ience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking fo

At its most basic level, an internet marketing business is no different from any other business. You really only need three things to be successful: a product, customers, and a way to market your products to your customers. Of course, these components are a little different on the internet than they are in your community.

This article, Part 2 of 3 in the series, focuses on the second component of your internet marketing business: The Customer.

If you’ve chosen to follow the advice offered in the first article in this series, you’ve decided to become an affiliate promoting and selling other people’s digital information products. In that article, you learned that the details of the products you choose to market will depend on the desires and preferences of your customer.

In this article, we’ll explore ways to find the right kinds of customers and how to select products that will most appeal to them.

Choosing a Niche
Your next step in building your internet marketing business is to choose a niche. You’re going to hear the word “niche” a lot—indeed, this form of internet marketing is often referred to as “niche marketing.” So what is a niche?

The simple answer is that the internet is really big. There is a lot of information available, a lot of different products, and a lot of different people with very different interests. You simply can’t reach them all, and if you try, you’re not going to reach any of them.

You have to choose a very narrow group of people with very narrow shared interests. You’ll build your business by selling carefully tailored products to those specific people, and by repeating this simple formula over and over again. This is your niche.

You want a niche that’s narrow enough for you to really master, a niche narrow enough for you to dominate. You want to be the undisputed king or queen of your chosen niche.

So what’s a good niche? Is “fishermen” (fisherpeople? anglers?) a good niche? No—way too broad. It lumps in commercial fishermen, ice fishermen, deep-sea fishermen, fly fishermen, and hundreds of other related activities. Okay, how about fly fishermen? Closer, but probably still too broad. Try to narrow it down even further, perhaps by geography.

For example, you might choose “Minnesota fly fishermen” as your niche. This niche might include anglers living in Minnesota, as well as fishermen living elsewhere who are interested in Minnesota fly fishing.

Keyword Research
The best way to choose a niche is to brainstorm several ideas and then test them. The best way to test your niche ideas is by doing keyword research. There are lots of different ways you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money on keyword research, but I’ll suggest a basic approach that you can use free.

The bottom line in niche marketing is that you want to find a large audience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking for

will depend on the desires and preferences of your customer.

In this article, we’ll explore ways to find the right kinds of customers and how to select products that will most appeal to them.

Choosing a Niche
Your next step in building your internet marketing business is to choose a niche. You’re going to hear the word “niche” a lot—indeed, this form of internet marketing is often referred to as “niche marketing.” So what is a niche?

The simple answer is that the internet is really big. There is a lot of information available, a lot of different products, and a lot of different people with very different interests. You simply can’t reach them all, and if you try, you’re not going to reach any of them.

You have to choose a very narrow group of people with very narrow shared interests. You’ll build your business by selling carefully tailored products to those specific people, and by repeating this simple formula over and over again. This is your niche.

You want a niche that’s narrow enough for you to really master, a niche narrow enough for you to dominate. You want to be the undisputed king or queen of your chosen niche.

So what’s a good niche? Is “fishermen” (fisherpeople? anglers?) a good niche? No—way too broad. It lumps in commercial fishermen, ice fishermen, deep-sea fishermen, fly fishermen, and hundreds of other related activities. Okay, how about fly fishermen? Closer, but probably still too broad. Try to narrow it down even further, perhaps by geography.

For example, you might choose “Minnesota fly fishermen” as your niche. This niche might include anglers living in Minnesota, as well as fishermen living elsewhere who are interested in Minnesota fly fishing.

Keyword Research
The best way to choose a niche is to brainstorm several ideas and then test them. The best way to test your niche ideas is by doing keyword research. There are lots of different ways you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money on keyword research, but I’ll suggest a basic approach that you can use free.

The bottom line in niche marketing is that you want to find a large audience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking fo

to reach any of them.

You have to choose a very narrow group of people with very narrow shared interests. You’ll build your business by selling carefully tailored products to those specific people, and by repeating this simple formula over and over again. This is your niche.

You want a niche that’s narrow enough for you to really master, a niche narrow enough for you to dominate. You want to be the undisputed king or queen of your chosen niche.

So what’s a good niche? Is “fishermen” (fisherpeople? anglers?) a good niche? No—way too broad. It lumps in commercial fishermen, ice fishermen, deep-sea fishermen, fly fishermen, and hundreds of other related activities. Okay, how about fly fishermen? Closer, but probably still too broad. Try to narrow it down even further, perhaps by geography.

For example, you might choose “Minnesota fly fishermen” as your niche. This niche might include anglers living in Minnesota, as well as fishermen living elsewhere who are interested in Minnesota fly fishing.

Keyword Research
The best way to choose a niche is to brainstorm several ideas and then test them. The best way to test your niche ideas is by doing keyword research. There are lots of different ways you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money on keyword research, but I’ll suggest a basic approach that you can use free.

The bottom line in niche marketing is that you want to find a large audience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking fo

t probably still too broad. Try to narrow it down even further, perhaps by geography.

For example, you might choose “Minnesota fly fishermen” as your niche. This niche might include anglers living in Minnesota, as well as fishermen living elsewhere who are interested in Minnesota fly fishing.

Keyword Research
The best way to choose a niche is to brainstorm several ideas and then test them. The best way to test your niche ideas is by doing keyword research. There are lots of different ways you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money on keyword research, but I’ll suggest a basic approach that you can use free.

The bottom line in niche marketing is that you want to find a large audience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking fo

ience of potential customers with a very specific interest. And you’d like to have little or no competition for the attention (and credit cards) of these potential customers.

The way to figure out who they are is by following the tracks they leave with online search engines. And the way to follow these tracks is by doing keyword research.

One convenient and free tool you can use is the Overture keyword search tool by Pixelfast (http://www.pixelfast.com/overture). Overture is the search engine used by Yahoo! While its market share is much smaller than Google’s, this tool will work just fine for your keyword research.

You’re looking for keywords that lots of people are searching for but that aren’t turning up many search results. In other words, you want popular niches with little competition. The Pixelfast tool will help you with the first part of this equation.

Simply choose a keyword and type it into the field in the upper left-hand corner of the page. The tool will count how many searches were done for this keyword on Overture in the last month, as well as related keywords. You want to find very specific keywords with many thousands of searches.

Once you’ve got some promising candidates, Google them. If your keywords come up with more than 5,000 search results, cross them off your list. Too much competition: Chances are, your niche audience is already finding the products and information they want.

Repeat this process until you find those very specific keywords with a lot of searches and very few search results. If you can find a group of related keywords that pass both of these tests, you’ve found a promising niche!

Now you know who your customer is. Go back to the ClickBank marketplace (see Part 1 of this series) and choose five products that will appeal to this niche. The final step is figuring out how to market these products to those potential customers. That’s the subject of the final article in this three part series—Internet Marketing Success: 3 Basic Components (Part 3: Marketing).