a message, in which you can include the niche.
I will also confirm via email.
Mark
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Post Comment #18, 31 July 2009 at 8:23 am

Jeff Jones said:
Mark,
You’ve done it again! How the hell do you keep topping yourself?
I’ll be knocking on your door for this stuff. It is easily the part of niche marketing I like the least.
For my first BANS guide site, however, I’ll just bug you to death to help me do the research like I have been. The ingrate that I am-LOL!
Jeff
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Post Comment #19, 31 July 2009 at 1:46 pm

Denis said:
Hi
Just wanted to know if you’d be able to provide that service in a non-English language ? Specifially I’d like to work on a French site, so the research and interesting niche keywords may be different – can you work on that ? Thanks.
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Post Comment #20, 31 July 2009 at 3:10 pm

Terry Tarlton said:
Mark,
This is great stuff if you have 8 to 10 hours a day to dedicate to doing this for a dozen sites or more, but unfortunately I have to hold down a full time job. A lot of this info is hard to understand and changes often. Kind of like the “flavor of the week”. I am not really impressed with the N1WAY 9 step guide. Looks like the same old info re-hashed. I guess the thing would have been to write the guide and THAT would be a Number One Way To Make Money Online then link it to sites like this and pay commission for sales of the guide. Hmmmm…. Anyway it worked with me !! And the “bait and switch” with the price was a classic old school “sales tool”. Most of the time this stuff looks to me like it is a vehicle (the info and access to it) for the writer of sites like yours to make page rank for his site that provides said info, thus making money on commissions, clicks, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s kind of like writing a book about how to make money and the writer makes HIS money by selling the book on how to make money. His advice wouldn’t be “write a book on how to make money”. It has been said on this site and others like it that the writer will not tell “all the secrets” to how to manage these sites and get them to be successful. That stinks and lends itself to questions about the info and the reason it is being provided at all. When I first got involved in BANS by your recommendation in February of 2008 you said I could make some money in 6 to 12 months. So I invested the money and dedicated the time to learning to get the sites up and running, which was like learning a new language.(Sometimes you and others take it for granted that we all know what the acronyms that use in your posts mean). FYI: 12 sites made me $2.75 last month. I want to be able to do this but it seems that you have to have a lot more time than I do to dedicate to this. Unfortunately most of us don’t do this for a living. I am going to try and continue, but it is difficult to get motivated to do something that is such a long shot.
Terry Tarlton
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Post Comment #21, 2 August 2009 at 4:51 pm

Mark (author) said:
Hey Terry – Good to hear from you!
I think just about anyone who does this can understand and relate to the exact frustrations associated with the internet marketing arena for sure, myself included. If you have been following along over on my other site since last year, you already know that alot of the way we built the sites changed last April, when many sites, including yours and several of my own, were dropped from search engines for lack of original content. No search engine traffic = no earnings! So we had to change the way we did it… You have to keep up!
The ONLY secret to success in internet marketing, is being flexible enough to ebb and flow WITH the flavor of the week, not pushing back against it! In all liklihood, something we do today to get ahead, will once again change… and we will have to adapt all over again. It may be 1 month, 6 months or 3 years, but change is the only thing we can be certain of!
All said, you definitely do not need to do this full time when you are starting out! I have a couple local friends here in Charlotte who never used a PC for anything but email, both of them work full time jobs, and spend just 1-2 hours a day on their sites… both are earning well over $2000/mo and if they invested more time, they could easily double or triple that amount! (John – with just 4 niche sites, Otis – with +10 niche sites, you guys are welcome to confirm)
I do agree that the N1WAY guide is really just another way of presenting alot of what you have already heard over and over. But that said, its put together in a way that makes much more sense than others, including the ways I tried to present similar info on my other website. I have actually learned quite alot from it as I have progressed through, but the most important thing… is not in any of the 9 segments, but the included “Treat it like a Business” section at the very end. (linked from the main page)
Heres to your future Success!
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Post Comment #22, 2 August 2009 at 5:33 pm

Randy said:
Hi Mark,
I like the idea of the service you are offering. I think I might try it so I can get off the ground.
I’ve been trying on my own so far and I was wondering. When you find a possible niche, how many searches do you look for in Google?
Sometimes I think I find something but I’m not sure how searches a month my niche should have.
Randy
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Post Comment #23, 2 August 2009 at 7:23 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Randy –
There is TRULY no specific metric I use for the overall niche market, but I pay much more attention to the PRODUCTS themselves.
The “PRODUCT Reviews or Details” are what make your money. So even if a niche market like Mallet Putters (The overall niche above) has only 1900-2000 overall searches, its the products like the “Ping Craz e” with 6000+ searches that build the niche.
I would rather have 100 specific product search visitors, than 1000 overall niche searches any day.
Hope that makes sense…
Dont build the niche based on the overall market – build it based on the demand and products, that make IT a niche!
Mark
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Post Comment #24, 2 August 2009 at 7:35 pm

Randy said:
Hi Mark,
When you do your searches, should you be using exact searches or broad searches?
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Post Comment #25, 2 August 2009 at 9:18 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Randy –
I use broad searches more than anything… it gives the widest combination of the most commonly associated words and phrases used by others. It helps uncover terms and phrases you may never think of.
Exact search on the other hand, is like a direct view into the money, but very limited…
I prefer BROAD when researching. DIRECT EXACT when pinpoint targeting.
Mark
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Post Comment #26, 2 August 2009 at 9:25 pm

