Different way to find perfect Money making niche

Finding a niche is a key element to developing a successful site. How marketers find a niche has been well documented on the web, many sites and training courses spew out the same ideas and techniques, most will mention Amazon as a great way to find a niche, most suggest finding the top products in each section and building a site around them.
                            
In principle this works, but when everyone else is using the same tactics and sources to find a niche, those new niches you’ve just found will become over crowded with other skilled marketers who are all looking for a piece of the pie. If we are all jump into the same niche at the same time, life will be made more difficult for us all, there will be 

less money to go round and the work load will increase.

So how do you find new niches that other marketers have misses? 

Flippa: is a website auction site a good source when researching possible niches and the best thing is that the webmasters who list their sites here take all of the guess work out of entering a new niche, they tell you how much traffic they get, how much they make from this traffic and how they make their money and who know they you may even find yourself a bargain.

Google Suggestion tools: There are programs available that will scrape Google’s suggestion tool, plug in in your base keyword and they will return a list of suggestions for that keyword, once this is done through the results into the keyword tool and see how many searches those terms get every month. A word of warning with this method, the results here you is possibly getting into the micro niche territory.

Q&A Tools: This is again similar to the Google Suggestion idea, add you base keyword and check the results; the warning with this one is that the results returned are mostly in the form of a question, which is traditional long tail territory, they can be easy to rank for but with a limited search volume.

Keywords: There are a lot of marketers that build huge lists of random keywords, they don’t care what the keyword is, it just needs to fit their criteria, low competition, a decent CPC price and an available exact match domain, this method works but you will find that these types of sites encompass a lot of micro niches, where there isn’t really any opportunity to build the site out further once you have hit the top spot for your main keyword.

Magazines: go to your local news agent and chances are you will see countless magazines on a host of different topics, if you can find a mag on an obscure topic then you may have found a good niche to work in.

Keyword Tool: Instead of plugging in a long list of keywords into the tool, use the website feature, it helps to have an idea of the main niche you are entering, let’s say you want to do something in the “money saving” niche, then look for a forum on that niche, websites can also work well but I find when I throw the link to a forum in, I will get a broader keyword list returned and a lot of the results can be question based ( LongTails). It’s definitely worth the 5 minutes it will take to give this method a try and you may be surprised with the results that will be returned.

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A great way to increase visitors to your blog

We have learned that monetizing our blogs involves: 1.) Creating a blog with the Blogger service and 2.) Learning how to implement Google AdSense to earn money. However, these are just the first steps in the overall process. Making money to blog takes
 time, but I'll show you how to speed up the process and start driving traffic to your blog in just a matter of minutes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once said:

You can have the best product in the world, but if you don't know how to sell it, and if you don't, if you don't have anybody who can sell it for you or tell the public, it's a waste of time, the whole thing.

We can't argue that point Arnold (by the way, I loved your role in Kindergarten Cop) - and that's why today I'm here to talk about one of the many, many ways you can promote your blog and its content with a great service called: StumbleUpon.



When I stumbled up, I was instantly hooked. In short, the service allows you to browse great websites with ease, which is specific to your tastes. So if you like technology, you're going to get pages about: hardware, software, etc. It's a brilliant concept, and eliminates those times (we all have) when we want to surf the Internet for topics we like, but don't know where to go - StumbleUpon does that for us!

So how does StumbleUpon help promote our blogs?

The answer is simple really - you connect with other stumblers through your StumbleUpon home page.

If they are interested in the content that you stumble, they'll add you as a friend and in turn will pass the word on. This networking will help promote your blog by adding your website into the stumble rotation. So now all of your friends and your friends, friends will be exposed to your blog content!

StumbleUpon makes the process of using its service to promote our blogs super simple with some great tools. For one, if you're using Firefox or Internet explorer, you can't live without the toolbar.



