Research to Riches - Niche Marketing Makes Money

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. 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 Tips

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Could You Be Doing More to Make Money Online?

People come to me all the time with the same old sob story about how they aren't making any money even though they "have been working at it for a whole month" - or maybe even a few months. It brings up one very big question in my mind every time... Are you really doing all you can to make money online?

I don't mean spending your days looking for some great money making opportunity that is going to make you rich by next week. Good luck with that! If you find it then please tell me, I would love to know what it is. But I guarantee you won't ever find it.

What I mean is, are you really working and doing all you can to make money online? How much time do you spend each day at your computer strictly doing tasks that are going to help you make money right now or in the future? I would be willing to bet it's not a lot!

Just because you have been "working at home" for months supposedly doing all you can to make money online doesn't mean you really have been. Do you work every day? How many hours? Are you really working or just on your computer doing who knows what?

Watching videos on YouTube, checking your Myspace ten times and emailing all your buddies the latest funny forward isn't going to make you any money! Neither are all the other things you are wasting your time doing while you are supposed to be building your online business.

The point is that real internet marketers, making the big bucks, probably put in more real work in a couple days than all these people whining about not making any money do in a month.

Sit your butt down, without any distractions, for a set period of time every single day and really get some work done. As long as you consistently do a few things to actually grow your online business on a daily basis you will start to make money before you know it.

Once the money starts rolling in it's NOT time to stop working or slow down at all. That should just be the incentive you need to work even harder.

Making money online is not rocket science. Just about everyone can do it if they really want to. All it takes is for you to actually do some work on a consistent basis.

Dedicated to your home business success,
Trent Brownrigg
Free Money Making Tips

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I Won A New 20" Monitor and It Arrived Today!

The great folks over at the Work at Home Community of WhyDoWork.com have held some awesome contests in the past couple years and I was the winner of the most recent one.

What did I win? I suppose the title of this post probably tipped you off, but if you are still unsure...

It's a new computer monitor. Actually it's a Black Acer AL2016WBbd 20" WSXGA Widescreen LCD Monitor to be exact.

The UPS driver pulled up today and I immediately got excited because I just knew he had to be delivering my new monitor. I was right.

As soon as I got it in the house I hooked it up. And I love it!

This will help me tremendously when building my work at home websites because I can now view them in all sorts of sizes to see what they will look like to my visitors with various screen sizes. So I can give my visitors a better user experience.

It will also help me with my home business in many other ways simply because my other monitor was old and out of date. I was very much in need of an upgrade.

Not to mention watching videos online is about a million times better on this new monitor than it was on my old one. It's so much bigger, clearer and easier on my eyes.

I was going to get my digital camera out and take a picture of it to show you what it looks like, but I got lazy. Instead, I found one online. The picture you see above is the exact monitor that I won.

Anyway, I am just very happy to have won this nice prize and wanted to share it with all my wonderful home business tips blog readers.

I highly recommend you become a member of the WhyDoWork.com Work at Home Community so you won't miss any of their contests.

Well, that's pretty much all for now.

Dedicated to your home business success,
Trent Brownrigg

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How To Make Money Blogging - 10 Step Solution

First, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day.

Second, I am not trying to sell you my latest "Get Rich Quick" scheme because I don't have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt, help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100's available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.

I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.

I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.

Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.

Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?

If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that's up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that's your prerogative.

Step 1 - Finding a Topic

Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what's popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.

Step 2 - Create Your Blog

Find and create your blog online. I like to use Blogger but other popular Blog platforms are Wordpress and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.

Step 3 - Go Google

Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don't take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.

If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.

You will also want to add your URL to Google's index.

Step 4 - Find Something to Sell

If you don't want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.

Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.

Step 5 - Social Bookmarking

There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.

I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.

Step 6 - Write an Article

Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.

Submit your article to any of the 100's which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.

Step 7 - Ping The Hell Out Of It

Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.

There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.

Step 8 - Yahoo! Answers and Forums

One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don't just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won't.

The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.

Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it's viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don't already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.

Step 9 - Update Your Blog

This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.

Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don't want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?

Step 10 - More, More, More

Repeat steps 1 - 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.

Step 11 - A Bonus Step

If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.

How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.

Some important things to remember so you don't get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that's how they do it. Your moment could be sooner than you think.

My Top 10 resources I use and recommend are:

1. Rob Benwell's Blogging to The Bank 2.0

2. Wordpress Goldmine

3. Rob Atherton's Building A Blog Empire For Profit

4. The Blog Challenge

5. Hinge Marketing Magic

6. Blogging For Riches - Complete Video Tutorial

7. Social Bookmarking Demon

8. Adsense Inbox

9. Wordpress SEO Sniper

10. RSS, Blogs and Syndication...

About the author:

My name is Andy I'm 31 and I'm from Manchester, UK I like to read a lot (Discworld, Sci-Fantasy) and listen to music (The Doors, Wu-Tang, Amy Winehouse, Kaiser Chiefs, Blondie, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix). I also try to be a skateboarder when I get time and dry weather. Please view and leave comments on my blog.

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