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Blogging as the New Frontier for Careers

Luis Sandoval — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:04:22 +0000

: Image by Annie Mole via Flickr

I’m currentl writing a post for my personal blog on 10 Steps for Social Media Success, and as I was finishing up that post I started to think of blogging specifically because aside from interactive design, I love writing. Writing for me is a key form of expression, perhaps because I can draw, paint, or compose music. But with my words I’m able to unite the hearts of many, inspire others to take action, and bring my readers to tears with raw human emotion that can be poured into my words. Still, in the grand scheme of things, we’ve seen blogging take on a huge roll in our daily lives, not just for personal use, but for financial gain, and the movement shows no sign of stopping.

Where do you stand in the movement? Are you a personal blogger or are you in it for the long haul with the hopes of a return? There’s nothing wrong with either, and both have their right and wrong ways to approach, but let’s understand what is happening before make that determination.

The Mighty Have Fallen

In the last year we’ve seen major traditional methods of media take a serious hit to their pockets. We as consumers and content creators are changing our consumption habits and as such, traditional media outlets are scrambling to survive this paradigm shift of what we consider quality content, or at the very least worthwhile content. It’s a race that not everyone will survive as we’ve seen major newspapers close entirely, or have entire teams of writers given the pink slip as traditional media and marketing/advertising attempts to trim their budgets.

Recently I was asked to be a local blogger for my metropolitan newspaper because of my reputation as a local media leader and my involvement with ongoing trends in media as they exist today. Standing on this new frontier I find myself amazed at how quickly old media is adapting and looking for ways to reach the eyeballs of their supporters. I wrote a blog for the paper’s online site that discussed how our attention is the 21st Century’s greatest finite resource, and it is. With so much competition out there to grab our attention for entertainment, news, sports, day to day tasks, we are consuming content faster, quicker, and in shorter spurts.

This trend is really pushing short video sites like YouTube and Hulu into the forefront of where people are watching their content. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular as well as audio books for those looking at consuming content on the go. Micro-blogs and blogs in general are offering perspectives and insights that traditional media completely overlooks.

This is apparently what the consumerist society wants today, and we as bloggers have an opportunity to enjoy.

Blogging Can be Profitable

So now focusing on blogging specifically, where does this put you? As a blogger this is your biggest opporutnity for two things. First you can capitalize on this opporunity for big gains, not just financially, but also for reputation. Secondly, you stand to be at the cusp for greatness when this waves officially washes over the world.

I still think that traditional media will have its roots and I respect the medium entirely. I am not completely comfortable with the term old media myself, but it’s been coined and as such makes it easier for those to understand the difference between old and new media. Still, I started out as a traditional journalist and writer, and have transformed myself into a digital media maven of sorts spreading myself across the globe with access to so many free tools that make it possible.

Advertisers may have shrinking budgest and the economy may not look the greatest on a global scale, but this is all temporary. Like any storm the clouds will pass and you want to be sure your content stands tall as someplace any company big or small would want to place their ads. This is why content is king and readership is important. Make your deals now, line your strategies with opportunities, or re-align your blogs mission for the future for increased profits. Whatever it takes, this new day is approaching quickly and there is plenty for everyone….for now.

Post Written by Luis Sandoval. He is a media strategist for Advantj Media, and writer on social media and technology on his blog The Daily Slackr.

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30 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog Part III

Luis Sandoval — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:26:19 +0000

As we close this series of posts for 2008, my hope is that all of the readers came away with something. Whether you chose to do a few of these, or decided to go through all of them to get the most bang from your efforts, I wish you luck. 2009 is indeed a year for opportunity, and if you’re spending your time creating quality content, why not monetize it.?

The final 10 ways listed in this post are perhaps a little more time intensive. They are indirect methods of making money on your site, but they require you to do a whole lot more to achieve financial success. But, if you’re willing with the patience and determination, the following 10 could not only build you a small fortune, but you could also develop quite the online reputation for your area of expertise.

