If you haven’t heard of Josh Spaulding, you’re probably living in a cave. As one of the top affiliate income earners, and a good teacher of strategies, he’s been making good money online, and making a good name for himself with his honest, and straight-forward approach to earning money online. He mostly makes his money through affiliate marketing, and he drives most of his traffic using article marketing (you will get his Article Marketing Domination free as a bonus for signing up).

First, you should know that Josh runs an excellent blog Ethical Internet Marketing (link at the bottom of this review). It has to be, in my opinion, one of the most honest blogs around when it comes to earning affiliate money online, I would rank it up there with Eric’s Tips as one of the best. Josh is a fellow ‘Hoosier (Indiana boy), and I like his folksy down-to-earth approach. Now, let’s get on with the review.

Hot Niche Spy

From what I can tell Josh developed this application to help him with his own Affiliate Marketing, and that’s a very good sign. There are other products out there like this, but, there are tradeoffs to using them, as you will see.  When you first login to Hot Niche Spy, you will see the main window (below), as well as links to training videos (1 bonus training video with Josh himself will be added every month), and links to your bonuses. Here’s a pick of the opening screen:

You can see from the main screen that right now there are 5 main actions for Hot Niche Spy (Josh is adding all of the time, in fact, just since I’ve been a member he added the Rankings & Backlinks checker (very nice).  For this review I entered “profit internet” into the box, but this is where you will enter your niche terms that you are checking for ‘Hotness’ – now… here is a review of the 5 actions.

• Related Products – shoots you over to Click Bank, Amazon and eBay to look at products related to this niche. You want to make sure that there are at least a few decent products to promote, before you even go any further with your niche. You don’t get the Gravity number with ClickBank which would be nice to see (I’ll put in a request to add it), but you do get the details on the top 10 products offered through each service.  If you find at least 2-3 good ones, then you should consider that you will have a product to promote, and can move on to the next step
• Keywords & Competition - this is my favorite part of Hot Niche Spy. It does an excellent job of returning the competition you will face, including the top 10 competitors in Google, and their average PageRank, as well as a decent list of related keywords that you can use to promote your niche – Excellent!  This part really blows me away, because you get even more than that.  For each of the top 10 sites, you will see the related keywords, and cost-per-click, as well as page rank for each competitor site – amazing detail, and this beats Market Samurai in it’s ease of use.
• Domain Checker – let’s you quickly and easily find matching domains that you can buy for your niche to setup your website on. This is an excellent checker, that will also show you related/possibilities for other domain names, if your primary niche domain name is taken. There’s a quick ‘Buy button’ which takes you right over to GoDaddy.com where you can make the purchase. I use GoDaddy as one of my main domain registrars and they are excellent. Well done on this section in Hot Niche Spy, it’s not included in Market Samurai at all.
• Related News – let’s you pull up news that is related to your niche. Find out what is happening right now in this niche, check out what is hot, and get great ideas for articles, that you can use to drive traffic (in spades) using Josh’s bonus: Article Marketing Domination.
• Rankings and Backlinks – another excellent tool, and I like the way this one works too. It’s fast (very fast), and it gives you all of the rankings, and the backlinks to your site, quick, fast, and accurate.

You’re certain to be gathering up tons of new Hot Niches with this tool, I highly recommend it, and it’s a good ‘partner tool’ to Market Samurai for finding keywords, and domains to promote your new Niche products on.

UPDATE: I just logged in to Hot Niche Spy to see that Josh is planning a new update (in 3-4 days that will grab Google Suggests Keywords)! This is huge, as there’s about to be a similar product released in the marketplace, but if Hot Niche Spy will do it, all the more reason to own a membership to HNS, once again this depends on the functionality of the feature, but it’s like previous functions, I’m guess it’s going to be great, as the other features/functions are. Here’s what it says on the home page today->

The next, exciting, new Feature which will be available sometime in the next 3-4 days is a “Google Suggests” keyword generator! Generate a list of related keywords that people are searching for in Google, but that the Google Keyword Tool is NOT displaying! (untapped keywords!) This is the next of MANY new features that you will have full access to as a “HNS” member!

