Have you seen the Wonder Wheel tool from Google yet? I just stumbled across it earlier today while working my way through a tutorial on keyword and niche marketing research. I am not sure how long this has been around but I suspect it is fairly new as I haven't seen it mentioned in any tutorials on related subjects.

Being an IM newbie I have no doubt that this tool will save me a lot of time.... I can only begin to imagine how experienced IMers can or do put this to work for them. I will try to describe where you can find it and what it does ....

Type something into Google search and when the results are returned look to left of the page... it should have a clickable drop down menu labeled more research tools.... select this and Wonder Wheel should be in the expanded list of options.....once you click on Wonder Wheel you should see your search words inside a blue circle with several spokes leading to related search words. Continue clicking on these and within a matter of  seconds you can drill down to very specific niches. 

This is an amazingly quick way to find niches for article marketing topics. What I really like is that with a single click I can also get a list of forums ( now called Discussions ) on the topic in the center of the Wonder Wheel. Exploring the questions asked in these forums should give me relevant information to base my articles on for those keywords. 

My description probably fails to do  this tool justice, but as I have an appointment to get to shortly I wanted to post this now rather than wait until later. Check it out and please let me know if you also think it has great potential. If you can't find it contact me and I will try to help you get there.