The integration of StumbleUpon into your browser is what makes it so popular. The options here (which I'll leave for you to explore) allow visitors to easily add your blog as a favorite to their StumbleUpon home page. This seamless integration helps to increase your blog network, promotion, traffic, and - generate more money from your blog at the end of the day.

Another must have for bloggers is the Link to Your Profile button. They come in many different flavors and it's just a simple copy and paste of the html into your blog post or blog navigation menu.



What these buttons do is make the experience for those who stumble your page much more enjoyable. If they like your article or site in general, they can simply click on the StumbleUpon button to add it into their rotation. Piece of cake, eh?

Making money from our blogs is a lot of fun. Promotion tools like StumbleUpon just make the experience so much better. So what are you waiting for? Get Stumbling!

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How to increase blog traffic through "Backlinks"

Now that we have those services we need to befriend Google. Google is going to become one (if not THE) major source of our traffic. Services like StumbleUpon are an excellent start but we need to do more –
much more.

Mr. Miyagi once said:

“Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so, just like grape. Understand?”

Mr. Miyagi knew a thing or two about karate, but I think we can apply it to monetizing our blogs as well. You see, creating traffic with blogs is kind of similar – you go full force and monetize successfully or you don’t. Backlinks is one of the major keys to going full force.

What on earth is a backlink?

A backlink is simply links from one site to another. It is one of the factors that determines how popular your blog is and ultimately how fast it’s going to get off the ground. The more relevant backlinks to your site, the better – and by relevant I mean the sites linking to you should be related to your topic (If your blog is about fancy cars it's probably going to do you little good to have a link for your site on a blog dedicated to quilting.)

Ok, so I get what a backlink is, but what does it matter?

Let me direct you to another Mr. Miyagi quote if I may:

“We make sacred pact. I promise teach karate to you, you promise learn. I say, you do, no questions.”

Swap karate with monetizing your blog and we’re good to go. Seriously speaking here – backlinking is a great way to do the following:

1.) Network with other bloggers and site owners.
2.) Establishing you as a major player on the web and ultimately getting higher listings in Google’s Search.
3.) Promoting your blog to other readers who frequent these other sites.

Ah I get it now! But how do I get started?

You may already have! That’s the great part about backlinking. If you have interesting content, chances are someone may already be linking to you. But even still you should do some networking. My recommendations to you are to bookmark some bloggers in your niche and get to know them – participate with quality comments on their sites. Most bloggers have a contact form or email link and from there you can request a link exchange. Key word here is “request”… do not beg.

Remember, we’re going to make money blogging but we have to earn it. Backlinks are one of the most popular ways to drive traffic to our blogs. So what are you waiting for? Start networking today.

Oh, what’s that? You have a site that has quality content that is your own and would like to exchange links with Earn Money to Blog? Sure, just shoot me an email and I would be delighted to add you to my blogroll!

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5 ways to drive Free Traffic to your blog

When you blog for money you need to create your own content (and lots of it!), implement advertisement programs like Google AdSense and WidgetBucks, and last but not least –
you need traffic.



In our offline lives we dread it, but online we embrace it. I want to give you 5 ways to start driving traffic to your blog today. With a little time and patience, you will slowly start to increase your viewer ship.

(In no particular order)

5.) Post comments on other blogs.

Blogs are everywhere – there’s certainly not a shortage of them. You should have no problem finding other bloggers in your niche that are popular and interesting. Bookmark those that you like, follow their topics daily, and if you find something that sparks your interest – comment.

Become a participating voice in the community. The more interesting your comments are, the more likely your peers will follow you to your blog. And who knows – you might stand out among the crowd and be recognized by the author, which can spin off into better opportunities.

4.) Register with blog networks like: Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog

It’s important that you get your blog out there for others to see. You can start the process by submitting to search engines, but that’s just the beginning. Technorati, BlogCatalog, and MyBlogLog are just a few of the high profile blog networks on the web. Register with them, network with other people in your releated area, and get your word out.

