Are You Using This Little-Recognized Affiliate Marketing Tool?

There is an affiliate marketing tool out there that only a handful of people recognize. It will help you with your search engine optimization with any search engine - but especially with Google! In fact, Google supplies this marketing aid. And it's free!

What on Earth could I possibly be talking about?

Google Alerts.

Google Alerts will let you know what's going on in your niche so that you can build your site and content around it.

For example, Google will send you updates whenever it indexes new content that contains your chosen keyword or keyphrase. It can simply send you new web content, if you want. But you can also get new content as it is indexed in Google's news, blog, video and groups search engines.

What can you do with this content?

1. News. This will help keep you at the front of your niche. If you're stuck for topics on what to write about for your website, blog or article marketing strategy, news alerts will keep the inspiration coming.

2. Blogs. These let you know what people are talking about! And you won't just see what they're talking about, but what they're saying about it, and how they're saying it.

Reading other people's blogs will also clue you in on new takes on your niche. You can leverage the power of other bloggers' brains to churn your own ideas. You can also see what people are saying about your niche and its products. This can clue you in on new ways to sell existing products, and may even help you come up with a new product of your own, to service an unfulfilled niche need!

You'll often see the latest and greatest new trends pop up on blogs before you see them on regular web pages. It really just all depends on your niche.

1. Video. Seeing what's going on in video will let you know what's going on with various video. This is useful to combine with other Google Alerts, like blog and web alerts, so that you can see what kind of videos go viral. How can you tell? People will be talking about them, linking to them, and even embedding them in their blogs and websites.

2. Groups. Google groups can serve some of the same needs as blogs: you get to look directly into your niche's mind and see what's being talked about, what's being said, and how it's being said.

But groups, in some ways, are one step better. Many of the keyword-targeted blogs in your niche are likely to be created by other marketers. The same goes for web content and video content.

Groups, however, are more informal. They are more likely to consist of conversations purely among buyers. Groups are where you can get an extra ear to the pavement on what needs aren't being met properly, and what needs aren't being met at all.

When you know this, you can create a win-win situation where you provide solutions to people's niche problems, and they provide money to your bank account!

For further information on affiliate marketing Alan King suggests you check out his friend Mike Filsaime's site at PayDotCom. Paydotcom is a great resource for finding niche marketing products.