If you missed the first and second part, don’t fret, they are not in any particular order.

Let’s dig in!

21. Selling Your Website

Selling your site is something a writer does not achieve until he/she has spent years cultivating the right readership, has interacted with the community enough to keep them coming back, is considered to have high value content worth marketing. A great many of us may never read this point, but there are writers out there with content that others would love to market and acquire. There have been blogs that sell for thousands of dollars, and there are blogs that sell for millions of dollars. Time and patience is again one of the many keys to achieving this. It’s a rarity, but not impossible.

22. Selling an Ebook

If you can’t flip your entire site for money, perhaps you can flip the content. Because we’ve chosen to write within a certain arena, it would be safe to say tha we feel passionate or at the very least feel educated enough to put together a series of ebooks with related content that can be sold online. Gathering your posts and elaborating a little to connect the thoughts could net you a decent ebook that could fetch a fair prices online. Again, this all comes from content that others will find interesting, if you’ve got it, they will buy!

23. Selling A Hardcover Book

So you got a little author in you. Perhaps you take your content and decide that you want to write a lengthy read to showcase what you know and how other people can do what you do. This type of book is not uncommon, it will be considerably more work, but not impossible. There are lots of methods for self publishing, but also just as many if you wanted to get an agent. This is not a quick turnaround and will take lots of time, but a great how-to book that takes people step by step through the process is a great way to put out a solid book with your name on it.

24. Selling WordPress Themes

Got a little creative bug in ya? If you’re becoming a pro with WordPress, why not design templates? Not everyone involved with WordPress has the ability to do this, but if you’re confident manipulating your blog, why not attempt to create a wordpress template that others will purchase. With enough understanding of CSS, and ability to make it graphically appealing, your templates could be in a marketplace or sold off your blog site and the profit would start rolling in. It’s worth a shot!

25. Offering Consulting or Related Services

Perhaps you have the skills to communicate your ideas to people. You don’t have the desire to write a book just yet, then perhaps your looking at doing some face to face consulting. Offering your services and expertise is a highly valued way to build quality relationships with readers of your content. Any topic can be fair game as long as there is a need from your readers.

26. Creating An Email List or Newsletter

Providing a way for you to stay in contact with your readers is important, which is why a newsletter is key. The email list you acquire will be vital if you ever decide to do something where you will depend on them…like making money. With an email list, this is probably where your first customers will come from only because they’ve chosen to receive your emails, and they are the first line of marketing. Your newsletter does not only have to offer things you are selling, but can also offer advertising where users can click and you ultimately get paid for it.

27. Mentoring Programs

Different from consulting, cause perhaps you only get contacted a few times. Mentoring programs are like academies or training modules where for a price you take people through your expertise from start to finish. In the end there is a goal or product to achieve, and readers are willing to pay a fair price to acquire this type of training. It does take some prep time on the writers end to ensure that the training is of high value and effective, but it can also net you a steady stream of income.

28. Creating A Conference

Have you thought of getting together with some of the best minds of your area of expertise and holding a conference where people pay top dollar to hear you speak? Probably not, it’s a lot of work, but the benefits are long term. Start local, find a free venue, or a low cost venue like the library, or local community college or university. Set it up for 4-6 hours and find people just as passionate as you and by putting panels together attendees will find value in all the minds gathered in one place. this is something that would have to be planned a year in advance, but the long term is that if you are noticed you could be invited to speak at other conferences and truly begin to build your reputation as a go to expert.

29. Quality Podcasts

Recording a podcast is easy, and can be done at minimal cost. Recording a high quality podcast only take a few hundred dollars, but after the initial cost, that’s it, the rest is profit. You can distribute your podcasts for free to build up some fans, and afterwards find ways to monetize it either by charging for it after awhile or finding advertisers for various spots within the podcast. If you love to talk, this is an excellent option if you can find the right market for your podcast.

