What if I told you that your success is mainly influenced by just one relatively simple first step?

I recently started a niche site which ranked in the top 10 search engines results for the main keywords in less than 3 months and making already sales via Amazon affiliate program (I’m going to write a case study soon, so you can reproduce exactly what I did).

This was possible with a proper link building (which I’m also going to share in the niche site case study), but first thanks to a correct keyword research.

In this post I’m going to explain into details how to use LongTailPRO, version 3.0 (which is currently in beta testing, and will be available to public in a few weeks. Be aware that those who buy now will automatically be upgraded to the latest version at no cost) to discover profitable keywords and let you build niche websites that make you earn a passive income online.

But before going into the explanation of LongTailPRO, let me give you some tips to consider when looking for profitable keywords.

These are very important points and understand them correctly can make the difference between building a successful niche website or having one of the millions of sites on the internet that do not generate a dollar, despite the big work you put into it.

What You Need to Know When Looking for Profitable Keywords

1. Search Volume

This is the first important factor you need to consider: a good number is from 1000 to 5000 monthly searches.

But there are other parameters you need to look at.

Broad Match vs Exact Match. Choose the easy way, and select the exact match. You get more accurate results, as the exact match volume, which is exactly the number of searches per month for a specific keyword. This can give you a rough idea of how much traffic you can get when ranking well for your chosen keywords.

2. Cost per Click (CPC)

This factor is quite important if you are going to monetize your site also with Google Adsense (which I do).

I have set the CPC search at $0,50. This can give you an idea of how much you can get paid per click on the ads you place on your site (around 60% of that value).

In a few words, if you find a keyword with high CPC, then your traffic will be very lucrative and you can earn good money with it.

3. Global vs Local Search

This is an important value you need to pay attention to, as you don’t want to make the big mistakes many people do.

Global search volume indicates the world-wide search volume while local search volume represents how many searches there are in the country your keyword research tool is set.

Normally, you want to aim to U.S. traffic. You can get for example a lot of global searches, but little local search volume. Think that English is set as main internet language in many countries, but they don’t have the purchasing power of people living in United States of America.

4. Satisfy a Need or Solve a Problem

Once you have considered the “technical” points mentioned before, you need to find the topic among the keywords you have found which actually solve people problems or satisfy their needs.

Just ask yourself: Would you run that query on Google?

Check the following examples.

“Funny cat pictures”: 49,500 local (U.S.) monthly searches (click the image to enlarge)

Or

“How to cure heartburn”: 2,400 local (U.S.) monthly searches (click to enlarge the image)

Looking at the amount of monthly searches, the first instinctive choice would be “funny cat pictures“, but if you look further into it, you’ll see that the other one, “how to cure heartburn”, with much less local monthly searches, will be much more profitable.

Ask yourself:

Would you pay $10 for a series of funny cat pictures? (Most of you would say no!)

Would you pay $100 (or much more) to cure your heartburn? Yes, of course!

Now you understand the importance of focusing on a keyword related to solving internet users problems, which is by far more important than thinking just about the search volume.

5. Buyer Keywords

Buyer keywords are the ones which include some words that clearly indicate the interest and willing to buy the thing users are searching.

The concept is simple.

If someone type in Google “buy cheap laptop”, means he’s looking to find the best deal in order to make the purchase. If you target this type of keyword you probably make more money.

6. Seasonality

If you work on keywords like “Christmas gifts” you won’t see many searches during summer time.

These seasonal keywords are based on specific events during and will not have a constant search volume during the year.

So be sure to use Google Trends to check how much will last the searches during the time period of one year and make your decision based on this finding.

See how the keywords “find the love” are pretty much popular over the past years in U.S. searches:

While the “Christmas gifts” query see an unstable trend, with peaks of course, during Christmas time and no searches during spring, or summer:

So now you know what are the factors to consider when choosing a profitable keyword.

So let’s see how to find profitable keywords with LongTailPRO.

Introducing LongTailPRO, 3.0 Version

LongTailPro is a powerful keyword research software that allows you to generate tens of hundreds of unique and profitable long-tail keywords within just a few minutes of work.

As already stated, I learned to master this tool during beginning of this year, and used to find great keywords to start my first niche site, monetized with Amazon affiliate program (I’m slowly adding Google Adsense too).

So if you are looking for a additional passive income to add to your online activities, then you should think about LongTailPRO and how to use it, to get golden keywords and build awesome websites that make money in autopilot.

I’m sure you’ve heard about this software; it’s developed by Spencer Haws, who has wide experience in building niche websites that make money.

This tool was created to help beginners find an easy way to get profitable keywords.

If you are an internet marketer, then you know the importance of keywords and ranking in search engines, to get organic traffic, which is the one that most convert.

Seeing the saturation of one/two words keywords, many people are going for a long tail one, which contain 3 or more search terms. They are more specific, but less common. These keywords are more focused on a niche.

