Choosing Your Niche – What Figures Can You Trust?

Choosing Your Niche – What Figures Can You Trust?

It’s easy to think there’s a formula for internet marketing.

Lots of systems teach you that there’s a sweet spot of between (say) 10,000 and 25,000 searches per month.

The figures vary – a lot depends on who’s suggesting them.

And they might be mixed in with other figures.


For instance, if the system is based around Clickbank then there’s a good chance it will suggest that you use their “gravity” figure.

Warrior Plus has a similar figure – they call it pulse.

Clickbank’s gravity figure isn’t something you can rely on (nor is the Warrior Plus pulse figure)


All it tells you is an approximation of how many affiliates have recently made a sale.

If there’s only one affiliate promoting the product, no matter how many sales they make the gravity figure can’t go above 1.

So whether they’re regularly selling 1 or 100 or 1,000 or even a million copies per day, the maximum gravity is 1 because they’re the only affiliate selling it.


But if 100 people are regularly making 1 sale each, the gravity will be 100.

Even if the other product with a lower number of affiliates (and showing a gravity of maybe 1) is making more sales overall.

Which means Clickbank gravity isn’t a figure to pay any attention to. With the possible exception of promoting products with a low gravity that fit with your niche on the basis that there aren’t many people competing.


The next figure that gets thrown around is the number of monthly searches shown on the Google Keyword Planner.

If you’ve got at least one campaign running, it gives you a very precise looking figure for the number of monthly searches.

If you haven’t, it will only give you a very imprecise range for the number of searches.


To be honest, both figures are often wildly inaccurate.

But in much the same way as we believe things that are in print, we believe the figures we see on screen, especially as most of us trust Google at least to an extent.

The problem with the keyword planner is that it’s designed to sell more pay per click adverts for Google.


There are so many other variables that the figures can be out by an order of magnitude.

I know that because I’ve had pages where they regularly (year in, year out) get more traffic than Google says exists.

Not just a few more – sometimes more in one day than Google says exists in a month.


Other terms with decent traffic showing on my site didn’t appear in the keyword planner for months (or even years)

Part of the problem is that the keyword planner isn’t Google’s main product.

Most people use Google to search, not to check the number of searches in order to buy an advert.


Another part is that if Google gave precise figures – even if they were available – then competitors could learn more about their business than they cared to reveal.

But the “even if they were available” statement is critical.

Sure, Google have the data.

But processing it into precise figures for every potential query in the planner would take a lot of computer power.


So, instead, the figures are an approximation.

Even ignoring other factors like how many other adverts are showing on the relevant search results – if there are quite a few, the search numbers would only apply to the ads as there’s a tail off in clicks the further you scroll down the page.

Plus the figures would be spread out over at least the first page of the results – so between 10 & upwards of 14 results would get the clicks spread between them.


Which means the only figures you know for certain are the ones on your own stats.

And even those can be misleading.

Some stats (Google Analytics for instance) are based on some Javascript and will vary depending on how far down the page the code is and whether every visitor has Javascript enabled.


Server logs in your control panel will show robots as well as human visitors.

WordPress Jetpack stats does its best to ignore robots and just show human views. But even those can be skewed if you regularly visit your own site without being logged in.

So even figures that should be precise can vary.


The only real figures I trust are sales.

Someone has paid me money – either directly or as an affiliate for someone else.

Subject to refunds, those are actual sales and money in my pocket.

You won’t know ahead of time which pages on your site and which videos you record and which emails you write will turn to sales.


Without a working crystal ball, that’s just impossible.

And as far as I know, most crystal balls don’t work like that, if at all.

So put your trust issues aside.

Stop using any figures other than sales made as a crutch.

Just do it.


You’ll be able to work out what works for you.

And you can use the time that you’d previously have spent checking figures productively by creating new content.

If you’d like more help with this, click this link now.

http://trevordumbleton.com/real-world-internet-marketing-squeeze-page/

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Choosing Your Niche – What Figures Can You Trust?