When you register with these services remember a couple of things:

1.) Create a detailed profile. Let people know a little bit about you and draw them in. Without that personal interaction people may flee quickly.

2.) Tag your blog properly. Tags are very important – they’re usually one or two word descriptions of your blog. So for example my blog would fall under categories like: Money, Business, and Finance. Dig around the specific service and look for popular tags and try to use those for your blog. It allows people who are interested in these topics to easily find your site.


3.) Register with several forums.

Do a Google search for forums that are related to your niche and register. Try to be an active voice in the community. People will flock to you if you’re interesting. Not only that but it allows you to find out what others are doing and what makes them appealing.

When you register with a forum, make sure to fill out the profile, similar to the blogging services. And equally as important – make a signature that is a direct link to your blog. Your signature is shown in every post that you make – helping you gain visibility. This is all the more reason to create thought provoking discussions.


2.) Social Bookmarking and Article Submission.

Social networking, bookmarking, and article submissions are all the rage today – don’t let it pass you by. Some of the major networks include delicious, Furl, and of course, Digg. These sites will allow you to tag, bookmark, and submit articles that you think are interesting. What’s more interesting than your own work? People should know about it so go spread the word.


1.) StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon really falls into tip #2, but I decided to break it away from the pack because it provides quicker results. Like the rest of the social networking sites, you create a profile and network with others. But what makes StumbleUpon so darn unique, is that you can “stumble” thousands of sites that you’re interested in by the click of a button. So what does that mean for you? Well, you can stumble your own site. By doing this you get into the Stumble rotation, and any people that you network with can stumble across it as well.

In my experience StumbleUpon can bring great surges of traffic for short periods of time. Due to the nature of the service, you’re likely to get overlooked more than not; however, those that do stop – tend to stay. And if they like the site, they can rate it and review it for all the friends in their network to see. Are you getting the picture here? Your viewer ship has the potential to explode!

As with most things in life, there’s no silver bullet for getting traffic. It takes a lot of research, careful planning, networking, patience, and time. If you have what it takes and start using my recommendations, you will definitely start to see an increase. Hopefully that increase in traffic will help you blog for money.

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Create a Google Adsense Channel

a Google channel will help you monitor which ads and which sites are making you money. By tracking your individual ads and their placement, you're able to increase your chances of blogging for money. I'm going to show you how to
 create an AdSense channel so you can start monitoring your progress today.

Creating Your First Customized AdSense Channel

Go ahead and log into your Google AdSense account. Once you're logged in, click on the AdSense Setup tab.



The AdSense setup tab will present several sub menus for selection. We're interested in the Channels today, so click on that now.



We're going to create a customized channel and to do so you'll click on the Add new custom channels option.



You should now be on the Add channel screen, which contains a single textbox labeled Name. This is where you're going to type the name of your channel for the ad that you will monitor. You want to make this as clear as possible so you know exactly which ad on which site you're tracking. So for example, let's say you're using a vertical ad unit that is 160 x 600, sits in your right navigational menu, and contains text only. A logical name for this channel might be something like “right menu vertical (txt)”. Later on when you check your report, you'll be able to easily identify which ad belongs to the channel. If you happen to have two sites with the same ad in the same position, simply differentiate the two by your site name - maybe something like: “emb rght vert (txt)”. If I had another site about baking cookies, this label tells me that the ad it's tracking is Earn Money to Blog (emb) not my other site Baking Cookies Blog (which doesn't exist by the way - sorry).

Assigning an ad to a Channel

At this point you've successfully create a customized channel. Let's stay with the earlier example and pretend you want to track a 160 x 600, text-only ad unit that sits on the right side of your navigational menu. In order to accomplish this, you need to create the ad unit and assign it to the channel. In Google AdSense for Search you learned how to create a custom ad and plug it into your Blogger blog. The steps for this are similar with the exception of the channel option - we skipped over that last time but today you're going to utilize it.

