A few years ago I found myself in a position where I needed to make some extra income. I had not worked in a while and with the economy I knew it would be tough to find a job. I also wanted to stay home with my family and the idea of picking my own hours and working in my slippers appealed to me. So I looked for ways to make money online. Today I make a very generous full time income from my online activities. I have a variety of income streams online and one of my most lucrative and favorites is niche blogging.
Niche blogging is selecting a very tightly defined niche area and writing about it. For example instead of writing about weight loss which is a very broad topic you would write about a small segment of weight loss such as cleansing to lose weight.
If your goal is to make money niche blogging then you will want to select a topic that will earn. Some commonly know popular earners would be weight loss, going green, relationships, travel, acne, hair loss and other topics. Take one of these and zero in on a segment of it. When I made my niche blogs I considered the articles I had written at pay per click sites and how much they made. I personally found that recipes, music, crime and life skill ideas did not do well for me. What did do well for me were articles on weight loss, making money, beauty etc. I took my favorites and developed them into websites.
But if you just throw a website up and start writing you will rarely make money. You need to target words that people are searching for so you show up in the search engines. And of course many of these topics are very competitive because they can make a lot of money.
So you need to find keywords to target that will fit in with your niche blog. I personally use and highly recommend Micro Niche Finder. When I started I used Google Adwords tool. But I found it to be a long frustrating process when looking at so many keywords. With Micro Niche Finder the work is done for you. You type in a keyword to search and it will pull up associated keywords. Then it will look provide different information; how many people are searching for the term, how much the term pays in ad clicks and more. Most importantly it will tell you how hard it would be for you to rank high in Google for the term. It will give you a green light if its a go and a red light if it is a no. Micro Niche Finder is a huge time saver.
I print the list of key words that are green and this will be the basis for my niche blogging website. Next I select a name. When you are searching key terms in Micro Niche Finder you can click on the domain name tab and immediately know if your best keyword phrase is available in .com, .net or .org.
What happens if it is not available? You can either choose another key phrase or add something to the key phrase. For example if your key phrase is PinkWidgets and PinkWidgets.com, PinkWidgets.net and PinkWidgets.org is already registered you could go with PinkWidgetsZone.com, PinkWidgetsCenter.org or PinkWidgetsSpot.net.
Should you take a .info or different extension if .com, .net and org are not available? That is a personal decision. I have had good luck with .info’s but many stay away from them.
I recommend registering your domain name at NameCheap.com. NameCheap offers good pricing on domain names and privacy. A domain name runs around $10 a year. You can also check on the availability of names at NameCheap.
Hosting is next on the list. Sometimes people ask if they should use a free hosting site like Blogger or Blogspot. The answer is no. Because you do not control those sites. So you are niche blogging on a site that can change rules, delete your account or disappear. I just read a sad post on a forum from a blogger whose blogspot was deleted. He was given no warning and had over 300 posts on it. Free is not the way to go. Think of it as building a hotel on land you don’t own and that helps put it in perspective.
Hosting runs under $10 a month and is an essential investment. I recommend Hostgator.
Now it is time to pick a WordPress theme. You can use a free or paid theme. One easy way to find a theme you like is to google the terms you are looking for along with WordPress theme and then look under the images instead of the text results. You can waste many hours looking for WordPress themes. If you plan to build many blogs my advice would be to find a flexible theme you can use over and over.
Now it is time to install your WordPress theme on your website. You must first install WordPress on your site. This is done at Hostgator through the Fantastico Panel. Hostgator has step by step tutorials for you to follow. This is very simple to do so don’t be afraid to try it. If you purchase Hostgator hosting through my link email me and I will do it for you; Hostgator hosting.
Now it is time to log in and see your site. There are a number of plug ins you will want to add to your site to make it work efficiently and there are online tutorials on how to add plug ins. I will also do this for you if you use my link for Hostgator hosting. I recommend using All in One SEO pack, Google Adsense (to add Adsense automatically) and other plug ins depending on your need. For example if you plan to only post once in a great while you may want to add Old Post Promoter which will rotate old and new posts so your site looks fresh.
