eBook Answers — Day 2

Posted by RP

September 18, 2007

Yesterday we spent some time on finding potential hot topics and short listing them. Now that you have that list, how do you refine it so see if there’s money lurking about in the various subjects? Well there’s a lot of favorite ways people have but one of the best, in my book is to see what the market is paying to advertise in the areas of interest.

This is sort of “piggybacking” on those already in the business … and why not. No one is paying money, long-term, to advertise unless there are customers out there buying. here are a few places to look:

Google AdWords: Our hero, Fred: can go to this site and enter a list of keywords and phrases related to foreclosure, In step one, I suggest telling the tool to preset the words in search volume format, That will give a picture like this:

There is no doubt “foreclosure” is a hot item. If Fred changes the display to show the estimated costs to get a click in the number one position on Google searches and sorts by price he’ll see this table. Not only are the different terms for avoiding or stopping foreclosure “hot”, there are obviously a lot of people bidding to serve the “wants”, so the market and demand seem to be there. Now this Google tool gave a good idea as to the value of the terms people were looking for but it only shows the number of searches in relative terms … little “slider bars” that rank the different terms against each other. If Fred wants to know how many searchers are really “happening he can go to a site called Trelian.

Trelian: This is a free version of a much more sophisticated engine for keyword research. It will serve our purposes quite well here. Fred merely types in “foreclosure” and gets a list like this:

These are the number of searches in the past 12 months for the queried word. Looks like at least 3,000 searches per month, or over 100 per day want this kind of information. In general, you would want to look at terms where the searches are in the 100+ per day range. It’s all a numbers game and if 1 or 2 people out of a hundred “convert”, price and other considerations being right, you have a winner.

Fred also wants to take note of these click costs for two reasons. We’re going to send a limited amount of money to use AdWords or other PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising services to do a real-world market survey and build a list of the initial paying customers for the proposed book. Remember, Fred hasn’t spent one red cent yet … but he will have to spend a modest amount further down the pike. Another tool that’s great for learning about advertising trends, click prices and conversion rates is WordTracker.

WordTracker: this is the oldest and most comprehensive keyword research tool on the ‘Net. WordTracker is a ‘for pay” service and well worth it if you get seriously into PPC advertising … but, like everything we’ve looked at so far they have a completely free research tool you can use to learn more about keywords and what people are looking for. Highly recommended.

And I’ve saved the best for last.

SEO Book: A fellow named Aaron Wall has written a fantastic book that covers everything you could ever know about making your website rank high in the search engines and dozens of other things to know for online business. I highly recommend Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, but it’s not free and you don’t need to buy it now … something to think about, though. What I do recommend you click on, though, which will keep you busy until the next installment is Free SEO Tools. These are free and they are worth every penny, and a lot more. Take a look at Aaron’s tools and his excellent blog … you won’t be sorry and you’ll learn a lot. Matter of fact, take a real good look at what Aaron is doing and bear something in mind. He’s a fellow who saw a need for people to learn about the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques that he taught himself, wrote an eBook about it, produced and promoted the ebook and the rest is history. I told you I’d give you straight facts and real world examples, didn’t I? Until next installment.

As always, feel free to leave a comment, write me an email at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com, or call me on 1-719-423-8872, or chat with me on Yahoo Messenger: davestarr(at)yahoo(dot)com. I’ll be happy to hear about subjects you want me to cover, places you feel I have erred, real life experiences good and bad, or just to toss out ideas you may have. There is no charge and no catch.

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