The Niche Think Tank » Niche Marketing Strategy

Income Report for October 2010

Larry C. — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:53:32 +0000

Hey Folks, I know it’s been way to long since I posted here and I still need to catch up on my income reports for the past year+ up to the present (1/2012). I’ve had many changes happening in my life recently and it’s complicated matters in the way of niche marketing and making my niche sites as well. Complications that have caused me to not be able to make any new niche sites in the last 3 months of 2011 and the only work being done on the sites I did have were back links by my VA. Yes I have a VA now and that’s for another post.

As some of you know my daughter was exposed to lead due to some shoddy renovations done by the landlord of the place we lived. Because of legal issues with that and bad feelings between he and my family we decided to look for a new place to live and move out. In our process of looking we thought we had found a place and gave a deposit to the people of the new place while we haggled over the lease terms. After not being able to get things in writing, or being told one thing one day, and having it change the following day I decided not to rent from the new landlord and ask for our deposit back. They said we did not fulfill the terms of the rental application and therefore they were going to keep our deposit and deduct a days rent for everyday it did not rent that month, until it gets rented. They eventually sent us a check for about $600 stating they finally got the place rented. Needless to say I was pissed.

I filed against them in small claims court and went back to our current landlord and ask to retract the 30 day notice we had given till be could find a place to live. He said no, he wanted us out and so we had to leave. We couldn’t find a place to live in the 2 weeks left of our lease there so we moved into an extended stay hotel with a kitchenette. And that’s where my experience with location independence started.

We spent two months in that hotel while we looked for a decent place to live and eventually found one that suited our needs as a family. We were able to move in, in the middle of December, just before Christmas, get a Christmas tree and do all of our shopping by Christmas eve. The kids had a great Christmas and so did we. We’re still unpacking and it’s a bit slow as the house we are now in is about 300 sq. ft. smaller than what we were in previously but the yard is big and we now have a pool. We are also paying the same amount of rent we were in the other place and we have a gardener.

We had our day in court with the landlords that kept our deposit and we were able to get back $1500 of the $1850 that we gave them. While I feel we should have gotten it all back, I understand the judge was trying to be fair to all parties and said we did verbally promise to move in. I’m just glad we could get most of our money back. That’s a lot of money in the present times of our economy.

Ok so here’s the income report for October 2010, over a year ago. I’m going to be getting the rest of these income reports done now that I have an office that I can close the door and get down to some serious writing. In the old house my office didn’t have a door and it was also the kids play room. It made it much harder to be able to sit and get some work done as the kids would always interrupt me. Not that I minded it just isn’t conducive to a work environment.

I’d like to thank all of you who purchase products talked about here on this site as I get an affiliate commission from those purchases. It does go directly to helping support my family, my endeavors as a niche marketer and niche site builder. Here’s to your success!

BTW, you’ll notice a slight decrease in this months income, which I’m not going to go into the analysis of as I just want to get the income reports up and going. People want to see the reports and I’ve been lagging. You can compare this months with last months report by looking at Septembers Income Report HERE.

Income Report for October 2010

Amazon – 120.43

Dating Sites – 987.25

eBook Sales(Mine) – 32.91

Affiliate Sales – 129.41

Clickbank Sales – 0

Text Link Ads – 40.06

Google – 449.40

Side Jobs (Hosting, WordPress Installs) – 630.00

Total October $2389.03

Last month (September) $2580.80

Decrease of $191.77

October 2010 Income Report

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10 Ways To Monetize a Forum

Larry C. — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:46:39 +0000

I was asked in one of the comments on a post here, about monetizing a forum. Good question. The person who asked the question has a forum and felt like it was easier to monetize a blog than a forum and was curious what the experts said.

Since I run several forums as well and need to monetize them too, I thought I’d research the topic and document my finding for everyone else to benefit from.

Since forums are sometimes the place I find answers to questions I have I thought that they would be a great place start. Then read some specific posts about monetizing a forum, and then try a few of the ways myself.

Forums are great for generating content and traffic as people contribute answers to problems, ask questions about problems and discuss findings too. As you know The Big G(Google) likes fresh content all the time. A ravenous appetite for content Google will find forums a feast of plenty, IF you have a good topic for your forum and lot’s of traffic. Even mediocre traffic can generate good content and give Google something to chew on.

