Review: Keyword Niche Power
Since I’m running a free course on profitable niche discovery, I thought it would be useful to look at some of the keyword software that’s out there and hopefully uncover some hidden gems for my students. Alas, the first one I ran across, Keyword Niche Power, turned out to be fool’s gold.
Product: Keyword Niche Power
Platform: Windows only
Retail Price: $97
Fair Price: $5 (on sale here at that price)
Rating: 1/10
These days, I don’t expect everything I buy to come with a manual, but even a simple “README” file is nice to have. When I purchased Keyword Niche Power (KNP), I ran the install and then started the program and I must admit I had no real clue what to do next, which is unusual for a software developer like myself. I played with the tabs a bit, but nothing was really obvious, until I noticed that buried within the ZIP file was another ZIP file called “KNPDemo.zip”. When I extracted it I discovered a web page with a Flash video demonstrating how to use the program. Well, rather than explain it to you myself, just watch the video yourself (opens in a new window). The video’s just over 6 minutes long.
Once I understood how you were supposed to use the tool, I immediately ran it on my personal site to see what keywords it would find. Here the first problem presented itself: KNP only accepts URLs that start with “www.”, which means I couldn’t use it on my pet fence guide site, which is not accessible using a “www.” form. Oops.
The second problem was less evident: when I entered www.EricGiguere.com, it found only one link on the page. When I entered www.ericgiguere.com, however, it was able to spider 10 pages. Nevermind that it missed a whole pile of internal pages (I had set the search depth to 10), but treating EricGiguere.com and ericgiguere.com differently is inexcusable.
I then got it to extract keywords from the pages it did find. This took a while, because I think it got confused by my Amazon order page that automatically redirected you to Amazon.com and added a copy of my AdSense book to your Amazon shopping cart. Oops.
After adjusting things, the final list of keywords it came up with was less than impressive, especially since there were repeated URLs in the list. Yeesh.
Maybe the keyword density tab would redeem the product. Again I entered www.ericgiguere.com (lowercase only, of course), only to be presented with this lovely message:
Oops again. So much for analyzing the keyword density of my page. But that’s OK, there’s a much better (and free) online keyword density analyzer available here.
It looked pretty hopefully for KNP at this point, but I decided to try the last feature, the keyword lookup feature. The user interface was even less obvious for this one, so I’m glad I had that video to guide me. Basically create a list of keywords in a text file and then run it from the “Search Specific Keywords” tab. The text file normally comes from the keyword extraction process we tried earlier, so I went back and redid an extraction and saved the results to disk. I then ran the search.
Now, the programmer who wrote this stuff is very lazy, because KNP doesn’t prompt you for a directory to use. It just saves things in a “Keywords” directory wherever you installed the application. Lazy, lazy.
What the “Search Specific Keywords” function does is take each keyword in the text file and run it through Yahoo!’s keyword suggestion tool, storing the results for each keyword in separate files in the “Keywords” directory.
Of course, the Yahoo! suggestion tool is actually free to use, so the only benefit to this is making it easier to scrape the results for tens or hundreds of keywords, saving them either as text or Excel files.
And that’s why I think this product is only worth $5, not the $97 it’s advertised at. If you’re a programmer you could probably write yourself a quick app to scrape the keywords in short order, or find someone else’s script to do so, so really only non-programmers will find this function useful.
Bottom Line: If you want a tool to extract keyword suggestions from Yahoo!, Keyword Niche Power does an adequate job, though you’ll probably have to edit the input file manually to make sure it gets all the right keywords you want scraped. Otherwise, look elsewhere for better tools. If you really want it, you can buy it for $5 from me and I’ll go buy myself a latte for my efforts at reviewing it.
Technorati Tags: keyword, Keyword Niche Power, review, resale rights, Yahoo, keyword suggestions, software
Wow, Eric! You really tell it like it is… (which is so refreshing!) and your in-depth review of that particular product makes me not want to bother installing it or even trying to figure out how to manipulate it.
It’s so sad that the going rate these days for even substandard software is nearly a hundred bucks. (Personally, I’d prefer using that amount to pay for the air conditioning bill - it’s HOT here in FL… lol)
Thanks for the great online keyword density analyzer, I found another one here: http://www.creatingonline.com/site_promotion/keyword_density.htm that also has several other useful tools for webmasters.
I just love all of those people who are so generous as to provide the nice free help and free tools - like YOU do.