Head to Get Ads and choose AdSense for Content.



Keep the default Ad unit selected and choose Text ads only from the drop down list and hit continue.



Now we're at the familiar customization screen - Go ahead and select the 160 x 600 vertical ad, also known as a Wide Skyscrapper. Feel free to customize it how you wish, you can even choose a different format if you feel comfortable at this point. This is just a simple example.

Now that your ad unit is customized, click continue. The following page will list your customized channels (you can create as many as you want). If you've been following up to this point, you should have a channel called “right menu vertical (txt)”. Simply add that to the selected channel and continue.



Ok, just give the AdSense unit a name (I tend to keep the default) and continue on to the next page. Simply copy your AdSense code and plug it into your Blogger blog...you're done! If you're not completely sure how to integrate this code into Blogger, please check out Google AdSense for Content (Images only). That article should get you up to speed.

(Please be aware that your new ad and channel will have a bit of a delay. In my experience it takes about 10 minutes or so for the ad to start displaying on my page.)

Creating a customized AdSense channel is very important to your success. If you want to make money online by blogging, you need to monitor your sites progress. AdSense channels will allow you to do just that.

In my next article I'll explain how you view your new customized channel. Creating your channel is half the battle, but you have to know how to read it so you can make the proper adjustments. And making those adjustments will help you blog for money.

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More tips to earn

(1) Sell Your Knowledge
If you routinely blog on a particular topic, you position yourself as an expert. Truly knowing what you’re talking about on a subject others care about is an asset. You can publish
your work in the form of an e-book or course. By spreading your knowledge, and your blog positioning you as an expert, you can make some money.
(2) Work with a Blog Network
The idea behind a blog network is to create a large network of bloggers, allow the bloggers to post, then sell ads on the network and make some money for all involved. From the blogger’s perspective, you would earn money from advertising sold on your blog. The type of payment model is dependent on the network. Creative Weblogging is one such network who pays the blogger $10 for every 1,000 page views their blog generates.
(3) Raise Your Reputation
This one is a bit indirect, but still applicable. Blogs serve to raise your reputation as an expert in the field on which you are posting. The benefits to this are many. If you are running a related business already, a blog on your subject matter can position you as an expert and thus earn you business. Also, being positioned as an expert will gain you mini-celebrity status in that arena. It can earn you writing positions with non-blog publications. It can even lead into consulting work or public speaking on your area of expertise. There are people who now make very good money per hour doing consulting work on an area they themselves learned about through the course of blogging on it. They were not trained in that field beforehand. But, through blogging, they themselves become quite expert in the field while also becoming known to others as an expert.
(4) Donations
Some view this as a form of begging or handout, but it really isn’t. If you are providing useful information to a wide audience, many in that audience will see the benefit in helping you financially to keep it going. Trust me, after awhile you will develop your own fan base. Simply ask them to support you and use Paypal or some other similar payment collection medium to collect donations. I would not, however, encourage this as a form of quick fundraising to buy a car or some other personal desire. This kind of revenue only works if you have a large and loyal following. Otherwise, it likely won’t be that successful.
(5) Flipping
Lastly, we have the idea of selling the blog. Now, the sale of any website will gain you some money if the site appraises well to potential buyers. But, just like in real estate where one can flip a house to make money, the same can be done with websites. Obviously, its harder to do with a website because while everyone needs a home, not everyone is willing to buy a website. However, by running the blog effectively and gaining a following, it has a value and could be sold.
I’ve touched on some ways to make money on a blog. Many of them apply to non-blog sites as well, and the list I’ve provided is certainly limited. The ways to make money online are only limited by imagination and demand.

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Affliate Programs

Use your blog to sell products for others and earn commission. For example, you could join Amazon’s affiliate program and sell books having to do with the subject of your blog. There are also a lot of other affiliate programs out there, including Linkshare, Commission Junction and Regnow.

