When you are trying to build an online business, it is easy to get discouraged by the successful competition and the online gurus who seem to be experts at whatever they do. You've probably read several reports or ebooks that tell you to become an expert in your niche and following will build your business.
Great advice, for sure, but most of those experts telling you to become an expert, don't tell you how to do it. You probably don't feel like you are an expert in any niche right now, but you can be.
The first thing you have to recognize is that there is no University of Experts or an online ecourse that transforms you into a recognized expert. If there was, we'd all be registered in it right now. So, how did all those gurus get to recognizable expert status? Well, it wasn't overnight.
Most of today's experts got that recognition through impeccable customer service, a record of helping people and providing what the members in their chosen niche wanted and were willing to buy. They also learned the specific differences between "offline" and "online" marketing.
You might be thinking that "business is business" and the actual platform doesn't matter, but you would be wrong. While the marketing concepts might be similar, their application is different. To begin with, Internet marketing is performed in a very fast environment and can change in a heartbeat. It is also a graphic environment driven by many invisible forces stemming from the social networking sites that have millions of members.
What all this mean to you and your quest to become a recognized expert in your niche? In order to be successful, you need to follow in the footsteps left by all those expert gurus you want to mimic.
Begin by selecting your niche carefully. Do keyword research and check out the competition and the popularity of your niche selection. You are looking for a niche with lots of active members willing to buy your products. Do a Google search on your subject and check out the sponsored ads along the top and the right side of the results page.
If there are a lot of ads, you can deduct that your niche has money to spend. Marketers are paying for those ads and would not throw money away in a non-lucrative market. Look for a tightly focused niche by refining your search terms down from broad to narrow, like from "dogs" to a specific breed.
Once you've selected your niche, search for forums to join that are specifically focused on your niche. Here's where you start building your reputation as an expert. Join one or two forums, introduce yourself and become a good community member by helping people, answering questions and asking intelligent ones and providing links to resources that you know about. Do not start actually marketing until you have created a good reputation.
Once your reputation is secure, add a link to your products in your signature and many of your forum members will check it out to see what you are all about. Consider creating a special report of real value to the members and offering it freely. If your report has real value to the forum members, your reputation will build rapidly. Your focus and genuine helpful manner will fuel your reputation.
Your journey to becoming an expert will start making you money as your focus starts to generate a following. Most newcomers to Internet Marketing skip that focus and begin using the "buckshot" method of marketing, flitting from one sure-fire method or product to another. It doesn't work.
So, in a nutshell, find a niche that matches your passion, do your keyword and competition research, drill down to a tightly focused category within your generic niche, find and join forums and start helping people. It's not brain surgery, but honesty, recognition of the problems others in your niche are trying to solve and a willingness to provide specific solutions.
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