3.4 How Scared Should You Be of Competition? (AF)

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In this video I discuss:

  • Why competition is usually a very good thing (and when it’s not)
  • The most competitive, evergreen niches for internet businesses
  • How to topple even the biggest and best competitors in any niche

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.4 Transcript Below

Okay! I mentioned at the end of the last video – the last lesson – that this is what we’re going to be discussing: How scared you should be of competition?

A lot of people’s instinct is actually the opposite of what you should really kind of take away from seeing a lot of competition in a niche. So I’m just going to dig down into this one, because at the end of the day, competition is actually a really good thing. You shouldn’t be scared of competition at all – with a few exceptions which we’ll talk about.

Competition is a sign that there is money to be made in that niche. And even more importantly than that, there is already money being made in that niche.

And a lot of people say… like I had someone write me the other day and they said, “Hey Ian, could you give me some examples… like these are the industries I’m looking at going into. Could you give me some examples of some valid affiliate sites? Some sites that would actually make money… that are making money?”

And I said, “Well if you Google pretty much anything in the niche and you find a site that is producing helpful content and writing a lot of articles, that’s a great site to model your site after.”

Almost the more competition there is in an industry, the more examples of things that are working that you can find very easily. So it can actually be a very, very good thing.

At the end of the day, if you provide more value than the current competitors in a niche, it’s just a matter of time before you topple them or you find yourself among them. It’s a matter of posting really high quality content over a period of time. And if you keep doing that, Google themselves have said very publicly that you will break through as long as you just keep publishing really high quality content. It’s just a matter of time.

So if you can find ways to provide value or provide as much value as the very tiptop… the people that are doing really well in the industry… if you can do just as well and even better, if you can do better than them and provide more value, it’s just a matter of time until you succeed in that niche.

So that can also be true, you don’t necessarily have to compete side-by-side with them. That can also be true… as I’ve discussed in past training… it can be true if you provide value in a different medium.

So if there are a lot of people creating really, really high-quality content posts – written content – you could be the guy or gal that comes in and makes videos. Totally possible and just as valid of an approach.

So the one exception I will give to kind of this role is if you see the same three to five authority sites… so we are talking about like really heavy hitter famous websites… if everything you search in a niche is dominated by the same three or five competitors – they have the top three, the top five listings so they are all showing up on the first page over and over again – it’s probably better to pursue a different niche if you just can’t find terms within that niche that these competitors are constantly popping up in.

So a really good example is Amazon. If you’re seeing Amazon pop up two or three times towards the top for all of the search terms you’re looking at – that you’re putting into Google If you’re finding really authoritative health sites like Mayo Clinic or Health MD. Another really good example is in the real estate niche. It can be really, really hard to do SEO (search engine optimization) in the real estate niche because Realtor.com and so many others… Zillow, Trulia… so many of these other websites have such a strong hold on those niches.

So if everything you’re searching is popping up with the same heavy hitting various established authorities and you just can’t find any way around that… you just can’t find enough keywords outside of that… I would seriously consider looking at another niche. So that’s just a really good rule of thumb for the exception there.

So I also want to take a moment in this lesson and talk about the most competitive and also the most profitable industries. You may have heard of these referred to as “evergreen niches” and there are kind of three main coveted evergreen niches in this industry.

There’s Health and Wellness and Beauty. They kind of fall into the same category for whatever reason. That is one of the top three evergreen niches that no matter what, that is always going to be a very profitable niche to do business in or a very profitable industry. There are a lot of niches under that umbrella and they will all be very profitable. If you can get traffic in that niche or in that industry to your niche site, you are probably going to make a pretty decent amount of income.

The same thing is true for Make Money Online, anything having to do with Investing or Business Opportunities. So at the end of the day, money. Health and wellness and money so far are the niches.

If you have a site about making money doing *blank* (whether it be working online or building businesses that cost less than $100 to start up) or anything having to do with investing (whether it be from stocks to auctions) to finding things on Craigslist or eBay that you flipped for money in the long run, those are going to be really profitable niche sites and there are going to be a lot of possibilities… really profitable niche sites within those industries.

So same thing goes for Relationships and Dating.

Those are the top three evergreen niches that as time goes on, more and more… it’s been this way for a decade, 15 years now, even longer actually… these have always been the most profitable industries for people running internet marketing businesses – whether it be a blog or an affiliate marketing site or eCommerce.

If you establish yourself in these niches, it’s likely to be very profitable but it is also significantly more likely to be much higher competition – naturally. If there’s a lot more money to be made there, there are probably going to be a lot more people looking to get in into that niche or that industry. But if you can kind of crack a smart way in, you could be looking at a huge pay off.

