As with any type of software, membership site, or subscription, if you don’t have some sort of way to interact with the developers or people involved in creating the site, it’s hard to have your own breakthroughs.

Real breakthroughs occur with LIVE intervention.

If you are stuck doing things by yourself and left to your own devices, frustration is bound to set in.

The reason is, you are limited to the knowledge you have available right now. To expand your knowledge, having someone else with more experience and some successes will allow you to see outside the box.

That’s why the NicheBOT Live Call-in Show was created.

Here’s a sample to understand how critical these shows are to the progress of our clients.

Live Show 76

In Live Show 75, we take a NicheBOT Gold Member through the process of building a Squeeze Page to capture email addresses and build an actual asset for the website and also have a way to automatically follow-up with clients, exposing them to more content, thus raising conversions.

We address the issue of how the client first came to us with an unfocused domain name and a monetization strategy for levering the affiliate travel membership that Mr. James Ken Ryan represents:

Live Show 76 – Part 1

In Live Show 76, Part 1, we follow-up with James Ken Ryan and his task of making sure to create highly effective bullets for his lead capture page that he will implement and drive traffic to his Travel Site: TheVacationKid.com:

Live Show 76, Part 2

A continuation from the video up above, we continue on with helping Ron and Ryan:

You can see what a few individuals have already said…

Hi Jim;

I just concluded my review of your first broadcast which gave me 3 pages of
notes! This was good stuff man and I hope that the next time I can be in
there with you on the next go around.

John Scott - President
Kansas City, MO

Hi,

    Listening to your call now.  Great information.  Thanks for letting us
get this information...I'll be sure to use it.  What I like about your site
(NicheBot) that I only joined within the last couple of weeks is just how
honest the information is.  I'm now working with a company that's helping me
to build my website.  A lot of the information regarding keyword research
and placement is exactly what I've been told from my coach, so I'll be
sticking with you.  Thanks!!

Melvin Phillips

Union, Maine

Thank you for this information.  I was on your conference call and it was
fantastic.  After diving into this field for months, I see, I am still a
neophyte to it. This is helping dramatically put the knowledge I have gained
into more of a perspective.

I look forward to continued articles and webinars.

Sincerely,

William Avon, LUTCF

Rockin' Savings, LLC

Travel Incentives and Fund Raising Programs

Billings, New York

Hi Jim,

First of all, thank you for the fantastic call yesterday!

It was 10 pm for me when the call started (I live in Romania) and then, believe it or not, I immediately downloaded the mp3 and listened to the entire call again.

So I managed to stay awake until 2 am in the morning, and you are the guilty one fore this! … )

On top of that, today I received part 1 of the “Keyword Research is NOT about Keywords!” article.

Excellent. Inspiring. I loved it!

And this is the main reason I’m writing to you right now.

I wanted to record the article for myself so I can listen to it again, and again, and again… so I can really get it!

Jim, what I really liked on the call was the sincere answers that you have given to all the people that submitted questions.

I was impressed that you were not afraid to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll check it out”.

That’s what I call a true expert. Not a boring encyclopedia that thinks he knows everything, but a fellow marketer who walks his talks and is still open to learn along the way.

Thank you Jim! You can bet that I’ll be all ears at the next call! … )

Cristian Ionica

VoiceOverPal.com – voice overs

And sometimes we drift a little bit off the keyword research topic because as I’ve already stated in my 5 (out of 10) Commandments to Keyword Research, keyword research is NOT just about keywords. Listen to what Dante has to say…

A lot of what I got out of today’s call were things that have nothing to do with the tools or service.
I was impacted by your comments on writing the way you speak.

I need to think about that a lot. This may be something for me to seriously consider doing.
It could have a positive impact on how often I produce content. I am more likely to speak than to write.

Dante DeAngelis

Coral Springs, Florida

NicheBOT X users that are signed up for an Gold Keyword Researcher account get access to the Weekly Live Call-in Show to ask any questions surrounding keyword research, how to maximize use of NicheBOT and access to all the databases, the accuracies of the keyword sources and much more.

Oh, but the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper. While the conversation can be isolated to NicheBOT X tools, the few calls covered things like:

1. Landing pages – how to build them and how to maximize conversion
2. Using your keyword phrases in your anchor text and how to do it and where to do it
3. How to optimally optimize a web page and how to make your search engine listing seductive and sexy so visitors click on it
4. How to track your visitors and where they come from (for FREE)
5. The various ways to get inbound links to your site and where to have them point on your website
6. How to maximize your web visitor’s experience from an article or content on the outside and have them flow right onto your site properly
7. How to write like you speak, using your personality to attract repeat visitors and maximize conversions
8. Much more that I can’t even reveal unless you are a NicheBOT user with an Gold Keyword Researcher account

It’s now two years later, closing in on 100 Episodes and our Live Show is featured on iTunes for the convenience of our subscribers.

Yes, you get access to all the archives above, and more, by having an Gold Keyword Researcher account at NicheBOT X and not have to fork out my hourly rate of $500 per hour.

Please feel free to leave your comments below, Re-Tweet this on Twitter and ask any questions you like of the samples before.

If you have already attended a Live Call-in Show. We welcome your thoughts as well.

Best of online success,
.
.
.
.
Jim Morris, President/CEO – FTEI
Founder, NicheBOT X – “Finds exactly what people search for.”

