Niche Blog Profits

This hub will take you through the basic steps needed to research profitable niches, choose your specific blog topic and begin to make money online with your niche blog.

There are seven steps and I recommend you read each one before you begin. Questions about this content can be send to admin@chooseaniche.com. 

Picking the perfect niche is perhaps the hardest - but most imporant - part of creating your profitable niche blog. You could spend months researching the right targeted topic, but if you complete this first step you will be able to narrow down options considerably.

In this step, you will create two lists:

1. Things you Love

2. Things you Know

This is strictly brainstorming so write down whatever pops into your head.

When you have completed your lists, you will most likely find that some topics are on both lists. For each of these topics ask yourself the following questions:

1. Will you get tired of writing about this subject?

2. Is there enough material on this topic to write about it for a long time?

3. Do people care about this topic? (We'll learn how to find out more about this question in the next step)

The more niche blogs you create, the better you will become at knowing which questions to ask and finding strong niches to target, but these questions should get you off to a good start.

When you have narrowed your choices down to two or three niches, you are ready to go on to Step Two.

There are about as many ways to research keywords online as there are keywords. You could waste a ton of time on this step so I'm going to give you a very easy method that has worked well for me. This method is called the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) and it will help you find niches that are in demand, but not oversaturated. You'll understand this more as we go along.

We will be calculating the KEI for each of your narrowed-down niche topics from step one. This will not only help you be sure you aren't choosing a niche with too much competition, but it will also help you find keywords you can use in your blog to help improve your search engine rankings.

The formula for KEI looks like this: KEI = P^2/S = P/S*P

Got it? Okay. I'm kidding. Basically, what that formula says is that as popularity increases and the number of competing sites decreases, the better the keyword is in terms of profit potential. What you are looking for are keywords with lots of searches, but not a lot of websites based on those keywords.

To find KEI in an organized fashion, you will create a spreadsheet with four columns: Keyword, Searches, Results, KEI. You can see an example of this spreadsheet below this section. In that case, I searched for the keyword phrase "Law of Attraction." It is a pretty competitive niche these days, but you can see there are some keywords that aren't as saturated as others. The first one I highlighted might be somewhat helpful while the second one highlighted is just ridiculous. You will inevitably find some ridiciculous results as you are doing your research, but common sense will allow you to identify them.

You can use any keyword suggestion tool to fill in the first column of your spreadsheet. I use the Google Keyword Suggestion tool. Fill in your primary niche keyword and you will get a list of results based on related keywords. Enter as many of those as you want in your keywords column and then use the Approximate Average Search Volume to fill in your Searches column.

Next, go to Google and search for each of your keywords. In the upper-right-hand corner, you will see the number of search results for that keyword. Enter that number in the Results column. In the last column, enter the KEI formula which is simply your Searches column divided by your Results column.

In Excel, you would enter the formula like this =(B2/C2)

Then you simply copy the formula to the rest of the rows and the KEI will be filled in. Next, sort the KEI by the highest number first. The first keywords listed are your strongest keywords.

If you are still unclear on this step, you can read a bit more about it by visiting Choose a Niche: Keyword Research. 

You might think that all the good domain names are gone, but this is far from true. Since you are choosing a targeted niche, you will have plenty of keyword-packed names from which to choose. And that is the trick to this - your domain name should include your primary keyword. If you have to, include hyphens, but don't choose some obscure domain name for a niche blog. If your blog is about Choosing a Niche, then your domain name should be http://chooseaniche.com or something similar.

When it comes to finding domains, there are some really great tools out there. Some of these tools will not only tell you if a domain is available, it will suggest other or additional domains with your related keywords. My favorite sites for this are:

• Make Words: Choose the "Wordlists" option at the top next to Search Type. 
• Name Tumbler: This one is self-explanatory 
• Go Daddy Smart Search :Just perform a regular search on the homepage and the results page will have a tab called "Smart Search."

These sites aren't just helpful, they are also really fun to play with. The first two allow you to choose very specific categories. For example, let's say my primary keyword phrase is "domain hosting." This is going to be a very competitive phrase, but a site like Make Words will allow me to find words based on different categories.

In this case, I am going to choose the Wordlist Theme "Business & Services." Make sure you have the "return only available domains" box checked and then click search. This search returned96 great available domain names including my keywords:

• DomainHostingFirm.com
• DomainHostingBiz.com
• ExpertDomainHosting.com
• DomainHostingAdvantage.com

The search engines would recognize my keywords using any of those domains. The other two links above work basically the same, but I really think Name Tumbler is more user-friendly than Go Daddy.

