4 Proven Steps to Finding a Profitable Niche

Muse Creation & Niche Marketing

Do you spend a lot of time looking for products to promote? If you’re like the vast majority of subscribers to my blog, the answers is a definite “Yes”.

In this post, I’m going to propose that you take a step back from product-picking, and instead focus on finding a niche audience to serve.

Why should you concentrate on a niche audience first, instead of products? Here are two solid reasons:

  • Products come and go, but niche audiences stick around forever. If you’ve ever been promoting a product profitably and then had it decline in popularity (or pulled off the market entirely), you know what I’m talking about.
  • When you choose a niche audience and take the time to understand their needs deeply, a whole new world of options open up to you. You switch from struggling to find ideas for products, to instantly knowing exactly the types of products you should be promoting – because they’re in tune with your niche audience’s needs.

I know this from experience. Three years ago I was a struggling affiliate marketer, bouncing from offer to offer (playing a game of what I call “affiliate pinball”). Today I make a full-time income from diverse passive income streams: sales of affiliate products, sales of my own products, and Adsense revenue (my Adsense revenue alone topped $2,000 last month). And it’s all because I focus on serving the needs of a niche audience.

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Why Are So Many Internet Start-Up’s Failing Today?

Online Business Failures

This guest post by Don Silver is the FINAL post in the awesome VBL Guest Post Month!

To all of you who contributed, and those that have commented on all the excellent posts from everyone, thank you, sincerely, for making October such a great month – and the one with the most traffic EVER, here at Virtual Business Lifestyle

I’ll see you guys on Monday with my October ‘Virtual CEO’ Monthly Report!!!

In the real world of brick and mortar business, every day millions of people are dragging themselves from their comfortable beds, performing their morning rituals of washing and breakfast to head to their jobs. In their daily grind some are thinking that there must be a better and easier way to make a living.

All these millions know someone or know of someone who has “made it” by quitting their boring existence and become their own boss using their own computers in the comfort and ease of home….

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They Laughed When I Said ‘Tell the World What Scares You’, and then they saw my Balance Sheet!

Note from Chris: This is a guest post from El Edwards.

It’s Monday morning, the first day of a brand new week. You stare at the blank, white screen in front of you, cursor flashing. What on earth are you going to do today?!

You pull out your planner, to-do list, GTD system or the good old fashioned diary, but it might as well be written in ancient Greek for all the help it gives you. You’re stuck.

Coffee? That’ll help won’t it? It’s bound to shift this fog and get you back in the right direction toward amassing your fortune, earning your keep, and generally keeping the proverbial wolf from the door. Because, let’s be honest, you don’t have time for this do you? You’ve a business to run.

There’s a whole world of stuff you should and could be doing right now but none of it feels right. Woah! Hang on a minute there cowboy. Feels? What’s this feeling nonsense you talk of? You’re an entrepreneur. You deal in plans and figures and goal setting and targets. Since when did you let your feelings dictate your work flow?

Well I have news for you sweetie. Feelings are what got you here in the first place.

Think back to why you started playing this game. What made you turn your back on the regular nine to five working for the man? Did it have something to do with dreams? Maybe a desire to spend more time with loved ones? Perhaps you wanted to earn a bit of cash whilst travelling the world? Forget travelling the world, do you have a desire to change it?

Whatever got you into this game, it certainly wasn’t facts, figures and balance sheets. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, your feelings have got you on this path so it’s time to play them at their own game. It’s time to start recognising your feelings for what they are and get real.

Stop pretending that you have it all together. The very next time your world feels a bit foggy, look around you. He might never admit it, but that guy over there in the slick suit and fancy tie? Yes him. He’s been where you are right now. And Ms ‘I have three degrees and six suits from Gucci’? She’ll be there next week. You are not alone.

The stuff whirling around inside that lovely head of yours is amazing. You can do such awesome stuff. But on the day that the fog descends, on the day when everything around you suddenly feels wobbly, you will feel all alone and shut off.

I’m here to blow the whistle on all that nonsense. The sooner we start being honest about this entrepreneurial journey of ours, the easier and more fun it will be.

Imagine that you’re having a dark day. Not black but certainly a darker shade of grey.

Just as you’re beginning to feel like the most frustrated person on the planet, your phone rings. It’s your best friend. A person who you not only respect and adore as a friend, but someone who you look up to in business too. So you pick up the phone expecting to hear of their latest triumph but instead, they tell you that they have a secret to share with you.