How to Conduct Instant Online Consumer Market Research the Right Way and Find the Best Selling Stuff in Any Market in Real-Time

by Jim Morris

It’s been about a couple of years since I wrote a pretty thorough article on the 5 free powerful ways to conduct successful online consumer market research and finding a product that’s in a niche market to represent.

That article made some serious waves and rounds on the internet and was reprinted thousands of times on exactly how to conduct online consumer market research the right way.

So in the spirit of keeping things fresh, we’re going to do a quick refresher on how to do this the right way.

The type of market research mentioned in the article above can be done for products you wish to represent as an affiliate (someone who works on commission) or whether you are looking to do direct sales from your own ecommerce site or digital publishing site.

But it still amazes the desperation of some SEO folks go through to attract attention to themselves by releasing a free or paid niche finder tool which (in a nutshell) claims that you start with a keyword database search to find a niche market.  (I’ll keep names to myself!) 

Someone please help by find the buzzer ———->  BUZZ!

This is ALL wrong and bass ackwards!

The process is so simple, let’s not confuse it:

1.   Find the hot selling products in your niche market by looking to online authorities that allow you to sort by “Best Selling”

Stop!

Let’s think about this for a moment (the vastness of this).

Companies like Best Buy, eBay, Amazon.com, Dell, Office Depot, Buy.com, Sears, Hewlett Packard, CDW, Sony — the largest retailers (online and offline) have done the research for us.

As you can clearly see that from clicking on the Amazon screenshot example above. the best thing is that some of these companies like Sears and Amazon.com allow their users to sort by “Best Selling” because, after all, they want to appeal to the folks who have to keep up with the latest.

The seriously cool thing is, we as marketers, entrepreneurs and business people have the chance to harness the vast power of tapping these giants’ databases instantly — and without them even charging us. 

Now, all you have to do is pull up one of the larger retailers (or digital publishers like Clickbank) that allow you to sort by “Best Selling,” pick a Department or Category, and refine your search until a Best Selling feature has shown up.  (I have verified the Best Selling feature on Buy.com, Sears.com, BestBuy.com and the ability to see the best selling products on eBay.com).

Hey, listen, if you currently have a site that is on literature and hot selling books, then you’ll want to check Amazon’s best selling for the hottest novels, etc.

If you are much more savvy and want to dig into offline databases to understand what kind of mailing lists there are in your niche or industry, then you can freely search SRDS (Standard Rate and Data Service) or use NextMark Mailing List Finder to search through over 55,000 mailing lists and locate related industry information.

(For instance, if your website sells binoculars, by searching NextMark’s Mailing List Finder, which is like a lite paid version of SRDS, you would immediately understand that both bird watchers are searching for binoculars as well as hunters.  You can also gain a good understanding of how solid, stable and well grounded your industry truly is.  You don’t want to get into an industry that constantly changes like a fad or could be here and gone tomorrow, wasting your precious promotional time.  Make sense?)

The primal concept to finding a good market is one that will serve you year round and not just on a seasonal basis.

2.  Go to a keyword tool and then expand that keyword list once you’ve found the market and the product to represent.

In fact, if you click on the image above, you’ll see that 85% of your keyword research is done for you since the “buying keyword” is the keyword you’ll be aiming to get ranked for (in fact, Tiffany Dow is teaching right now how to build a focused Squidoo lens around these tightly formed buyer keywords).

Look, I’m not even going to ask you to use our keyword suite of tools because you can dig into any keyword database you like.  Just make sure you aren’t limiting yourself to just one database and getting as much coverage NicheBOT has.

If you don’t do as prescribed above and in the article mentioned above, you end up at these keyword tools with a blank stare on your face NOT knowing what to type into the blank field for a keyword search.  Let’s face it, us humans are not as creative as would like ourselves to be.

This is why it is so much easier when you start inside an existing store like Amazon that has just about every product in any niche you can think of.

However, it may be advisable to use a specialist store to search when you may be looking at remote control cars as such (I would isolate my search to a site like hobbyshack.com).

Doing what is so logical above is so easy.  In fact, you’ll be instantly clear on the essence of your keyword research that follows.

When you start the other way around, you have to first go out and confirm that there are even products or services to offer a niche market (making it double the work for you).

There is no doubt that it helps to be inside a lively ecommerce place like Amazon.com to see what’s selling and hot now in a marketplace that interests me.

Fact is, Amazon has just about every single item on the planet.  So…

Now all you need to do is find your passion or at least something that slightly interests you, and it’s off to the races (to build a site or third party hub site).

THE MIS-INFORMATION ABOUT MARKET RESEARCH MUST STOP

It really urks me when I continue to see people serving up misleading information in a desperate attempt to get attention to their keyword tools.   (Aren’t there any better promotional tactics?!)

Back in 2001 – 2004, I remember what it was like to be lost in this sea of endless information, not knowing who to believe or what to believe, until I unraveled it all (after years of discovery).

That lost feeling is one of the big reasons that drove me to become obsessed with keywords and keyword research (and perhaps you should get obsessed too).

I’ve said this for over 3 years now and I’ll continue saying it today — “keyword research does not equate to market research” — and vice versa.

Let’s think about it for a moment.

When a large corporation goes on to conduct some market research for a product they may wish to develop, they go to sales statistics that are basically taken from a particular sector or industry.

The basis of measurement should be true for any entrepreneur, small business or otherwise.

You should be looking to actual online authorities for the particular products you wish to sell.

Here are a few scenarios for you as I’m looking at this huge list of the top 500 retailers:

1.   If  I want to sell consumer electronics (maybe even computers), I’m probably going to head over to Best Buy so I can sort stuff by Best Selling.