Trevor said:
Hi Mark,
I really don’t have a couple of hours per day to spend on BANS or N1WAY and I did think I could learn things as I ploded along, BUT again I’ve found myself in a time consuming trap.
I found a niche with 49,500 searches per month locally here in UK. I bought a close domain name after I had checked the results on Ebay and found approx 200 listed items again in the UK.
When I checked ebay.com there was no where near that number so perhaps the article is listed with a more american style name.
That didn’t bother me too much BUT I’ve since noticed that recently most of the item listed in ebay are for pick up only and I now fear that this may reduced the possible sales of this product drastically.
Can you please advise if this item is likely to be a waste of time because of this?
Thanks
Trevor
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Post Comment #27, 3 August 2009 at 5:28 am

Mark (author) said:
@Trevor –
You actually toushed on some of the things I mentioned in a 5 Reasons to Avoid a market.
To answer your question though… if the buyers have to call, or view the item before buying… they will.
Mark
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Post Comment #28, 3 August 2009 at 8:23 am

Trevor said:
Wow! Mark that was real strange as I had only finished the above message when your 5 reasons to avoid a market turned up in my incoming emails.
Did you send it in response or was it just a coincidence?
My product is not so big as couldn’t be carried by an individual person so I’ll check as many listings as I can to see what percentage is in pick up only. I’m sure this will change on a daily basis and are probably the second user market. New items would probably be shipped directly to a customer.
What would be a bad percentage where pick up only is involved?
I definitely cannot put out the extra terapeak monthly fee so if there’s a free way to check sales that would be great.
Thanks
Trevor
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Post Comment #29, 3 August 2009 at 9:47 am

Mark (author) said:
@Trevor – It was pure coincidence… I wrote it yesterday, it just sends out in email in the mornings.
Terapeak DOES have a free section that offers a bit more limited info. Go to their homepage and scroll to the bottom, for the “Sample Report”
Mark
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Post Comment #30, 3 August 2009 at 10:25 am

Trevor said:
Thanks for your response Mark.
Unfortunately terapeak will not allow me to have a free search in ebay uk. only ebay.com. My item using 3 separate discription names has 178 – 226 – 558 listings in the uk but terapeak advises there are no results in ebay.com
I googled asking for suggestions for american translation and so far I’ve only found one alternative but showing no results.
Can over 500 listing have no sales? Surely not!
Something not quite right. I’ll either find an answer or all this is maybe a warning to steer clear.
Thanks again
Trevor
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Post Comment #31, 4 August 2009 at 6:05 pm

Ottidid said:
@Mark – Like Mark said , I did not know how to do anything on the computer and still do not know as much as I want to know… But my sites do well and I get a good payment each month with some fluctuations.. I work a full time job and work online as much as I can. Sometimes it is hard to get started each day with all the things that I need to do on certain sites. With my focus on all the things it is difficult, I try to focus on a few at a time. That is the only way I can keep up… Thanks for the props Mark…
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Post Comment #32, 5 August 2009 at 7:35 am

rem said:
@Mark – tx for the great explanation!! it completes the N1way guide.
Still a short question:
I understand you are looking at the PRODUCT results and not to the overall niche above. But if the overall niche doesn’t matter could I then skip looking at the direct competition sites for those terms (like: the competition for mallet putters)?
(ps: sorry for my english, I know it is not great)
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Post Comment #33, 25 August 2009 at 5:06 am

Mark (author) said:
@rem –
Rem – The english was fine… “Ranking” in SERP’s for the phrase “Mallet Putters” is going to be a “RESULT” of the rest of the content, not the target.
Look at your ranking window UPSIDE DOWN… with the longer tail phrases and pages being your TARGETS > the shorter phrases, being the RESULT of the those targets being hit.
Go to this post and read my comment, the ninth comment, where it explains the keyword funnel.
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Post Comment #34, 25 August 2009 at 8:03 am

rem said:
@mark – really fast answer, and I think I understand. To test it I just bought one of your rank spank reports. I also was not send to the “enter niche” box. I’ll mail it to you!
rem
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Post Comment #35, 25 August 2009 at 9:37 am

Atomm said:
Mark,
One of the things I don’t see in your research is SEO. In some cases, I’ve found great money makers, but the terms are too broad and SEO is too difficult to make it worth doing.
Do you use any SEO research prior to building a site? Do you have any guidelines on what you look for? or do you just rely on the long tail of the review pages?
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Post Comment #36, 31 August 2009 at 11:47 pm

Rick Blackmon said:
I have had fairly good success in getting Google Rank using the #1way but next to none in getting traffic to the sites even though they rank high. I guess that fits into one of your five reasons to skip a market.
Thus far, I have had very little luck with eBay stores and I am convinced it is niche selection.
I am considering your niche ranking report.
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Post Comment #37, 12 September 2009 at 10:47 am

Rick Blackmon said:
You mentioned Terapeak several times on the forum and in here. I have started using it. Is it just me or am I missing something in that it seems the singular url ie. red widget seems to get more searches than does red widgets? I tried this on about 5 items and it held true everytime.
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Post Comment #38, 12 September 2009 at 1:55 pm

Mark (author) said:
@Rick Blackmon – Good point Rick – but remember that TeraPeak is showing you EXACTLY how things are SOLD. If they are most often sold singular, thats how they are listed.
Cars – for a website
Car – how the item is sold.
When people buy a putter for instance, they are usually just buying 1, thats why the terapeak data returns different results for both ways of searching.
Also – DONT let TP data be confused at all with search data. Two completely separate animals!
Mark
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Post Comment #39, 12 September 2009 at 6:13 pm

CoolGames Guide said:
I wonder how many people have made money using terapeak.
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Post Comment #40, 22 December 2009 at 1:42 am

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Niche Guide Topics

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