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Money From Advertising

Blogging started out as a fad. People come online, set up quick websites, and then start posting journal entries. It has taken some time to gain respect. Blogs that deal with news and politics have long been the brunt of jokes from the so-called “official media”. But, most of them will admit they visit blogs regularly because blogs have become not only lightning-fast sources of news, but also a great gauge of public opinion.

But, as blogging moves from fad to standard, the question is: can money be made doing it? The answer is

(1) Advertising

This is the most obvious. All websites which are primarily content based (rather than ecommerce based) will likely need to host advertising in order to generate revenue. Blogs are no different. A blog is a website like no other. If it is traffic, ads will work. Do some research to find an ad network which will accept blog sites. Google’s Adsense will and is a popular choice. BlogAds is also popular. But, look into Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT, Tribal Fusion, FastClick, Yahoo Publisher Network, among others.

(2) Sponsorship
Another avenue of advertising is the sponsorship. Depending on the subject of your blog, you may be an attractive option to businesses looking to gain some exposure for their product. Typically, sites that would do well with sponsorships are ones which are niche sites. A blog which is general, personal or raw entertainment might not be attractive to potential sponsors. But, if your blog is specific such as Web Development, digital cameras, PC gaming, or other industries which have companies which do internet advertising, you could pick up sponsors.

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The Importance of Choosing The Right Market

The title could also be as - Choosing the correct niche for your blog. I prefered using market since many could not understand what is niche. Well, "niche" refers to the base topic on which you blog.  If you desire to make money as a blogger, the road is a lot easier if you choose a solid market to begin with. A few guidelines would be:

 

1. As a blogger in your prospective market, can you help your reader solve real problems that exist in the real world?
2. Does your prospective market have certain goals that would give them pleasure? Or perhaps something they fear that would give them great pain?
3. Does your market have any kind of traits that would just make them not willing to spend any money?

With those guidelines, you can begin to see why certain types of blogs are going to have a much tougher time making any money. If your blog is essentially a news site, for example, what problem would you be solving? What are the goals or fears of people on a news blog? And surely you’re going to have a tough time getting anybody to pay you since people are USED to getting their news for free. A celebrity blog would be in the same boat. It is just pure entertainment. Entertainment blogs are tricky to monetize and that is because the audience is just there for fun. As a collective audience, they have no common problems, goals or frustrations. Plus, people expect online entertainment to be free.

The best markets are those where there is a real-life problem to solve, there is a goal which they feel strongly about, or there is a nagging fear which they are afraid of.
It isn’t a coincidence that some of the bloggers who make good money talk about how to make money blogging. Ever thought about why that is? It is simply because there is a big, overriding GOAL to the market. In other words, MORE MONEY. And who isn’t motivated by that? However, don’t go into “make money” blogging just because you think it would work. You have to have actually done it before you can talk about it with authority.
The same philosophy works in a BUNCH of different markets:

• Musicians have the common goal of being better players. They want to perfect their craft, gain respect, pick up chicks because they’re so good. They’re a potentially good market.
• Business owners have the goal of making more money and retiring early. Easy market.
• Dating is a good market because everybody wants to have a partner and men want to get laid. I mean, face it.

Markets where there is competition among members of the audience are good, too. For example, I’ve seen popular sites that are all about taking cars and making them look better. drive faster, etc. Modifications, essentially. Great market because you have a rabid audience of people who are out to impress their friends and have a generally more bad-ass car than everybody around them. And they’ll PAY for that.
(I once knew a dude who paid more for the rims on his car than he did for the car itself. I was floored).
So, market selection is very important. When we talk about making good money blogging, the entire thing is going to be much harder if you’re not talking to a market which has goals or pains. It is much better to think about this before you start blogging for money. If you’re already blogging, then take stock of your market and see if it adds up. If it doesn’t, you might want to adjust to better align with something having market potential.
Either that or just blog as a hobby.