Speaking consumer electronics, check out this neat gadget caught over at CES 2010 which @chrispirillo’s team covered:

2.  If you are looking to sell more household items, power tools, etc., then you’ll want to go check out Sears.com and sort by their best selling.

3.  As I stated above, if I want to get into the R/C car/helicopter industry, then I’ll probably want to head over to a specific online retailer like HobbyShack.com that does the most sales in my country (and hopefully they’ll have a way to sort by “best selling”).

4.  If you can’t find specific stores or items in large online retailers, then you may just have to pick up the phone to speak to some personal shops in your city, country and local area that sell the kind of goods you wish to sell.  I’m certain you can find a person or two at a number of sites to offer helpful information about the current trends and tell you what’s selling now.   Without raising any red flags, you may want to avoid talking to managers and rather speak with sales clerks or salespeople.

See, I’m able to pinpoint exactly what I should be focused on selling NOW rather than pulling these ideas out of my head from some random keyword tool just because some a keyword phrase got a LOT of searches.  (Gimme  a break!)

No keyword tool on earth can tell you exactly what people are buying unless you go to some concern that is doing a lot of sales for a specific group of products.

It’s almost not even fair when you conduct market research this way before entering a marketplace.

You will certainly be 10 times more prepared than 99% of the marketplace that is simply hoping to sell some of whatever they have to offer. 

IMPORTANT:  Our mission is to create global awareness for entrepreneurs around the world about how to properly conduct market research by using the power of the retweet.  Please help us reach our personal goal of 500 retweets to bring about the proper awareness by hitting the button above now.  Thank you.

NOTE: This business success article begs to be re-tweeted and passed onward because of the truth in what it takes to succeed at life and in business.  Please do not leave this article without re-tweeting it or paying it forward.  Your friends and colleagues will thank you. 

===========================================

Are you building real, true long lasting business building muscle that will allow you, your website or your company to sustain continued growth well into the future?

In other words, as you are running online websites (businesses), are you truly mastering skills that produce quantifiable results?

Here’s what I mean and, in fact, I’ll give you a very real story to relate this to with an insightful visual.

Earlier this year, I had what I thought was a stiff back that turned out to be a herniated disc at L4/L5.

As if that weren’t bad enough news, my chiropractor who kept telling me this was “all muscular” insisted on cracking me and twisting me until 2-3 weeks after his manipulations caused my right leg to go nearly paralyzed.

After a fine neurosurgeon removed about 75% of the contents of my herniated disc stuck in my spinal column, things felt much better.

Only thing is, just prior to surgery, I was laid up in bed for 10 days straight with the muscles in my right leg going into atrophy (it really is true that if you don’t use something, you lose it!).

After surgery, I began getting the feeling back in my right leg, but I had suffered nerve damage and still couldn’t feel the bottom of my foot.  I was also walking like an 80 year old man because my right calf muscle completely atrophied and you can see how much smaller it is.

Interesting insight:  It’s amazing how you don’t realize the muscles you use on a daily basis, then have one pulled out from the mix and bammo, one day I’m going down Whistler Mountain, the next day I’m a cripple!

Now let me tell you something shocking about the picture above.

That picture is taken on December 30, 2009, 8 months after surgery took place and after only 1/3 through rehab (yeah, that’s right, this will take me at least 18-24 months to recover).

I am not pretty much no longer limping and can half-heartedly run now.   Yippee!

But even still 8 months later, you can see that I have not built up to the original muscle mass, not even close.  And I am taking 3-4 walks with my dogs who have been my savior.

Alright — so I can hear you saying it.

What in God’s name does this have to do with business and building an online presence and getting good at it?

It has everything to do with it.  (I talk about these concepts (mastering things) inside my Private MasterMind Group).

Building muscle in your body is just like building muscle in your daily habits and rituals that make up the results you produce now. (And if you’re not happy with the current results, just change the things you are doing.)

You see, it’s not some amazing keyword tool or software device that is all of a sudden going to make everything happen for you and figure out your specific business, but it’s actually you as the user who pushes the buttons in the right order that will make things happen.

And usually, those “pushing the buttons in the right order” thing to make cash pop out of the computer screen and PayPal account doesn’t usually come included in the Owners Manual (wait – didn’t you read the fine print?!).

But what is the right order of doing things?

That’s the magic that YOU need to figure out.

That takes time just like building back my muscle up above (so slow down, it doesn’t have to happen all at once).

Because see, those amazing tools and software that will supposedly make you rich doesn’t come with a MINDMAP on exactly how the developer of the tool uses it (exactly down to the “T”) to profit.

Without the mindmap of exactly how a successful user uses the tool, you will have to SLOWLY break in, fail and fail miserably and go through trial and incorporate the use of the device, service or software to actually get good at it.  It could well be at the point you think it’s pointless when you have a breakthrough.

Sadly, most do NOT have the stamina to last through the “break in” period and never stand a chance at succeeding (they didn’t tell you that you have to KEEP AT things?).

This is why I laugh at folks who purchase a product or service from one of my many online companies and then ask for a refund the very next day claiming “It doesn’t work!”

You are kidding me — you used it a day and it don’t work?  (Most things can’t be learned in two weeks let alone a day.

For anyone to build true skill at anything, whether it be a video game (I personally still like playing Ms. Pacman on my Tilt Smart Phone), you’ve got to invest at least 100 hours to get good at something and at least 500 hours to get really sharp and master something.