Be sure to consider that this kind search is very likely to convert that phrase into a sale. It also helps the user to make a precise buying decision.

You’ll see that the probabilities of searchers using long-tail keywords to look for a specific product or service are very high, so the chances of converting the visitors landed on your site after using that query in Google (or any other search engines) are high too.

They are more likely to buy from the links on your site if they find the exact information they are looing for.

In other words, long-tail keywords have the power to catch the targeted buyers in the conversion cycle.

And remember, long-tail keywords are much easier to be ranked in search engine as compared to common keywords (the ones with one or two words).

I can make an example.

Let’s hypothesize you are interested in the “tea” market, but, of course, this is already saturated just for the word “tea”. So let’s dig a little more and find “green tea”. Now, simply looking for search related to this keyword on Google:

Will make you find several long-tail keywords, like “green tea weight loss”.

Digging even more:

will make you find “best green tea weight loss”.

Now, back in time you’d have to spend many hours looking for keyword opportunities, may be using free tools like Google Adwords Keyword Planner, or SEO Quake.

With LongTailPRO you can automate that process and get profitable keywords in a couple of minutes.

What Are the Main Benefits of LongTailPRO?

• You can enter many seed keywords at once and receive results for all the long-tail keywords at the same time. Therefore, you can save a lot of time.
• You many want to generate results in relation to on your chosen CPC, search volume and other settings, like advertiser competition, number of words, domain availability, Google or Bind title competition. This way you can find a lot quicker what you need.
• When you find a golden long-tail keyword, you can increase the organic traffic to your website dramatically, by focusing the content on that keyword, with chances of ranking high in SERPs.
• There is a great support behind LongTailPRO, with demo videos, FAQ and ticket system.
• After you become a LongTailPro user, you can benefit from the knowledge and discussion with its community.
• and discuss anything with others.
• You may want to check keywords competition using different metrics, helping you ensure success.
• Check the keyword rankings of your site with the tool included, on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Before going into details, steps and screenshots on how to generate golden keywords with LongTailPRO, you should be aware that in order to get the most out of this tool, you need to go for the platinum version.

While the “Free 10-days trial” and “Pro” plans offer you the following features:

• Search Multiple Keywords at Once
• Generate up to 800 results per seed keyword
• Pre-filter keywords
• Automatically find Domains
• Google or Bing Title Competition
• Competitor Analysis on top 10 Google Results
• Check Rankings of sites in Google, Yahoo, and Bing

But it’s just with the “Platinum” version, you can get:

• Calculate Keyword Competitiveness (which is awesome)
• Save Favorite keywords
• Import lists of keywords (up to 10,000 at once)
• Create custom calculations from keyword results
• 30 Days Free Platinum Features with Purchase

Once you have chosen your plan and installed the software on your computer, be sure to have both accounts at Google Adwords Keyword Planner and at Moz.

Get Your Account at Google Keyword Planner

In order to start the research of the keywords, LongTailPRO asks you to login to your Google Adwords Keyword Planner Tool.

If you don’t have one, you can simply register here: https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner.

Get Your Moz API

If you have a platinum version of LongTailPRO, you can get Keywords Competetiveness (which is great to understand at first glance if you will be able to beat competition or not).

Just follow the link inside the LongTailPRO and add your SEO Moz API key:

Get your account at Moz here: http://moz.com

Some Important Metrics to Consider When Choosing Your Keywords

These are the recommended metrics for choosing a profitable keyword with LongTailPRO:

• Keyword with Keyword Competitiveness score of 30 or less
• Keywords with at least 0.05 CPC (I like 0,50)
• US local search from 1000 to 5000 (setting U.S. as local market)

How to Use LongTailPRO, 3.0 Version

Let’s see, step by step, how you can generate profitable keywords using LongTailPRO, 3.0 version.

Step #1. Find Seed Keywords

As mentioned before, one of the great features of this tool is to be able to generate results from one or more seed keywords at once.

But where to find these seed keywords?

I suggest you to start from your interests. Make a list. Something you are expert in, or passionate of.

Remember that, unless you hire a professional writing service, you need to be able to write at least 10, or better, 15 articles of high quality content for your niche site, plus 1500-2000 words for the main page.

There are many places where you can start, like Google Trends, Amazon Top Sellers, Reddit, Yahoo Answers or Quora.

Lately, I discovered a nice resource you can use to generate seed keywords ideas: http://www.soovle.com

Just enter your interest and get awesome results (click to enlarge the image):

See how many seed keywords ideas?

Just choose one (or more than one) and add it to LongTailPRO.

Step #2. Finding Potential Keywords

After you enter the name of your project, let’s say “Amazon Niche Site Project”, I choose 3 seed keywords and added to LongTailPRO: “knife”, “survival knife” and “knife sharpener”.

