[Warning: the following is quite a long review of Market Samurai. To skip it and get a free trial, please go directly to the Market Samurai Website.]

I’m going to give you my full, hands-on Market Samurai review, but first let me explain why I’m feeling a little foolish right now. Like the guest who was invited to the best party that has ever been thrown but didn’t go because there was something on TV.

You know that feeling?

It’s like being offered tickets to the most spectacular firework display but going to the cheap one in your local park instead because that’s what you’ve always done.

The reason I’m feeling so egg-on-faceish is because I’ve been deliberately ignoring something that I now know I really, really shouldn’t have ignored.

If you think I’m being a bit over dramatic, let me explain.

Keyword research is vital to my business. Anyone who reads Kickstart knows that over the years I have used, and recommended, a multitude of keyword research tools. Each one offered something a little different to its predecessors and was a little easier to use, or a little better in its functions.

Some, like the excellent Niche Inspector, stopped working eventually and were abandoned by their creators. Some just failed to keep up to date.

My latest favorite was Micro Niche Finder – a sophisticated bit of kit that I’ve been proud and happy to recommend.

For quite a while now, I’ve been aware that a lot of people have been talking about a program called Market Samurai and extolling its virtues sky high.

But I didn’t take a lot of notice. As far as I was concerned, MicroNicheFinder did the job perfectly well and I couldn’t really see what more Market Samurai could offer that would make it a significant step up.

I did download their free trial offer, but for some reason got distracted and didn’t use it in the trial time. So when I did get around to wanting to test it out, my trial period had expired. I was left none the wiser.

Micro Niche Finder did all that I needed, so I forgot about Market Samurai and (a bit uncharacteristically for me) closed my ears and my mind to any of the buzz that kept appearing about it.

I guess I figured that there is only so much a keyword research tool can do and if I was happy with the one I had, why go looking for anything else.

How wrong I was.

I took the plunge this weekend and bought Market Samurai and NOW I can see what all the fuss was about. Hence this review.

[If you are one of those people who have been telling me so all this time, I can quite forgive you thinking 'Told you so!']

Make no mistake – Micro Niche Finder is a fantastic keyword research tool and if you already own it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it …

… it is just that Market Samurai is better. A whole lot better.

What I hadn’t appreciated, but do now (a lot) is that Market Samurai isn’t just a keyword research tool. To call it that is like calling Google a search engine. Yes it is that, but there is a lot more going on.

Market Samurai is a Swiss Army Knife – a whole array of tools to help save time and effort – and help you make money.

There are eight parts to it right now, with a ninth due to be added very soon.

They are:

1. Rank Tracker. You tell it your domains and it checks where they appear in the search engine listings against any keyword that you are analyzing. This is really useful and digs in to give you even more information: PageRank, backlinks, how many pages each search engine has indexed and so on.

Of course, you are not limited to your own domains. Add your competitors sites and you’ll know exactly what you have to beat.

2. Keyword Research. As a keyword research tool, Market Samurai does everything you’d expect of it and a bit more besides. It is beautifully easy to use and includes all the filtering options you need to uncover the best keywords to target.

3. SEO Competition. Here is a useful module. For any given keyword, the SEO Competition module will analyze the top ten results in Google and give you a table showing eight off-page SEO factors and five on-page ones. It gives you a very clear snapshot of what you are going to have to do to rank a page for that keyword. The chart is color coded to make life even easier for you.

A very nice touch is that you can also enter specific URLs (pages you have already created perhaps) and see how they compare to the Google top ten,

4. Domains. Once you’ve decided on a great keyword, the Domains module will quickly discover if it is available to buy as a domain, or if not, will suggest lots of similar domains that are available. Of course, you could just go to GoDaddy to do your own research, but it is a real time-saver to have this facility built right in to Market Samurai.

5. Monetization. The previous modules are great, but the last four are the deal-clinchers for me – starting with the Monetization module. I have been using this one a lot in the last couple of days.

