In the pervious posts I talk about how to find a niche and how to preform indepth keyword market analysis. Check out pervious Posts: How To Choose The Right Niche (part 1) ,  How To Choose The Right Niche (Part 2)

Get to know your competitors better, Who are your competitors? What are customer needs and preferences are you competing to meet? all this shapes your business decisions. Competitor analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of competing products or services. Find out exactly where your competitors traffic is coming from. Find out exactly which keywords are sending them the most traffic.

Here are some tools that is great for competitive analysis.

KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy – Free SEO & PPC Keyword Research software tool, that unveil your competitors most profitable Ad copies and keywords.

Quantcast

Quantcast.com -presents the demographics of web sites as well as the estimated monthly unique visitors, similar sites and the profile of a typical visitor of the site. Unfortunately, the results are sometimes unusable, because there are simply too many sites quantcast doesn’t know yet.

Compete

Compete.com – provides information for every site on the internet including site traffic history, competitive analytics, visitors, keywords that are driving traffic and more.

Google Adplanner

Google Adplanner – Free research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. Provides statistical profile of visitors to any website.

I hope you have found this post useful, let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

In the last post I talked about how to pick a product / niche idea and keyword research. Now you can take the keyword research to the next level and do a indepth keyword market analysis which will give us the evolution of interest over time and keywords that our competitiors are using.

SEO For FireFox

SEO For FireFox – Once you have install the plugin, their are lots of features you have access to:

A couple keyword research tools are located just below the search box including:

* Google Insights – compare search volume patterns across specific regions,
categories, time frames and properties.

* Google Trends – shows historical search volume trends.

* Google Sktool – The average amount of traffic the keyword matches each month
on Google.com

* SEO Book Keyword Research Tool – cross references many popular keyword research tools.

* Google Traffic Estimator – shows top bid estimates and click volume estimates
associated with Google Awords.

* Google Keyword Sandbox – Google’s keyword research tool.

In addition to pulling in this valuable marketing data this tool links to the resources where the data was pulled from, so it makes it easy for you to verify the data and further analyze it by citing the source. You can click on any of the data points to dig deeper.

Other SEO Tools for serious market research :
15 Useful SEO Tools

The first thing you need is to have a product or niche ideas, the best place to get ideas is yourself, what are you interested in and what knowledge or skills do you have, read this article “How to find product / niche ideas”

Once you have some ideas, you want to look deeper to make sure there is a good market for them before you even think about creating a product or service.

The best resources I use to ascertain if their is a market for my idea, are places that tell you what people are searching for.

1/ Google Search based tool

Google Search based tool – Enter your niche or product idea in the word or phrase box, or select a niche from the categories on the left handside.

From the keyword ideas list copy a keyword or keywords that you want to analyse more.

2/ Google Adwords Keywords Tool

Go into Google Adwords Keywords Tool and paste the keyword or keywords into the box.

Try and look for keywords that have around 3 or more words in them. With between 2000 – 5000 or more per monthly searches using exact match phrases.

3/ Google

Next I like to see what sort of competition there is for those keywords. Just look at page 1 of Google. You really are only competing against the first 10 websites. Type your search term (without quotes) into Google search engine. If the top ten positions have a page rank of three or less, then your niche will have a good chance of ranking in the top ten of Google. Use SEO for Firefox plugin, to check the page ranks..

More Niche market resources to try:
More Niche Resources
10 hot Niche Market Research Sites

Part 2 is going to talk about indepth keyword research….

Running and building your own online business can be very rewarding, but at times it can also be extremely challenging. Luckily, there is a lot of advice and lots of great resources to help you make your business dream come true. Here is a list of the best resources that I use most of the time to help build my online business.

These resources will help you learn how to start your business from scratch, help you find great ideas and help you stay motivated and make your business successful.

Entrepreneurs Journey

Entrepreneurs Journey – is a blog (weblog) website aimed at those interested in Internet business and Blogging. Entrepreneurs Journey provides useful content and interviews from entrepreneurs from around the world.

The Warrior Forum

Warrior Forum – Is the best place to learn about internet marketing, ebook selling and home based business.

Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur.com – Great content on how to start an online business, also a great place to network with entrepreneurs just like you.

Think Big Magazine

Think Big Magazine – is a free online business magazine which shares stories that inspire and motivate people.

Meet Up

Meet Up – This is a great place to meet like minded entrepreneurs and business owners, which can help form mastermind groups, plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world.

Mixergy

Mixergy – Mixergy is where the ambitious learn from a mix of experienced mentors. Mixergy holds events were business people take some time out of their schedules to help teach others what they learned from their own experiences.

startups – uk based

startups – Startups.co.uk is the number one leading source of information for UK entrepreneurs. Whether you are a budding entrepreneur ready to start a business for the first time or you are an established entrepreneur looking to do it a second time, Startups.co.uk have all the news and information you need to get your small business starting on the right foot.

Other links to resources

Top Social Networks for entrepreneurs: visit website

101 Useful Resources for Online Entrepreneurs: visit website

10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Entrepreneurs: visit website

I hope you have found this post useful, let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

You know the saying “Everyone has at least one good book in them”. Which I think is true!!! The internet has opened the doors to would be writers to enable them to self publish their work. Gone are the days were you had to appoach offline publishers, begging them to read your work and publish it, ok not quite gone!!!

Self publishing is a great way to get exposure, connect with fans, and make more money with your written words. There are loads of self-publishing sites out there ready to take your master piece, to share to the world. Who knows you could be the next Stephen King or J.K.Rowling…

I am going to share with you self publishing sites I have used and personally think is worth trying.

Issuu

Issuu – is very cool, its for online publications where you can see the digital versions of print magazines, catalogues, and documents. This site is more for professional publishers than for individual users. Issuu also allows you to embed your publications on your site.

Yudu

Yudu – produces digital versions of your brochure, catalogue, newsletter or magazine. Yudu also allows you to add multimedia elements such as video, hyperlinks and sound to your publications.

Lulu

Lulu – is great, lets you publish and sell print-on-demand books, e-books, online music, CD/DVD’s, software, artwork and calendars.

Scribd

Scribd – Alot of small businesses uses this site to share documents and promotional material. Scribd is the world’s largest document sharing community. Visited by 17 million people per month.

here are some more publishing sites:
Sites to share documents online
10 self publishing sites