So, you want to
make money online? That's great! It's an awesome way to earn a living. But please read this post before you go starting another blog about making money online (there are already too many of those).
You've probably already seen about 100 different make money online blogs talking about how they earn a million dollars a minute from their blog. So, of course, you want to start your own make money online blog so you can start making money like all these guys do. I can understand that considering you don't know any better. But I am about to let you in on a little secret...
Hardly any of those so-called "make money online blogs" are actually making any money at all. Only a small percentage of them really do make a profit and even most of the ones claiming to earn thousands upon thousands of dollars per month are lying to you! It's a simple fact that blogs about making money online are the very same blogs that aren't making much money. Some do, most don't!
If you don't believe me then go ask
Griz,
Court,
Vic, or
Mark. They all own highly popular MMO blogs but they will be the first to tell you that they earn the majority of their income from niches outside of the make money online niche. They'll also tell you to do the same.
There are plenty of reasons for this that I am not going to get into right now so just take my word for it. The reason for this post is to tell you NOT to start another MMO blog if you really want to make money online.
You might be asking yourself, "If that's not the way to do it then what is?" and I will tell you right now...
Go back to the title of this post, "Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money" and I am sure you can at least somewhat figure out what I am about to tell you.
Yep, you guessed it, if you want to make money online then you should be starting blogs and/or static websites in smaller niche markets. This will sometimes require quite a bit of research on your part but it is more than worth it in the long run. And sometimes you can hit a good niche market without much research at all.
When you think of a niche that you might want to pursue you first need to research to make sure there is a market for that niche. One way to do this is to type in the niche keywords in quotes in Google and see how many Adwords ads come up on the right side of the search results. If there are none that usually means one of two things...
1) You have either just found a killer niche that nobody else has tapped into.
2) There isn't enough of a market for that niche to make it profitable enough for Adwords advertisers.
Most likely it's the second one, but don't dismiss it as a bad niche just yet. Do some more research first! More on that in a minute.
If you find there are a lot of Adwords ads then it is most likely a profitable niche. Typically a good niche will have some Adwords ads to show that it is profitable but not too many because you want to be able to make money from this niche without spending all your time trying to beat out a lot of competition.
Ok, so now you have found a niche that appears to have some profit potential but not a lot of competition solely based on the Adwords ads. Well, that's not enough. So, what do you do next?
More research! I told you this was "research to riches" didn't I?!
Now you need to figure out how often your niche keywords are searched for and how much competition there really is.
First the searches...
The most basic way to do this for free is to use the free keyword suggestion tool from
Wordtracker so you can see how often it is searched per day. I've heard varying opinions but most people say that you need to take the number the tool comes up with and multiply it by 4 to get the number of times it's searched for per day on Google.
Now the competition...
Go back to Google and search for your keyword phrase in quotes. It must be in quotes or you won't get a good estimate of your competition. Now look at the top right corner and it will say, "Results 1-10 of about XX, XXX" and the X's will be the number of sites that match your exact keyword phrase. This is how many people you have to compete against to get the top ranking on Google.
If the number of searches exceeds the number of competing sites and there are Adwords ads promoting products in that niche, then you have most likely found yourself a gold mine. Get started in that niche right away!
Most likely that isn't going to happen. But if there are only maybe 20,000 or less sites competing for that niche and it does get quite a few searches, and there are at least a few Adwords ads, it's probably a niche worth going after. Anyone with a little SEO knowledge and internet marketing experience could dominate a niche like this pretty fast and make a lot of money.
Another super way to make money online through niche marketing...
Building niche trend blogs is a great way to make money and it's a lot easier to find the niche this way. What the hell is a niche trend blog? Well, let's see if I can put it very simply...
A niche trend blog is a blog you start around a certain trend or "hot topic" that is happening right now.
For example; if you would have been one of the first to start a niche trend blog about the popular MTV show "The Hills" and marketed it correctly, you probably would have a blog that is pulling in some pretty darn good profits right now. Or you could have started a blog about any of the main people on the show like Lauren Conrad, Audrina Patridge, Heidi Montag, Whitney Port, Spencer Pratt, or Brody Jenner.
Being one of the first to jump on a hot topic and get a blog going about it puts you in a good position to take the top Google rankings for those keywords and cash in on the trend. These don't usually last long but if you keep adding more and more niche trend blogs you will continue to make money off each new one. There is never a shortage of hot topics to start niche blogs on. You just need to stay on top of the gossip and get your blog going right away.
I suggest using the free blogger.com service for these for many reasons. Mainly because they are free and you don't want to be spending money to create these because you will be creating so many of them and you don't know for sure if they are going to produce any income. Also, they are very easy to create and you want to be able to get these up quickly. And since Google owns blogger.com it only makes sense that they would rank well on Google and that is exactly what you are trying to do.
Many of your niche trend blogs will probably turn out to be duds but some of them will make money, and the more you create the more chances you have to make money. This will eventually turn into a nice sized
passive income. Since they are free and you won't be spending much time on each one, you don't need to worry about all of them pulling in profits for you. Just move on and find another hot topic to cash in on.
So what have we learned here?
1) Starting a "make money online" blog is actually one of the worst ways to make money online.
2) Niche marketing is a much easier and faster way to make money online.
3) Niche trend blogs are a very easy way to get into niche marketing.
You stand a much better chance of getting rich by doing research to find profitable niche markets then you do by throwing up another MMO blog and trying to compete in that niche. That's why I called this post, "Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money" because niche markets are where the money is at!
So, get started on finding profitable niches right now so you can really make money online!
Dedicated to your success,
Trent Brownrigg
Free Online Business TipsLabels: blogging, make money, make money online, niche marketing, niche research
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