If you are in need of templates for your niche stores, then go check out Great Niche Templates.  Most of the templates there are free, and there are some excellent ones to choose from.  The templates are geared towards niche stores created with BANS (Build A Niche Store), Wordpress, or a combination of BANS and Wordpress.

I am happy to announce that, after almost two months of nothing going on, things are happening all at once.  Or, at least, it seems that way.  We were held up for two months (very long story that I won’t bore you with, but has to do with permits for my city).  Finally, this has been resolved.  I even started painting today.

The only reason I mention this is because I will be super busy for a while.  This poor, neglected blog will be neglected for a bit longer.  I’m currently in the middle of instructions on how to get custom articles written for as little as $0.05 each, but simply don’t have the time right now to finish it.  

But I will.  When all the craziness calms down.  Not sure how long that will be, but if I had to guess, I would say about two months (we need to paint, move our stuff back in, unpack, and anything else that pops up that we are not currently expecting).

May you all have a wonderful holiday season.

Rochelle

It has recently occurred to me that I know more than I give myself credit for.  I have spent a lot of time learning about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), how to get traffic, how to promote sites, and so on.  Although far from being an expert on these topics, I feel comfortable enough to remove the training wheels (so to speak) and go it alone.

If that made no sense, bear with me.

My learning has been come from many places.  I have bought e-books that have helped me.  I have asked questions in forums and on blogs.  I even paid for mentoring from one very helpful individual.  I did all those things because I didn’t know enough to successfully do them on my own.

A few days ago I bought an e-book about creating eBay affiliate sites.  The e-book was on sale and I figured I might learn something I hadn’t previously read.  

It took me about an hour to go through the e-book.  When I was finished, I was a bit shocked to realize there was nothing new to me!  Not only that, I knew more than the e-book had gone over.  While the e-book was perfectly fine for those new to eBay affiliate sites, there was not a single bit of new information in it for me.

That was the moment I realized that I actually do know enough.  

This week I have come to realize how to get traffic to my sites, and it’s pretty simple (but it does require an investment of time).  But I have a tendency to be easily distracted, so I am currently working on a “To Do” list for myself to keep me from straying.  When I’m done with it I will share it here, in case it is helpful to any of you.

Believe me when I say the idea in my head isn’t anything Earth-shattering, but I haven’t seen it spelled out the way I’m thinking of it.  I haven’t put it to use yet, so this will be the perfect place for trying it out and seeing if it works the way I think it will.  And, as always, I will be interested in the input from you readers, as you are very good at helping me see what I may have missed.

Rochelle

In this post I am going to compare three methods for doing keyword research. I am also going to be upfront about why I am writing this post, which will be explained in just a bit.

Some time ago I purchase Micro Niche Finder. I used it for a while, then forgot about it. Shortly after that, I signed up for an account with WordTracker, and that is where I have been doing my keyword research.

Two things have recently happened that prompted this post:

1) MicroNiche Finder is running a contest where the creator is asking people to submit videos, PDFs, etc. of how they use Micro Niche Finder to earn money or research keywords. I passed the first three e-mails or so that I received about this. The one I got today, though, motivated me to actually submit an entry (the creator upped the anty by offering some really niche freebies to everyone who enters).

2) My subscription to WordTracker is soon to expire.

If my subscription to WordTracker wasn’t about to expire, I might have deleted the most recent e-mail about the contest, as I did with the others. But I started to wonder if there is actual value in Micro Niche Finder.

So, here is the truth about why I am writing this post. I decided to see how Micro Niche Finder compares to WordTracker. I am going to conduct an unbiased test on these two keyword research methods, and I will submit this post as my entry. I will be completely honest about my results and my ultimate opinion about both methods. In other words, I am not going to fawn all over Micro Niche Finder just to make the author of the program like my entry. I don’t really care if I win. I am genuinly curious about how this will shake out.

Without further ado, onto my testing.

I have a niche store that is all about pin cushions (or pincushions - ha! I just snuck two different keyword phrases in here! - That’s exactly the kind of research you need to know about with your own niche stores.). I’ll use this keyword research test to look for additional types of pin cushions that people are searching for. My site is only pin cushions that are sold on eBay, not pincushion patterns, history of pincushions, etc. All I want to know is if there are any pin cushions that people are looking for that I should add to my site.

