When You Begin Your Niche Start With Good Habits
Start with What You Know
Niche research is really very important
The first thing you want to do is create a file or place where all of your research ideas are stored. This can be digital or tangible, if you prefer to write in a spiral notebook or notepad, then go ahead and do so. I use online tools like Google Drive or folders on our computer’s hard drive to track, store and work on my files. To create a file on my hard drive I create a folder with my domain name. Quite literally the full domain name such as www.insertyourown domain here.com. The reason I use www. is because then all my websites appear in one place, under WR my hard drive. If I filed it under weightloss.com it wouldn't be obvious and it would get lost in a sea of folders and files. This might seem pernickety but you can't create good habits early enough.
Within that folder, I will have folders called:-
Research,
Images
Optimized images (these are images that I have optimized using RIOT
Login and hosting details
Keyword ideas
These are on a spreadsheet. In the first column is the idea, the second column is the date I wrote the article. The third column is the date the article ranked, the fourth column is the article page rank, and the fifth column is the last date I checked the rank.
These keyword ideas may seem over-the-top when you first start, but when you've written 50 or 60 articles or even 150 articles you really need to start organizing how you track things.
Ironically, in the house, I am the untidiest person on the planet! Without my cleaner, I would be absolutely out lost. Yet my computer has six hard drives and millions of files and I know where every one of them is!
You’ll be preparing your business for quicker results when you take care of this early on because when the time comes for you to create content, you can quickly and easily pull from your files to see what needs to be covered, and you can use it to track which topics you’ve already created content for as well. Do a brainstorming session of what you already know about the niche topic. This can be things you’ve experienced yourself, such as losing weight, earning money online, or learning how to motivate yourself, depending on your niche topic.
Start by mapping out all of the questions you had when you first developed an interest or need in this niche. These questions will come in handy for future info product development and to showcase your expertise. Also, go to Quora and spent two hours researching the questions people are asking within your niche. Then do the same with Reddit.com.
Next, go over the various pain points, frustrations, and obstacles someone may encounter in this niche. It might be cravings for sugar or reaching a plateau if you’re in the diet niche – or not converting visitors to buyers or not getting subscribers if you’re in the online marketing niche. Brainstorm all of the potential avenues for success. This would include strategies as well as specific solutions, like products. For example, to lose weight, the strategies might be calorie deficit, eliminating carbs, etc. For products, you might cover a variety of tangible and digital options, such as cardio machines to do at home workouts, or HIIT courses that teach people how to increase activity and burn fat faster.
When you do a brainstorming session, don’t just think about your own personal experience. Go ahead and brainstorm common sense ideas, too – things almost anyone would know, regardless of whether or not they had to deal with this issue. You can also ask friends and family or think about what they’ve confided in you about this – or maybe what they’ve shared on social media posts. Sometimes people open up about the struggles they have, and you can use this to your advantage to help people. Once you have your list of brainstormed topics and ideas, you can move on to the integration of other outside methods of niche research. These will help fill in the gaps of things you may not have considered, especially when everyone has a unique experience and journey – not to mention struggles that may not be what others have experienced.
Recent Comments
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Organizing your topics is key. Sometimes I scroll back through my folders and I forget subjects I might have already written on. So have e-folders allows for pulling up instantly. You are also correct having an excel spreadsheet as you have described for each article allows proper performance monitoring, retrieval of links and changes to easily occur. Thanks for this Catherine.
Hugh
All of these things we learn with experience, I wrote this in an attempt to put newbies on the right path before they lose important information
Good morning Catherine,
Thank you very much for your excellent blog post, it's a good one!
Unfortunately, I see far too many people who are totally disorganised when it comes to organising their online business. I couldn't agree with you more Catherine, I have hundreds of folders on my computer as I like to keep things organised. It's so much easier than having hundreds of files in a filing cabinet and having to search through hundreds of papers to find something!
One of the great things about storing files on a computer is it we can carry out a quick search and literally find things instantly. If this was a series of notebooks or folders, where do you start, especially if it's from several years ago?!
My Webmaster in the US said one of the reasons he likes working with me is that I can pull up a file from many years ago, immediately! I don't say this to boast, I just say it to encourage others to get organised, time is valuable and wasting time is totally pointless!
It's very frustrating when you're trying to help a friend or someone near to you and they have forgotten their password, you can literally waste hours of time. I appreciate that you can have a password emailed, however, they don't always come through straight away, more time lost!
I'm sure your post is a great reminder to many to get organised Catherine, it's a great time saver!
Have a great day.
Roy
I work with somebody who constantly changes his passwords and constantly forgets them because he only writes them down in a notebook half the time when he changes them. Actually, to be fair I no longer work with them because in an hour's session it took 50 minutes to find the passwords and that was painful.
Catherine, I feel your pain immediately! That type of thing is just so unnecessary and wastes everyone's time. You have done the right thing by not working with this particular person, far too painful!
Have a good day.
Roy
Yes, Catherine, I'm with you, I felt it too many times before! There is no doubt you have done the right thing, you cannot work with people like that!
Have a good weekend.
Roy
I like how organized you are, Catherine.
I have tried many different things as far as organization goes to see what works for me. So far, I'm still a work in progress.
I'm pretty much the opposite...I'm much more organized in my home than in my business lol.
When you talked about taking two hours to find out what people are asking at Quora and then doing it again for Reddit, I thought what a great idea.
Thanks for all the great ideas!
Lynn
Having a wonderful organisational structure from the start will save us countless hours, days, maybe even weeks or months of otherwise lost time searching for all the information, research, passwords, usenames etc, etc... that have been jotted down in random places over the years!
I still consider myself a little old school, and normally use the tried and tested paper and pen method, but I know this will have to change in the not too distant future.
Thanks for the great advice and enjoy your evening Catherine.
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Great tips here to organize all our articles and website stuff!
I remember when I started out and I went back to the good ol" binder and line paper. Folders and tabs helped along the way.
Big thanks to WA for keeping backups and helping us feel secure. I was never good at saving my work on drives n whatnot.
Sounds like you got a great system and I will take heed of your advice to utilize my computers "folder system" better.
Thanks! :)
Just a point you should always take your backups never rely on somebody else to do it! What happens if that backup fails and you haven't got one?
I have a program you may like it is call (one note ) I think it came with my comp, not sure. You would treat it like a book. The first section selection is like the directory. Then you add a page. then a second page. section- Dogs
Page 1 - cloths
Page 2 - hygiene items
Page 3 - food supplements and treats
Page 4 - medication and allergies
you can list all the ideas you have on each different website. collect material for posts (making sure to list where each Idea came from so you can list it on the bottom of your blog page as a reference. This way you will not be nailed with plagiarism.
Just a thought. I love mine it is cram jammed full of really cool stuff. Best of luck.
Thanks I will have a look into it :)
This is true, it was a concern of mine. Kyle tells us in the training to have a backup. When I started here I had absolutely no clue about computers or how to back anything up. I would save it to something on my computer and it would be lost. No idea where or what I saved it too? Ha ha I am better now.
Thanks again :)