Once you have chosen your domain name, you need to find someone to host it. There are thousands of hosts online and not all of them are alike. Make sure you do plenty of research to find the domain that suits all of your needs. The host I use is Quality Host Online. This is the fourth domain I have used in the last decade - I'm very picky - and I have been with them for nearly two years. Their customer service is 24/7 and always outstanding. They also offer a lot of different packages for all types of uses.

The most important things you need to host niche blogs are:

• Unlimited add-on domains or a Reseller account: In order to build your income, you will want to build more than one niche blog. Unless you want to open a new hosting account for each blog, you want to make sure you can have many add-on domains. The other option here is to get a reseller account. If you are going to host 20 or more domains then I recommend a reseller account. This way you can create your own separate accounts for each domain under one hosting account.
• Several MySQL Databases: In the next step, we'll discuss using WordPress to design your blog. Wordpress needs at least one MySQL database to run and you'll need more based on the various plug-ins you choose.
• Uptime: Many hosts promise 99.9% uptime, but it is hard to know if they are actually delivering on that promise. I monitor my domains using a Vista gadget called "isAlive," but there are many other services that will let you make sure your site is constantly active. I have never had a downtime problem with Quality Host Online. Not once.

WHen you are choosing your host, don't get sucked in by special deals that expire quickly or mask a less-than-optimal domain host. Make sure you read the fine print so you know what you are getting and that you are getting everything you need. Changing hosts is a huge pain so it's best to find a great host and stick with them. 

If you want to create an empire of SEO-friendly niche blogs I have some very important advice for you: use Wordpress. This free application has everything you need to quickly and easily build a user-friendly blog that the search engines will gobble up.

You can find all the information you need to know about installing WordPress on the Wordpress itself. Along with this, many hosting accounts come with applications like Fantastico that will automatically allow you to install WordPress blogs.

Finding the Right Wordpress Theme

One of the most important parts of building your Wordpress blog is choosing a theme. There are thousands (millions?) of free themes online so it can be a bit overwhelming to choose just the right one for your niche blog. Be sure you choose a theme that is user-friendly and not too busy. My favorite place for free, SEO-optimized Wordpress themes is Court's Internet Marketing School. Court really knows his SEO and these themes are clean, interesting and very easy to customize.

If you have the money to pay for a customized theme, I recommend Unique Blog Designs. They have ready-to-go exclusive themes as well as the ability to fully customize a theme from the ground up. For a small, niche-specific blog you might want to start out with something a bit cheaper (or free), but if you plan to create a flagship blog, the boys at UBD are briliant. They designed my Pajama Professional theme and, even after a year, I still am amazed at how cool it looks. That is my flagship blog, though. For my niche blogs, I use free themes and have learned enough about PHP and Wordpress to customize them myself. It may look difficult, but once it clicks you'll find that being able to tweak your own theme is not only convenient, but quite fun as well.

The Two Different Types of SEO

Along with having an search engine optimized Wordpress theme, you will want to make sure your posts and pages are given careful SEO treatment as well. There are two main types of SEO: onsite and offsite. Onsite SEO consists of your theme and what it includes (meta-tags, how posts are named, the category organization, etc.). You have control over onsite SEO and you should take full advantage of that.

Internal SEO

Meta-Tags are bits of information in the code of your theme that let search engines know more about your blog. You can use meta-tags on individual pages, but at this point we're going to keep thing simple and just talk about how to apply them to your overall theme.

If you use Wordpress and do not have any SEO plug-ins installed, your theme's meta-tags will be found in your header.php document and will look like this:

<meta tag="keywords" content="domain name, domain hosting, find a domain">

While you can manually edit your meta-tags, I recommend a Wordpress plugin called All-in-One SEO Pack. This plugin is very user-friendly and will allow you to edit your meta-tags right from your Wordpress Dashboard by just filling in a few simply columns. You will also have the option to use the plugin for individual posts and plugins in order to further optimize specific parts of your blog.

When writing your posts and pages, always be aware that your keywords need to be included as much as possible. There is a very fine line between just the right amount of keyword density and overdoing it. Some niche bloggers go so far as to include 10% keyword density. I stick to around 3%-5%, but I rarely actually measure the density of my keywords. The problem you can run into if you become to obsessed with keyword inclusion is making your text unreadable or awkward for humans to read. Search engines are also beginning to recognize this problem, called "keyword stuffing," so just try to keep your keywords in mind, but don't try to make them fit where they clearly don't belong.