So let’s dive into my findings…

1) Adsense – Adding Adsense to your forum is pretty simple given the add-ons you can get for the forum software you use, or it may even be built in, therefore making it that much more simple. You can place Adsense just about anywhere on a forum but just remember the Google Adsense rules for the number of placements per page.

I’ve read arguments for both sides of this. Some people say this is a great way to monetize a forum and others say forums with Adsense have a low CTR(click through rate). Some say “Ad Blindness” meaning we see so many ads from Google all day long we stop seeing them eventually. Depending on what you decide, Adsense will serve up ads for the topic of that post or the forum itself.

2) CPA and CPM Networks - Often times called Publisher Networks, CPA is “cost per action”, usually a sign up of some sort or a completed survey or some sort of “Action”. This might be like those ads you see where you get something for doing something. These are typically lead generating actions, which can pay anywhere from $.50 on up to several dollars or more. I use this type of thing on several of my niche sites and have done very well with them.

CPM is “cost per mille”, Mille being a Latin word meaning thousand, so cost per thousand clicks usually. This is ok if you have a lot of traffic and they like clicking on things, especially if it’s free or they get something really cool. It might do well for some people but not others.

3) Affiliate Networks – Similar to CPA and CPM, Affiliate networks generate Sales as opposed to Leads. The main sales force behind these products are called affiliates. You put an Ad on your site to sell something and get paid a commission for the sale of the product. Some affiliate networks are Commission Junction, Share A Sale, LinkShare, and more.

4) Selling Text Links – Text-Link-Ads.Com is where I go to sell my space for text links. If you’ve got a PR3 or above site and want to earn money effortlessly, go to TLA. Basically all there is are Text Links, that’s it. Either you add them by hand manually, or you put some code on your site that automatically adds them to your page as they advertisers add you to the list of sites to run ads on. Fairly simple and easy, and as one of their ads says, “Earn Money while you Sleep”.

5) Selling Banner Advertisements or Ad Spots – If you have a niche forum and Google just isn’t doing a good job of putting the right kind of ads in their ads for your site, then sell ad spots yourself. One way people do this is to directly contact the prospective advertiser and offer them some space on your forum. So let’s say you have a forum on Salt Water Aquariums, you could sell ad space to an online (or offline) aquarium dealer. Or maybe ad space for a complete pet supply shop or a specialty fish shop. The possibilities are endless.

6) Selling “sticky” threads – Selling sticky threads is like selling ad space. If you’re running a forum you should know what a sticky thread is. A sticky thread is one that sticks at the top of each forum board and stays there all the time, never moving with time or threads so it is always at the top, where it can grab peoples attention.

7) Sponsorship – If you have a really niche market and have a lot of good traffic, you could get sponsorship. There’s a story about Tivo, the Television Recording service that people fell in love with. When Tivo first came out someone started a Tivo Forum for hacks and tips and fixes. Tivo, rather than claiming trademark infringement, rather sponsored the forum by giving them money and had some Tivo Technicians talk in the forums as well. The only catch was that the people in the forum couldn’t talk about how to hack and bypass the payment system. The owners and moderators agreed and police the forum for such topics and therefore Tivo is happy and so is the forum owner who get’s paid by Tivo for that community.

Private Members Area – Just as it says “Members Only”. Charge for a premium membership to exclusive board on the forum. Warrior Forum does this and so does many other forums in a niche culture. I belong to a private forum for Yaro Staraks Blog Mastermind program. This is a blogging program for people to learn to become successful bloggers and earn a living from blogging by producing good content. While the members only forum comes with the program, I paid for the blogging course and have lifetime membership to the forum.

9) Donations – Yeah really! Donations. Put a donation cup on the forum sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If people find good content or fixes for what troubles them, people are likely to give a donation.

10) Sell Something – Sitepoint forums, a place where you can learn a lot about building sites with PHP and many other web related things, including internet marketing. Sitepoint was once just a place to learn and talk but the owner needed to monetize the site otherwise it was going down. He tracked where the users were most going and found the areas of what they were looking for and made a few print on demand books in the areas of PHP/MySQL/ CSS. Now the site makes tons of money from these publications with their second book generating over $1 million in the first 12 months of it’s release.

