It doesn’t matter how much we discuss what a good niche is, at the end it comes down to profit. A good niche is, without a doubt, a profitable niche. And “the magic formula” is actually quite simple: find something people are looking for, but other internet marketers aren’t offering enough of. This way, you’ll be able to get high in SERPs, plus, you’ll get the finest quality traffic you can. If you try to sell something, your chances and conversion rates will be higher if the niche is more targeted and narrower, because your traffic will look exactly for what you’re offering.

That’s interesting. So how do I find such a good niche?

The short answer on how to find a good niche is, answer the “Why?” question. By that I mean answering on question “Why is somebody searching for something?”. It basically means stepping out of your shoes and try to see things through someone else’s prospective. You must find out why they really want information they are looking for. I’m sure you’re ready for an example now, so let me give you a few.

Industry: weight loss

Typical keyword: “lose weight”

After the “Why?” question: “lose weight before wedding”, “lose weight for my boyfriend”, “lose weight without fitness”, “lose weight around my thighs”, “fit into my prom dress”, “how to look slimmer on camera”, “how to hide my weight when going out”, “how to look sexy without losing weight”, “how to look better naked”, “how to look sexy on the beach”

What I did to find these good niches was simply ask myself, why somebody would really want to lose weight. I got my answer by trying to go through all kind of life situations and try to see why people really would like to lose weight – what’s their motivation, what are their goals, ambitions and so on.

There are quite a few good ways you can help yourself stepping out of your own shoes and try to see through someone else’s eyes:

* talk to and listen to your friends and family,
* see what people are buzzing about using Twitter and other social media sites,
* go through different ages and life periods (childhood, teenage years, adulthood, senior years) and try to see some typical life events during these periods,
* discover the culture of your market (what is their tradition, their culture, holidays).

Now you’re ready to find a good niche, so go on and make some money using these examples and advices.

1. Get domain and hosting
Buying a domain name is first thing to do when you starting new website. Domain name has to be short as possible, easy to remember and has to include your main keyword. Let’s say we want to make website about swimming pools. Perfect domain would be swimmingpools.com, but I’m sure it isn’t available anymore. You can try with something like planetswimmingpools.com or swimmingpoolsworld.com (i haven’t checked if those domains are available). I have all of my domains registred at DynaDot.com.

Second thing you need is hosting. For start it would be enough to own shared hosting. It means there are many sites on one server. It is not really good, but for site with less than 500 unique visitors it is enough. If your site gets big, you can still move it on VPS or dedicated server. I host my site at Hostgator. They have great support, but I heart they ban you if you have too much traffic - that’s means you have to move your site before it is too big.

2. CMS - Content Management Systems
In good old days we code every single page in HTML and than upload it on server, but it starts to be to complicated when you have many pages of content. I’m glad someone invented CMS. This is script, which allows you to manage your website in your browser. It is much easier to add and edit articles, links…

My favourit CMS is 19pages.com. It is very small, you don’t even need a database. It is simple to use - just download it from offical website and than follow the instructions in read me file.

3. Design
Your visitors have to like you website. Content is important, but you also need quality outfit of your website. It is easier to download free template from sites, like MantisaTemplates.com and than modify it. I really don’t like to deal with design. That’s why I pay $20 to my friend and he makes design for me. Don’t forget to add code from statistic software in you HTML code(I suggest Google Analytics)

4. Content
This is the most important step in website building. Content is king. For start you need at least 10 unique articles, about 500 words long. If you have skills to write articles, just do it, otherwise you can find somebody on freelancing sites and webmasters forum to do it for you. I pay $5-$10 for 500 words long article, don’t forget to check, if article is really unique.

I really suggest you not to copy articles from article directories. I have already written about it here.

5. Link Building
Link building is my favourit step in website building. Link building is endless process. There are few methods how to do it:

• Directory submition - I always start building links with directory submition. It is free and it is easy. Read something more about directory submition in post from my archive and find best directories to submite on my list of directories.
• Article Marketing - Just rewrite you articles to make them unique and submit them in article directories.
• Link Exchange - I find people to exchange link on webmaster forums. Try to get realted links, even if they have lower PR.
• Link Buying - Link buying is the only way to get good SERP for competitive keywords, but be carefull. I suggest you to use TNX.net - buy links with differen PR and different anchor text.
• Social Bookmarking - Submit your articles on websites like Digg.com - to get better result you can ask for few diggs on webmaster forums - but be carefull - it is ‘illegal’.

6. Start earning money
Your site is done, you have built few links and you can see first visitors from search engines. Now you want to make few bucks.

• Google AdSense - It is really easy to use - you just need to install code and you can see ads on your website. You get paid everytime you visitor click on ad. You will probably make about $4 for every 1000 impressions of your website(depends on niche and CTR).
• CJ.com - CJ is network of affiliate programs. In this system you can find products realted to your site and than add some ads in your website. You earn some money everytime someone(reffered by you) buys something from seller.
• Text-Link-Ads - TLA is link building network, which allows webmasters to sell and buy links. There are few other services, but I think TLA is the best online.
• Kontera - Kontera is great ad network, because Kontera In-Text Ads don’t need any special place on your site. There are just few underlined links in your content and when visitor click on this link, you get some money.

