The word ‘Niche’ must be one of the most overused words in Internet marketing. Everyone and his neighbor will offer advice about finding a suitable forte and staying ahead in it.

But certainly, the single most important thing you can do as a blogger is to find an idea or a category you will be good at exploiting to the fullest and being the best at. A niche can make or break your ambitions.

Finding your niche is only part of the story, you need to stay well ahead of the rest and earn respect as an accomplished expert in your niche.

Well, after you have chosen a good niche that you are comfortable with dealing with and are confident of making a success of, then comes the harder parts. You have to drive yourself to be the top guy in terms of knowledge in everything to do with your niche. This will mean staying up to date and ahead of your competitors.

You need to have a good idea of what is upcoming and set to be big in the topic you have chosen as your niche. There are several ways you can get ideas based on what is happening around the world.

Go to eBay, where you can look for the category th

at matches closest with your niche. You can check who the top sellers are in the niche, and then find out what items are being stocked, what items are selling and what are not as well as the latest items introduced.

Check out various blogs that deal with your niche. Use search engines to search for blogs. Register for forums and participate in discussions. You can even lurk and find out what the new things are being talked about. You can brand yourself as an accepted guru in these forums as well, which will make for increased traffic on your blog. Read about what is happening and being discussed around the world, cover countries such as Australia, United States, China, UK and more.

Check out best seller lists for books that have been released and are selling well in the NYT best sellers list.

There are many other ways you can stay up to date and ahead, but once you get into the habit, you will realize that you simply can not afford to be behind, because its your niche!

Well, money saved is money earned, is what I believe. The best thing about the following free tools is that they are not only free, but extremely useful. For most part, they are every bit as functional as the paid alternatives, sometimes better.

One of the best ways of worst things about using paid stuff for commercial applications is that the costs tend to pile up. At most times, the paid versions charge extremely high prices, in fact more than they are worth. Free, useful software and tools such as these are the very answer to the internet marketer’s prayers. So read on, and find out.

Email Marketing Service Provider

MailChimp is an Email Marketing Service that is capable of storing close to 500 contacts free of cost. Every penny counts when you are a beginner in the business. Go to the MailChimp website. The service is pretty good, as good as paid services such as Aweber.

On Screen Video Capturing – Camstudio

If you are making a tutorial on something related to IM or simply making use of videos for promotions, CamStudio is a free open source tool which you can use to record what is happening on you screen. The mouse cursor and type are also recorded, along with audio. CamStudio is a very useful tool, and is free of cost.

Plagiarism Checker

Every one knows what duplicate content will do to your rankings. It is important to check your articles before submitting them for any copied content. CopyScape is the software most people use, and it has a per page charge. However, there are a number of free alternatives to CopyScape that are getting extremely good reviews, in fact, I have checked a few out, and they look pretty good.

Actually using only one tool for checking for duplicated content is not what I consider wise. Use more than one, in fact use three to four.

Plagium is a great piece of free software that wins over CopyScape for functionality and results. DupeFree is another. PlagiarismDetect is a site primarily designed with college students in mind so that they can check their theses and papers for plagiarized content. This is not to say you, as a copy writer can not use it. Article checker.com is another great site.  However, make sure you read reviews about the checker, lest the various rumors about these stealing content be true.

Graphic Editing Software – GIMP

Making professional looking web pages is of the utmost importance. However Adobe Photoshop is extremely expensive if you are a starter. Also, it has too many advanced features that are not very useful. GIMP is a freeware that is the answer to your prayers. It has a ton of useful features that will do the job for most of us. There are bundled tutorials as well along with the documentation.

Some days, I don’t have a post in hand. And then I wake up in a cold sweat and just know that I’m going to blow my schedule to pieces. I need something to go live, I need to find ways to relax, and I need to do it now. My mind is working overtime and I panic, kick myself and then try to get a grip on things. How could I let this happen? How could I be so forgetful?

Dear god, what have I done? I missed the boat (in a manner of speaking) and I gave myself a mental rollicking as I knew I had screwed up. But time passes and you regain your sanity and you wonder how you’re going to get things done. And then I realized that I didn’t have to post and I just had to find ways to relax. My life wouldn’t change if I didn’t. Zeus would not rain his rage upon me from high up in Mount Olympus. Neither did a bunch of angry readers email me asking why I didn’t post. Last time I looked out my window, I didn’t see any picket wielding mob baying for my blood either. All is good. For now…

No post? No problem. So what if I had missed the schedule? Sometimes I have pre-written posts, sometimes I don’t. Now, I make sure I have a backlog of posts ready to go at the touch of a button when I forget to post on some day. The idea is to never, ever be caught without a post on any given day. If I do miss a post, it could spell the end of the blog as I know, and that is not an acceptable solution at all. That said, I just went back to my coffee and bagels (god, they’re so good) and knew I was fine. I had a reliable, rock solid schedule that I missed on one day because I had stuff going on. Big deal, I never miss the deadline otherwise. Wake up and smell the coffee. I did, and it’s just delicious, thank you very much for asking.

I only recently put down a biography of David Ogilvy, and those of you that don’t know him, you should. He’s an interesting ad man who was far ahead of his time. My fascination with David Ogilvy goes back a long way and so I figured that for those of us that know about him and those that don’t, I’ll compile a list of quotable quotes that pertain to your business. The king of Madison Avenue may now be resting in peace, but here’s how his thoughts resonate through eternity and still ring true even today.

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”
I’m sorry, but I had to open with this one. It’s my favorite, I still remember how this cracked me up when I first read it. Even in this digital age it is still apt for not just marketers, but also bloggers. Don’t talk down to your customers or readers; they are someone you should value and cherish. And if you can do this, it will take you a long way. And now, since we live in such serious times…

“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”

Some of the best posts I’ve written on here have been a bit light-hearted and funny (or as funny as I could make it). It very often is the craziest and funniest things that resonate with your readers/customers. Don’t underestimate the power of humor.

“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.”
Another class quotation, and in essence this is something that Donald Trump also said in his autobiography whose name I don’t remember now. Of course, your expectations should be realistic as often as possible but that’s no reason to think small. Aim higher and try to do things you never thought you could, and who knows…you might surprise yourself with what you can get done.

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.”

All of the grammar Nazi’s can go take a long walk of a short pier. Sometimes, being grammatically correct is important, but the importance of communicating lies in getting the message across any way you have to. Write your blog posts or ads as if you were talking directly to the person in question. Even if it’s not the best English, it doesn’t matter. Always be relevant to your audience.

“If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. But don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else.”

Truer words were never spoken. It is annoying and extremely heart-wrenching to see your idea or thought process being hijacked by someone else. The key to being relevant is to constantly offer unique content and information, perhaps put a different spin on things. Nothing good ever came by copying someone else’s work.