Originally, when I entered the internet marketing niche overall… similar to Free Internet Marketing Project, I wanted to start an honest review site for so many years before I did it. But I finally did it once and it turned out to be a really, really great niche to be in.

But I didn’t go into internet marketing saying, “Hey I’m going to teach people how to make money on the internet,” because there’s so many articles about that and it’s such a saturated market place.

So I decided what I would do… before – well, not before – but when I entered the internet marketing product review space, everything you read was a positive review for the product. No matter what you looked up, no matter what search term, on YouTube, in Google, all you saw were positive recommendations because that was how people monetized. They weren’t giving honest reviews. Most of them weren’t even buying the products. They were just saying, “It’s great. Buy through my affiliate link.” “It’s awesome. It fulfills everything it ever said it would and more. Buy through my affiliate link.”

And I was really fed up with that because most of these products were crap. I knew because I was buying a lot of them or I had bought a lot of them in the years leading up to that and they were just crap. When I got into them… this guy gave it a glowing recommendation… I got into them and it was a total piece of crap.

So I ultimately decided to enter the internet marketing space. Instead of going head on and competing with all of the articles – all the really high quality content that’s in this industry – I decided to review products honestly and that was a great way into the niche.

Now traditional kind of school of thought was: if you go into a niche and you say products are bad… you find products and you go through them and you find out that they’re bad and you can’t recommend them… well then, you can’t make any money because if you say, “Oh, this is crap,” and nobody buys it, then you’re not making any money.

But what I found in time as I was going through and giving all of those honest reviews was there were products out there that were fulfilling similar sales claims that were totally legitimate and much higher quality. And over time, people would find their way to those products.

I never… I could’ve been much more strong-handed in how I funneled people into those. Basically, there are a lot of people in the industry now that say, “This is a bad product. This is a good product, though. Go buy this one.” And I never really did that because it just felt – for me – ethically questionable.

So even though I probably shouldn’t have a problem with it personally, it was just something I didn’t want to do because my number one priority was helping people. I always wanted to keep that at the core of my business. And at the end of the day, if you help people, they are going to end up a lot of them sticking with you, following your training, digging through your sites some more, and ultimately making you money.

So that’s a really good example of a smart way into a very, very saturated niche. And so smart in fact that it’s taught now – it wasn’t when I started No More BS Reviews years ago before… that was when I eventually started Stopping Scams to be a more holistic site than just reviews: to incorporate training and stuff like that, too; to really help prevent scams because what better way to prevent people from being scammed than giving them really high-quality training so that they don’t have to go and buy all these products; or at the very least, when they’re evaluating a product, they have a much better understanding and realistic perspective to evaluate… a better lens to evaluate that product through. So if there’s a smart way in, the payoff can be absolutely huge if you thicken your skin and you can tough it out.

So I say all of that again to get down to kind of the important takeaways.

Stop looking at competition as a bad thing. It’s usually quite the opposite with that one exception I talked about if the same authorities are dominating all of the search terms you look up, it’s probably better to either find a different way into that niche, find different things to write about in that niche, or just switch niches entirely.

The most important thing is that you add more value or you add value through a different medium or you add value in a totally different way that nobody has ever added value before. So if you do those things, you will be successful in the long run and whatever niche you enter – as long as it’s dealing with a buying audience.

So if you can add more value, if you can add value differently than any of the people in the space are doing it, or if you can add value through a different medium – say, again I always use the example if there’s not a whole lot of people making videos, but a lot of people making written content, and you’re willing to make videos, they don’t even have to be super great, we’ll talk about that later in the training, too – those can all be really great ends to very, very profitable high competition niches.

So that’s the end of this lesson. Again the take home message is just don’t be afraid of competition.

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to post them to the Facebook group – free for registered members. And other than that, I will see you in the next lesson.

3.4 How Scared Should You Be of Competition?

Thanks for stopping by and checking us out! If you like what you see, make sure to create a free account so that you can:

  • Track all of your progress and easily pick up exactly where you left off
  • Get support from me and other members whenever you get stuck using our members-only Facebook group
  • Secure your spot in a followup accountability course designed to assure you’re making progress

Or simply log in if you already have one.

=====

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2509″ ifallowed=”hide”]Unlock more training for growing your online income — with the business tools you’ll need in the process.
PLUS, get:

  • Time-tested methods to get traffic fast with NO risk of getting Google-slapped.
  • The most profitable ways to make money—and exactly how and when to monetize.
  • Access to Ian’s expertise so that you can ask him questions every time you need to.

