In a perfect world, we need to know not only the size of the market we are about to invest time and money in, but also the cost of getting involved. We know from the Google’s Keyword tool the apparent size of the market, but is the cost of first page placement within our budget? In other words, how competitive is the market we are considering. Lucky for us, Howie Jacobson, PhD (See Pic) has provided us with a free tool to calculate market competitiveness. Later in this chapter, we will discuss others as well.

owie Jacobson is the author of AdWords for Dummies, published by Wiley and available wherever fine books are sold. You can save yourself a trip to the mall and get a copy from Amazon if you like, Also, Howie has a great web site with a lot of great free stuff on it. Go to https://www.askhowie.com to check it out.

Howie has worked out a system which enables us to judge the competitiveness of a market in which we are considering publishing our eBook. You will need to Click Here to go to Howie's site

When you get to his web site, you will be asked to give Howie you name and e-mail. He will immediately send you an Excel file. Included in the Excel file are directions on how to use the Market Competitive Score tool which he calls Total Market Health (TMH). His tool uses the number of searches on a particular key word and Google’s Traffic Estimator to produce a number (Market Competitive Score) which is then compared to a chart which tells us the competitiveness of the market. The chart grades competitiveness from “Not much happening here” to “Hyper-Competitive Market” See insert above.

For example, I used this tool to calculate a competitive score for the keywords, “eBooks”, “Fly Fishing”, “Business Plans”, and “Yoga”. The scores ran from a low of 200 to a high of 492.

According to Howie, beginners should enter niche markets with Competitive scores between 100 and 200. At 200, the markets become more competitive, and below 100, there’s no real market. This is a great tool. Although the directions to use the tool look a bit arduous, once you work through a few iterations it takes no time at all to calculate the Competitive Score. We will use this tool and others to nail down our best niche. Later we will create our own tool which will give us a feel as to the amount of content and link building we will need to get first place placement with Google.

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