And clicked directly “Generate Keywords & Fetch Data”.

See the following screenshot (you may want to click on it to enlarge):

I’ve left as default the other settings, but you can add your preferences, following the “customize data & pre-filter option”, as:

• Local Search Volume (min or max)
• Suggested Bid (min or max)
• Advertiser Competition (low, med or high)
• Number of words
• Global Search Volume
• Domain Availability
• Bing Title Competition
• Google Title Competition

See a screenshot showing these pre-filters:

After you click on “Generate Keywords & Fetch Data”, you just need to wait a few minutes to get the results.

Step #3. Choose Your Profitable Keywords Browsing Through the Results

From those three seed keywords, I got 1070 results in total:

• 347 from “knife”
• 197 from “survival knife”
• 526 from “knife sharpener”

See the screenshot of the results (click to enlarge):

Now you have to “play” a bit to find the golden keywords!

With the new version of LongTailPRO software I’m using (which as mentioned will be available to download in a few weeks), you can click directly on each keyword, to find the top 10 competition sites into details.

In a few clicks, I set:

• min number of words to “3”
• advertiser competition to “low”
• and local searches to display at top the max

I found out in the third line, this long-tail keyword: “how to sharpen a pocket knife”, which has 0,45 CPC, 1900 local searches (U.S. market), low competition and 6 keywords.

See screenshot below (click to enlarge the image):

I’m getting the Platinum version in a few days, so I’ll be able to see keyword competitiveness too (consider finding golden long-tail keywords with a KC score of 30 or less).

Meantime, let’s concentrate on the other metrics and results.

Metrics to Consider When Checking the Top 10 Competition

I like to keep things as easier as possible, so let’s see the most important factors to consider when checking the top competition for your chosen keyword.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you can get at glance Page Authority, Juice Links, Domain Authority, Moz Rank, Page Rank and Site Age of competitors for the selected keyword (plus keywords competitiveness, if you get LongTailPRO).

This feature of LongTailPRO gives you a complete analysis of data about these parameters. It plays an important role in finding long-tail keywords.

Keyword Competitiveness Score

Keyword competitiveness goes in LongTailPRO in a scale from 1 to 100, where 1 suggests that it’s a simple to rank the keyword, while 100 indicates a highly competitive keyword.

You should aim for a long-tail keyword with a low score, to ensure the success of your niche site.

With LongTailPRO Platinum, the keyword competitiveness score is calculated in just a single click, through a software algorithm which consider the metrics of the web pages in the top 10 position in Google.

See the image below to give you an idea on how to choose your keywords depending on its competitiveness:

Page Authority (PA)

Page Authority goes from 0 to 100 points, and it shows you the opportunities to rank the content containing the keyword on the single page.

A high PA means that a specific page is authoritative.

With a simple concept, you can think about a single page with high PA as a great potential to rank well in SERPs.

This metric data comes from SEOmoz.

Juice Links

Juice Links gives you information about how many links are pointing to that certain page (DoFollow links with a specific measure of authority).

This is also a metric given by SEOmoz.

When finding golden keywords, look for top 10 results with web pages referred by low quality of links.

Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority goes from 0 to 100. A higher score means the domain is more authoritative.

Like Page Authority, but regarding root domain.

This is another metric calculated by SEO Moz.

Moz Rank

Moz Rank is a link popularity score that shows the value of a specific page over the internet.

This metric is based upon the total number and the quality of other web pages linked to that page.

Higher Moz Rank shows a great quality of incoming links on that webpage.

It goes from 1 to 10, and can be increased working with SEO techniques.

Page Rank (PR)

Despite Google said is not longer used, Page Rank for older domains is still showed and can be used as a parameter for evaluate the importance of a specific page.

It goes from 0 to 10 points.

A good rule when searching for great long-tail keywords via LTP is to make sure that none of the top 5 sites have a page rank of 3+ and at minimum two pages with Page Rank 0 in the top 10.

Site Age

The Site Age simply shows the years passed since domain registration.

You know that Google consider site age as one of the 200 factors to rank a website in SERPs.

Other Important Tips

The following suggestions are not included as a metric in the software, but will help you finding golden keywords!

1. Onpage SEO with Relevant Content

This is quite the most important factor to consider.

Be sure to check if in the title and URL of the page there is the keyword.

Plus, check the meta tags and the relevancy of the site content.

Put yourself in the shoes of who is building a site and ranking for a specific keyword.

What would you do?

Well, working on SEO page, of course, and writing relevant content, which means adding your keyword in the title, description, headline and URL.

Now, if you find a web page in the top 10 results, which are NOT doing this, well, there you go, you have one less competitor.

Check the Kind of Pages in the Top 10 Competition

This is quite simple, but important at the same time.

If you are lucky, you can get keywords, with the top 10 pages with no SEO.