Unlock it all by getting the tools your business needs to grow.

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

[mepr-show if=”loggedin”][mepr-active memberships=”2338,2342″ ifallowed=”hide”]Twice the results. Half the time. Would you be interested?
Be on the top 5% of online business owners who know how to maximize their online profits. Get new, actionable, and advanced training every month. Focused on more profits. 2X Faster.

WARNING: Goo-roo’s ain’t gonna like this

=====[/mepr-active] [/mepr-show]

In this video I discuss:

  • Why competition is usually a very good thing (and when it’s not)
  • The most competitive, evergreen niches for internet businesses
  • How to topple even the biggest and best competitors in any niche

Please direct all questions and requests for support to the FIMP Facebook group (free for registered members).

3.4 Transcript Below

Okay! I mentioned at the end of the last video – the last lesson – that this is what we’re going to be discussing: How scared you should be of competition?

A lot of people’s instinct is actually the opposite of what you should really kind of take away from seeing a lot of competition in a niche. So I’m just going to dig down into this one, because at the end of the day, competition is actually a really good thing. You shouldn’t be scared of competition at all – with a few exceptions which we’ll talk about.

Competition is a sign that there is money to be made in that niche. And even more importantly than that, there is already money being made in that niche.

And a lot of people say… like I had someone write me the other day and they said, “Hey Ian, could you give me some examples… like these are the industries I’m looking at going into. Could you give me some examples of some valid affiliate sites? Some sites that would actually make money… that are making money?”

And I said, “Well if you Google pretty much anything in the niche and you find a site that is producing helpful content and writing a lot of articles, that’s a great site to model your site after.”

Almost the more competition there is in an industry, the more examples of things that are working that you can find very easily. So it can actually be a very, very good thing.

At the end of the day, if you provide more value than the current competitors in a niche, it’s just a matter of time before you topple them or you find yourself among them. It’s a matter of posting really high quality content over a period of time. And if you keep doing that, Google themselves have said very publicly that you will break through as long as you just keep publishing really high quality content. It’s just a matter of time.

So if you can find ways to provide value or provide as much value as the very tiptop… the people that are doing really well in the industry… if you can do just as well and even better, if you can do better than them and provide more value, it’s just a matter of time until you succeed in that niche.

So that can also be true, you don’t necessarily have to compete side-by-side with them. That can also be true… as I’ve discussed in past training… it can be true if you provide value in a different medium.

So if there are a lot of people creating really, really high-quality content posts – written content – you could be the guy or gal that comes in and makes videos. Totally possible and just as valid of an approach.

So the one exception I will give to kind of this role is if you see the same three to five authority sites… so we are talking about like really heavy hitter famous websites… if everything you search in a niche is dominated by the same three or five competitors – they have the top three, the top five listings so they are all showing up on the first page over and over again – it’s probably better to pursue a different niche if you just can’t find terms within that niche that these competitors are constantly popping up in.

So a really good example is Amazon. If you’re seeing Amazon pop up two or three times towards the top for all of the search terms you’re looking at – that you’re putting into Google If you’re finding really authoritative health sites like Mayo Clinic or Health MD. Another really good example is in the real estate niche. It can be really, really hard to do SEO (search engine optimization) in the real estate niche because Realtor.com and so many others… Zillow, Trulia… so many of these other websites have such a strong hold on those niches.

So if everything you’re searching is popping up with the same heavy hitting various established authorities and you just can’t find any way around that… you just can’t find enough keywords outside of that… I would seriously consider looking at another niche. So that’s just a really good rule of thumb for the exception there.

So I also want to take a moment in this lesson and talk about the most competitive and also the most profitable industries. You may have heard of these referred to as “evergreen niches” and there are kind of three main coveted evergreen niches in this industry.

There’s Health and Wellness and Beauty. They kind of fall into the same category for whatever reason. That is one of the top three evergreen niches that no matter what, that is always going to be a very profitable niche to do business in or a very profitable industry. There are a lot of niches under that umbrella and they will all be very profitable. If you can get traffic in that niche or in that industry to your niche site, you are probably going to make a pretty decent amount of income.

The same thing is true for Make Money Online, anything having to do with Investing or Business Opportunities. So at the end of the day, money. Health and wellness and money so far are the niches.

