Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

The niche selection will be the first action we need to perform. Please use this subject line "Step 1 - Niche Selection" when you email me your choice for this project. I am hoping all of you will respond within 2 days. 2 days from now, I will email all the folks who have selected a unique niche and give the go ahead on ordering hosting and a domain name. For people with duplicate selections I'll put you in touch with each other to work out your selections.

One good idea might be to post your selection in that thread so others who are trying to think of something will get an idea of what to do, and also not take the niche that you have already selected.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I guess I need to sign into this IRC channel at some point. Are any of you guys on there much?

Max

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I also forgot to mention that the interest area selected was Making Money/Personal Finance/Economics/Investing...

Max

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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I guess I need to sign into this IRC channel at some point. Are any of you guys on there much?

Max

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We're here, come on by...

#mmf on efnet

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Roth 401k

Top google search site looks to be surpassable.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'm going to take "Budgeting."

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Tipping in the service industry
hairstylists, waiters, cab drivers, etc.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

tipping... Thats funny. I like it.

Max

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'm doing various career/occupation incomes. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreaciated.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

max,

how many people are on the mailing list?

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'm doing "Debt reduction."

Getting free of your credit card bills, paying off your mortgage early, the all-cash lifestyle.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I use a software package called Keyword Elite to generate niche ideas.

(Not spamming: I have no connection to the product other than the fact that I use it.)

Here's a video that shows one way to use it.

http://www.tubetorial.com/niche-competitive-analysis/

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I have about 85 people on the mailing list. I want to mention that if you want to do two sites, that would be fine with me. It would give you two chances to have your site pay off and share the cost of hosting between the two.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

'Persuasion'

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I've been running 5 market beating shadow portfolios for 4 years now (one of them is used to help run a real fund). I'm going to blog about my efforts to keep ahead of the S&P 500. I guess this is straight up Sharemarket Investing?

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

"Roth 401k

Top google search site looks to be surpassable."

The top result is www.Roth401k.com, an established website with the best possible domain name for that search. You wonty be surpassing him easily.

In my opionion if this is your first website you should stay away from anything finacial related. These are no longer niches cause everyone and their mother already has made a finacial website. You guys should be thinking of original ideas. The tipping website is the only decent one mentioned in this thread. Follow his lead and think of something new. THere are millions of web users so no matter what you choose as you will always get someone to come to the site.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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I'm doing "Debt reduction."

Getting free of your credit card bills, paying off your mortgage early, the all-cash lifestyle.

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Highly competitive.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I will focus on Socially Responsible Investing.

Edit: Note if this category proves too broad to be considered a "niche" I will narrow my focus to companies that display just one aspect of this. (ie: green building materials manufacturers, companies that are extremely employee friendly, companies w/ no association to Bill Frist, etc.) [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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Follow his lead and think of something new. THere are millions of web users so no matter what you choose as you will always get someone to come to the site.

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A wiser man than me once said, "There's nothing new under the sun."

I agree with the principle of trying to find something less competitive, but coming up with something "new" that's not on the Internet...that's a difficult thing. I use the Internet non-stop and like never run into subjects with non-existent content. You can find anything on the Internet.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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Follow his lead and think of something new. THere are millions of web users so no matter what you choose as you will always get someone to come to the site.

[/ QUOTE ]

A wiser man than me once said, "There's nothing new under the sun."

I agree with the principle of trying to find something less competitive, but coming up with something "new" that's not on the Internet...that's a difficult thing. I use the Internet non-stop and like never run into subjects with non-existent content. You can find anything on the Internet.

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Right. When was the last time you Googled something and it came up with no relevant hits at all? Not often for me.

