Find a Money Making Niche

Monday, February 25th, 2008 | Niche Sites with No Comments »

Paid surveys are a quick way to make money online, but after some time many of us decide to build something more lasting, something that will continue to make money for us without any continuing work on our part. One way to go about doing this is through the monetization of blogs and websites. A good site in a good niche can continue to pay you months or even years after you’ve put any work into it.

Of course the first question that needs to be answered is “What the heck do I create that website or blog about?”

Step 1: Make a List of the Things You Like to Do

Everyone has things that they enjoy doing, reading about and learning about. Take some time and make a list of these things. One easy way to do this is look around your house and see what things you have there already – magazines, pictures, books and collectibles all provide clues.

Next take a look at the bookmarks in your web browser or the blogs that you subscribe to. These are another good source of inspiration.

Personally I have a very diverse set of interests and I’m an avid reader both online and off. This means I’ve got tons of books and magazines at home as well as hundreds of bookmarks and blog subscriptions. Plenty of fodder to get ideas for new niches. Of course being interested in something doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m knowledgeable or any good at these things. This brings us to the next step.

Step 2: Make a List of the Things You Are Good At

This list is much harder for some people, but it doesn’t need to be. One very good way to find out what you’re good at is to ask your family and friends. I’m sure there are some similar questions that continue to come from them. That’s because they know you’re good at something or consider you an expert. For example I constantly get questions about computers, the internet and traveling. That’s because everyone who knows me knows that I am very knowledgeable in these areas.

So, listen to the questions people are asking you. Maybe you get questions about video games all the time, or dog care and grooming, or cooking. Could be that you’re the person who does the bartending at all of the functions you go to or maybe you get called to help with car repair questions. Whatever it is there is usually something that people consider you the expert at or very knowledgeable about and they will continually come to you with questions about these areas.

It’s important to note here that the list of things you’re interested in and the list of things you’re good at will probably be different. There will be things that you are interested in that you’re not good at and there will be things that you’re good at that you’re not interested in. The key is to find the matches. Things that you are both good at AND interested in, that’s where you’ll find the best niches for you.

Is your goal to make money with your new site? Of course it is, so now you’ll need to make one more list.

Step 3: Make a List of the Things You Can Make Money Doing

The great thing about the internet is that with enough visitors and some creativity you can make money from just about anything. Note that I said “just about anything”. Before you put time and effort into your new niche you’ll want to do some basic research to make sure this is a topic that you can make money from.

This is actually not that hard. You’ll want to stay away from popular search terms initially because it just takes too long to break into some areas. So, don’t start a site on “Dogs” unless you’ve got 60 hours a week to devote to it. You can however choose one specific breed of dog and start a niche site. For example a quick search for “Pomeranians” on Google tells me that there are roughly 1.3 million pages ranking for this search term. Doing a search with the SeoBook Keyword Tool I find that there are 582 daily searches for “Pomeranians”. Those two quick searches tell me that there is decent potential and limited competition for this particular niche.

Now that you know there’s enough interest you want to think about ways you can monetize and make money from this niche. Consider all of the following options:

Google Adsense – You can find the potential for keywords in each niche with Google’s Adwords: Keyword Tool.

Affiliate Sales – Check at popular affiliate sales sites Commission Junction and Clickbank to see what types of products you might be able to sell on your site or blog.

Direct Advertising – Search for similar themed sites and see if they are offering direct advertising. If they are chances are you can too.

Selling hard products – If you are an artist maybe you can sell your paintings or photos on the site. Consider writing an eBook on your subject. Good eBooks can sell very well. If you are good at making something chances are you can sell it on the internet.

Selling services – If you’ve got a travel related blog maybe you can partner with a local travel agency to offer special themed trips and packages.

By making this list you’ll start to get some idea of ways you can make money from your site and more importantly how well they will work. If AdWords shows you that most of your keywords have bids under $1.00 then you can probably rule out AdSense as a significant source of income unless you have a lot of traffic to the site.

However if you can find a good partnership or offer a unique product or service you won’t need hoards of traffic to make money.

Step 4: Find the sweet spots.

Looking at your three lists you should see some areas that overlap. Ideally you would like to have a niche that is on all three lists. That way you like it, your good at it and you can make money writing about it. I know this is a tall order, so if you find a niche that overlaps just two lists that’s good too. The next best combination in my opinion is an area that you’re interested in and can make money in. Even if you don’t know that much yet you can learn while you teach others. Many people find this is the best way to learn. If there’s something you’re good at that makes money this can be good as well. You may get bored more easily creating the site, but you’ll be much faster writing about it since you’re an expert.

If you’re lucky enough to have an idea that overlaps all three lists then by all means run with that idea. You have the knowledge, you’ll be having fun and you’ll be making money. Who could ask for more? Once you have a site like this making money work becomes more like play! Good luck and go get started!

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