I mean, I hate to make it sound akin to something so barbaric as lifting weights, but you’ve got to do mental weight-lifting exercises and flex your mental skills to get good and master anything (and this is truly scary for some people (the fear of it all).

HINT:  It took me 5.5 years of practice to get good at writing and thoroughly hone the skill to become persuasive enough to create over $3.5 million in revenues and rising.

So now that I’ve preached to you my squawk and holler, allow me to share with you how exactly how I’ve applied my own panacea and built my business muscle in 2009.

In fact, not only did I make sure to get good at the things that I’m going to mention, but I mastered them by putting in the extraordinary amount of time (which most might consider going above and beyond the call of duty).

Perhaps this will spark some course of disciplined action on your part to master one, two, three, or maybe you are really adventurous and want to master four new things in 2010.

Most of the actual in-depth training will be imparted inside my Private MasterMind Site (and there are a few hidden proprietary things I can’t talk about here or Uncle Vinney would have to visit you).

So without further ado and too much extra prose, allow me to share with you what I did in 2009 to build some business muscle (that will be applied in full fashion in 2010).

1.    Webinar Marketing – rather than doing boring tele-seminars on the phone, I took the dip and mastered doing webinars on GotoWebinar and building an actual system around it.  I mastered the training side and the selling side with some webinars doing as much as $20,000 per event (which is also why my rates are $500 per hour).  I believe these webinar events were much more engaging with visual stimulii.  The web is evolving into a multi-media spectacle, and if you don’t start learning, you will be left behind and getting table scraps for profits.  (NOTE:  I took a webinar coaching class in the beginning of 2008 which I spent $1500 on and didn’t apply the stuff over 18 months!  Back to this webinar thing).

2.  Video Creation, Editing and Production – I tried all sorts of devices this year from $900 HD cameras to HD webcams to Flip cameras to Digital Cameras that have You Tube Video ready modes.  T’was a great learning experience.  The one thing I couldn’t figure out was how to put the movies together without having to get into Video Editing.  Well, it figures that I couldn’t avoid it, so I ended up mastering Sony Vegas 9 video editing software and couldn’t be happier with the stuff I’ve produced thus far.  NOTE:  It actually took me about 45 minutes to begin actually using Vegas 9 it’s so friggin easy (I can’t believe I waited two years to take the dip).

3.  Video Podcast Production and Network Distribution – are you beginning to see a theme here?    Yup, I even mastered how to manage video podcast distribution with Blip.tv and how to cross-distribute and syndicate content across multiple networks without having to lift much of a finger.  Right now, I’ve got it down to the point where it won’t be just the Let’s Talk Profits Show, but there will be two other shows launched in the early part of next year, the busy guy I am. 

4.  WordPress and Amember Complete Mastery and Business Model Setup – people are sick and tired of paying the high monthly fees for a “half rate” MemberGate and they don’t want to rely their complete eCommerce solutions on some WordPress plug-in that manages members (a la MemberWishlist).  I have a member inside my Private MasterMind Forum who created the same type of membership plug-in and continuously had idiotic folks using wrong versions of WordPress leading to copious compatibility issues and constantly being behind the development curve, never knowing what WordPress may do in the next update.  Amember and the power plugins that I use allow me to do upsells, funnels, physical shipping via APIs and stuff that most would consider me a digital publishing warehouse and this makes Amember the most robust member management option outside of moving up to a higher level of member management such as InfusionSoft which’ll run you $700 a month or more.

I have personally used Amember since January 2006 and processed over 750,000 membership payments with it.  This year, I mastered integrating Amember and WordPress to make the most unstoppable membership management system that doesn’t rely on the updates of WordPress and whether some security risk could cause a hacker to completely corrupt the WordPress database and thus, the entire customer list (I hate restoring stuff).  2010 will be the year of truly leveraging premium content.

Lesson in this section that I learned a long time ago – Axiom #1 is never build desktop software with all the various crap computers people still have in their houses; and Axoim #2 is never build software that is a plug-in to other software that requires the user to hing their entire customer database or membership management on it.  It’s fine to build plug-ins to enhance performance, but ecommerce is another touchy, finnicky thing to hook in with a content management system.  That is a disaster waiting for something to happen.

I know for certain that Alex, the developer at Amember, is well dug into the project and Amember is well recommended throughout the entire online community (at 1ShoppingCart.com) and having been with the project for over 6 years, I know he has stood the test of time and has the stamina to not abandon the project.  (But who knows, I could be wrong as I have been before.) 

5.  Social Media and Social Networking Distribution – during the beginning of 2010, after hundreds of hours of setup and practice (key word in business building), the light switch on the Full Throttle social networking plan will go on and there will be this gradual build and illumination of light coming from an immensely bright source.  At this point, there are tools on the market that would allow someone with a certain amount of consistent action and content to flood a niche market with so much valuable content and distribute it on such a mass scale, a literal eclipse could take place in that niche market.  But like I said before, tools are only an ends to a mean and only there to make you more efficient.  If you don’t train yourself or find out how the owner uses it most effectively, then you’ll never master it.

None of these strategies or skills were built overnight.

As I have illustrated for you in the physical world, real muscle takes time to build.

That ripped left calf (pictured above) has taken 39 years of solid time to build up.

Who knows how long it will take for me to build my right calf up to the size the left one is at.

But what I do know is that I must continue to take action daily and keep building that muscle with frequent repetition and practice and resistance (and never give up – key element).

The same must continue to happen with the mind.