By the way, when choosing a niche THIS PAGE makes a good point about how to go about it if you want sales. It's a cheesy sales page, but read it. The point it makes seems very valid.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Hm...eh, i'll go w/ it anyway. I might try a 2nd one too.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I didnt mean something NEW as in non existing. But going after competitive niches is a waste of time for a project like this. When adsense first started and financial keywords were paying $5 a click EVERYONE started making hundreds of sites in every little category you could think of. You should target something with less compition obviously

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

This probably would have been good to discuss when we were picking "Finances" as the general topic. If all of these sub-topics are well covered already, maybe it's not a very good topic.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I have two ideas I could run with...

One is similar to the budgeting title already proposed, whereby I would simply write numerous techniques for money saving. I know a fair few of these.

The other is to write a quest site, similar in concept to the $15k in 30 days challenge, but on a smaller scale. I'm thinking £20k (just under $40k) in 10 months (as I will hopefully be starting a real job next September, but until then would like to make money). I imagine one thing better about it than the $15k in a month thing would be that I'm a total novice, so a total novice could better relate to it. I'll probably go with that one.

I am also happy to write a few articles for any budgeting/money saving websites you guys all come up with. I do wonder how useful techniques for saving money in the UK would be if we are dealing with a predominantly US based website but we shall see.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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This probably would have been good to discuss when we were picking "Finances" as the general topic. If all of these sub-topics are well covered already, maybe it's not a very good topic.

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I agree that this category is probably oversaturated. This is really just a learning experience for me, and I intend to start several more sites on my own based on the methods and techniques we'll be learning together on this project, so if the group wants to stick w/ it that's fine by me.

That said, I would again like to offer up "Health/Wellness/Fitness" as an alternative category. I do believe there are more untapped niches and greater flexibility here.

Black & white topics such as Investing, Budgeting, and Debt Reduction all have pretty specific, scientific information associated with them and have been well explored, whereas there are hundreds of more subjective ways to present health and wellness issues. (Diets that integrate a specific life philosophy or religion, specific sports training regimens, very obscure medical conditions that may be largely untapped, Eastern medicine vs. western, mental vs. physical health)

However, it is possible that this category is SO broad that our niche choices will be TOO far apart to be of any use to each other in terms of cross marketing and linking. Not sure how big of a factor that might be.

Anyway, this project is Max's baby and I'll leave it up to him if he wants to re-poll the group for a possible focus change before we get too far into this. If we decide to stick w/ Finance et al I'm still happy to participate.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

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This is really just a learning experience for me, and I intend to start several more sites on my own based on the methods and techniques we'll be learning together on this project, so if the group wants to stick w/ it that's fine by me.

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QFT

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

[ QUOTE ]


I agree that this category is probably oversaturated. This is really just a learning experience for me, and I intend to start several more sites on my own based on the methods and techniques we'll be learning together on this project, so if the group wants to stick w/ it that's fine by me.


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Indeed....I've got one idea in particular which is sports related which I am already running with. There's just the problem that I have no idea how to really market it, and so learning along here would be very useful. And besides, even if the websites ens up losing money, it's all good experience, and the amount of money it can lose is finite.

That said I wouldn't object to a repoll, I personally did not vote for the making money niche [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Well, assuming we're still going with money makin', I'm going to set up a loan officer training site. I used to be a loan officer myself and actually have some pretty good knowledge of how the game works that could help out some of the struggling lo's out there.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I am willing to organize around any of the topics that we polled on.
Personally I believe that any topic we chose is going to have plenty of competition. The key to being successful here is to pick a niche that isn't dominated by some larger sites. For example if we had picked sports, and someone wanted to do a page about the Carolina Panthers, they would be in just as much competition as the guy who wants to do financial planning info. The topics are just too broad. You really have to be focused. I liked "tipping" as a choice. There aren't going to be nearly as many pages out there on tipping as there will be for financial planning. I still haven't decided what I want to do yet. I think I will wait and see what everyone else comes up with.
What I want you guys to do when you pick a niche is type in your target keywords into a search engine. Take a look at the sites that pop up. You'll be in direct competition with those guys. The front page of google gets a lot of clicks. You can check out how many links each site has by using the google search "links: sitename.com". If there are a bunch of links, then you might have trouble competing. Also its not just the number of links, but some of those sites are going to have quality links from other high ranking sites. Page rank calculators are available on the internet, and I think google toolbar will tell you as well. I believe that a page rank of 4 is attainable, and if every site on the first page is a 5, you have your work cut out for you.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