This about this, for user generated sites. And it happens many times.

If some of the following sites are showing up, then it means you can easily outrank them:

• Yahoo Answers or other Q&A sites
• Facebook or Twitter profiles
• Article directories (ArticleTrader, EzineArticles, etc.)
• Forums
• Web 2.o sites (Blogspot domain, WordPress.com, Weebly, etc.)

Exact Match Domain Available

If you are going to create a niche site, consider that people prefer purchasing exact match domain (no, you won’t get penalized by EMD, simply you’ll get fewer benefits that before this Google update).

Trick: if you find that the exact match domain is available, then with high probabilities no one is working on that keyword, which means no competition.

Conclusion

If you want to include an additional income to your online activities, building niche websites that make money in autopilot or your simply need to get more targeted organic traffic to your blog, by optimizing your content for long-tail keywords, I strongly suggest to get LongTailPRO today.

As you have read in this review, it’s possible to understand how this tool works, to get the most out of it and finally crack some SEO secrets.

Why I’m asking you about something like that?

Let’s start with short introduction…

I plan to write about something else, but last week something happened which changed my plans. Last week there was 1^st anniversary of CommentLuv – great WP plugin from Andy Bailey (I mention this plugin some weeks ago here: How to Stop Spam in Comments – AntiSpam Tips for Bloggers). To celebrate it Andy “squeeze” prize of it (developer’s license costs between 20-30$ instead of 97$!). And a lot of bloggers start to promote it – recently I found a lot of blog posts about it and I also received a lot of emails about this promotion.

I totally understand it – a lot of bloggers want to get money via it. But what do you think – how many of them (of us) will earn “real” money from this promotion, let’s say more than 100 dollars? Few of them (us)? Maybe a dozen

What I want to say is that it’s very difficult to make money promoting other things, especially when almost everybody in your niche is doing it. And blogging niche is one of the most crowded niches. But bloggers in this niche are trying to make big money. In most cases without success…

I know only few bloggers which make a lot of passive money blogging (Pat Flynn, Daren Rowse, John Chow, Jeremy Shoemaker – if you are interested you can read 5 Most Powerful Blogs About Blogging And Making Money Online), and other bloggers make money via other niches (or blogging isn’t their most important source of income).

Do you want some examples – okay, here you are:

Steve Scott – he earns money not from his great blog, but from niche site(s) (see his income report). On his blog he writes not only about blogging and making money online but also about authorities’ sites. But he didn’t reveal what his niche is

Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti – owners of Adsense Flippers.com  – they earn money mostly from niche sites. They earn money via selling niche sites and via Google AdSense ads.

Josh Escusa and Trevor Welsh from WSOtesters.com – they also make most money via site sales and Google Adsense (placed on niche sites).

Dean Saliba, Michael Chibuzor, Mitt Ray, Bamidele Onibalusi and thousands of other bloggers – they make money via writing for others. They are content creators for others – you can find their posts on other blogs, on popular websites and even on some big portals. They run blogs (and sometimes write guest posts) for promoting their writing services.

There are also some bloggers which promote their own services – not only writing but also website design, SEO or marketing services – and they earn money on it, not on blogging about it…

What’s more – I also make some nice money on my niche sites, but from this blog I earn maybe 100$… And I spent lots more…

So please think about it – is your time and effort invested in blogging (about blogging) worth it? Or maybe it’s a huge waste of your time? There are a lot of possible ways of making money online, for some of them you even don’t need a blog! If you don’t have ideas about it please read some of my posts listed below:

Online Passive Income – 5 Money Making Ideas for Bloggers

How To Make Money Online – 10 best ways for doing it!

How to Earn Money Online with Niche Sites

What is Your Business Model – Authority Site, Niche Sites or Something Else?

Do you still think you can make money blogging? Of course, it’s possible… But do you really make passive income via your blog? I don’t. And I suppose you also don’t do it (but maybe I’m wrong).

Please share your own point of view and ways how you earn money online in comments below this post.

The idea is great, but during short “investigation” what niche I should choose and which keywords should I pick out,  the basic question appeared: “what kind of site should I create; the authority site or niche site?”

The answer on that question is very important: I don’t have a lot of time to play around with another thin niche site. On the other hand – authority site needs even more effort…

First part of this year clearly show us that we have to really think about our business model – Google Penguin overturned SERPs, Amazon closed down some affiliate programs and turned off some accounts. What’s more – there was a lot of bans in the most lucrative program for niche sites – Google AdSense. And nobody knows why…

Blogosphere was boiling with anger and site owners were shuddering with fear. Do you remember that? Did you lost some traffic or maybe your AdSense account was also banned?

Okay, no more complaints and hassles – lets go to some news and facts.