The moment I give up, the moment my muscle starts to degrade (both in my mind and in my body).

Flex your mind by doing tasks in your business daily.  And if you have trouble reminding yourself, just have Outlook or Google Calendar remind you by email.

You have NO excuse!

It’s simple…

If you are not doing things like website promotion, video marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, whatever it may be, you are not creating muscle.   The muscle between your ears is dying and I’m quite certain you don’t want that. 

It’s time to get out of the training mode and get into the doing mode and start getting some feedback on new found skills you are yet to discover.

It’s like I tell my clients who pay me big money, you have to condition yourself like an athlete that conditions himself/herself daily for four years until the Olympics arrive.  If you are not conditioning yourself everyday to be ready for that moment when “opportunity knocks,” with the right set of skills, having mastered them, then you, my friend, will be SOL.

I hope this web post not only sparks a little action on your part, but also knocks you back on your feet about what you may be doing hopping like a fish off the deck back into the big blue sea.

Remember to pay it forward and retweet this above, pay if forward and continue forward, keep on progressing without any echoes of giving up. 

Your partner in profits,

.

.

Jim Morris, President/CEO – FTEI

NicheBOT.com – “Finds exactly what people search for”

.

P.S.  You’re still reading? Okay — so here’s a usual scenario. Many people get a keyword tool (names don’t matter here).

The marketer did his job to sell the software to the end because the marketer and all his testimonials are using the tool to such greatness and with incredible results.

So the business owner (you) think to yourself.  Wow, the tool is just so great that I will just go out and do all my work and  I literally don’t have to think.

The user then digs in without even reading an iota or a shred of material and begins using the tool — because, after all, it’s the bomb tool that does everything as the “Swiss Army Knife.”

But there’s nothing that explains the “psychology of the how and why and how to print money with it.”

After days of use and mass confusion, the end user gives up because he/she can’t figure out what he’s/she’s doing despire what the marketer and all other marketing whores have said.

What’s missing?

Learning the same skills as the developer to achieve mastery of the tool.

Now it’s just a matter of choosing which tool you want to master. 

Happy Holidays from NicheBOT.com and the Morrises…

Now that’s not some bad dancing after having back surgery on a herniated disc that nearly paralyzed me.

This year has brought challenges for many people including myself, and the entire world economy has been a stinger to many.

I am constantly sending out immense beams of clearly great visions and outcomes to the universe (similar to prayer) for the economy to bounce back in 2010 (which is about all I can do besides educate you).

I am personally on a mission to help as many folks as possible to gain their own upper edge in their marketplace and help get more traffic and more profits.

In nearly 4 years, I don’t think I’ve ever closed down the office for two straight weeks, but it’s happening today.

I’m letting everyone go to have an awesome rest of the year while Jim retreats to the laboratory to finish up some projects (and prepare for NicheBOT’s 4th evolution).

In fact, there hasn’t been a major redesign to NicheBOT since it started well over 5 years ago.  That is all about to change, let alone some incredible upgrades under the hood.

From December 21, 2009 through January 4, 2010, up until 9:00 a.m., support will be limited and most everyone will be gone but for a few devoted souls that will make sure to give support to our loyal users.

And with the holiday season upon us, me and the rest of the Morris coon would like to share a dance for you (above).

We wish you a happy holiday and a prosperous new year.

From the entire Morris family and the NicheBOT Team, Scott Paton, Adrienne DeVita, Alexander Zaychuk, Cherisse Blanchard, Keith Gramcko, Lynne Morris, Mary Foster, John Gibbons, Oleksandr Krulik, Andriy Kud,  Vitaliy Kozelko, Anatoliy Lapiy and Volodymyr Tymchuk.

P.P.S Here are some snapshots of James Cameron’s avatar that I saw last night with the family. What an awesome movie!

It wasn’t too long ago on September 28, 2009, that Google took Google Hot Trends down to 40.

That was what — 3 months ago?

Apparently that cut wasn’t enough because they made another one.

Just today, December 21, 2009, I just noticed…that the results are now down to 20 — so it looks like they are now mirroring the likes of Yahoo with their skimmed down skimpy version of hot keyword trends.

It appears the Big G cut down the results to 40 due to a new format of using the top the hot trends grids in Google.com search results.  So if someone happens to search for one of the top 100 most searched terms, you will see a hot trends grid right within the results.  They could have just as easily kept the top 100 AND include a grid within the results.  Of course, they really didn’t really make it clear WHY they cut down the trends from 100 to 40, but that’s usual G fashion.

All this is great for the visitor (although I don’t think visitors were looking at the top 100 trends like us webmasters), but why does the visitor care about search trends on the topic?

Do you care?

I mean, other than the social proof of the topic being SO HOT, the visitors will continue searching some type of search engine and will hopefully continue to look to Google for those results.  To answer why the visitors may  care, I’ll defer to this article by Danny Sullivan who explains how people definitely want to see real time information, especially for Twitter, so this is now Google’s way of responding.

But it doesn’t look good for Google and real-time Tweeted results as Danny Sullivan lays into Google’s real-timeness as of yesterday (and Danny got scathing tweets about his use of Brittany Murphy’s death as an example of Google’s supposed real time results).

I think these limited results are a great way of not allowing us webmasters to see the additional data. 

Without the depth, I am now definitely going to have look at each and every hourly Google Hot Trends report I get from our Live Trends service.  Click screenshot below for full view:

(Note:  The LITE version of this service comes complementary with an active NicheBOT account, but the PRO version with the up and down movement, plus hourly archives going back to November 2007 + hour email alerts is a supplemental subscription.)