Micro Niche Finder vs. WordTracker vs. Google Keyword Tool
Micro Niche Finder
	Up first is Micro Niche Finder (aka MNF). I will start by entering the phrase "pin cushion" into the software and see what I get.
	MNF returned a total of 26 results for "pin cushion," as seen here:
	There are a few results that have to do with specific types of pin cushions, which would be helpful to me regarding my niche store. The rest of the results don’t interest me (at least not now), as I don’t have any pages that deal with those phrases.
	You may notice that there are several keyword phrases relating to the term "pin cushion," but not much more information. I can easily get that information by clicking on the keywords that interest me, then asking MNF to find that information for me (ok, it’s not really asking, but pressing a button). In this case, I would like more information about how often some of the returned phrases are searched for. After I pressed the button, MNF let me decide which results to ignore, such as adult content:
	So, now I have search counts for my selected phrases. I see that those phrases are being searched for, but I’d really like to know if those exact phrases are being search for. Now, I will have MNF look up how often my selected phrases are being searched for, exactly as they appear:
	Last, I would like to get a feel for the competition that may exist for these keyword phrases. So, I will have MNF search the Strength of Competition (or, SOC) column (each time I have MNF do a search, it kindly reminds me that if I do too many searches that Google may temporarily ban me):
	I have now completed my research in Micro Niche Finder, and it took me less than five minutes. It was pretty easy, though there was a bit of selecting and clicking required on my part. I think, though, that MNF does not automatically return every aspect of every search as a courtesy to Google. If correct, I appreciate this act of kindness.
	Potential keywords found: pincushion plant, pin cushion queen, pincushion urchin, pincushion man, and pincushion hakea. That’s a total of five possible new pages for my niche store.
	I’ll admit that some of these may not be actual pin cushions (I have no idea what a pincushion hakea) is, but I’ll skip that aspect of my research, as I can do that another day. My focus right now is strictly to test these three tools.
WordTracker
	WordTracker (WT) is a bit trickier to use. There are many keyword research options (there are, in fact, four options!):
	To be honest, I have not used all five of WT’s keyword research methods. I usually use Keyword Universe: Research. Since this is what I usually use, that is what I will use for this test. My apologies to any WT aficionados who know a better choice. Like I said above, I’m not trying to skew the results, so I’m sticking with what I know.
	As with MNF, WT offers me the option of removing certain results from my search. In fact, the filtering options for MNF are identical to WT. Here is where I entered my keyword phrase of "pin cushion." Note that WT is asking if I would like lateral terms and Thesarus terms included in my results. That sounds good, I’ll take them:
	WT came up with a whopping 300 results! Wow! But, wait. Before I get too enthusiastic about that, it seems that almost none of the results have anything to do with pin cushions:
	Hmmm. Only two of the 300 terms displayed are pin cushion terms. It might seem as though I did something wrong. No, not exactly. WT was simply coming up with terms, or activities, related to pin cushions that might be of interest to me. I am left to wonder, though, how the term "Marlboro" relates to pin cushions (yes, that was result #37)…
	What I need to do now is click on any of the 300 terms and look to the column on the right. This will show me what I want to know. In this case, I clicked on "pin cushion" and WT then showed me 50 keyword phrases for "pin cushion." These results came from Dogpile and Metacrawler queries, not Google:
	There are definitely some good keyword results here, but not many that are specific to types of pin cushions, which is what my site is about. This is similar to the results I got from MNF.
	WT is not finished with keyword research. I can click on the little shovel (under the "dig" column) to go deeper into results for that specific keyword. But this doesn’t always do anything. In this case, if I click on the shovel for the term "pin cushion" I get the same exact results. So I would need to choose a different word to get more results.
	Just out of curiousity, I clicked on "pin cushions" (plural) to see the results for that term. Here is what I got:
	This provides me with some excellent longtail keywords (keywords with many words), but very little about specific pin cushion types. If I wanted to add content to my pin cushion niche store, then this would be good, but it really doesn’t help me for my current goal of finding keywords for pin cushion types. So, on to the third keyword research tool.
	Honestly, I’m not really sure what would be a good keyword phrase for me to focus on. Like I said, there are great keyword phrases here, but not really any for my needs, which are admittedly narrow (it is, after all, a niche store).
	Potential keywords found: cupcake pin cushion, pewter pin cushion, flower wrist pin cushion, and wool cupcake pin cushions. That’s a total of four potential new pages for my niche store.
.

Well, that was interesting. Between the two methods I have found nine potential new pages to add to my niche store. None of the results overlap, meaning, I didn’t get the same results with either method.

Ultimately, I think both methods are good. There is no doubt that WordTracker has an excellent reputation as a keyword research tool, but its price is pretty steep. Micro Niche Finder, in my opionion, provided equally good results (at least, from this test), and was easier for me to use. While the purpose of this post is not to endorse one product over the other, if you want to conduct keyword research (which you should be doing, regardless of the tool used to do the research!), then you might want to consider Micro Niche Finder, as the price is much easier to swallow.

Rochelle