For a long time ive been interested in making a review site. It would have several categories, such as cars, money, gambling, tech, etc. Instead of getting detailed about any one category, the site would offer basic information and unbiased reviews and links to goods sites that do specialize in that particular area, as well as links to everyone else sites thats on board with this project. this is just the general idea i have, but please let me know what you guys think.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'm thinkin about making an investment site geared towards new teachers. My gf is a new teacher and after going to school and not really making a lot of money out of college, her finances are not great. I'm sure she is not the only one in that boat. I know a few other teachers that I could get insight from as well.

Granted, it's probably nothing special that teachers need to do to invest, but marketing it to them will be the difference.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Hmmm...socially responsible investing may pose a bit of a problem. Of the 10 links on the front page there are 4 sites that are pageranked 5, 3 sites that are ranked 6, and 3 sites that are ranked 7. I guess I need to try again. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'm gonna start with Retirement Planning for young people (20s and 30s); may do a second one also. I already have a book review site I'm working on.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Another thought I had was setting up a website for baby boomers who are getting a late start in investing for retirement.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

Just posting the niche I emailed to max. I wanted to do a site on loans and interest. All aspects, borrower and lender. So it would be educating borrowers to get the best loans, the best interest rates for CC, track a bunch of indicator rates historically, etc. Also on the other side, information about how to protect yourself if you make loans. Either private secured type loans or lending on a peer to peer site like prosper, etc. I wanted to do like a light side/dark side type of site. (making the lenders from the dark side of course) I am currently licensed in CA for RE and loans, and do make loans as investments right now. I know this has some overlap with Scotty M, but I am just posting here what I emailed maxtower yesterday.

Pancho

PS I am fine with sticking with the making money category as a learning experience, but I am also fine with picking another. If you decide to pick something else, maybe spend several days and have a thread to let people argue for one or the other before the vote.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

The site I am working on is targeted at a college demographic. When I googled "broke college kid," I didn't really get many pertinent information on making money. Instead I got blogs, broke college kids asking for money, and only one article on buzzle.com with some helpful tips. The second page wasn't much better.

My site will focus on living in a dorm / campus apt. environment, although commuters will still find some relevant material. Thrifty tips for saving money, and easy and interesting ways to make a few dollars on the side will be the bulk of the content. For example, sharing a book with a roommate or floormate who is in the same class as you can be very helpful, considering books are one of the more expensive things a student has to pay for (disregarding tuition). As a side note, the site will not allow explicitly illegal ideas, such as how to prepare and sell coke at a frat party. However, there will be some grey area and at this point in time I am still working on the level of censorship.

The site will launch with a handful of articles, and then users are prompted to submit there own ideas / tips for broke college kids. A forum will also be used for networking and general discussion on money making in college. This seems like a great niche to get into, considering the sheer number of broke college students and the lack of significant competition.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

It seems that we could have picked any topic and people would be expected to come up with a niche and generate content for it. Where's this content coming from? How am I supposed to give financial advice when I know nothing about it? Are most of the content sites out there just taking other people's research and rewriting?

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I'll be doing my own writing just by talking to people. Almost all content on my site will be anecdotal.

If you're not qualified to talk about finance, then don't talk about finance. Nearly everything in our society revolves around making money. With a little creativity people should be able to come up with something that can tie into our topic.

I'm confident all the people who signed up for this project can come up with a targeted niche that they have personal knowledge on or can do the research to be knowledgeable in that subject area fairly quickly.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I agree that "Health/Wellness/Fitness" has much better potential.

Re: Forum Project Step 1 - Niche Pickin\'
 

I am doing financial education. Books,seminars,etc.