One plug in I love is Reviewazon. This plug in pulls content from Amazon based on keywords you give it. So you can pull in anything Amazon carries and earn a commission. Brad at Reviewzon is amazing and will give you step by step help if you have any trouble with the installation. Click here to get a substantial discount on Reviewazon.
Now that you have your blog set up it is time to start niche blogging. You will want to use the keywords you found with Micro Niche Finder. Use the keywords in the title of your post and sprinkled through out your post. On the side of your blog you will see “Post Tags”. It is important that you include tags or keywords from your article post. Click publish and you are on your way!
Next it is time to think about monetizing your niche blog. There are many ways to monetize a blog. Adsense is one of them. Google Adsense is free to sign up for; sign up at Google. With Adsense advertisers pay to have their ads on your site. Micro Niche Finder will tell you how much the rate is, as will the Google Adwords tool. You will get a percent of the rate shown.
It is important to note that with Google Adsense you must have a privacy policy on your site. If you need help with this contact me.
You can also put affiliate products on the blog. There are many different affiliate companies. You will make a selection based on the type of niche blogging you are doing. Some of my favorites are;
Share A Sale – wide variety of products.
LinkSynergy – wide variety of products.
MoreNiche - health and beauty products, excellent support.
Amazon – Low commissions but wide variety of products.
Clickbank – Online products ebooks, software etc.
I would recommend starting out with just two or three companies. Select products that you feel add value.
Recent changes in FTC laws require that you post on your site that you are an affiliate of the products you sell on your site. You can post a disclaimer in the About section of your site or elsewhere on the niche blogging site.
So now that you have products and/or Adsense and posts on your site it is time to get traffic. You can have the best niche blog in the world but if you don’t get traffic no one will see it.
There are many ways to get traffic. There are many ways to drive traffic to your site. Some of these methods include article marketing, posting on forums, using a link to your site in your signature, submitting the RSS feed of your niche blog to feeds such as FeedAge and social bookmarking. I will go into more detail on traffic in another post.
Once the traffic comes to your site, you may want to capture your readers email address depending on the type of site you have. The best way to do this is by offering a free report. You can write a report yourself or find a pre-written PLR report. PLR stands for private label rights. These are articles you can rewrite or publish verbatim. They are usually inexpensive and a quick way to get a report for your niche blog.
To get the report your readers will need to opt in to your mailing list or auto responder. In my opinion the best autoresponder and the one I use for some of my sites is Aweber. They offer a $1 trial for a month. Once you have an autoresponder set up, it will automatically send out your emails. You can also make a pop over box to pop over when readers visit your blog to invite them to sign up for your newsletter. There are so many blogs out there it is easy for people to forget about your blog if you don’t have an autoresponder so it is well worth it to get one. Use my link to sign up for Aweber and I will help you select and find a report, make a pop over and help you put the newsletter sign up code on your site.
One of the most important things with niche blogging is to offer your readers value. You will want to provide great content and offer goods and services that you believe in. That is how you will build your readership.
It takes time to build your readership and you may have questions along the way. One community that can help you build your blog is WP Goldmine. WP Goldmine is a group of very supportive people that discuss ideas and strategies to take their blogs to the next level. The site focuses on Niche Blogging and offers step by step how to videos and reports. If you are interested in joining a trial member ship is only $1. Click her to try WP Goldmine for the $1 Special Offer. I am a member of the site and am constantly learning new things there, even though I have been niche blogging for some time now.
It took me several years of working diligently to build up my niche blogs and to learn what to do. But it was well worth it. I won’t say exactly what I make but I will share that it is very financially rewarding for me.
I have picked out the best of the best methods and things that I use that took me much time to learn. Hopefully this report will save you some time and help get you on the road to niche blogging fast.
UPDATE: A short time ago I joined The Keyword Academy. I would very highly recommend this program. They have a method to make link building and finding the “money” keywords very easy. In addition the forums are full of support, advise and challenges. The Keyword Academy focus is on both niche blogs and supersites. I would very highly recommend this program. It is taking my income to a new level. They have a $1.00 trial program. Read my review of The Keyword Academy or go to the Keyword Academy site and learn more.
If you have any questions do feel free to email me at info@WriteForMoneyOnline or info@MyLilGoldDress.com.
Happy Blogging!
Lee