7. Keep your site updated
Google and other SE don’t like dead websites. If you want to get good traffic from search engines you’ll need to add new content every few weeks. To make updating easier you can add news system on your website and search major news networks for news in your niche. When you find something interesting, just rewrite this news and publish it on your site.

Also you shouldn’t forget that you shouldn’t stop building links. Are you bored at the moment? Submit your site in few directories.

To earn as much as you can from your site, test different ad networks and ad placment on your website.

And the most important thing - keep reading my blog to find out new link and traffic methods - subscribe to my RSS.

Than I have realised I won’t make any money from those low-quality articles and I have decided to write few articles by hand. But English is not my first language and I realised I just can’t write articles about niches I’m not interested in. That’s why I started writing this blog. I read webmaster blogs for a quite a long time and I learned how to write this type of articles.

After few weeks of writing this blog I realised I can’t make a lot of money from this blog - internet marketing is very competitive niche and advertisers don’t pay much. I start thinking about building content sites in niches with well paid ads and low competition. But everytime when it comes to content building I realised I don’t have enough writing skills to write few ten articles about my niche.

I was searching for solutions on webmaster forums. I bought few content splitters(programs, which makes duplicated articles unique), but the output was terrible(human unreadable content). Then I found one guy who write articles for $5 per piece. Now I create desing, do niche research and link building, but I outsource content writing.

If you want SE traffic you need unique content. So, invest in your content. If you have enough writing skills just write articles, if you don’t have enough skills like me, outsource content developing.

AdSense - $44.91
Text-Link-Ads - $83.69
Paypopup - $2.06
AdBrite - $0.23
Kontera - $0.52
Local Ad Networks - $13.26
_____________________________
Total - $144.67 or $4.82 per day

The easiest way to avoid dead directories is submiting to new directories. Many webmasters spend a lot of hours with their new directory, but after some time they start working on other sites and there is no time for directory.

It is easy to find new directories on webmaster forums. My favourit place to find new directories is DigitalPoint.

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1. Affiliate marketing
In affiliate marketing you put ads on your website and you are paid every time somebody you have reffered to webshop buy something. In the most cases you get from 4-75% commission but in other cases you get fixed amout of money per sale. The easies way to start with affiliate marketing is to join to one of the affiliate networks:

• CJ.com
• ClickBank

2. Direct banner sales
Direct banner sales is great way to make money. You can cut out middleman commissions and make prices more affordable for advertisers. But you have to have lots of traffic and great marketing skills to get advertisers.

3. Paid Surveys and Polls
There are companies which pay for running polls and small surveys. The most popular service is called Vizu.

4. Donations
If you have great community which is aware of your hardworking and have lots of benefits from you content you can put small Donation button on you website.

5. Selling an eBook
Many bloggers rewrite thier post in eBook and sell it online. EBooks are great for readers because it is easier to read book than searching all over the blog to find all useful posts.

2. CPM Advertising
CPM means cost per 1,000 impressions. You get few bucks for every 1,000 impressions of banner or popup/popunder. You’ll get about $0.5 - $2 per 1,000 impressions. CPM advertising is popular mostly with entertiment websites which has low CTR and a lot of impressions. CPM program I use is Paypopup.

3. Paid reviews
Paid reviews are popular with bloggers. I don’t have much experiences with paid reviews, but some bloggers get upto $500 per post. The most popular review service is ReviewMe.

4. Text link sales
Text link sales is one of my favourit methods. Link buying is the easiest way to get more link popularity and many webmasters are doing it. I use Text link ads and TNX.net.

Another post about making money methods is coming soon. Don’t miss it - subscribe to my RSS.

Darren from ProBLogger has written a kind of a case study. It talks about jewelry store which had blog mostly to get people know they had added new product in their store. They had had small number of RSS subscribers and bad ROI. Than Darren gave them an advice… read more

5 way to get readers to new blog
Darren have also written great series of posts how to start blog - not how to setup Wordpress but how to get first readers to your blog and get first subscribers.

Series include 5 posts:

• Guest Posting
• Networking
• Advertising
• Social Media
• Viral Content

I think it would be enough reading for today and tomorrow I’ll be back with another post full of great tips. Don’t miss it - subscribe to my RSS feed.

1. Subscribe to blogs in your niche
When I don’t know what to write about I go to one of the major blogs in my niche(ProBlogger, DailyBlogTips and others). Than I go in archive section and read some posts which have been written about a year ago. When I find something interesting I think for a while about this topic and write post about it.

2. Write speedlinking post
You can go to your RSS reader filled with blogs in your niche and read some posts. When you find something useful you can write short review about this post and link to it. An example of speed linking post can be found HERE.

3. Write ‘miscellaneous post’
If you have a lot of things to tell but they don’t deserve whole post just put them together in one post. Example of miscellaneous post can be found HERE.

4. Write about goals
Write something about what you want to reach with your blog, how do you see it in future. Readers wants to know what will happen with their favourit blog.

5. Put down you ideas
Buy yourself a notebook and when you get an idea for blog post topic just put it down in it. You’ll be glad you had done that when you will run out of ideas.

For more blogging tips subscribe to my RSS feed.