30. Donations

Nothing wrong with raising money for a cause. If you feel confident enough with your efforts and your readership, then put up a donation button where people can put money into your pay pal account. A few dollars can go a long way, and some might consider it begging, but if you’re writing, is your time not worth something? There’s a lot of generous souls out there and making a few bucks here and there is not so bad. Give it a try!

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30 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog Part II

Luis Sandoval — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:56:16 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Still looking for ways to make money? If Part I was not enough for you, then let’s move on with the second part of “30 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog.”

11. Private Forums

If you’ve got valuable information to share, or your network is highly experienced in their fields, you can leverage that expertise into a paid forum on your site because others will want access to the information. Many sites have utilized the paid form method by charging anywhere between $10 to $100. This monthly recurring charge is revenue that requires little to no work after the initial setup and management. The community itself will create a level of importance, and you will simply provide key information from time to time.

12. Job Boards

If you’ve got your finger on the pulse of employment situations, why wouldn’t you share your abilities with the masses. Some people are just hubs for networking, and these individuals understand that people are tired of the free job sites which get spammed with false postings, or misleading information. By providing a paid for job board, you’ve limited the offerings to some of the best selections and by building your reputation users will have no problem paying for your board because they will come to expect premium level jobs depending on the niche.

13. Marketplaces

Ever heard of a garage sale? Perhaps you’ve been to a flea market? You can transfer the basic concept into the virtual world by providing a place where people can buy, sell, and trade specialized items. While the process can be complicated for new users, once you’ve gotten over the learning curve, it’s the community will take care of itself. Mashable is a good example of a site that has also integrated a Marketplace into its systems.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are a lot of marketing and advertising companies out there looking to collect data. Many understand how users may not trust a site they have not been to before, but by partnering with popular sites with high numbers of visitors, some will pay to have their surveys and polls on your site. The data is collected on the back end and reportd directly to the company, but the survey itself is housed on your site, where users might be more likely to respond.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

This is an odd practice but has been around for awhile and made notable most recently by sites like Million Dollar Wiki. The idea is to offer internal pages for users to purchase for their own use, naturally your site would have to have an existing high page rank or extremely high views to make the purchase worthwhile. For a small site this might be difficult, but not impossible. This might encourage some of the smaller sites to really implement some of the tools we spoke about in previous posts to increase the number of visitors to their site.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

If you’re site is well designed, and receives a fair amount of traffic, it’s not impossible to get sponsors to support your site. While your data is displayed somewhere on the site, whether it’s a side bar, or at the top, or a separate link all together, sponsors with blogs will highlight their latest and most viewed posts and thus direct qualified traffic both ways. It’s a method that was pioneered by Techmeme, and according to reports nets them $5000 per sponsored post, and guess what? They display six at any given time, you do the math!

17. Donations

Okay, so what’s easier then begging? Don’t like that word? Let’s say asking for donations, it seems to make people more warm and fuzzy. In any case, donation buttons seem to work well. It’s a moderate way to make income, not necessarily a cash cow, but if you’ve got a cause worthy enough, and the money is going to the cause and not to you, there is a good chance that you could raise a lot of funds. Just beware, mentioning a cause, and then taking the money for yourself is illegal, so do the right thing!

18. Online Webinars

With a thriving community of readers, it would be simple to coordinate a webinar on your site to provide information, training, or an open forum for ideas. Using a simple pay method like Pay Pal, you could charge a small fee for those attending, and utilize a closed video circuit to conduct the meeting, requiring a password and login for access. This is especially useful if your session is very visual and access to the webinar will provide insight to the process that would not be possible by just verbal or written explanation.

19. Pop Up Advertising

In the most desparate of situaitons, users could rely on the pop-up ads. The market is apparently still ripe for this type of advertising, though as tech savvy users, they are the bae of our existance. Typically there is a very small percentage of connected users that understand how to install pop-up blockers, and even fewer that know they should not click on everything they see. If you don’t plan on fostering a trusted community of users and you just want to make money…well good luck with that, this might be just what you need!