Last week there was a debate on AdSense Flippers between Steve Scott and Mike Thomas about pros and cons of niche and authority sites. Both of them have their own arguments for and against, but I have the impression that nobody wins this debate…

In this post I want to share with you my point of view about niche and authority sites and my business model. At the end I will ask you about your opinion and your preferences – niche or authority sites?

Niche Sites

Pros:

• easy to set up
• low money investment
• low time investment
• if you have experience it’s almost automatic for you to earn money from it
• you can outsource the whole process
• faster ROI (Return on Investment) –first earnings appear after 1-2 months

Cons:

• in most cases only one source of traffic: Google (you can lost it in minutes)
• in most cases only one source of making money (you can lost it in minutes)
• probably lower ROI

Authority Site

Pros:

• easy to set up
• a lot of possibilities of earning money
• at least few sources of traffic
• your online effort (authority, brand) may be used in the real world
• probably higher ROI

Cons:

• long-term ROI (real money appear after 1-2 years)
• you can’t outsource a lot of tasks related with your authority site
• huge amount of time is needed to establish your authority, social proof and brand

You may be interested in reading: Online Passive Income – 5 Money Making Ideas for Bloggers

Okay, and how about my business model?

As you know (if you don’t know it, please read section about), I have some websites on Polish market – few dozen niche sites (mostly in financial market) and one vortal (also on financial market). It works very well for me at this moment, but unfortunately a lot of traffic comes from Google. And big brother G. may change some rules in the future and … (uncensored words appeared)

On English market NPI (NoPassiveIncome.com) is my first, hopefully not last website. And I plan to make some things different than I did on Polish market.

That means:

I want to create at least two authority sites (including NPI) and around them having about 5-10 related niche sites.

I want to diversify income sources as well as traffic sources also for niche sites.

Traffic for my niche site will come from:

• SEO (organic traffic)
• Mailing list (from my authority site and from separate lists)
• Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, other if appropriate)
• CPC Ads (Google AdWords, Facebook Ads)
• Authority site (posts)

The same will be with income– below you can see main sources of income for my future niche sites

Each niche site will earn money on:

• 2—5 related affiliates programs
• My own e-product (probably ebooks or training programs)
• Ads in CPC model (Google AdSense or something similar)
• Ads in CPM model (only for niche sites with more than 10k page views per month)

I know that this model is very time-consuming and may take about one or even two years to see a results. But it should work. I hope…

And what do you think about it? Please share your business models or all of your opinions about niche, authority sites or my business model in comments below.

But I totally disagree with them. What’s more, I’ll tell you, that these days niche sites are bigger and stronger than ever. Of course it concerns only good quality and well prepared niche sites, not micro sites. Please read carefully this post, and answer yourself, if niche sites are still good money makers.

In most cases niche sites are prepared for making money – and only that kind of niche site will be discussed here. So, let’s go to the points.

How to Earn Money Online with Niche Sites – 10 Crucial and Current Tips to Beat Your Competition

1. Find Your Niche

There is a lot of ways, how you can choose your niche. It’s the most important point for you – if you are wrong with your choice, all of the next points will fail. So be sure, that your choice is made correctly. Shortly – choose something, which you are very interested in, it’s your passion, or you are better in it than others. Of course a lot of niche site owners didn’t concern about it (they look only on possible earnings and competition) – and now they are out of the market.  If you don’t want to share failure with them – follow your passions

2. Check Your Competition

Now it’s time for making a little research. Check what’s cool in your niche, how many major competitors you have, who they are. From your competitors you can learn, what you should write about, and what you should not. But remember – it’s only ideas. If you want to distinguish from the crowd, you should be yourself.

 3. Find Proper Keywords for Your Niche Site

OK. Your niche is chosen and you know your competitors.

Now you have to make a keyword research. Choose 5-50 niche related keywords. You can use Google Keyword Tool for research (it’s free tool) but I use (and recommend you) more powerful tool – Market Samurai. If you don’t know, how to find proper keywords, you can learn about it here: How to find best keywords for your blog or website

 4. Build and Set Up your Website

Now you are ready for creating your professional niche site. If you really want to make money with it, you must invest some bucks into it.

So, first of all please select and register your own, appropriate domain name. In godaddy.com it will cost you yearly less than 15$.

You should have hosting for your site. It can be free hosting (I don’t recommend it) or paid hosting. For more than 90% of my websites (and 100% which earn money for me) I use paid hostings like HostGator or BlueHost. Hosting price is between 5$ and 10$ (monthly), so it’s not cheap. But remember – if you want to earn something (not only online), you must firstly invest some of your money.

Having your own domain and hosting, you are ready for the next step. You must choose proper software for your website. For almost all of your ideas, WordPress, free content management system, will be the best solution for you – now it’s used not only for blogging, but also for selling, promoting, informing, sharing, etc. What’s more, there is a lot of plugins, widgets and themes for this CMS.