So you’ve got a forum on Black Banded African Gerbils? Sell either an eBook or Print on Demand book on The Complete Care and Feeding Guide for Black Banded African Gerbils.

10 ways to monetize your forum, hopefully will bring you 10 ideas per point, to give you at least 100 different ways to monetize your forum.

I really appreciate your support of this blog and the use of my affiliate links. It’s because of you that this blog is alive, growing and informing.

I’d love to hear your comments, suggestions or success stories.

Thanks for all your comments in previous posts, and please keep your questions coming.

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Google Search Results Are Skewed – How To Get Real Search Results

Larry C. — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:14:35 +0000

How To Get Rid of Google Personalized Search

Many people may already know that Google personalizes search results based on your search and browse patterns, but I didn’t realize how it affected me and my business until just recently. When I thought my websites were climbing in the ranks to page 1 of Google they really weren’t on page 1, they were more on page 2 or 3.

Google is using what is commonly know as Personalized Search. This changes the search results based on the websites you’ve previously visited. While this might be great in some instances, it’s very misleading in others and can hurt your web based internet business and keep you from really attaining the #1 position in Google if you’re not careful.

Because I visit my websites more than other websites in the search results when I do a search of my keywords, the search rankings and results are skewed and not as accurate as some believe. This gives a false sense of security and reality for those who have no idea Google is customizing the search results based on search history.

So me, being a niche marketer who depends on knowing his ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages, needs to know where I stand with the Google, as most of my traffic will come from Google. I need to know so I can determine what course of action I should take for getting my ranking higher, or if I just need to maintain my current status. I also need to have an accurate result so I can best assess my competition based on their true ranking, and not what Google thinks I want to see. Make sense?

There are several things you can do to get a true search result. One is go to an anonymizer search system such as Scroogle.org and use their un-skewed results and also get no ads. Another thing you can do is turn off Google’s Personalized Search by reading their instructions HERE.

I use both Scroogle and Turned off the Personalized Search and now get the more accurate results when I search my keywords and look at my competition.

Thanks to Pat Flynn at smartpassiveincome.com for the Scroogle Tip, and be sure to read the little fiction story on Scroogle.org Called “Scroogled“, pretty good read.

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Income Report for September 2010

Larry C. — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 06:35:19 +0000

Hey folks, sorry for the total and complete lag on my monthly income reports, lot’s of things been happening. So this is September 2010′s income report, 5 months late, but I guess better late then never. So the past few months I’ve been perfecting a system of how I build niche sites, how I place content on them, and how I get them ranking with back linking strategies and such. I’ve been working hard at this as I am putting together a membership course for niche site’s and niche marketing. I’ve been using ReviewAzon for getting some content up really quickly and highly suggest it. See my review HERE.

I’m sure there’s a few people out there who have a little extra time and would like to know how to do these little niche sites that build recurring monthly passive income. How’s about an extra $1000-$2000 a month sound to you? I’m sure for some of you it might make all the difference in the world to have a little more income than you have now. Especially in this economy, right? I know every cent counts for me, seeing as how this economy had tore my day time business apart. Which is why I turned to the internet to supplant that income.

This months(September) Amazon was way down, and in my August report it had come up from the previous month, but then went down again. This is all catch up from the past months of figuring out how I was going to make the Amazon Associates thing work for me, as it had started to actually make some income, and got me thinking. You’ll see from this month out, the Amazon income will be going up, and way up in December, but that’s another report.

So even though my Amazon was down many other things were up and going up steadily as I somewhat predicted a few income reports ago.You’ll see somethings fluctuating from this report forward but you should also see things going up. Way up.

So enough of my yakking, I’m getting ready to do a podcast with a special guest which will be released next week, so stay tuned. I’ll be catching up over the next two weeks on my income reports so stay tuned for those as well.

Thanks for stopping by.

September 2010

Amazon – 36.17

Dating Sites – 676.33

eBook Sales(Mine) – 29.94

Affiliate Sales – 223.48

Clickbank Sales – 49.21

Text Link Ads – 39.19

Google – 459.48

Side Jobs (Hosting, WordPress Installs) – 1067.00

Total September $2580.80

Last month (August) $2168.72

Increase of $412.08

September 2010 Income Report

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One of my Niche Sites – Disclosure.