20. Audio Ads

When traffic comes to your site, they will be introduced to your site with a 5-7 second audio advertisement that does not offer the user a chance to turn off. The recording should be short, but offers 100% conversion rate because users cannot stop the advertisement from playing unless they leave the site. Like the pop-up advertising, this is very intrusive so think very carefully before using this method.

Net Audio Ads

Stay tuned for the final part to this spectacular series which will provide the last 10 methods to make your blog as highly profitable for 2009!

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Blog Failure? 5 Motivations That Equal Failure

Luis Sandoval — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:40:36 +0000

Giving the thumbs down, disapproval sign

There is nothing like having something that you’ve created fail to reach the popularity you had in your head when you first started out. No one ever starts a project with the intent to fail, nor does anyone start out thinking that their brand will be ignored. Too often though our ideals and actual reality are never aligned, perhaps due to lack of follow-through or proper promotion.

Still, as writers, our blogs our the extensions of the minds we hold so dear. Our thoughts, ideas, fears, and hopes. We grant access into our minds every time we post an article for the world to read. Not necessarily something everyone is comfortable with, but we exist because we long to share. This is the vital crux where success and failure is determined, the motivations we have will either make us sing or swim, and today I will discuss the Top 5 motivations that will sink not only your blog, but all of your efforts.

5 Reasons Why Blogs Fail

Here are motivations that bloggers should be focused on when developing income, community and notoriety for their blogs.

1. Focusing only on getting to the front page of Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon

I can’t tell you how often people will write with this mission in mind. That’s putting the cart before the horse as they say. There is nothing to be gained by writing with this goal as the sole reason for your post. There can be no respect for someone who puts the reader on the back burner for the sake of a few new eyeballs. While driving traffic to your site is important, quality content is what keeps readers on your site, people that come via promotions will just pass through if your content is not engaging.

2. Basing your success only on initial analytics

Sure fire ways for your blog to die

It happens too often, but people do not have patience to make their passions happen. A site may not gain popularity on the initial launch, but there is something to be said about perseverance. Sticking with your site, pushing forward with quality content, and finding ways to increase readership are all duties that one must undertake. Over time you will gain the popularity you seek, but initial analytics should not be considered indications of what your future holds.

3. Lack of quality content

Quality content can be hard to come by, but innovation is key in making what you do different. There are a lot of blogs in the blogosphere, some are more popular than others, but finding the right niche and make a big difference. By providing the right people with the right information, you increase readership, readers stay on your site longer, and people are more willing to share your site with others. If you are just posting for the sake of posting, to fill up space, or meet a quota, all of that is sure to doom your efforts as a blogger.

4. Keep your blog in one place

Once a community has come together to support a site, the blog takes on a life of its own, one in which the community now has a stake in their efforts on your site. A sure fire way to fail and even lose the community is to change the location of your site. It’s one thing to transfer your site from one host to another, some downtime can be expected, but you’ve not really changed the face of your site. But if you plan on changing the name, which will in turn change the brand, your community may lash out and maybe even disappear. Plan when you choose a name, plan when you decide to build your brand, all this is key to ensuring never having to experience this failure.

5. Cluttered sites, means readers leave

Are you the type of person that likes spinning, flashing, dancing, and glowing buttons, banners, and icons on your site? STOP! The whole idea if you being a blogger is to share information. It does no one any good if they cannot find your content because they are busy investigating and being confused with irrelevant distractions. Keep your site clean, easy to follow and manageable. If you need lots of content, consider links and tabs, believe me your readers will love you for it.

Photo Credit striatic, Scott Ableman, Fire Monkey Fish

Luis Sandoval is a media professional and consultant who shares his insights on social media and technology on his blog The Daily Slackr.

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Monetizing Your Blog At the Next Level

Luis Sandoval — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:18:16 +0000

Many writers have looked to blogging as a way to instantly create income that will work for them even when they are not at the computer. Blogging as a platform is easy to use and even easier to learn. There are some generally accepted practices to blogging, which have been covered here and on other sites, but overall blogging provides the freedom to communicate your thoughts to the world.

