When it comes to making money online, the key is to make money. Seems silly, right? What else would it be about? You may be surprised.

Many people who are trying to get those sweet magic internet monies are going about it completely the wrong way. Your first step is to find a gap in the market. Who isn’t being served? How can you serve them?

If you can’t answer these questions then it might be best to move on to another market. Or maybe it’s a diamond in the rough. How can you tell?

This is the kind of topic that makes marketers heads’ spin. If you want to know how to identify market segments that still have huge potential, you’re in luck. We’re going to try and break it down. Read on.

Find a Niche Using Google Trends

When you’re racking your brain and trying to come up with a plan for making money online, look no further than Google Trends to start your research. It’s a really easy tool to use.

Go to the website and plug in your topics. You’ll be given a graph that you can play with to fit into your desired timeline and you can even hone your search down by country. Keep in mind Google isn’t the number one search engine in every country and some countries have content restrictions.

For anyone who wants to make money online through a niche or authority website, you probably want to focus on certain countries. This includes the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

This group of countries has a lot of wealth and niches that do well in one can probably do well in the others. Whereas a customer in the UK probably does not have the same wants and needs as someone in a conservative Middle East nation.

For this example, let’s use cryptocurrency. It’s a niche that is growing every day. But is it still worth it to try and get into the hustle?

In this example, we compared the search term “Bitcoin” against “Online Banking”. There is a lot more interest in cryptocurrency right now than there is in online banking.

This is probably a good thing. Websites like NerdWallet have that niche locked down pretty hard. It’s going to be difficult to rank well against the likes of them and other big names.

But you can go into this even deeper. Let’s do another quick comparison.

This is a comparison of the Ethereum blockchain against a small blockchain called Fantom Opera. Fantom is starting to make waves in the defi space. But according to Google Trends, people are still searching for Ethereum more often.

Does this mean Fantom isn’t worth building content around? Is it too new? Let’s compare Fantom to another rising star, the Avalanche blockchain.

This changes the entire landscape, doesn’t it? You can see that while neither Avalanche nor Fantom is competing well with Ethereum, interest in both blockchains is steadily rising.

After doing some research like this, you’re probably going to go out and hunt down some cryptocurrency affiliate programs and then build a website around them. You could join discords for different protocols and create YouTube videos to promote your website. 

Twitter and other social platforms are other great places to promote your work.

Putting all of these tactics together can make your website a rising star in the crypto world, which is a space that struggles when it comes to well-written content. However, it’s also important to keep search engines in mind. It’ll make your life a lot easier in the long run.

Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

Keywords are a big part of search engine optimization. Using the examples from above, let’s assume you decide to start targeting various crypto keywords with your content.

Right off the bat, you need to take keywords like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Blockchain off of your list. These keywords are simply too short and overly saturated. It doesn’t matter how good your content is, you will never rank.

Instead, go after long-tail keywords. Using the long-tail phrase “best protocols on fantom” the first piece of content that pops up is a Medium article. When was the last time you saw a Medium article rank in the number one spot?

Go to the article as well as a few others. Write something that is way better. Promote this content on your social sites and then reach out to the creators of these protocols. They will promote your piece, provided it’s good, on their own channels and in their discords.

This will bring tons of readers to your website and help you to build a loyal audience. When new protocols come out, they may even reach out to you and offer payment for writing a piece on their project. 

Google will see traffic flocking to your content and you’ll rise through the rankings quickly just by targeting the right long-tail keywords.

It’s important to remember there is always more than one way to do something.

Secondary Keywords

Secondary keywords can be just as vital as your main keyword. But what are they and how do you find them?

Your main keywords should be included in your title, at least one header, and sprinkled throughout your content. Secondary keywords should be in headers and then lightly peppered into your blog posts. That’s some quality seasoning.

A good way to search for great secondary keywords is to go back to your original search and look for the People also ask box. It looks like this:

You can answer these questions as part of a FAQ section or just add the headers naturally provided they fit into the blog post.

Competition is a Good Thing

Pro-tip: Don’t be scared of a little competition.

Other website owners and marketers in your space are a sign that the niche has money in it. You should be more concerned if you’re the only creator or business owner in this space.

However, you may have to get creative. If someone or another business starts to outrank your website, do some digging. There are a variety of marketing tools out there that can help you track backlinks to your competitor’s website.

Spend a little time monitoring their content. What are they doing well? How can you make it better? Competition breeds innovation.

If you thought you could build a website and never update or try to make it better then you got into the wrong business.

As always, it’s also  a strong belief of mine that a solid link building campaign can always help give you an edge in particularly tough but lucrative markets.

It doesn’t take much to pull ahead of the competition in that regard. The little things like creating a professional email signature, using branded email addresses, creating truly personalized outreach and focusing on quality over quantity can help a lot.   

Keep Your Mind on Your Money and Your Money on Your Mind

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Snoop Doggy Dogg was not the first person to put these words together. He just made them famous with his hit song Gin and Juice.

Building websites, affiliate marketing, ad revenue. These are not hobbies. They are integral parts of building an online business.

Not only is it a business, but it has the same goal as every other company in the world, which is to make a profit. If you’ve done a ton of research and you’ve found a niche no one is living in, there’s likely a reason.

Bad niches have bad traffic and bad affiliate programs. These aren’t worth your time. It can cost thousands of dollars to build a great niche or authority site, which is why it’s so important for you to identify a dead market before you dive in.

How do you identify dead markets using the tips we’ve already mentioned?

• Keywords – If the cost and the traffic for your main keywords are low then the market for products and services in this niche could not be moving. This could also be a sign there is no healthy competition, which means there is no money here.
• Trend lines – If you spend an hour or two on Google Trends and every topic is a flat line, the desire just isn’t there.
• Bad Programs – There is also a wild card category. If brands for a particular niche are constantly going under or if they’re a hassle to deal with, no one is going to waste their time. If you come across a niche that seems too good to be true, do some research on the best affiliate programs for it. If Amazon is all there is, it likely isn’t worth your time.

Conclusion – How to Identify Market Segments that Still Have Huge Potential

Finding the right market segments for your writing and website design style can be difficult for sure. Remember, you only have to be right one time. Then it becomes a matter of rinse and repeat.

If you use the tips above, it will make the process much easier. However, there is much more to making money online than just these ideas. You’ll need to become a subject matter expert, a social media extraordinaire, and your own SEO.
It’s doable. Thousands of people are doing it every day and so can you. Thanks for hanging out. If you enjoyed this post, you’ll like this one on how to grow your small business with affiliate marketing.