You grab another cup of coffee, ready for a tale of secret travels for their spouse’s birthday next month. But no, it’s not that kind of secret:

“Shhh, don’t tell anyone. I have something to tell you. I feel like a fake and a fraud. Everyone sees me as this hugely successful person. They respect my opinion and think I’m great. But the thing is, who am I to think I can run this multi-national corporation? I’m just me. Who am I kidding?!”

Wow! You land in your seat with a bump, the air knocked out of your lungs in shock. And then smiling and breathing a sigh of relief, you recover and prepare to welcome your friend to the club.

When was the last time you heard a peer own up to this darker side of business? Do you ever look around at your contemporaries and feel a slight tinge of envy because they have no worries?

I have news for you my friend. Every single person on this planet has days like this. There are some great actors in our circle but it’s an illusion.

It’s time to start being honest. It’s time to start being real. It’s time to shine a light on the dark stuff so it has no-where to hide. Who’s with me?

El Edwards is a muse and writes Heaven and El where she inspires people to live their dreams in an honest and authentic way. You can read more about El’s vision in her manifesto, Like A Breath Of Fresh Air. She’s also the founder of UK registered charity Give A Brick where she uses social media to empower unconditional love and giving.

3 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Building A Business Online

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCQgQhlEyyk

This guest post by Milt Baron is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!.

When entrepreneurs make the leap from real world offline business to online Internet business it can be tricky to know the best way to go about building your online presence. With so much conflicting information around and different approaches for different types of businesses it can be very confusing.

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How to Take Charge of Your OWN Virtual Lifestyle!

Virtual Lifestyle

This guest post by Yolanda A. Facio is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

It sounds exciting…sitting on the beach with a fruity exotic umbrella drink and tapping away at the keyboard of your laptop, waves crashing 5 feet away, mmmmmmmmm.

Sounds great!  But it also sounds very, very far away…

I’m here to tell you it isn’t that far away and to help you change your perception about what being “virtual” really means….

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Virtual Office Tips for Virtual Business Success!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk85OfMCrSA

This guest post by Valerio Paolini is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

Today, we have the pleasure to see a guest video post from Valerio Paolini all the way from Rome, Italy. In this clip, Valerio shares practical tips on how to take your business to new heights utilizing virtual office magic tricks! Valerio highlights the Pareto efficiency in economics that we can all learn from. He also mentions the bliss of having a virtual business lifestyle, meeting new clients in 5-star hotels and restaurants.

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Alone and Stuck With Your Online Business? Join a Mastermind Group TODAY!

Join the Mastermind Group Today

This guest post by Juha Liikala is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

I guess we’ve  all been there. You wake up, check your blog’s statistics for the morning, open up your blog and start thinking about what would be your next step. What can you do to make it better. No new comments today, is there something wrong? Have the audience lost their interest on my stuff? Will this lead somewhere or am I just wasting my time? Should I create a product about this or launch a service about that?

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Lessons From the Corporate World: Tips for Outsourcing Business Tasks

lessons from the corporate world

This guest post by Eric Gati is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

If you’re reading this post right now on Virtual Business Lifestyle, chances are you’ve at least heard of virtual assistants, and are perhaps interested in finding one or finding out how to utilize them effectively.  Congratulations, you’re already more advanced than the majority of people out there who believe that affordable help is difficult to find.  The fact of the matter is, outsourcing bits and pieces of your business (or in some cases, most of your business) is a critical part of making you as productive as possible….

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3 Awesome Steps to Virtual CEO Success

you keys to a Virtual CEO success

This guest post by Ben Lumley is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

There are 3 keys to achievement: Common Sense, Hard work and Stick-with-it-ness – Thomas Edision

I wanted to look at something that a lot of the readers of virtualbusinesslifestyle.com will be very familiar with, Chris’s goal of becoming a Virtual CEO by the end of 2010. What I would like to do though, instead of looking at the mechanics of how he is reaching this mother of all goals, is identify 3 keys to Chris’s current and future success.

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How To Use Paper to Help Your Business Virtualize!

How To Use Paper to Help Your Business Virtualize

This guest post by Stu Lustman is part of the VBL Guest Post Month!

I’m Stu Lustman and I virtualize some but very little of my business so far.

Disclaimer: I am trying to virtualize more than I do now.  Also, I may bring up technical topics but I am not a techie. My business is in commercial finance.

Unlike many who jump into the lifestyle design concept, I already have a business that I enjoy doing that I am trying to virtualize and location independent-ize for myself.

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