Larry C. — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:18:40 +0000

I run a few niche sites that I sell eBooks on, and I thought I would disclose on of my sites for people to see and understand how I make money from them. These sites that I run are called Niche Sites, and How I make money from them is simple.

I produce an eBook for the site
I write articles about the specific niche I am targeting
I people to sign up for a mini tutorial sent through email to help bring people back to my site
I choose keywords that are high traffic, low competition and low search results
I built a website and place the eBook on it for sale
I include some articles on the site for people to read and to get their interest growing so they want to buy the eBook
I use article marketing with article directories to drive traffic to my site
Once it’s set up and running, it’s low maintenance, I just let it generate money for me and I do very little once it’s running.

This is a nice little way of having passive residual income coming in.

In the short future I intend on starting a membersite where I give out 2 premade sites a month, which includes articles, eBook, and an eCourse for email. Relatively low priced membership that will have all you need to make your own Niche Site. You can see one of my sites here.

Download the articles, mini tutorial and eBook for one of my sites Here.

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Duplicate Content Hurts EVERYONE

Larry C. — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:41:22 +0000

In my quest to learn all I can about Niche Marketing and Niche Marketing Strategies, I have joined a membership site that has a pretty good track record and following. I first learned about this site from Yaro Starak and one of his Podcasts. I listen to podcasts all the time, everyday in fact when I am walking.

Anyway I like the philosophy behind this membership sites method, so I joined. In the style of making money online, they give a prebuilt website kit to all members each month to use as a learning tool. The kits are a bunch of articles for article marketing, keywords for SEO marketing, Graphics and the articles for each site.

Once you get these sites you’re supposed to customize them to be unique and your own. However, as it is with most people just learning or trying to make money on the internet, to trying to get rich quick, they will put up the defacto site and not even change it at all. This not only hurts the other people who are doing the same thing but it hurts themselves as well. Here’s a video I did for this article, which continues after the video.

Google doesn’t like duplicate content in the first place, second the person who had their site up first gets the higher page rank(if they even get a page rank). Anyone after them to put up a site with the same duplicate content will rank lower and lower. The other problem is when someone does a search for this specific topic and they come up with a list of SERPs(Search Engine Results Pages), The see a ton of Clones.

My example is here:

Type this is your google search engine:

Get your free Rose Growing Mini-Course Here

Or just click the link it will open in a new window, and start clicking on the links that you see, no need to delve into each site just click a link and then hit your back button. Go down the list of site and then go to the second page of search results. What you will see here is an army of Rose Growing Mini Courses.

While some of people have taken the time to customize the graphics and text, many of them just threw up the sites as is. Unfortunately some of the sites are half done and still have beagle training stuff still on there and I am sure many of those site owners are wondering why they aren’t getting any sales at all.

Google is going to index the first sites first and anyone that comes after that is going to get SLAPPED for duplicate content and possibly get sand boxed. Now if I started looking for sites that teach how to grow roses and I saw that each site I went to was the same as the 0ne previous I wouldn’t want to buy. I would also get very suspicious of the product being sold, especially if part of it still had some sort of beagle training course on it.

I started typing in combos of the words on the pre made sites and I found a plethora of interesting sites. Some were half done and some were completed but may have missed a “beagle” word here or there. It’s really a shame, because if you really want to learn how to make money online you have to practice also trying to be unique, even in a sea of Rose Growing Sites.

I knew one of the prebuilt sites that were given out were for wine making, so I typed in a phrase for wine making and I found a site which I think is a good example of someone customizing the site to make it unique. The site is here:

http://growgrapesandmakewine.com

Now this site doesn’t exactly follow the model from the member site I belong to, but its close. The member site I belong to have specific ways of doing a website but the point I am trying to point out here is to customize the product site and make it unique. Re-write the content, change the graphics, make it your own and so there is not any duplicate content on the site so no one gets dinged not only by Google, but by a prospective customer.

