Spotting Keyword Trends, and Amazon on Your Desktop

Personally delivered to you by Steve Lindhorst, author of
"Selling on 'the River' and "The Niche Book"

I hope your summer is going well so far. I'm writing with a heavy heart since I learned my fellow blogger, Gary Hendrickson "The Auction Rebel" passed away suddenly last week. Through his blog, Gary inspired me to look for old books and start selling on Amazon, which eventually led to "Selling on 'the River." By extension, many readers of this newsletter owe Gary too. He always made me feel like I could find treasures right here in my hometown, if I just took the time to look. Gary would brave snowstorms to go to the thrift stores, and he was still quite successful on eBay selling collectibles. He will be sorely missed. On to the newsletter...

In This Issue

1. Insight on Using Keywords to Find Your Niche
   
2. Spotting Trends with AdAge
   
3. Get Instant Amazon Updates on Your Desktop
   

1. Insight on Using Keywords to Find Your Niche

Interest in keyword research has grown tremendously over the past few years. Sellers who branched out from eBay found themselves trying to attract traffic to their own websites. Others use pay-per-click advertising, and try to draw attention to their websites with ads from Google, Yahoo, etc. They do this by learning what keywords people use when searching for information. Once they find out what the top keywords are, they can add them to their websites and ads to get more traffic.

The challenge has been to find keywords that the "big guys" haven't already gobbled up. Once a lot of people compete for a keyword, it's harder to capitalize on them. For example, if you try to show up in organic search results for the phrase "make money," you're going to be up against a huge number of bigger, and more well-established websites than your own. Same goes for ads. There are only so many slots for ads on a Google search results page. It can cost a lot to be in the first few slots because you're competing against other people for the same term.

Discovering a niche is important then. Find a word or phrase that hardly anyone else is using, and you should rank well with it. But where do you look? Many people use the Google Keyword Tool. It shows search trends for your keywords over the past month. But guess what? It's not up to date.

Note: I am using the following example to illustrate a point. I am not a cold-hearted jerk encouraging you to make a buck on tragedy. I only found this information, I did not use it for profit.
Whew. Now that that's been said, please continue...

The recent losses of celebrities is a good example of how behind the Google Keyword Tool is. When Billy Mays died last weekend, there were millions of searches for his name. If you look at the keyword tool though - all the searches added together don't add up to even one million. Why not? Because that's LAST month's data. Now go over to Google Insights for Search. It's closer to real-time. There you can see the keywords and phrases almost right away. Type "Billy Mays" there and you'll see all the searches done by fans trying to find out what happened to him. The Google Keyword Tool doesn't even show that he passed away.

Why is this information important to know? Well, when a big event happens, you need to act fast. You can update your ads, your website, blog, or even your eBay listings to reflect that event. Unfortunately, many big events are sad, like a death. But whatever the big event is, if it's unexpected, there is a good chance terms related to that event will be cheap. For example, if you were selling one of the products Billy Mays promoted, you could have received a tremendous amount of traffic (and business) from all the news about him by bidding on terms associated with the story about his passing. In the Google Keyword Tool, there was virtually no one bidding on keywords including "Billy Mays."

Morbid? Yes, I think so. But I'm just using this sad event as a real example. Take this principle and apply it to other events (within your comfort level). The whole thing (and a lot more) is explained in much more detail by Micheal Jones at: www.MultichannelSurfer.com/clickbank. Knowing how all this stuff works together gives you a potential for making a TON of cash.

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2. Spotting Trends with AdAge

For years I've read Advertising Age magazine. As a printer, it was always very interesting to me, and now in the internet age, it's even more compelling. You can read much of it for free, online. Just by digging into the articles a little you can see trends in advertising that will affect what your shoppers do in the near future. You can get a jump on trends, products for the holiday season, and even learn which companies are in trouble.

AdAge and magazines and sites like them give you a glimpse into the future of ad campaigns and promotions. It also tells of problems that can allow you to swoop in and fill a need. For example, today's issue has an article about faulty headlamps in the Toyota Prius. It seems replacing them can cost owners around $1000 - and they are not happy.

If you were in a position to provide owners with a better deal, wouldn't you want to capitalize on that news? Of course. By scanning these sites (I subscribe through my RSS reader) you can get a lot of juicy tidbits early and be ready to pounce on opportunities.  AdAge.com

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3. Get Instant Amazon Updates on Your Desktop

It's a mouthful to say, but I'm talking about the Amazon Services Order Notifier - or ASON for short. It's a free download from Amazon, and before you Mac users get too excited, it's only for Windows users right now.

If you're still with me...when you launch ASON, you'll see a little icon in your system tray. It's always running in the background and checks your Amazon account every so often to see if you have a new order. When new orders are retrieved, you'll get a little pop-up to let you know.  ASON maintains an order history of up to the last 30 days or 5000 orders, whichever is reached first.

ASON also allows you to view the details of each order and print a shipping label and packing slip. The detailed order description includes the buyer's e-mail address and shipping information, the items in the order, and a detailed breakdown of the order charges and fees.

I've even used it to download a CSV file of my orders, convert it to the PayPal Multiorder Shipping Tool, and spit out labels a little faster. In any case, I like the instant notification so I can get shipping underway as soon as possible. Get ASON for free here.
Thanks for reading.

Steve

Tagged as: Amazon, ASON, google insights, Keywords, niche, The Auction Rebel, Trends