In the last edition you may recall we spoke about researching your market. You can also check out the shopping sites such as e-bay and Amazon for more ideas and to see what is selling well. However, I'm going to assume that you have now narrowed down your search and you're ready to start looking closely at the markets you have chosen. For example, let's say that you've chosen ' anniversary gifts ' as your target market. Now, you need to know how many people are looking for anniversary gifts and indeed, what your competition is like for that market.

So, please go here.

http://www.such-sense.com/about-research.php

Follow the onscreen instructions and register. I've obtained a couple of good discounts for you. You can also register for the free trial. If you want you can stick with the free trial at this stage (although limited to MSN results, this will give you an idea of what you are looking for). Note: The full membership includes Google results and you will get a better picture of the overall market as Google controls around 60%-70% of it. Once you’ve logged in then enter the first subject idea from your list i.e. ‘anniversary gift’. Again follow the onscreen instructions, add the suggested keywords to your basket and at the end of step 4, you should have a list of potential keywords with the very important KEI number. The higher the better!
 
The KEI is simply a calculation between the number of web-sites competing for that term and the number of times that search term is used on a daily basis. Ideally what you are looking for is a keyword with FEW competing sites and LOTS of visitors. This is what the KEI identifies. Assuming that the best KEI has a reasonable number of searches (count above 400 should do) and the KEI is over 10 then that is your one! If your KEI is over 100 then you may have hit gold! Write it down and start over. The link to start over is at the bottom of the page after step 4. If it doesn’t meet your benchmarks then try some other words from your list for that subject. Repeat for your other six categories so you end up with at least 7 target words. What I do is usually come up with 2 or 3 options per category and score them KEI/count i.e. 15/585 so when we get to the next stage I know which ones are more valuable. Final tip: Avoid the word ‘free’ in your keywords – too hard to make any money with that one  )
 
Then for each of your seven keywords, input them here in the following order: http://namewidget.com/
 
{keyword}{keyword}.com (with no separator),
{keyword}-{keyword}.com (with - separator)
 
We’re looking for dot coms where possible. You should now have a good idea of what domain names are available. Write them down! By the way,  namewidget is not perfect but it is a nice, quick tool for these purposes. We are going to register your keywords in the next edition – and then they will be yours - how exciting!
 
I think that will do for today, in the next episode I'll show you how to register your domains.
 
Until then,
All the very best,
Allen Jesson
Internet Marketing Specialist
http://www.internet-marketing-sense.com
Making Sense Of It All