Something I saw when I clicked on the “our eBook” link, was the great looking cover. It nicely done, and it’s obvious someone took the time to give a great presentation. In many industries including sales and marketing “presentation is EVERYTHING”.

What I am getting at here folks is that if you want to get this right, take the time to customize graphics. Re-Write articles, or write your own, don’t just throw up default packages you may be given. If you do decide to just toss up a defacto prebuilt website don’t whine and moan about how you’re not getting any sales, or that the program you are in is a scam.

Duplicate content hurts not only yourself, but the other people you may be duplicating, and that isn’t right.

BTW The Member site I joined and Really like the Method and Theory of is Niche Profit Classroom 2.0 It’s a pretty cool system, check out the video on the home page.

Enjoy.

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3 Places Where I find possible Niches

Larry C. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:15:20 +0000

I am constantly on the go and since I have been in Internet Marketing and Niche Marketing, my brain thinks a little differently sometimes. When I come across something that is a possible need, my head starts to churn it around up there and think of possible niches or ways of using that as a money maker. Before I do anything else there are a few places I like to go when I have an idea that I want to investigate. A few of these places are:

Google Keyword Search Tool – To see what sort of search numbers come up for that word or word phrase.
Google Trends – I then punch it into Google trends to see what sort of trends are coming up with that word or word phrase
If Google trends doesn’t turn anything up then I go to Google Insight, even if it does turn something up I still go to Google Insight anyway.
Then I end up at just Google and do a search with quotes around the phrase to see how many results come up for that specific phrase. If the results are 10,000 or less, and the search results from the Keyword Tool are over 1,000 then I feel like IO may have a Possible Profitable Niche to exploit.

Amazon.com – I Might go there with my possible niche to see if anyone is searching for that topic in the form of a book, if so I take note of that book.
If I am not going to Amazon.com with a phrase or topic I will just go with the intention of looking at whats in the Best Selling Categories. This is another place to find hot new niches to possibly profit from.
Most Gifted – a category on Amazon.com that is a good place to look as well as Most Wished
I also like to search specific topics and look at the customer reviews, sometimes looking at the number of reviews will give me a heads up as to that being a hot topic for a niche market.

Ebay – Whats selling and whats being looked for? Look at Ebay Pulse for possible niche ideas. Especially if you are a review writer or an eBook/eReport writer, this is the place to see whats hot and get topics for reviews and reports to sell.
Ebays “Want It Now” – this is a place to go to find what people want RIGHT NOW. Another place to see and get ideas.

There’s plenty of places to go search right now with those three places. Anyone can take an idea or keyword, phrase adn search and find a niche that might be profitable. Beware though, don’t get caught up in the shiny things aisle. I am always bad with that, getting caught up reading and not doing my writing. “Oohhh, shiny, pretty…..oh look at the time slip by….”

I hope this helps some of the newer readers of my Blog, and in case you want this list I have created a PDF version for download here

Enjoy.

Larry C.

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Hellraiser Puzzle Box meets the economy from hell

Larry C. — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:01:52 +0000

Time…to play…

I have a favorite movie called Hellraiser, some of you may have heard of it, you know that movie with pinhead? Anyway, I love that movie for some strange reason, and I love that little box that everyone is always trying to get their hands on. I found a site that sells them and I ordered one a few years ago.

Quality Lacks

Well I finally got the box after months and many emails hassling the guy for either my money back or the box. when I finally got the box, it was already falling apart. the brass plates were peeling up at the corners and it was tarnished and it looks like he tried to sand the brass to shine it up. It was an unholy piece of crap.

My Vow to the world, or how I sold my soul…

I was pissed. No one should ever have to put up with what I did ever again, nor should this guy ever sell another piece of crap like that ato a Hellraiser fan, ever. So I decided I would make my own.

I got a scan of the box faces, had a friend who does autocad make a blueprint for me of the box faces. I found an etching house to etch the brass that is .005 of an inch thick, it’s thin as paper! Then I found a place that could cut me the 3″x3″x3″ cube of wood. I bought some black lacquer and some clear lacquer and off I went, I started making my own hellraiser boxes.

So I started making these things and I started giving them away to all my good friends. I had made about 15 that first run, and I realized when I was down to my last 2 that I had given them all away and not sold any of them. Well ok, call it self promotions, that was a good rationalization.