By looking at each hourly report throughout the day, I now know when those short term spike terms come on the radar (which also leave just as fast) and I can continue to capitalize on them.

What’s nice is that I can always go back and look at the archives of Hot Trends on NicheBOT all the way back to November 2007.

What’s really nice is getting all the Google Hot Trends reports by Gmail because I now have an archived searchable database of emails going back a year that is also INSTANT research. 

I’m still miffed that Google demolished over 3/4 of the list.

What are your thoughts on this recent meat clever to Hot Trends being chopped down by 80%?

Pipe in down below.

Your partner in profits,

Jim Morris, President/CEO – FTEI

Founder – NicheBOT X Keyword Suite

.

.

P.S.    The Google Hot Trends is only one aspect to NicheBOT’s Live Trends service as the service integrates Yahoo’s Movers and SHakers, eBay Hot searches together with TV Shows from authorities that go straight to their show schedule to capitalize on Oprah trends, and a News tab to instantly give you access to the most popular news searches all within one tabbed and organized screen.

We also include the number of competing pages at an instant glance so you know how easy it is to rank for the given word within hours (by using blogs and social bookmarking and pinging).

Then we give the WordTracker count for a keyword so you know whether you should do some backlinks for long term positioning and reaping traffic beyond the 24-72 hour spike in searches.

The actions column provides links Google’s Hotness Graph to see a visual and the large detailed page through the Hotness Detail.

This is by no means some sales pitch for the service, but just to show you what other aspects of trends you should have in your bookmarks to cover if you can’t afford the service itself.

Just a quick note to let you know that FTC Rules are now in effect.

(In fact, just in today’s email, I’ve seen an abundance of violations that people are making already the DAY OF — are you making them too?)

This is serious — and I’m not trying to alarm you because I have something for sale because I don’t.

All sales are off (and were on Sunday at midnight).  But…

The FTC thing is SO serious, I am watching Internet Marketing gurus retire products in the last month just because they do NOT want the heat.

The FTC is the NEW internet police.

Forget Interpol (which is for serious hackers and counterfeiters), the FTC will take out the average entrepreneurial site, the blogger who is gaining too much clout or the guru that is flying too high in the atmosphere.

I received notice from one marketer who is exiting selling info products for selling services.

Talk about a PARADIGM shift.

While this note may be quick, you should take this incredibly serious.

The internet in the United States (and soon in coming nations) is no longer just the Wild Wild West.  It will soon be heavily  regulated within the next 5 years by the government — guaranteed.

Those who have their shop setup right — their businesses aligned properly and strategies configured from the getgo with the new profiteers from this FTC re-alignment.

One lawsuit from the FTC could paralyze your organization if your site does not comply.

Not too many can hire a defense attorney to represent them and drop a $5,000 retainer and continuous monthly payments to defend against an FTC complaint.

The fact is — you simply don’t even want to get a notice — plain and simple.

Simple rule of thumb would be that if you are in doubt about a disclosure of ANY kind as to an affiliate relationship, disclose the relationship.

I’ll share with you how to dampen the effect in just a second.

The rules affect TWO major things:

1.  Testimonials

On your site or your affiliate site should state right below any claims of what kiind of results the average user should receive.

Do NOT use a testimonial from a vendor unless you know the average user results — OR just grab a testimonial that simply states an EXPERIENCE about the product — not a result.

It must be CLEARLY spelled out what the average user should expect to receive ONLY if the testimonial is a results oriented statement.

2.  Blogger Reviews – Freebies – Affiliate Relationships

When in doubt, I already said it above (and I do repeat things purposely so YOU remember it) — disclose that relationship.

Dampen the effect by offering a bonus to offset the disclosure part.

It’s SO easy — and instead of the disclosure, your bonus becomes the highlight.

I am discussing this in more detail in side the NicheRockets.com Private Mastermind where I am disclosing a bunch of examples I’ve already received on HOW to creatively deal with this situation (beyond just the FTC webinar we had about a month ago on how to creatively deal with the situation).

I’ll be revealing certain LANGUAGE to use (one because I’m a wordsmith when it comes to legal terminology having been a
paralegal/law office manager for 18 years of my life).

Your privacy policy, terms of service and income disclaimer should be up, including one thing I see people missing all
the time, which is the Disclosure of Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA for short).

Any blog reviews that have a recommendation, you should disclose any freebies.

Any emails that go out with affiliate recommendation should have disclosures on them — you will be seeing this with me so you can follow by example if you wish.

That’s all for now — this is simply a Public Service Announcement

Now make sure you are in compliance.

Your partner in KEEPING YOUR PROFITS,

Jim Morris, President/CEO – FTEI
Founder – NicheBOT.com, NicheRockets.com, LetsTalkProfits.com

P.S.  Please leave your comments and thoughts about this situation and feel free to retweet this post

In doubt about the effectiveness of your content before (or after) setting your web page live?

Apply the Puppy Treat Test. 

You think I’m kidding?!

Sure, I’ll be the first to tell you that doing in-depth, exhaustive keyword research is the first step in the right direction to ultimately getting what you want.

No matter how powerful your keyword list supposedly is or how profitable someone says a set of keywords is, if your content is lame, don’t be too disappointed if you don’t make a dime no matter how much website traffic gets thrown at your site, er the web pages.

So it’s the actual content on your web page(s) that truly has a considerable bearing on your site’s profitability.