Monetizing your blog is a great first step to ensuring that your thoughts and time have value. Whether you work with affiliate advertising, use Google Adwords, or some other mechanism to make money, it’s important that we feel that our work is valued, and with increased traffic, it’s hard not to make money.

But what happens when you’ve peaked with your online income? Is there a next level?

The answer is yes, and we’ll briefly talk about how you can take your ideas and thoughts to a whole other level.

Understanding the Value of “Product”

In a previous post we discussed how vital it is to be an expert of the blog topics you are discussing. Over on my own personal blog I touched on the topic of accuracy with regards to being the true and accurate self when interacting online. All of this can lead to the foundation of taking the community you’ve built, that trusts in your work and utilizing a business model to put even more value to what you are sharing.

Product is key, in anything you do; product is what is valued as a commodity in the business world. You started with your writing, that was the first level of “product”, but now that you’ve hit your limit you will now take your existing product and turn out something new. This “new” product will be something that people will invest time and money into if done the right way. Everything I’ve discussed in the past on this site and others will help to put together a plan with limitless profits.

What is the Product?

Back in the early part of the 19th Century and early parts of the 20th Century writers like Charles Dickens were published in magazines. Month after month, or week after week, depending on the periodical, his works were continued in the same publication. Afterwards the pieces were removed from their original frameworks and thrust together into one continued storyline. His two most famous novels were A Christmas Story and Oliver Twist.

Do you see where I’m going with this? No, I’m not asking you to write a novel…not exactly.

Comb over all the work you’ve poured into your site. Chances are that over the year or two that you’ve been writing there are similar pieces that could ultimately come together to form some kind of instruction for someone to follow. By combining these you’ve now created a product that people can use instead of having to dig through your site to find all the articles separately.

This could add up to your own publication using self publishing methods, or you could create a series of e-books which are prevalent online and do quite well in the market. You’ve now found a way to offer yet another product that users may want to buy into, and by offering pieces of it on your site, you can increase the visibility of both your site and your product, reaping the benefits of making a profit on both ends.

Final Thoughts

This is something I have recently started to develop and already I’m happy with the return. Currently I’m taking the initiative further and developing instructional DVD’s for the topics that most interest me, along with providing an e-book, and podcasts. I look to turn this trifecta of media into a profitable business, and it all started by following the basic fundamentals of building a product and a community.

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What’s the “Voice” of Your Blog?

Luis Sandoval — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:13:20 +0000

Writing has always been a long-term passion of mine. As a blogger for just over a year now, I’ve learned that what works in the world of journalism, and standard novel writing, works the same in the blogosphere. That being said, as a blogger, there are a lot of tools writers should understand before delving into the medium.

For starters, every writer should know their audience, and knowing the audience will determine the tone or “voice” of the blog. I see three levels of “voice,” being professional, educational, and informational. While cross pollenation exists, most of the blogs will fall into these three categories.

Professional Blogs

If you write for your business, or write for a business as your main outlet for creativity, then you are writing a business blog. This is defined as being the humanistic approach that companies and businesses are taking in order to connect with their existing clients and prospective clients.

As a business blogger you have a certain level of fiscal responsibilities for your writing that the other two formats do not have to worry about. Still, a successful launch of a corporate blog can rally a community together that is unimaginable for the other formats.

Language, grammar, opinions, sentence structure, and transparency are all items that business bloggers must be absolutely aware of. Companies like Dell, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Ford have all been extremely successful in this new medium. Their approach to making contact with their community is easy going, but still maintains the responsibilities a business has to its paying customers. It’s a cyclical relationship where one feeds the other, and the cycle continues.

Educational Blogs

Looking at teaching something? Perhaps you want to run a DIY blog. If you’re interested in sharing your know how with the online world, then you’ve got yourself an educational blog. While expertise in your field is important, expertise in an educational blog is vital.