God bless you all,
Donna
Thanks, Donna. I have no problem paying for good software (I earn my living as a software developer, after all!) but I don’t like lazy coders who try to take advantage of people.
I’ve seen that keyword density tool you mentioned, but I prefer the one on ranks.nl. Mind you, these are all online tools and it’s also good to have an offline tool for testing out your own files. I have something I use myself, maybe I’ll package it up and release it someday.
Eric
Eric,
I am actually the creator of Keyword Niche Power. Thanks for being honest. However one of your comments is of opinionated and making judgement without knowing the software creator - “lazy coders who try to take advantage of people.” is quite untrue. This software had taken several months to program and yes I could have profit off of it myself, but I chose not too. You will notice that I don’t sell it on the main site, rather give an opportunity to resellers to resell it.
As I don’t know you, I am not going to say that you take advantage of people, because that is simply without proof or evidence.
Yes, VB6 windows software has errors, and I do admit the software may not fit all of your needs, but if you received an error you should have reported it as you are bound to run into a problem. I don’t mind if someone reports an error if they are getting one so that I can help people resolve there issues.
I run software sites like CBNicheBuilder.com which frankly has over 1500 members and it clearly says something about software I create of quality and no I don’t take advantage of people. If that was the case then my list conversion rate would not be so high and I would not be in the business I am in. I mentor people for free at InternetIncomeLab.com by the way…So I don’t think that says that I am taking advantage of people.
Best of luck,
-Stephen Luc
Thanks for stopping by, Stephen. My job with this site is to give honest reviews of the things I come across. For software, I can’t help but look at things from the viewpoint of a professional software developer, which is what I am. This particular piece of software suffers from a number of problems, as evidenced in my review. I’m sure you could fix many of them, however. Off the top of my head:
1) Include a written manual. Even a page or two that explains what it is briefly and then tells you to watch the video.
2) Be more tolerant of URLs. Accept the non-www form of a URL. Be case insensitive.
3) Let the user specify a directory for saving the keyword information.
4) Explain where the keyword information comes from. Anyone can get the same info for free, so explain the benefit that you provide.
These changes, which shouldn’t be hard for you to do, will vastly improve the product. I wish you luck with it.
Eric
Hi Eric,
I am glad you are giving an honest review, yet I am scratching my head when you call someone you don’t even know “lazy coders who try to take advantage of people.” If I wanted to make profit from KNP, I could, but to this day I have made zip…My resellers are the only ones that profit from KNP and so I do this for marketing testing…
Anyways, getting to the real meat, yes I do agree that you make some good points with some changes the software needs. These are of course minor changes. I’ll probably come out with some sort of upgrade later on. Most of my energy is put into CBNicheBuilder.com, InternetIncomeLab.com, and mentoring right now, but I’ll look into the new upgrade for KNP when I get the time.
Thanks again,
Stephen
Stephen, I guess I just don’t feel the product is worth $97, that’s all. I know you’re not selling it for that, but the sales page you provide suggests that price. I do understand writing software is a lot of work and that there are bugs, but either the suggested price needs to be lowered or else the product needs more value. That’s just my opinion, of course.
Instant AdSense Templates…
I guess it had to happen: apparently I’ve developed enough of a following that people are starting to send me stuff unsolicited in the hopes that I’ll promote it. It’s not like I don’t already have a lot of stuff to review and look at, either. Ther…
Eric,
Actually anyone can sell it at any price, even $20 or as long as it is packaged with another package. It is merely up to the reseller.
-Stephen
Eric;
As always, straight and honest analysis.
Very accurate and I must say, more than fair evaluation of the software.
Mr. Luc, being a respected online marketer, should not allow his resellers to sell something that’s obviously flawed.
No one can expect perfection from anything they develop, however the elementary structures should be observed when a piece of software is released to the open public.
The http://www. issue as well as the capitalization of letters made me delete the software and stick to better tested and developed tools (paid and free)
Thanks for your evaluation and allowing Mr. Luc to defend his software.
Ed
Ed,
If there were complaints, they should have been directed to me. Until I saw Eric’s feedback, there were no complaints whatsoever. All I received were good feedback mainly because most people were getting it for being members of another site.
So unless constructive criticism goes to “directly” the product developer themselves, there is no way they know of your desire in improvements.
