Doing a market research may seem like a waste of time, but it is important to conduct a thorough search before getting your domain name. You don't want to waste your time in a market where there is little or no interest...you just won't make any money this way. Neither should you jump into a hot market with a tremendous amount of competition, because the experienced marketers will dominate these markets leaving little or no room for you to make any money.

Now I know I have said it before, and I'll say it again, "If you are new to internet marketing, pick a topic that interests you." Well then if that's the case, then you don't need to do a market research, right? WRONG! You still need to do a market research for optimum results in your new business. You might still make money without doing a search, but it may take longer, or it won't be as much.

For example, let's say you love to crochet; you just love anything that has to do with crocheting. You know crocheting is a hot market, but without doing a thorough search you won't know what area (niche, or micro niche) of crocheting will be the most profitable.

This is where keyword research comes in, and Google has an excellent keyword research tool; it's free and it does an excellent job. All you do is simply type in your keyword, like "crochet," or keyword phrase like "free crochet patterns" and it shows you the results for that keyword. It shows you exactly how many times people have used the search engines to search for that term and it also shows you how much competition you have.

The key is to pick keywords with the highest amount of searches and the least amount of competition. When you type in crochet, you'll see that there are a lot of searches coming in for that term, but the competition is also high; too high for you to enter into at market level.

So then you move down to the niche level, which would be a keyword phrase like "Free crochet patterns," or "Crochet tutorials." And again if you were to type in "free crochet patterns" you would see there are many searches, but the competition is still too high. In some markets you might be ok going in at the niche level, but if not then you want to go one step further and find a micro-niche.

A micro-niche is simply a niche within a niche. For example, the niche "free crochet patterns" has many micro-niches within like, "free hat crochet patterns," or "free afghan crochet patterns," and the list goes on and on. These are also known as longterm keywords because of the longer phrase, and are much easier to compete for.

The micro niche level is the best way to enter into a market, but does not mean that you have to stay at that level. Naturally as your site grows you can optimize for more keywords in different micro niches, or niches, and eventually make your way up and optimize for keywords at market level.

Here is a great video showing you how to use the Google Keyword Research Tool. Now in the video you'll see a couple of keyword phrases with absolutely no competition, and that is what you want, but in most cases you won't be as lucky, so just try to choose a keyword phrase without too much competition.