Lot of the plugins and themes are free. In most cases free plugins are very good and enough for me.  I use only paid theme Theme Junkie, and paid plugin MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate. You can read something more about them on my resource page, but you can ask me about them via comment or email.

Of course, you can get everything described in this point for free (even subdomains on blogging platforms like Blogger or WordPress). If you are software programmer you can prepare some of the plugins or themes by yourself, investing only your time.  In my opinion a minimum is own domain and own hosting – of course your site may be on free subdomain and hosting, but it’s not only unprofessional, but also ineffective and very dangerous (you can lost everything at any time).

5. Forget About Thin, 5-10 Pages Niche Site

In my opinion micro niche site, with 5-10 pages is to thin, to make good impression on search engines and on internet readers. So write (or hire someone to write) 15-50 good quality articles accordingly to your keyword research. At the beginning you should place most of them on your website. But be prepared for publishing at least one new article pro month on your niche site – it will be good as well for search engines, as well for visitors.

Some of my oldest niche sites have almost 200 articles – it’s because they are updated once a week and are online for almost three years!

6. Your Niche Website Should be Informative, Good Quality and With Original Content

If you really want to earn money with your niche site, you must treat it as a normal site. It shouldn’t looks like MFA site (made for AdSense). So it must look professional, have great content with at least two killer articles. If you have time or money, you can put into your articles something more, than only words – pictures, videos or presentations. If you want more ideas about it, you can read How to Attract Your Blog Posts – 20 Tips for Normal People

7. You must promote your niche site like normal, good quality website or blog

You must be aware of two things – before you can earn money online, you should make traffic first. And the second point, which is especially important in earning money with niche sites – to be successful in niche sites, most of your traffic should be from organic traffic (search engines).

There are a lot of sources and tutorials about promoting websites or blogs. I’ll only mention that you need a lot of links pointing to your niche site (for example from article directories, guest posts, social networks, press releases, etc.). If you want to read more about it, please look at some articles:

8 Helpful Tips, How To Promote Your Blog

or

50 Types of Links to Strengthen Your Website

8. Try to Have at Least Two Monetization Ways on Your Niche Site

As I wrote in one of my articles, How to Make Money Online – 10 Best Ways for Doing It, there is a lot of ways for earning money online.

On my niche sites (most of them are financial niches) I prefer a combination of two of them – PPC (Pay Per Click) and affiliate marketing.

For PPC my preferred network is AdSense, but there are a lot of other PPC networks – for example Chitika.

For affiliate marketing I use Trade Doubler (it operates on European market) and some local programs which operate in Poland. You may use ClickBank instead.

9. Make and Forget – Forget about It!

As I wrote in one of the previous points – your niche site should be updated! To prove, that your site is worth to visit, it must be updated in regular intervals. I suggest you, to make it at least once a month, but it depends on your niche and on your resources (time and money).

You should also analyze your statistics – and not only traffic, but also your incomes sources for your niche website. If something is not working for you – you should change it and try something else.

10.   If Your Niche Site is Making Money for You – Reinvest It!

You may be wondered – you are earning some money and I’m telling you to invest it back into your niche site? Not spending it to new car or vacations?

Yes, it’s true. If you earn money from your website – you should invest at least one half of that money into your niche site. You can order some more articles, pay for some marketing or even improve appearance of your site by buying professional theme.

But there is the other side of the coin. If your site isn’t making money for you (or it’s too little to pay the bills for hosting, articles and marketing), you should sell your website. Of course you should wait at least half a year, to see if it’s make money for you. But if it’s not working – sell it!

And what do you think about niche sites? Are they dead, or not? Do you have similar experience to me with it?

Disclosure 1 – please note, that above mentioned tips are my own tips, which base on my own experience, knowledge and specific market and they may not work for you!

Disclosure 2 – please note, that some of the links above are affiliate links and I earn a commission, when you buy something via them.

You may be a little bit confused – even my domain name tells you, that there is no passive income at all… So, where is the truth?

OK – I’ll reveal you a secret. There is not passive income in Internet! And please read this article very carefully – more than 99% of bloggers doesn’t earn a decent income from their websites (blogs, niche sites and other sites)!

Each time, when you want to earn money online, you must work – sometimes more, sometimes less. And in this post I’ll show you, what online passive income is, what skills you should have as a blogger and five money making ideas for bloggers. These concepts don’t need a lot of time, sometimes you can forget about your online business for some months (so they are ALMOST passive, but not passive!), and, for this reason, they are ideal for bloggers.

But before revealing you these 5 concepts, please let me tell you, what does passive income means for me.

So, passive income means an income generated regularly without any effort. Only effort is (if any) needed at the beginning, when you setup an account in your bank

Examples of passive income:

-interest of deposits

-rent from real estate (if they don’t need active management!)