Sharing information that others can benefit from is an excellent way to garner support and attention from enthusiasts, believers, and other interested parties who want to learn what you make available. A business blog “voice” will turn off your readers because they are looking to be taught, bought.

You’re not trying ton convince them to be a customer, you’re trying to inform them on something you are confident in your knowledge about. Educational writing tends to be more lengthy because every step must be documented and you can assume nothing.

Informational Blogs

Finally informational blogs are simply just that, informational. There is no real rhyme or reason for these blogs other than sharing parts of your life, experiences, and ideas. Things like life blogging, hobby blogging, celebrity blogging, and other Hollywood and entertainment blogs are just informational.

The vast majority of blogs out there are informational, some more noteworthy than others. Language and grammar are not necessarily as guarded, sentence structure is typically thrown out the window. And why? Because the writer takes ownership of their style, and because they do not represent a business, and they are not looking at educating anyone on a particular topic, these writers write for fun, because they find it interesting to share their lives and interests with the world.

Please note, that blogs can be a mixture of a few or all combined. Writing is a unique form that can be shaped and molded as you write. You might have intentions of your post being one way and ultimately turn into something else entirely.

Where does your blog fall and are you truly reaching your target market? Chime in and let us know your experiences as you started your blog.

Photo Credit UBC Library Graphics

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Guide to Making Money on the Internet by Selling Your Own Information Product

lkcheng — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:03:02 +0000

The Internet has become a great source of Information. Billion of people use it to find the information they want. But, they aren’t always obtaining what they want because some valuable information isn’t available free on the Internet. They will have to pay money to get it. Since these people desperately need the information, they will be more than willing to pay the seller who can provide them the info.

So, if you have deep knowledge on a particular field, then you may sell the knowledge on the Internet for profit.

With the valuable knowledge you have in your mind, you can turn this knowledge into your information product and sell it to a target market. A quality info product will keep on making money for you. There are several types of information products and the types that are currently selling well are e-books, e-courses, reports, podcasts and video tutorials.

What Skills You Need?

Your information product is going to be focusing on a topic, so you must possess great knowledge in that topic. You may also need to gather more information from different sources like the Internet, libraries and other sources in order to produce a quality information product that contains loads of valuable information.

It will be even better if your have experience in Internet marketing. Your skill and experience in marketing will enable you to promote your products to your target prospects more effectively.

What Tools You Need?

This will depend on the type of information product you want to create. If you plan to write an e-book, a report or a guide, the MS word program will be suitable and once you have done writing, you can then convert the MS Word file to PDF format. Your e-book needs to be in PDF format to sell online.

For e-courses, you must use an autoresponder program to create them. Other info products like podcast and video are much complicated to produce. You need to have audio recording and editing software to successfully create your podcast. Video is most difficult, you need a digital camera or webcam, editing software and special knowledge.

How to Begin?

First of all, you must decide on a topic for your info product. Think about your expertise, the field that you have most knowledge in or the things that you are passionate about; ask yourself what valuable knowledge you possess. Doing all these will help you make the right decision on what topic to focus on.

A topic usually is very wide. You won’t be able to write everything about the topic. So, you should narrow down it into a specific area and then focus on that specific area.

Subsequently, you need to do some keyword research to find out whether there is a market demand for the product you want to create. This is an important step you must take as you don’t want to create something that no one wants to buy.

Then, you may research your topic and gather all information necessary for your info product creation project. Once you got everything needed, you may start creating it.

When you info product creation project finished and your product is ready for sale, it is time to put up a sale website to market your info product online. You need to have a sale letter on your website to persuade your potential buyers. It is not suggested that you write the sale letter by yourself because you don’t have the experience and skill in this field. It is better to leave the job to a copywriter.

Hiring a copywriter will cost you money but it is worth it because the copywriter can write sale content in a way that make your product so desirable that anyone would want to buy it.

