Niche markets are small specific markets. Individuals or businesses are grouped together for niche marketing if they share similar interests or needs. For instance, females who play golf can be considered a niche market. Reaching as many people in the same niche is necessary to making your small business work. However, if you are an online business start-up, finding your target audience may be challenging in the beginning.

I know what you're saying, ?I can't write.? I use to feel the same way. Frankly, you don't have to be a published author or a journalist to write articles. The truth of the matter is, anyone can write. You just have to find a topic that interests you and start from there. What should you write about? You can write about anything from home renovations, to computers, to personal training, to web hosting, heck you can even write about writing. The bottom line is, articles are a valuable source of ?relevant? back links and additional exposure to your site.

Write Your Headline

A rich in Keywords and power words seems to work best. Look over article directories and see which titles grab you. Don't copy a title but you can use the same power grabbing words.

To Use your Resource Box

The resource box at the end of your article is your space to ?sell? and promote you and your services, products, and expertise. To reprint your article, publishers have to include the resource box. Here is your opportunity for FREE advertising and unashamed self promotion.

I highly recommend that you use software to manage your reciprocal links. A good piece of software will ensure that all of your link partners continue linking to you, & will automatically organize links by category. I recommend SolvoLink, which you can download free at http://www.free-link-exchange-software.com There are others, such as Links Manager, but you have to buy them. SolvoLink is good enough for the average webmaster.

It's important to realize that most of the big directories are incredibly picky however. A listing in DMOZ, for instance, will turn Google's head and also get you in the Google directory and several other large directories and hundreds of web sites. DMOZ has seen everything though. Every listing is carefully reviewed by a human editor. If your site isn't quite finished or just isn't really all that special then you're asking for rejection by submitting the URL to DMOZ. If you're going to try to submit your site to the big directories then make sure you have all your ducks in a row.

Stay away from link and banner farms. They do nothing but send you tons of emails a day. Even though they promise lots of traffic to your website, that rarely happens, and when it does, it's traffic from a popup window that came up on someones website. Think of how often you pay attention to popup ads and now think of how others will react to your popup on their screen. Popups long ago stopped being effective and everyday more and more popup blockers and killers are born. So it's rare if someone even sees your popup before it's quickly killed.