-royalties (from written books, screenplays, software programs)

-pension (when you retired, you will get some money as a regular, monthly pension)

Online passive income means for me:

• Hard work on the beginning (maximal one month of effort, but you may work 16 hours a day )
• Automation for almost everything, for example purchase, payment, etc. (you should simplify everything as much as possible!)
• Little time for maintaining it (monthly it should be less than one working day)
• Possibility of delegating tasks to somebody else (so you may go for your monthly holidays)

Now you know what passive income (normal and online) means for me. Does it mean the same for you? But let’s go to another aspects of blogging for money

As a powerful blogger:

1)      You are excellent writer (if you are not good writer, please read 10 Article Writing Tips, How To Write Killer Article

2)      You know, how to get a lot of traffic (if not, please read: 8 Helpful Tips, How To Promote Your Blog)

3)      You have a big email list (if not, please read this post 12 Action Steps To Build A Profitable Email List From Scratch by Michael Chibuzor)

4)      You are aware of it, how your blog may be successful (if you are not aware of it, you must read my guest post 3 Vital Tips For Creating A Successful Blog

With above mentioned assumptions, now you are ready to learn 5 Money Making Ideas for Bloggers. All of them, when properly used, fulfill my requirements about online passive income. Here you are:

1. Prepare an online product (for example an eBook)

You can earn money by selling it by yourself, or by creating affiliate channels for selling it. In this case you will share some profits with your affiliates (as commission).

2. Create niche site(s)

Your income will be generated by placing contextual ads on this site. Best choice for contextual advertisement  is Google Adsense, alternatively you may choose Chitika for instance

3. Product site

It is a mix of points mentioned above. You can create online product (it may be eBook as well) for example WordPress Plugin. But you can promote someone’s product too (in that case, you will get commission from product creator. And you sell this product via your optimized website.

4. Use your email list

If your list is enough big, you can try to monetize it through affiliate links, sponsored emails, or paid reviews

5. Make a paid membership site

It’s very simple model of earning – you create great content, limit it only for paid access, and invite your readers (which trust you, that it is worth for paying for it).

If you want to learn more, you may read How To Make Money Online – 10 best ways for doing it!

And how about you? What does “passive income” means for you? Or maybe you have another useful concept how to earn money online?

Basing on my almost five years of experience as an online entrepreneur, I’ll show you 10 ways to make money online – 9 established and very useful and one very “hot” and new – Google Affiliate Ads for bloggers.

Each of these points may be implemented successfully by you – it’s not black magic or something for “selected”.  Of course there is a lot of work with all of them, and at these days your online activities needs a lot of time and consistency (for example my first website about financial products needed almost 2 years to become profitable).

So, read carefully

10 points, how to make money online:

1. Showing Ads On Your Site

The easiest way for monetizing your blog or site is by advertising. There are a lot of possibilities of it, in almost every possible category and topic.

There is a lot of types of online advertisement. Some of them are mixture or different types.

Below you can find most common types of advertisement:

1. PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisement

This method is very simple – you earn money, when someone click on ads on your site. Firstly of course you must sign in into one or more of ads networks. Most popular service provider for this type of ads is Google AdSense. It’s accessible for everyone, it’s easy to set up and start earning a lot of money. But in some business areas, there is to less of advertisers, and your earnings may be very little. In this case, you may choose, for example, Chitika instead.

2. CPM, CPT (Cost Per Mille, Cost Per Thousand) advertisement

This type of advertisement is paid per impression. That means that the advert is paid pro thousand of impressions. Simplifying it – when CPM for ads on your site is 2$, and this ad will be shown on your website 50 000 times, you will earn 100$ (because 2$*50=100$)

3. Banners (graphical) ads, text (or intext) links, video ads

Some ads networks are specialized in one type of medium. For example Google Adsense is contextual network, with almost all types of ads (at this time without intext ads). If you want to use intext ads on your side, Kontera is for you.

4. Selling ad space directly to advertisers

When your site or blog has a big traffic, is in specific niche, or has great content, you may try to sell ad space by your own. Of course looking for someone, who want to advert directly on your site isn’t easy and quick job. It’s more engaging and time consuming. But on the other hand – it’s more profitable than participating in ads networks. See my advertising page here.

 2. Participating In Affiliate Marketing

This type of making money is accounted in CPA (Cost per Action) model. And action, in most cases, is defined as a sell.