Your information product should have an e-cover or a product image. So, you will also need to hire a graphic designer to create one for you.

People often like to receive more when it comes to purchasing information product. Don’t just sell your info product alone. Your info product should accompany with several bonus products. Add in as many bonuses as you can. This will make your offer more compelling.

When you website is ready, you can start several ad campaigns to promote your product to your target prospects. You are going to need to put in a great deal of effort and time in marketing and promotion in order to generate sales and profit.

This post was written by Alan Liew. Alan is the blogger of Money Maker Info. If you are interested to learn how to make money online, visit his blog at http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com.

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Part 3 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

Stephen Lee — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:30:40 +0000

This is the last of a three part series on “How to choose a profitable niche in 3 simple steps”. If you missed the first two parts of the series, you can get the first part here, and the second part here. If you never intended to make any money for your blog, you might still find some information here useful in the event that you’re selling your blog. The information here will help you gauge the market value of your blog.

Step1 – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

For the rest of the folks whose intention is to make money from blogging, it’s important that you examine the possible income streams that your niche topic is capable of generating. In my previous post, I’ve talked about the many ways a blog can make money, but not every method of making money is compatible with every niche topic. For instance, contextual content Ads like Google Adsense and Kontera Context Link while works well with certain niche topics might do very poorly for other niche topics. Some niche topics work well with CPM (Click Per Mile) type Ads which is suitable for high traffic sites, while other niche topics do well with only certain affiliate programs. At this point, you don’t need to be concerned about what method of making money works best for your niche topic. Instead, you need to focus on potential profitability of your niche topic.

There is generally two camps here when comes to sizing up your niche earning potential – Advertising Networks (Adsense, Kontera, Bidvertizer etc) and Affiliate Programs.

Advertising Networks

We are just going to base our discussion on Adsense since it’s the market leader in this segment. In order to help you size up your niche topic earning potential, you need to familiarize yourself with two very easy to use tools – Google Adwords Traffic Estimator and Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

Merchants or Advertisers who have products and services to sell on the Web will buy keywords from the Google Adwords program. The “Average CPC (Cost per Click)” is the amount paid by the advertiser when the ad is being clicked on. These ads will show up on Publishers’ websites along with content related to the keywords. Publisher will get a slice of the ad revenue based on the CPC amount and also on how well Google rates your site content. This slice is generally around half the amount of the CPC assuming that Google considered your site to be good.

For the purpose of figuring out the profit potential of your niche topic you should go for something that has a pretty good search volume as indicated by the search volume bar and a CPC of between two to three dollars. If you are going for a niche that has the highest CPC in the marketplace, be prepared for a lot of competition from zillion of webmasters who are already established and competing for the keyword, and it may be a long while before you would get any kind of traction from your efforts at SEO and stuff.

The figure below shows how the different levels of CPC and how it played out for different niches. You would not want to target “Credit Card” because it’s highly competitive, but you might settle for “firm” or “plan”. Likewise, you might want to stay away from very specific niche like “paralysis” because of its low search volume and CPC. However, it might be a different story if you’re an authority site dedicated to paralysis, and have a strong passion for it.

Affiliate Programs

Some niches do phenomenally well with affiliate programs that carry a good variety of their product and services offerings. There are many affiliate programs on the web, some of the bigger ones are Amazon, Clickbank and CJ. Sign up for an account at CJ and check out the main category belonging to your niche and get an idea at the depth of the product and services offerings for your niche. Also look at their network earnings and 3-month EPC to get an idea how well their advertising campaign is performing.

