In Depth Analysis of a Successful Niche Product

By Gary Huynh
Posted Sunday, September 12, 2004

The product is about teaching your parrot how to talk. Now THAT is a niche! (http://www.yourparrotwilltalk.com)

There are a few niche information products targeting pet owners. Creating a product for pet owners is a very sound idea. People love their pets more than anything else they own.

Frank Kern created a product for parrot owners that is making him $20,000 a year on autopilot. A search for "parrots" in the Overture inventory tool at (http://inventory.overture.com) returned 88,000 results. That means 88,000 people searched for that term in February 2004.

Let's see how Frank is making money on autopilot with his product. By typing "parrots" without the quotes into Google's search box, I see that on the right side of the results page, Frank's parrot site is listed in the number one position.

It's very likely that Frank pays only the minimum of five cents per click with his Adwords campaign because there are only three other ads on that page. Let's say that Frank gets two percent of people who search for "parrots" to click on his ad.

He probably gets more than that since it's a very good ad. The wording of the ad hasn't changed for weeks so it must work, I've checked.

At two percent click through rate (ctr) that means 1,760 people visit his parrot site. If just five percent of people order Frank's product at $37.77, he's making $2898.72 per month. That's really an exact figure and I'll show you how I came up with it.

Frank uses Clickbank as his payment processor. They charge $1 + 7.5% for each transaction, that means out of $37.77, Frank gets $33.94.

Five percent of people ordered so that's 88 orders. 88 x $33.94 = $2986.72 Subtract the cost of pay per click advertising of $88 and that leaves Frank $2898.72 for the month. Multiply that by 12 months and Frank makes $34,784.64 a year. That's a nice income from a one page website using one source of advertising don't you think? Frank could spend an hour a week to monitor his Google ads and that's all the work he has to do for his site.

Frank could probably double his income by making a few changes to his business. Since he doesn't run an affiliate program, he could switch his payment processor to one that takes a lower percentage of his earnings.

Frank could also raise his prices. If he studies his market of parrot owners he'll probably figure out how much they spend on their parrots. Parrots aren't cheap pets. Also, pet owners WILL spend a lot of money on their pets. People send their dogs to obedience school, grooming services, and buy them all sorts of pricey things.

All Frank has to do is send his list of customers a survey asking them how much the information that they bought is worth to them. He could raise his price for the product or create a version 2 and sell more to his existing customers. He could also sell parrot supplies to his existing customers.

Another thing Frank could do is have a subscription box on his site to capture emails and then build credibility with visitors who don't buy on the first visit, and in the case study above, that's 95% of people!

Having listened to Frank talk on a bunch of internet marketing teleseminars I know that his aim is not to fiddle around too much with any one site. His method is called the "Underachiever Method". His aim is to create 50 sites that generate money such as the parrot site. What a good idea. 50 streams of income that run on autopilot.

That got me to think. If he can create 50 sites like that, for me to create just one site is good enough. I started to research my own niches. I asked myself what other pets could people be interested in that would create that kind of income?

I searched for the following terms and found how many people searched for those terms.

Rabbits - 139,995 Humming Birds - 110,692 Ferrets - 76,820 Tropical Fish - 155,579 Hunting Dog - 30,725

Woh! Excellent potential - bling bling. I searched on Google and didn't find anyone selling information products on rabbits or hunting dogs. I did find one on ferrets and tropical fish. That shouldn't stop me from creating a product on ferrets and tropical fish. There's always room for improvement or joint ventures.

I looked at "hunting dog" more closely and saw that some related keywords are:

"rabbit hunting dog" "hog hunting dog" "squirrel hunting dog" "deer hunting dog" and a lot more.

There are so many niches yet untapped it's unbelievable. I think I'm going to create an information product for hunters and use all those little niches for the chapters. I don't mind revealing all this to you because I've got a bag full of niches that I've researched.

One method I use to find niches is to type in just a single keyword into the Overture tool and look at all the related keyword phrases. Those related keyword phrases are your niche markets.

If you're going to create a niche product, set up a Google campaign to survey the market to see the potential success. Once you're certain it's going to be successful, go to a bookstore like Barnes and Noble and look up a book or magazine about your niche. If there isn't a book about your niche then you really should look for another niche.

Look through the book to see what kind of content it contains. Now go to a freelance site such at (http://www.elance.com) and hire freelancers to write your ebook for you.

Then set up a one page website, hook it up to a payment processor such as Clickbank and then send some traffic to the site. This should take you no more than a month working part-time or two weeks working full-time.

Good luck!

About the Author
Gary Huynh is an independent internet marketing consultant. He works full time researching and implementing new streams of profit for his existing business and for clients. View his Niche Marketing Power Zone at (http://www.onesourcebiz.com/niche-marketing)
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