Niche Marketing: Strategies Using Web 2.0

Like me, you probably have overspent, buying every second product that comes along offering the latest magic solution promising you big bucks for one hour's work per week. Learning the intricacies of niche marketing has been a matter of survival, and the smartest thing I ever did. I tried fighting the odds and attempted to sell into the general Internet Marketing arena, even though I was told it's already too crowded. So now I work with smaller niches where my web sites have a chance of being noticed. I'm willing to share with you one of the most powerful and overlooked sources of free traffic from niche markets. Free traffic from the world of Web 2.0 has been greatly overlooked by many of us. Using niche marketing strategies to gain a foothold in this milieu will prove to be a god-send, if you just give it a try. Look into Internet groups, known as news groups. Yes those... Yahoo! Groups, MSN Groups, Google groups and other places where people freely exchange news and info regarding their specific interests. These groups offer a wealth of interested and hungry prospects. People in these newsgroups will eagerly grab your information if it's any good, and if properly distributed to them. These are people who voluntarily joined a group to share their passion with others in their common interest. The same interest you are promoting in your niche. They were not induced by a free newsletter offering gifts as reward for signing up. You don't even have to sell them on your idea. They are already resold on that particular niche, and all you need to produce is the answers they're looking for. Think about this for a minute. Internet groups are already targeted, interested prospects. You can send them unlimited messages, every day even, you get to communicate or interact with exactly the customers you want, because they're already in your chosen niche. The postings you do may go directly to their inbox (if that's what they chose, or they can read it at the Group page. In email marketing, the open rate (how many emails you sent out got opened) is running 12 to 20%. So you can imagine the benefit of delivering almost all your messages. Because you're emailing people already interested! Yahoo still has the leading newsgroups, and then there is MSN and Google. If you go to 'Group Search' page at Yahoo, you will be amazed at the number of groups listed. The numbers after the categories refer to the number of Groups, not the number of people. Games, for example, have over 90,000 groups, health and wellness over 120,000. Incredible numbers just with Yahoo. You can join as many as you want, completely free for you to e-mail as much as you like. Join a bunch of enthusiasts interested in the same thing as you. Of course you just can't join all the groups in the niche. But you can surely focus on up to 50 groups, each with thousands of people in them. If you handle it right, you can easily establish yourself as a trusted authority and end up making good money. Yet, people are skeptical on the Internet these days because of the excessive Spamming, so you must be careful or you will alienate yourself from them. If you downgrade yourself even by accident, forget about making a comeback, it just won't happen. There are too many choices available, so second chances don't exist. These niche specialists are loyal to their group, so you must talk to them with respect. Too many people on the Internet have turned into rude bullies. Maybe hiding behind the curtain of anonymity. which is the Net, gives them a feeling of power? Of course it's not justified. Try that behavior in the Niche Groups and you'll soon become an outcast, and justifiably so. The bottom line is simply this, within the Internet groups you have the opportunity to bond with your fellow niche followers. Once they trust you, you are then OK to start offering quality products to them. What more could you ask.