There are of course other avenues you can explore when evaluating the income potential of your niche. Here are some unconventional ways you can get a rough idea on your niche income potential:

	Go to ClickBank and enter the category and sub category relating to your niche. If your niche is popular and people are making money off it by creating digital products like ebooks for it, you will no doubt see a long list. The list is sorted by gravity score in descending order. A high gravity score indicates that the product has been selling in the most recent period the score is taken. So what does this tells you, a high gravity and high payout indicates that the product is in high demand and popular among publishers. A quick Google search on the product’s keyword will confirm that.
	Go to 7 Search Keyword Suggestion Tool and type in your niche. You will get back a list of related searches based on your niche ordered by the search volume in descending order. The bid amounts that are displayed along with each keyword give you a good idea how much advertisers are willing to pay for the keywords. These bidding figures are taken across the advertising industry and are not specific to Adwords. The general rule of the thumb is to look for moderate volume and bid amounts of between two to three dollars.
	Go to Google and type in “PLR My Niche” where “My Niche” is substituted by your niche. PLR is Private Label Rights which is content that you can purchase and distribute on your own sites. If authors are writing PLR content on your niche you can bet that there’s pretty good demand for it out there and publishers are making money off it.
	Go to EzineArticles web site , a premium article directory, and drill down to the category related to your niche and look at the number of articles written for it. A good number of articles indicate that it’s a popular category. Also, looking at the most viewed section for the category and titles of the articles will give some pretty good ideas on the kind of subject matter within your niche that garner the most attention.

Can you think of anymore?

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Part 2 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze the Traffic Potential of your Niche

Stephen Lee — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:51:34 +0000

If you’d missed the first part, please check it out here.

Traffic is the life line of a Blog or any type of online media for that matter. Only when you have traffic can you start thinking about ways of monetizing it, which will lead us to the next step – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche. You can be writing the best content in the world but if no ones visiting you, it’s as good as staying home and throwing away your house keys.

Step 2 – Analyze the Traffic Potential of your Niche

There are generally two types of traffic – organic and paid. We are only interested in organic traffic here – traffic that is brought to you when people search for information on a topic. The reason why you should be very interested in this is that you don’t want to be focusing on a niche that is inherently limited by poor organic search traffic. The size and potential of this traffic is directly proportional to the number of people searching for information relating to the topic. The goal here is to determine if the niche topic has at least a moderate amount of search volume to justify pursuing it any further. It is however not an exercise on finding and targeting keywords for your niche.

There are many useful tools available to help you estimate the search volume for a particular topic. The one that I find most useful is Trellian’s KeyWord Discovery Tool. I like this tool because it is very comprehensive with very well designed user interfaces which do not overcrowd your screen with a million things. Instead, it offers you the option to drill down to more details if you need to.

For instance, if my niche topic is “Sydney” and I’m interested to know how many people search for information relating to “Sydney”, using this tool it will display a list of all search phrases using this keyword in descending order of the number of searches performed. From this list, you can also derive at the overall search depth of this niche topic. This is important because it gives you an indication how big your blog can grow with this niche, and the number of keywords you can use with it. From the figure below, the total number of searches for “Sydney” is 63,453 which is prominently displayed at the top of the box. Tabulated inside the box are search phrases displayed in descending order with action buttons for analyzing trending and market share information.

The figure below shows a detailed analysis of “Sydney Hotel” drilled down from the first page. The first 2 entries are going to be tough to compete in with about a million web pages already using the keyword term, and only 10 are going to be ranked on first page of the search results. “Sydney luxury hotel” which has a pretty decent KEI, is much easier to compete in since it only has 127,00 web pages competing for top 10 positions. It will be much quicker to rank with this keyword then “Sydney Hotel”.

There are other freely available tools on the internet, but my absolute favorite one is “SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool”. This not only gives you the average number of searches broken down by 3 major search engines, it also provides convenient links to “Google Insight”, “Google Trends”, “Trellian keyword Discovery Tool” and others.

At the end of this step, you should have a pretty good idea how much traffic each niche topic can expect to have and the ideas around how to monetize this traffic will come to fruition in the next step – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche.

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Part 3 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

Step1 – Analyze the Profit Potential of your Niche

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Part 2 – How to Choose a Profitable Niche in 3 Simple Steps : Analyze the Traffic Potential of your Niche

Step 2 – Analyze the Traffic Potential of your Niche