And really, that’s only partly true.

If you do any sort of online advertising or have search engine rankings on Google, it’s the actual content in your advertisement or search engine listing that will get the web surfer to click over to your site or not.  (Read that again and make sure you understand it).

After a visitor clicks over from an ad, like a Google Adwords ad, or a search engine listing, the content on that specific web page has to take over and develop a connection (rapport) with the web surfer; especially, if you stand any chance for the visitor to follow your recommendations.

Remember — your visitor is fickle and ready to jump ship at any time if your content can’t stand up to the muster and give that visitor what he/she wants.

So how do you know whether the content on your web pages can even stand a chance to convert as many visitors as possible?

I would highly recommend you apply the Puppy Treat Test.

I just love it when things like this appear in my life that can easily relate to internet marketing and converting a web visitor into a profitable action.

Quite often, things like writing and publishing content on the net can be a complex subject to talk about with people across  varying skill levels.

Well, it was not too long ago that I attended puppy class with my first dog (as an adult).  Her name is Juno (pictured below)

Part of the training process involved using puppy treats to get the desired response from your dog.

In much the same way, humans go online to find best buys or solutions to their nagging issues or problems while us website owners are waiving around our content (puppy treats) in hopes that it smells good and will prompt a good reaction from the visitor (a profitable click or a sale).

But if the puppy treat aka your website content doesn’t smell right to your visitors, you won’t get a bite!

After months of using puppy treats to train Juno, I noticed that certain treats gave Juno a more intense reaction (and boy, you might say that I sure had her attention as well). 

In other words, one treat would prompt Juno to sit down and be somewhat casually waiting for the next command to get the treat.  Okay, not an overwhelming reaction, but it got the desired response.

But when I used a certain chewy treat that she really enjoyed, she would sit anxiously wagging her tail while she beginning to salivate on the floor.  Juno looked as if she had enough spunk to go to the edge of the earth for me.

I was like — “Woah –that is a powerful treat there!”    And I kindly noted that in the mental notes section. 

Ultimately, it is this anxious state that induces salivating in dogs that we want to get our website visitors in.

I sure hope you get the picture here. 

So how do you apply the puppy treat test to each of your individual web pages?

Simple.

After having read the web page you are wanting to apply the Puppy Treat Test, ask yourself the following two questions about the content in question:

1. If I am the visitor and I was in search of whatever my website is offering, selling or otherwise, would this particular web page with its content get me extremely excited to the point that if it were a puppy treat, I would be salivating with anticipation and willing to do just about anything for it?
2. If I am the visitor and I found the content I just reviewed, would I have to be insanely nuts to pass up taking further action by either bookmarking, clicking a link to find out more info, calling a number, subscribing to a newsletter or ordering that item?

If you can honestly answer an astounding yes to both questions, then your content passes the puppy treat test and you are definitely going to make the mouths of those visitors wet with anticipation.

Having a couple of other people reviewing your content would also help to assess the situation further to get you feedback.

If you feel your content does not pass the PTT, then I would highly suggest you consider using testimonials, proof elements such as screenshots that prove your points, and even re-writing the content and really putting yourself into it.

I can wholeheartedly say that speaking academically on a web page will definitely lose out to a page that has your personality and your heart in it.  People can tell when there is a real person behind the web page.

I also know this from personal experience of writing long copy salesletters that closed between 8% to 12% to certain targeted audiences.

In fact, I wrote a 50 page article you can find on Google called “Write like you speak, not as you think.”  Type that into Google and you’ll find the article that talks about how I broke the proper English habits. 

I never said that you can’t go and publish just “good” content on the internet.  Just don’t expect “great” results is all I’m saying.

That’s it — now if you really and truly care about the guts and glory of your web business and want to enhance how many MORE people take action at your site, please apply the Puppy Treat Test to your content. 

I think you will thank me in the end.

Let me know how this article has given you any extra insight into how you construct your web pages.

Best of success,

Jim Morris, Founder

NicheBOT – “Finds exactly what people search for”

P.S.  Be on the lookout for an email about a NEW WAY to leverage your content on a huge marketplace that is completely undiscovered and untapped.  And if you don’t get an email, just email us at contactus  (at)  nichebot.com and we’ll you the information so you get in at the VERY beginning.

PR: wait…  I: wait…  L: wait…  LD: wait…  I: wait… wait…  Rank: wait…  Traffic: wait…  Price: wait…  C: wait…

]]> http://www.nichebot.com/blog/422/puppy-treat-content-2/feed/ 15 http://www.nichebot.com/blog/385/googlish/ http://www.nichebot.com/blog/385/googlish/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:30:05 +0000 Keyword Research Expert Jim Morris http://www.nichebot.com/blog/385/googlish/

There’s a reason I’ve silenced myself about this Web 2.0 hype.

While mainstream experts from the SEO and internet marketing arena continue to plot together and decide which way to pull the herd (you and I included), I’ve stayed solid on the same principles since May 2004 when NicheBOT began.

Get links to your site.

Wait, I may have overcomplicated that.

Let me say that again, but simpler.

Get links…  get links… get links… get links.

If you are lucky enough to arrange an hour of powerful consulting with me on the phone and ask… “What exactly should I be doing to promote my website full force?”

Sure, we’ll come up with a surefire battle plan during the power hour, but ultimately it boils down to one thing.

Once you get powerful content up on your site, if you have NO money to test and send traffic via Google Adwords, you better start working on getting inbound links to your site with your preferred keyword phrases used in the hyperlink.