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5 steps a newbie blogger never misses

Blogging is an exciting thing. Even more exciting is being a newbie blogger. Every matured living being passes few stages before becoming so. For instance, there is a single cell stage, an embryo, new born, child, teen and so on. Similarly every blogger is a newbie before becoming a matured blogger. And there are certain stages every newbie blogger passes through. Here I discuss 5 stages every newbie blogger comes across.

1. Excited blogger

This is the very first step of every newbie blogger. He/She cannot miss the initial excitement when starting to blog. It won’t be inappropriate to call it over-excitement. In this over-excited state, a newbie blogger can go as crazy as he/she can.
For instance some or all of the following things can happen: Purchasing bunches and bunches of cheap domain names, starting blogs at every profitable niche prevalent in the world, posting three or four times a day, downloading all plugins and installing them (and getting screwed), downloading all free ebooks (or literally anything available in pdf format) that talks about blogging and so on. The list is not exhaustive. Even more crazy things can happen.
At this stage, the blogger is either excited about his/her own blog or even sometimes excited about an A-lister blog.

2. The stat checker

The first thing every blogger does after launching a blog, even before publishing a single post, is to check stats. That is purely human nature to be curious about who is visiting the blog. But this curiosity takes over everything else at the earlier stages of blogging.
Checking stats becomes the blogger’s irresistible thing. Even without concentrating on writing blog posts, even without worrying about the design and the misaligned pages of the blog, even without taking into account that it has been just one week after the blog has been launched, the blogger couldn’t resist himself/herself checking the stats every hour.
When there is one new visitor since the last check that is a great motivation. But if there are no visitors to the blog, which is what is to be expected at this stage, the blogger becomes disappointed and frustrated. This is a big factor that greatly affects the development of the blog, especially at its initial stage when extra care and effort are needed to build the blog without worrying about the stats.

3. The monetization phobic

The blogger at this stage does Google searches (hundreds of them) to learn about all types of monetization techniques for a blog. PPC, CPC, CPM, PPM, ABC or XYZ… whatever! The blogger ruthlessly reads about all sorts of advertising.
He/She struggles hard to get an Adsense account approved. If this step doesn’t turn out to be successful, then the blogger Googles for “Adsense alternates”. As always there are a bunch of them available. So the blogger starts accounts in all of those advertising websites, puts all those banners on the blog and BOOM! One gets a beautiful site that has misaligned banners which blink, change colours, flash kisses at you and sell you stuff.
That is not all. There are places where one can do direct selling of ad banners. There are also in-text ads, strip ads, interstial ads, you name it. The blogger sincerely tries them all out and gets frustrated to see that the earning for the past three months is $0.50.

4. Endless learner

This is when the excitement in down a little bit. The blogger’s focus is now not on writing for their own blog(s) but to know what others are writing about. That is good, but it is actually over done or done endlessly.
The blogger starts reading a killer article about “how to blog successfully” from a A-lister blog; the article ends and there are a bunch of related posts. Oh there is that interesting post about “how to earn $1000 dollars from your blog in less than a month” and that article gets a click. This goes on and on- reading comments, related posts, about the products the A-lister is offering and so on.
And, now the blogger looks at his/her clock when it is almost mid-night. He/she feels so tired and hence goes to bed. Great!

5. Stat-free minded blogger

This is the stage when the newbie blogger becomes a matured blogger. I call him/her matured blogger not because his/her blog is now getting 10000 page views per day but the blogger is very well aware of what blogging is really about.
The blogger exactly knows what it takes to develop a good blog, what it is about to write quality content, what are the factors that are to be taken care of at this stage of blogging, and what are the things that are not to be taken care of.
The blogger now knows that blogging is not about building it, forgetting it and earning while snoring. It is about developing a good quality blog which has useful and valuable content, developing trust and good relationship with the readers, maintaining the motivation at a consistent level and sticking to it without worrying about anything else.

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