The internet linking structure of your blog is taken care of very well by Wordpress. The application allows you to create categories and include tags. One thing WP doesn't do automatically (without a plugin) is link to other pages within your blog. So be aware as you are writing a post that there may be a prior related post you could link to. Internal linking can help search engines find more pages on your site. The more pages you have indexed, the more chances you have to rank well. One easy way to increase your internal links is to install the Wasabi Related Posts plugin. This plugin will sort through your blog each time you publish a post and create a list following that post of other posts on your blog based on keyword and category similarities.

You will also want to include a sitemap for your blog so that search engines and people can find posts and pages more easily. I use two separate sitemap plugins: one for the humans and one for the search engines. For the search engines, I use Google XML Sitemap Generator and for humans, I use Dagon Design's Sitemap. Wordpress also can automatically generate archive pages based on dates, categories, etc. - depending on the options you select.

The last imporant type of internet SEO is a file called robots.txt. Thought it looks a bit daunting, basically this simple document tells search engine crawlers which pages of your site to index and which ones to ignore. This helps you avoid submitting duplicate ontent or including pages that you feel just aren't imporatnt for indexing. You can find a lot of information online just by performing a quick search for robots.txt, but if you aren't a coder, I recommend installing Joost de Valk's Robots Meta plugin. It will customize the file for you based on a few options you select.

External SEO

You don't have the same amount of control over external SEO as you do internal SEO simply because it is really about getting other sites to link to your niche blog. There are many ways to do this and link building is all about time and patience. Here are a few suggestions just to get you started:

• Join Social Networks
• Comment on Other Blogs
• Trade Links (reciprocal links aren't considered as "valuable" as one-way links so try to target a specific post or page when you request a link trade with someone)
• Comment on Forums
• Create Hubpages
• Get Your Blog Listed in Directories (especially those with high Google PageRank)
• Write articles and submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles and Go Articles.
• Submit a Press Release
• Create and Give a (quality) Product to other bloggers for free in exchange for a review and link on their site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Your link building tactics are only limited by your imagination. Just remember that this is probably the most boring part of growing a blog. However, it is completely worth it.

The method described here is just one of thousands of ways to set up a blog. I hope this helps someone out there, even if it's just one person and one suggestion. Please leave questions in the comments.

There are many, many effective ways to build traffic to a niche blog, but they only come in three categories: buying, borrowing and building. In this step, we will discuss these three categories in a bit of detail and break down the options within each.

Buying Traffic

Buying traffic to your blog is undoubtedly the fastest way to get visitors. The problem is, you need to shop around to find the rithere are some good - and some really bad - options out there. The key is to get targeted traffic. You can send 100,000 visitors to your blog about plants, but if they don't care about plants they aren't going to stick around. This is even more important when you are trying to sell a product. If you are going to shell-out your money for visitors, you want to be sure that they are visitors that have been pre-determined to have an interest in what you are selling or writing about.

The most popular way of buying traffic these days is through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) programs like Google Adwords. Using a service like this, you choose related keywords, write up your article script and then designate how much you are willing to pay for each click to your ad. The higher you bid, the higher your ad will appear on the results. Adwords and other PPC engines can work quite well for niche blog marketing because your generally targeting a small topic. This means you will pay less and most of your visitors will having genuine interest in the topic about which you are writing.

There are many sites out there that offer to send thousands of visitors to your site for super-low prices. A Google search for the term buy website traffic came up with just shy of a million results. Most of these sites - even if they offer targeted traffic - are most likely not that targeted either. These traffic selling sites buy their leads (the folks they send to your site) from other companies that have visitor collection methods like traffic surfing sites and exchanges. When you are working with a super-targeted topic then it is very unlikely that a site selling traffic will be able to send you 20,000 visitors that are all specifically targeted to your niche. It's just not possible.

In the last paragraph I mentioned surfing sites and traffic exchanges. Again, it is very difficult to get truly targeted traffic with these types of sites. I'm not saying it's impossible, but most hot niches are not well-suited for advertising on traffic exchanges or surfing sites. The exception to this can be a really good internet marketing blog. However, internet marketing is such a competitive niche that I would not recommend you select that as your niche blog topic.

There is one more way to pay for traffic that can work very well, but it can also be very expensive. You can hire a professional firm to send targeted traffic to your site. Basically they have tools and resources that allow them to personalize advertising campaigns just for you. In this case, you just sit back and wait for the traffic. Again, this is an excellent option - if you have a very high advertising budget.

COMING SOON: Borrowing Traffic and Building Traffic

COMING SOON... 

COMING SOON...