That means you will earn money, when someone will buy product or order a service via your referral link or recommendation

Commissions may be very various, but most common is a percentage of the sale price. Standard is 5-10%, but for some products, commission is as high as 20-50%

Most profitable online niches are:

1. Financial products (mortgages, loans, bank accounts, bank deposits, Forex accounts)
2. Products related with making money online. It’s very wide niche. We can find here hosting providers (for example Hostgator or  Bluehost), tools for keyword research, like Market Samurai or Traffic Travis, or other plugins and tools related with this topic
3. Products and services for health and beauty (tutorials, diets, exercises, pills etc.)
4. Products and services in tourism branch (hotel and fly reservations, trips, car rental services)
5. XXX branch

Below you can find 4 services, with a lot of affiliates programs for you:

ShareASale

Clickbank

Commision Junction

Amazon Associates

3. Selling Online Your Own Product

Instead of marketing someone else’s products, services or websites, you can earn money selling your own product. In most cases it’s more profitable for you, than showing advertises or even selling someone’s products. But of course there is also the other side of the coin – you must spend time not only on promoting, but also on preparing, updating and supporting your product or service.

If you have no ideas, what could be your product, below you can find some most popular “self-made” product ideas:

1. Books and ebooks
2. Photos, graphics and videos (you can sell them for example on Fotolia or on Istockphoto)
3. Tutorials and guides about specific topics
4. Applications for PCs, iPhones, tablets, etc.
5. Tools, plugins and themes for WordPress

4. Mini Sites (also called Niche Sites)

For some money makers this is the most important stream of their incomes. They set up tens or hundreds of mini sites, advertise them, and are earning a lot of money from them. Earnings from single site are very small – it may be for example one dollar a day. But if you have for example 200 of minisites, you earn about 200 $ a day. Monthly it’s 6 000$ – it’s not to be sneezed at!

And some of niche sites may grow big and earn alone hundreds of dollars. If you are interested in this topic, please visit this site (owned by Pat Flynn) about Niche Site Duel

 5. Making Paid Reviews Of Other Products Or Websites

If you are a good writer and like preparing reviews of products or other things, you may try to make it for money!

In most cases, amount of money you will get in exchange for your review, depends on 4 factors:

-areas of interest of your blog

-reviewed product or service

-traffic on your blog (more the better)

-your possibility to write interesting and reliable reviews

There is a lot of websites, where you can find as well advertisers as bloggers, some of them you can find below:

SeedingUp

SponsoredReviews

LinkVehicle

PayPerPost.com

 6. Be Online Consultant

If you have an established opinion as an Expert in your field, you can stay Online Consultant. Of course you must have very good reputation in your area, and have some teaching skills. You will be paid for consultation, which means people will pay you for your extraordinary knowledge and creative ideas. Most often online consultants are paid per hours (between 10$ and 100$), but most recognized experts will charge you even 1 000$ pro one hour!

I don’t recommend this method, if you are a beginner blogger, specialist or entrepreneur. But if you want to try it, you must start building your credibility and reputation as soon as possible!

7. Preparing Paid Membership Site

It’s very similar way of earning money online to being online consultant – it’s basing on your (or someone else, who prepaid excellent material for your site) reputation and knowledge.

But as opposed to be online consultant, you share your knowledge and experience with more than one man at one time. What’s more, you produce almost all material for your members before starting this type of website.

Of course there are a lot of other differences – most important of them is price! Fees for accessing membership site are almost always fewer, than fees for hiring online consultant. And for this reason, membership sites must have many more customers, than online consultants

8. Selling Websites Or Domains

Some online entrepreneurs make a lot of money only by buying and selling websites or domains. They are looking for expired domains or underestimated websites, they are buying them, looking for someone who needs it, and they are selling it with profit. Most popular marketplace for doing it for existing websites is Flippa. For expired domains you can visit for example GoDaddy.com or Domains.com

9. Monetizing Your Email List

If you have thousands (or well-targeted hundreds) of subscribers on your email list, you can try to monetize it. Lot of companies, small businesses and even bloggers live basing on their email list.

How you can make money with it? You can for example:

1. send sponsored email or newsletter
2. send paid review of some products or websites to your subscribers
3. prepare your own article with affiliate links and send it to your readers
4. send info about your new, hot product

There is a lot of other ways of monetizing your email list, but there is also one, and only one thing, you should never send to your subscribers – SPAM!

 10. Google Affiliate Ads for bloggers

Some days ago appeared new way of earning money for bloggers – it’s Google Affiliate ads for bloggers. This possibility at this time is only for US bloggers, which are blogging on Blogger.com

To get started earning money with this program, you need only active AdSense account, and active blog on Blogger. If your blog category is adequate for advertisers, a new widget “Advertiser Products” will appear on your Earning Tab, where you can choose proper affiliate ad.

It can be text link, banner or even product image. More about it you can read here.

Unfortunatelly I’m not US blogger, so I couldn’t tell you, if it’s profitable or not.

There is only one more thing, which you must know before putting some points from the list into live – there is no passive income at all, and earning money without a lot of work is, in most cases, impossible. So, don’t be lazy and go blogging!

And what are your favorite ways to make money online? Please share them with us!

Disclosure – please note, that some of the links above are affiliate links and I earn a commission, when you buy something via them.