If you have a site about making money doing *blank* (whether it be working online or building businesses that cost less than $100 to start up) or anything having to do with investing (whether it be from stocks to auctions) to finding things on Craigslist or eBay that you flipped for money in the long run, those are going to be really profitable niche sites and there are going to be a lot of possibilities… really profitable niche sites within those industries.

So same thing goes for Relationships and Dating.

Those are the top three evergreen niches that as time goes on, more and more… it’s been this way for a decade, 15 years now, even longer actually… these have always been the most profitable industries for people running internet marketing businesses – whether it be a blog or an affiliate marketing site or eCommerce.

If you establish yourself in these niches, it’s likely to be very profitable but it is also significantly more likely to be much higher competition – naturally. If there’s a lot more money to be made there, there are probably going to be a lot more people looking to get in into that niche or that industry. But if you can kind of crack a smart way in, you could be looking at a huge pay off.

Originally, when I entered the internet marketing niche overall… similar to Free Internet Marketing Project, I wanted to start an honest review site for so many years before I did it. But I finally did it once and it turned out to be a really, really great niche to be in.

But I didn’t go into internet marketing saying, “Hey I’m going to teach people how to make money on the internet,” because there’s so many articles about that and it’s such a saturated market place.

So I decided what I would do… before – well, not before – but when I entered the internet marketing product review space, everything you read was a positive review for the product. No matter what you looked up, no matter what search term, on YouTube, in Google, all you saw were positive recommendations because that was how people monetized. They weren’t giving honest reviews. Most of them weren’t even buying the products. They were just saying, “It’s great. Buy through my affiliate link.” “It’s awesome. It fulfills everything it ever said it would and more. Buy through my affiliate link.”

And I was really fed up with that because most of these products were crap. I knew because I was buying a lot of them or I had bought a lot of them in the years leading up to that and they were just crap. When I got into them… this guy gave it a glowing recommendation… I got into them and it was a total piece of crap.

So I ultimately decided to enter the internet marketing space. Instead of going head on and competing with all of the articles – all the really high quality content that’s in this industry – I decided to review products honestly and that was a great way into the niche.

Now traditional kind of school of thought was: if you go into a niche and you say products are bad… you find products and you go through them and you find out that they’re bad and you can’t recommend them… well then, you can’t make any money because if you say, “Oh, this is crap,” and nobody buys it, then you’re not making any money.

But what I found in time as I was going through and giving all of those honest reviews was there were products out there that were fulfilling similar sales claims that were totally legitimate and much higher quality. And over time, people would find their way to those products.

I never… I could’ve been much more strong-handed in how I funneled people into those. Basically, there are a lot of people in the industry now that say, “This is a bad product. This is a good product, though. Go buy this one.” And I never really did that because it just felt – for me – ethically questionable.

So even though I probably shouldn’t have a problem with it personally, it was just something I didn’t want to do because my number one priority was helping people. I always wanted to keep that at the core of my business. And at the end of the day, if you help people, they are going to end up a lot of them sticking with you, following your training, digging through your sites some more, and ultimately making you money.

So that’s a really good example of a smart way into a very, very saturated niche. And so smart in fact that it’s taught now – it wasn’t when I started No More BS Reviews years ago before… that was when I eventually started Stopping Scams to be a more holistic site than just reviews: to incorporate training and stuff like that, too; to really help prevent scams because what better way to prevent people from being scammed than giving them really high-quality training so that they don’t have to go and buy all these products; or at the very least, when they’re evaluating a product, they have a much better understanding and realistic perspective to evaluate… a better lens to evaluate that product through. So if there’s a smart way in, the payoff can be absolutely huge if you thicken your skin and you can tough it out.

So I say all of that again to get down to kind of the important takeaways.

Stop looking at competition as a bad thing. It’s usually quite the opposite with that one exception I talked about if the same authorities are dominating all of the search terms you look up, it’s probably better to either find a different way into that niche, find different things to write about in that niche, or just switch niches entirely.

The most important thing is that you add more value or you add value through a different medium or you add value in a totally different way that nobody has ever added value before. So if you do those things, you will be successful in the long run and whatever niche you enter – as long as it’s dealing with a buying audience.

So if you can add more value, if you can add value differently than any of the people in the space are doing it, or if you can add value through a different medium – say, again I always use the example if there’s not a whole lot of people making videos, but a lot of people making written content, and you’re willing to make videos, they don’t even have to be super great, we’ll talk about that later in the training, too – those can all be really great ends to very, very profitable high competition niches.

So that’s the end of this lesson. Again the take home message is just don’t be afraid of competition.

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to post them to the Facebook group – free for registered members. And other than that, I will see you in the next lesson.

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