Ebay’s time to play…

I started to make my next batch and I decided I would sell these on Ebay and gt my money back to order more plates. The face plates alone were $800 for 25 sets. Each set is 6 plates, one for each face of the six sided cube. $32 for each box just for the brass plates alone, $5 for the lacquer which one can covered approximately 10-15 boxes. The cube of mahogany were about $5 each. Then there was my time into making them, and it took about 2 weeks to complete one box completely from start to finish. However I make the boxes in lots of 10-15 at a time so about $10 per box for my labor. Ok so roughly $50 for a box, what was my markup going to be?

Oh good, Competition…

I looked on Ebay and saw another guy selling them for an insanely low price. I had to email that guy and tell him he was hurting the market and to raise his prices. The theory behind this is that if you lower the price too low it hurt the industry and the other people in that industry who are trying to make a living. It’s called devaluing the product by making the price so low there is no profit margin.

Well the guy actually did raise his prices and now I had some competition at $150 per box. He was selling them before for like 50$ per box. Insane. Well we both sold our boxes for $150 per box for a while and made a decent profit for a while. It’s not the same today in this economy.

The economy from hell…

I can tell that the economy is pretty bad because no one is buying the boxes anymore. I tried putting up 4 boxes a few weeks ago and deliberatly lowered the prices to about $75 and not a single one sold. I even put one up that was signed by Ashley Laurence, the girl who played Kirsty in the first 2 Hellraiser Movies, and no one bit on that either. A quality prop replica like I make is not easy to find at that price and for no one to bid even the lowest one any of them, it’s pretty bad out there.

I digress…

It’s the same in a lot of different industries that are luxury oriented. The boxes are a luxury, so is photography. I do photography on the side, and the only thing that is happening is baby photography right now, and that is a bit scarce.

So why is baby photography happening and the boxes aren’t? like I said, the boxes are a luxury and people don’t NEED them. Baby photography is somewhat a necessity for people. The need to document their families for historical purposes, for the sake of having pictures of their darling little babies. This is definitely something that people want and they consider it a NEED. Hellraiser Puzzle Boxes aren’t a NEED. They are a WANT. Big Difference.

Reeling it back in…

This is how I find my Niche markets that I plan to cater to. I find something that is a NEED and that people are desperate for. Sometimes its not really a NEED, it’s more of a desperate WANT. One of my Niches I am getting ready to exploit, is a segment in the dating industry. Yes that’s right I said exploit. The definition I prefer to use is “To advertise; promote”. And not unethically.

I will be advertising and promoting a site that is geared towards a segment of the dating population that doesn’t seem to be hit right now. I found this at Google Insights. That is one place to find up and coming Niche markets, another place is Google Trends. And yet another place is Amazon and Ebay. Just got to each one and look at the best sellers lists. Ebay has Pulse.

The think tank…

Another why I come up with my niche’s that I delve into is right here at The Niche Think Tank. Thats what I do here, I brainstorm and think and doodle and come up with new and nifty( that’s right, nifty) Niche Markets to Exploit. While I was sitting here writing this I started thinking about how I could get more people to bite on the Puzzle Boxes.

I go for several walks throughout the day and I am usually listening to one of Yaro Staracks Podcasts. While I was walking today thinking about the puzzle boxes and listeing to one of Yaros Podcasts, I had the idea to sell just the brass plates at a discount so that people could make their own. Then my Wife suggested a kit, sell them a 3x3x3 inch block of mahogany and the plates and instructions on how to put it all together. what a great idea. So there you have it, the start of yet another little money maker. Anyway I am hungry and I am going to go get some tacos at Ponces in Kensington.

See you all later.

Larry

P.S. If you would like to see some of my boxes head on over to my Hellraiser Puzzle Box Site:

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The Niche Think Tank » Niche Marketing Strategy

Income Report for October 2010

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10 Ways To Monetize a Forum

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Google Search Results Are Skewed – How To Get Real Search Results

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Income Report for September 2010

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One of my Niche Sites – Disclosure.

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Duplicate Content Hurts EVERYONE

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3 Places Where I find possible Niches

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Hellraiser Puzzle Box meets the economy from hell

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