On advertising, I will deal with this below.

The highest-selling niche markets
are those whose keywords have:

1. A lot of search requests (over 200 a month on the free Wordtracker keyword tool), and

2. A low number of pages to search (under 300,000 or so on a Google search).

This is just a rule of thumb, though. If everybody is selling Wii抯 and making money, then sell Wii抯, too. When everybody抯 doing it, unless you want to specialize, don抰 compete. Copy. Copy everything you can from top sellers and expose yourself as much as you can to their traffic. Expect modest earnings, not a fortune from this.

You can sell all kinds of stuff, both niche and popular. If you sell enough modest stuff, you make a fortune.

Next you need a site to sell the stuff on. Learn HTML sites, do WordPress, or set up a free site like a hosted blog, Squidoo or a Web 2.0 site. Learn the options. There抯 tons of assorted crap out there to teach you. For a small niche site, you need about 5-10 pages of quality content and your offer, which will send the reader to a sales page. Make it pretty to look at and that抯 about it. You can pepper it with Adsense if sales are down.

Don抰 be fooled by a lot of blah blah blah about blogging. Treat blogs as niche presales sites or backlink pages. End of blogging course.

You can make Adsense sites with blog farms, etc., but products give you more money per sale. Learn to sell products. Then learn to make Adsense sites. That抯 the best sequence in my opinion unless you抮e a real geek or math freak.

If you can learn the shit-through-the-snake sales page techniques, all the better. (This means your reader starts at the top, goes through a long scroll until he hits bottom and comes out by clicking to the order page.) Lots of hype, testimonials, fake high prices that you discount, fake reviews, freebies, big ugly 揃uy Now?buttons all over, and other techniques. There抯 oodles of stuff on this. They are usually called landing pages or sales pages. They are crap but they work. That抯 why people use them.

If you have trouble learning the techniques, find a good sales page that impresses you and copy the damn thing. Then replace the dude抯 stuff with your info. Sales pages don抰 get any search engine attention, so you can copy up a storm.

IMPORTANT. Make sure you can get paid and accept credit card payments. Set up accounts with Paypal, Clickbank, some other places (look for them). Get a merchant account (the best option, but do the others as well).

Make sure you deliver promptly. For digital products, make sure there is a way to download it. Those who sell other people抯 stuff online don抰 have that problem, but they need to learn how to cloak their commission link (usually called a hoplink). It抯 pretty technical but doable. Even if you don抰 do it, you still make money. You are just ripped off sometimes.

If you are starting out with your own digital product, protect the download page, but not too rigorously. It抯 good for Black Hatters and other clever fellows and gals to grab it for free and comment about it. Your name grows as it spreads. They抮e going to steal it anyway, so don抰 even worry about it. Just make it a little challenging to keep the newbies out. Of course, it抯 better to get paid, but remember that if you completely isolate yourself and you are a nobody, you will get 100% of nothing.

As to physical products, like I said, there抯 shipping and you have to deal with it. This isn抰 rocket science, though and the literature is easy to find. Look for 揹rop shipping?and you will get all kinds of places to sell goods and let others worry about shipping.

I didn抰 say too much about one aspect of your product: what you sell. You can sell other people抯 stuff, your own stuff or try to get them to do stuff like click on an ad, fill out forms or install programs on their computers. I didn抰 say much on purpose. There are gazillions of ideas, techniques and so-called secrets out there. Find what tickles your fancy, find the instructions for getting it or making it on a Google search and simply do that.

But none of this is nearly as important as making sure your product or information solves the problem of people who buy stuff. Or it tickles their dream or they think it抯 cool. If you get to them and offer them they want, you sell. That抯 the only real secret and any kindergarten kid can tell you that.

Make sure you choose decent profits, too. At least $15-20 a sale. Otherwise, don抰 waste your time.

On advertising, I will deal with this below.

White Hatters fall in love with their product and market regardless of sales. Gray Hatters do the market research donkeywork and sell what people want. Black Hatters sell home loans and penis enlargers and so forth by spam with no research, or try to get people to do stuff often by tricking them.

As regards customer profile, remember that it is easier to sell one person out of 2,000 an item (and a dream) for $2,000 than it is to get 2,000 people to buy something for a dollar. You only need to lay down some bullshit to get the first, but you need a whole lot of bullshit to get the second and the money is the same. There is a lot of literature on this so make sure you become familiar with it. I will go into it a bit below on BS Riches Tributary.