Click on this tab and, depending on which keyword you are analyzing, Market Samurai will let you search Amazon, Commission Junction, ClickBank or PayDotCom to find appropriate affiliate products. You then just have to pick the one or ones you like the look of best.

As if that wasn’t powerful, timesaving stuff all on its own, it is actually just half the story. Once you’ve picked a product, Market Samurai actually helps you create a blog post, a banner ad or a WordPress sidebar ad.

I have never seen anything like this in another program and I’m very impressed by it.

6. Find Content. As the name implies, this module goes out to the Internet and finds all kinds of content that matches your selected keyword. It selects articles, blog posts, pictures, videos, news feeds and more. And having found the content, Market Samurai then lets you analyze it so you can select only the best.

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, this is really useful and time saving.

7. Publish Content. They really have included everything. This module works seamlessly with the previous Find Content one. Any content that is found can then be passed to an editor screen in the Publish Content module. You then either make changes if you wish, or use the content as is (with content from articles directories you shouldn’t change anything) before clicking one button for Market Samurai to publish directly to your WordPress blog.

I’m running out of superlatives!

8. Promotion. This module is all about getting backlinks from sites that are already considered authorities for your selected keyword.

There are a variety of choices: Web 2.0 sites, Blogs, or Forums, with several option in each category.

Just select the sources you are interested in and in the blink of an eye you’ll be presented with a list of places you can get quality backlinks.

I have Market Samurai running beside me right now and with one click of the ‘Analyze’ button have just found a ton of high PR sites that I can place backlinks on. Really useful stuff.

This overview has only scratched the surface of the major features of Market Samurai. Within each module there are other buttons and options that make them all even more powerful than I can describe here.

I wish I’d listened to the people who have been singing its praises over the last year or so, but better late than never!

Don’t end up with egg on your face like me.

Get It Today For Free!

Now – I’ve saved the very best bit to last: you can try out Market Samurai completely free of charge.

There is a free trial available – of the complete program, not a cut-down version – at Market Samurai Free Trial

Just make sure you use it!

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I was at the LFMpires seminar in Bristol (UK) over the weekend and got some serious food for thought.

Seminars are almost always great places to go – if only for the netwoking opportunities. The people you meet are always the high spot, but this time the speakers were top-notch as well. There were loads of them (including your’s truly) but for me, an American chap called Sterling Valentine really stood out. He had some great things to share and I recommend you look him up.

Thinking back to some of the personal stories that the successful speakers shared from the stage, there is one theme that keeps coming up. The people are different and the words describing their situations are different, but when you boil it all down, the people who are now enjoying success almost all went through a similar journey:

1. They were struggling in their lives. Some were flat broke and desperate, some were stressed to the max and at their wits’ end, some were on the verge of complete meltdown. Even allowing for a certain amount of poetic license in the stories told, the recurring theme is that their lives were way less than great and they were trapped.

2. They all tried everything. Or thought they did. They worked several jobs (if they had jobs) and flitted from one scheme to another.

3. Even when they discovered Internet marketing and saw the potential, they found it impossible to focus. Time and again we heard stories of people trying this, and failing, trying that, and failing, and then trying anything else that caught their attention. And failing.

4. Despite their phenomenal lack of success making money online, each and every one of them (and I’m including myself in the group too) absolutely knew – and I mean *knew* at a molecular level – that Internet marketing was real, making money online was possible and success was just a matter of putting the jigsaw pieces in their right places.

5. Success came *only* when, for whatever reason (everyone has their own reason) these people stopped chasing every rainbow and started focusing on creating a business. It came when they realized, at a deep level, that you fly higher and faster on a rocket that is blasting towards a target than on a balloon that is drifting in the breeze.

Everyone had their own solutions, strategies and skills, and each speaker was naturally ‘selling’ his or her own methods. But underneath it all, they were all saying the same thing: stop drifting, stop working hard at achieving nothing, stop being distracted. And learn to focus. You have no idea how much you can achieve if you only make a plan and follow it to the end.

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