To check out Hot Niche Spy on your own, check out this link: http://www.hotnichespy.com

Josh’s Internet Marketing Blog is at: http://www.ethicalim.com/

You will get the Stomping The Search Engines 2.0 for $1.00, and The Net Effect subscription. This is a great combination that you must have if you are an online entrepreneur. Head over now and grab your copy.

Here are the links:

The Net Effect signup:http://stomping2.com/

Stomping Search Engines 2.0 Review of What is Included: http://www.stomperblog.com/seo/stse2-2/

Ok, on to our reviews, in the electronic world there are tons of free newsletters, actually probably more than you would ever want to read, so, it becomes a bit of a problem to stay focused.  To avoid overload, stick to the very best in your niche area, for example there are internet marketing ezines about specific topics such as traffic, conversion, niche marketing, mini-site development, keywords and seo, etc.  You name it, and there is probably an ezine about it, and many of the electronic newsletters are free.

I’m going to spend the next several days updating this post as I watch what comes in, but I know of several off the top of my head that I would rate very high quality, in fact one of them just made it’s debut today.  Watch this space for further developments as I review other ezines.

Topics will appear below – with the best newsletters/ezines listed at the top (in descending order of my ratings), this will help you to quickly spot the quality newsletters that you should consider reading.

Internet Marketing (in general)

A broad topic, so, it makes it harder to cover with just one person.  There’s a new one that just debuted today, and I have to say I rate it at 5 *s and the top of the heap.  I’m going to write a separate review of each individual ezine/print magazine if it offers quality content, so watch for a separate review post about this one:

Internet Marketing Newsletter (Armand Morin), Price: Free,  Rating: *****, Link: Internet Marketing Newsletter

Armand has been involved in Internet Marketing for as long as I remember, and nearly as long as I have (over 11 years), so I would say, he knows what he’s doing – but, that has not stopped him from bringing on a slew of great (and experienced) marketers in their own right to handle the articles.  What you end up with is an excellent mix of well written short articles that can be read quite quickly in PDF format (about 1-2 pages per article) for a total of nearly 40 pages.    I suggest you sign up right away for this as there is no charge and excellent well-written newsletter with useful articles by top marketers such as: Jim Edwards, Ray , Michel Fortin, Jeanette Cates, Mike Stewart, Stu McLaren, Chris Howard and Armand Morin.  Get your own free copy at this link: Internet Marketing Newsletter.

Early To Rise (Michael Masterson, Price: Free, Rating: ****, Link: Early To Rise

I’ve been reading this for over 4 years and it continues to entertain and educate me every morning.  This is a short, one page email newsletter that covers a variety of topics: marketing, finance/investing, healthy living, vocabulary.  Each day you will get a great little boost of information, you take what you need and read what interests you, and leave the rest.  It’s no doubt some of it may not interest you each day, but there is a wealth of little gems that will keep you excited to find this in your inbox each morning.  A great start to your day.  Get your free subscription started at: Early To Rise.

Watch for my additions to this post where I will cover electronic ezines/newsletters in other subject areas  of Internet Marketing.

I’ve tried and used about every internet marketing product on the planet.  I’ve marketed by email, before there were good ways to do it, and I’ve tracked stats, sales and header graphics for over 10 years.  To put it straight, I know what works in the Internet Marketing world and one of my goals is to share it with others who are also looking for freedom from their own jobs.

INFORMATION Overload has become a huge issue, everyone is suggesting to try this, or that, usually something like SEO or traffic tactics, or some new conversion method – the offers come in by the hundreds to my email account every day.  The best thing to do is find a good source for someone who has tried these methods, or who has a real good handle on how they work – so you can TRY to get a handle on whether or not they may be helpful for your business.

Some CALM In the Storm is what I hope to provide through this blog – a well referenced, thoughtful analysis of what works and what does not work in the online world.  In these pages and posts, audios and videos, I’m going to lay it on the line and let you know the best and most useful – THE VERY BEST tools, software, emailers, marketing strategies and techniques to make you successful.  So, watch for new posts coming every day as I document what worked, and what did not work in ‘REAL LIFE’ Internet Marketing.

 It’s the kind of knowledge you rarely find anywhere else – as most other marketers are selling to business owners, or other marketers, this is the real deal, and if I ever stray I want you to let me know about it.  Post your comments and keep them coming as we explore together the best methods and tactics for making it work in Internet Marketing.