Success With Marc

Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase

Here’s a great Firefox Add-on for your blog. It’s called Zemanta and it’ll speed up your blogging tremendously.  Zemanta provides relevant content from the web as you write your posts. It gathers content, pictures, and videos with immediate tagged links created between your posts and others sharing related conversations.

The images and related links were provided as I typed this post.  All I needed to do was click on them, and they were instantly added. You can even add your Flickr account to instantly have access to those pics for your blog posts.  Very cool, and very easy!

Here’s the link to download Zemanta.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Hands On With Zemanta - Your Blog Writing Concierge?
• Firefox update - Get more out of browsing from Firefox

Technorati Tags: blog tool, Blogging, firefox, firefox add-on, zemanta

One additional market research tool is Google Blog Search.  I’m finding many useful ways to use this free Google tool.  The first thing to know is that it does not limit its results to Blogger or .blogspot blogs. All blogs are included in the search results.  You can also look for results in languages other than English.

So, the first use of this market research tool is obviously just for fun.  If I want to know what people are writing about a hobby of mine like theatre, I can get all the latest blog posts about my interest in the stage.

Then, the market research or niche research possibilities are very good.  If I’m looking to set up a money blog about a blockbuster movie for 2010, then I can type in Mighty Mouse and see if I can get a jump on the competition.  (I’m not doing a Mighty Mouse blog, but…)

I can also research keywords and see how other blogs in my niche are optimizing for those keywords (or not).

Finally, I can put in my keyword for my blogs and see how I’m ranking against my competition among other blogs.

The Google Blog Search lets you sort by recent posts, within 1 week, within 1 month, all posts, etc.  What’s really cool is that you can do an advanced blog search by keywords, long tail keywords, negative keywords, blog post titles, blog authors, blog urls, and date ranges.

I love the free stuff from Google!

Technorati Tags: blog search, market research tool

One of my absolute favorite tools for doing niche research is SEO for Firefox. It’s easy to use, gives tons of useful information, and it’s FREE! The primary function of this useful Firefox add-on is to give you a range of data to get an over-all picture of your niche competition in search engine results.

SEO for Firefox sits in the status bar of the Firefox browser, and one click can turn it on or off. It’s recommended that you keep it off when surfing the net, and only have it on when doing market research. When it’s on the search engines are being pinged, so as a courtesty toggle it on only when you need it.

One of the features I like is I’m looking for a highly ranked site or blog where I can leave a useful comment with my link. SEO for Firefox will tell me if the links on the page or comment section are “no follow” links by highlighting them in red. If I see the red highlight over the links on the page, I may still leave a link for some additonal traffic, but I’ll also know that I’m not getting any link juice.

The main use of SEO for Firefox is for search engine results. For example, after typing in a keyword in Google, the tool will pull all types of useful data to help me determine if I want to pursue a particular niche. Here’s what I’ll learn:

• PR - Google page rank
• Age - date that page was first indexed
• Links - estimate of number of links pointing to domain
• .edu and .gov links - estimate of number of .edu and .gov links pointing to domain
• .edu and .gov page links - estimate of number of .edu and .gov links pointing to page
• Page links - estimate of number of links pointing to a page
• del.icio.us - number of times the URL has been bookmarked at Del.icio.us
• Technorati - number of total links to a site from blogs
• Alexa - rank based on web site traffic
• Cached - shows number of pages from site that are indexed by Google
• dmoz - shows number of pages from site listed in DMOZ
• Bloglines - shows number of subscribers to site in Bloglines
• dir.yahoo.com - shows if site is in Yahoo! directory
• WhoIs - link to look up whois data for the domain

You can customize the tool to give or leave out information, and you can also access tools like Google Trends, Google’s keyword research tool, and more.

It’s very cool and time-saving to sit down and get a good picture of the niche competition and an idea of what kind of work it would take to dominate Page One of the search results.

To start using SEO for Firefox, you first need to be using the Firefox browser (and I’ve recently found that it also works on the Flock browser).

Download the Firefox browser here…

Then, you can download the SEO for Firefox at SEOBook.com.

Happy researching!

Technorati Tags: firefox, seo

Looking for the best places to find an affiliate niche?  The key to making money in internet marketing isn’t the product; it’s finding the buyers.  Market research needs to come before finding a product, or even creating a product to sell online.

I’ve always put most of my energy into network marketing, so I’m relatively new to affiliate marketing. However, I’ve learned that determining the right hot niche saves time and makes money.  Once you find a niche, then doing further research into its size, the competition, the willingness of people in the niche to buy, etc. comes next, but first you need to find the best niche.

There are so many ways to find a niche, and here are my 10 best places to find an affiliate niche:

Google Hot Trends -Top 100 search terms or phrases on Google updated up to the minute (or pretty darn close)

AOL Hot Searches -Very extensive compilation of top AOL searches from electronics and celebrities to personal finance and travel…and more.

Technorati Popular - Top searches, Top Blogs by fans, Top Blogs by authority. Great way to see what other blogs people want to visit.

Amazon Hot New Releases - Not only for affiliate products, but can you find a niche with many books or journals about it?

Ebay What’s Hot - Looks at eBay sales data to determine what’s in demand

Yahoo Buzz - Top searches and Top Stories based on votes, emails, and searches

Lycos 50 - Lists its Top 50 links for pop culture. Take a look at the lower right section of the page to subscribe to the Lycos 50 newsletter

eHow - How to do just about anything. Check out what people want to know

About Ask.com:IQ - Top weekly searches and advancing searches

Google Groups - Group directory by topics, size, language, region, and messages

This is a great starting list for finding that market ready to buy.  If you have any other places that you find helpful, please share them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, find a niche, internet marketing, niche