Warning:  This could also mean that you may have to pick up the phone to build relationships with other related sites in your industry to get content swaps and such.

Here’s a bright, shining example.

The following Google Ranking Experiment one of my colleagues informed me about proves what I’ve been saying for years while all these marketing whores continue to pimp the latest and hottest thing.

Click here to read the Google Ranking Experiment.

Yeah, if you read that experiment, this wasn’t some floozy one month test by some internet marketer high on crack, it was done by a real business man over the course of a year with no intent on selling you an ebook.

And see, I’m going to explain what happens when you get led around by the folks pimping the latest and greatest way to get 100,000 followers on Twitter.

While I believe that people can teach you how to get a lot of followers on Twitter, I believe it is incredibly impossible to teach ONE universal method of how to actually monetize Twitter traffic across every single niche market.

Fact is, there is not one method that works across every niche market or industry to profit from any social media outlet.  You have to find your own following.

Like many things, the methods used should depend on the market and the target depending on the niche, I may do a press release for one type site while I wouldn’t waste my breath on a site in a different niche market.

Here’s my biggest problem with all this Web 2.0 social media stuff…

While you are trying to get traction in your online business, you also get distracted by trying to learn this hot trendy stuff.

In the meanwhile, as 6 months stroll on by and you are just getting used to the latest and greatest new community hot spot, a new property rises up and is supposedly way better than anything else out there

Now you’ve got a new place to go master, all while you should have been getting inbound links to your site. 

If you’ve mastered the inbound linking thing, then as the experiment above shows, you should be well off with traffic and, with your extra time, go ahead and dip into the Twitter or any other web 2.0 thing.

But the key point is to not get distracted from mastering getting inbound links as it’s been something that has worked for years and I believe will continue working.

After reading that experiment (case study), I sense and smell the comeback of reciprocal linking.

I’d love to hear your thoughts below, even if they are controversial. 

Yours,

Jim Morris, President/CEO/Founder

NicheBOT – “Finds exactly what people search for” an FTEI company

PR: wait…  I: wait…  L: wait…  LD: wait…  I: wait… wait…  Rank: wait…  Traffic: wait…  Price: wait…  C: wait…

]]> http://www.nichebot.com/blog/385/googlish/feed/ 36 http://www.nichebot.com/blog/351/semrush-deal/ http://www.nichebot.com/blog/351/semrush-deal/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:04:27 +0000 Keyword Research Expert Jim Morris http://www.nichebot.com/blog/351/semrush-deal/

March 11, 2009 – Oceanside, California -  having tested NicheBOT’s most recent integration with its members over the past few weeks and announced here on February 5, 2009, we are glad to announce the public release of SEMrush Total Espionage (beta) that is powered by SEMrush.com’s data.

This tool now replaces SEO Espionage that only returned organic results from SEO Digger (the earlier version of SEMrush).With this new tool, NicheBOT members will have the ability to uncover their competitors keywords they are bidding on over at Google Adwords.

While some services like Spyfu, Compete and KeyCompete offer the same data, they do not provide the dual-edged sword by also making available access to the keyword phrases a competitor may rank for in Google.com’s organic index.  We say… “Why not have ALL the data at your disposal?!”

NicheBOT’s Top Ace Romanian Coding Team used the latest AJAX technology which simply means that the page processes data without having to refresh or reload.Because we know how sketchy some providers can be with their data year in – year out, we made sure to arrange a long-term deal with SEM Rush until August 2011 and we thank SEMrush’s CEO Michael Goldfinch for extending us the courtesy.

All of us at NicheBOT look forward to a very harmonious and long lasting relationship with SEM Rush and believe they will take pride in the integrity of their data.I’ll demonstrate exactly how this tool works in the video below…

There was also a discussion about this tool on the 40th Live Show at NicheBOT here:

http://www.xiosoftpresenter.com/?eventid=6559338

Try NicheBOT out for only $1 by visiting the main page here

March 11, 2009 — Oceanside, California — always on the cutting edge in the keyword research sector, NicheBOT is proud to announce the release of NYT Article Search X which simultaneously announces its new partnership with the New York Times.

Over the past few weeks, NicheBOT has tested the new article search API which was released just over a month to go to the public (as announced here).

We are proud to announce that after rigorous testing by thousands of users, the first tool is ready for public consumption.

NicheBOT members will be able to instantly search across 2.8 million that date back to 1981.  This is truly the first credible and reliable source of articles that can be used for a variety of research reasons, such as:

1.  Easily brainstorm new content to erect on your website by simply typing in a keyword phrase, choosing a date range and how youwish to have the results sorted;

2.   Utilize the result to come up with your own unique and new articles to submit to ezinearticles.com and other article directories (I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to read and dictate 500 – 600 word articles in about 12 minutes — no joke)

3.   Find a new angle for a press release to enter and penetrate the market or reinvigorate interest by creating news (many times news events are created and, thus, gives the news something to report).

4.  Uncover past events and match spikes in Google Trends for a given keyword with articlesin the New York Times

5.  Since the New York Times is a worldwide authoritative figure on reporting news with world-class writers, you can use your article research to cite to authoritative articles in the database.

There now should be no more wondering what kind of articles or content to write about or submit

Here is a video that shows exactly how the tool works:

There was also a discussion about this tool on the 40th Live Show at NicheBOT:

http://www.xiosoftpresenter.com/?eventid=6559338

Try NicheBOT out for only $1 by visiting the main page here