Now that I have at least two people for once who have talked about this issue of the http://www. problem, I’ll come up with an update to fix these issues coming out within a week or two.
-Stephen
Stephen, if you can fix the product so that the sites http://www.EricGiguere.com and http://pet-fence.ericgiguere.com can be analyzed, I’ll be happy to review it again and to adjust my review accordingly. That said, I still don’t see it being worth the $97 that some resellers are charging for it. Not when programs like Keyword Elite are available for not much more. I know that’s not your problem specifically, since you’re not the one selling it. It demonstrates the importance of shopping around, though, because with some hunting you can find people who are offering it for a lot less.
Hey Eric,
Thanks for the constructive critism which I enjoy hearing feedback from users which your comments are quite the first, but which is great. Honesty is important and it’s what helps my other softwares improve immensly.
You seem to have a good amount of software development experience thus I will treat this like free software consultation.
Anyways, I suppose I am more of an Internet Marketer, since my expertise is in affiliate marketing, SEO, etc. If you look carefully at some big name marketers clickbank screenshots, like listfx, you may see my affiliate ID - ebooks4y, which shows that my techniques work and there are people profiting from it.
Though, I am definitely always looking to improve and help my customers, so thanks again - I’ve already put an upgrade into the schedule.
Btw, the product is now set for retail of 40-$67, not $97. I put some resell rights license details there too…
Take care,
-Stephen
Stephen, the fact that you’re willing to improve the product and have lowered the suggested price are very encouraging. It sounds like you didn’t do enough testing initially, or at that your testers weren’t very thorough — the problem with affiliate sales is that the affiliates are loath to criticize a product that they dearly want to sell. Which is too bad, because a few comments like mine would’ve made for a better product out of the gate.
Anyhow, please send me the new version when you release it and I’ll happily take a look at it. Don’t forget to throw in a README file or something similar in the ZIP file to tell people what to do… and where to report bugs!
Eric
Hi Eric,
Thanks again. Yeh you are right. I only had 4 people test KNP and I suppose even when you include an email on the download page, there’s gotta be another better way to get feedback.
I am always looking to improve myself and my products, so I take constructive criticism seriously from everyone, newbie or expert. Because it’s what people want in the end, what makes their lives easier, and at the same time the software better for them.
Yeh I will generally write up a manual in several different formats, online and PDF. I prefer to take screenshots of the software and a step by step approach. KNP is a lesson of what I missed out and what I should have done for the future.
Thanks and I appreciate it,
Stephen
Hey Eric,
Sorry to bother you again. Do you only get the “lovely message” when you use the keyword density feature? Anyway of sending that to me? I’d like to see why that may be happening in case there are other people out there having the same issue that aren’t saying anything about it.
I am also thinking of being able to support ip addresses as URLs since some people use ip addresses as their urls.
Thanks again,
Stephen
Eric,
Just thought I’d let you know the status of this upgrade.
1) A detailed step by step written manual with screenshots - IN PROGRESS
*additional clear audio recording for the written manual for audiences that want to follow along with audio.
*Re-recording of the Flash Tutorial
2) Be more tolerant of URLs. Accept the non-www form of a URL. Be case insensitive. - FINISHED - In Beta - Testing all possible urls…
3) Let the user specify a directory for saving the keyword information.
- FINISHED
4) Explain where the keyword information comes from. Anyone can get the same info for free, so explain the benefit that you provide. - - IN PROGRESS
5) Also, you won’t get the error message when entering the http://www.ericgiguere.com
6) Other than that, I’m testing it to the full extent before sending it out again.
Take care,
Stephen
That’s great news, Stephen! Glad to see you’re updating the software. It’s certainly the sign of someone who’s serious about their product. I’ll be happy to re-evaluate the product afterwards.
Eric,
I’m not sure if this note will reach you. Any word on the updates for this product?
Love your review site, btw……
Yves Marie Danie Baptiste
MLMOnlineMagazine
Wow, that was a really interesting conversation here!
And what a good one! Not full of anger and hatred but concerning to make things better. How often go such conversations in a bad way.
I am also pretty sceptical of resell rights products, and so authors, because there’s much hyped up crap that’s being sold for moon prices, although I have seen some awesome RR products that are really worth it’s price tag or more.
Good to see that a Resell Products author really cares about the customers.
And also of course, the honest review from you, Eric!
Andy
How much longer are these so called Internet Marketers and product developers going to throw useless products at the public?