How do you make money blogging?

Everyone has at least some kind of hobby. Most people fail to realize that there is money opportunity in writing about those hobbies. The more obscure the hobby is, the better. So, while one may have a much larger audience with a hobby like boating, a hobby like fungi collecting may earn the most money on the side.

That's how niche marketing works. Where a retail outlet such as Wal-mart has enough money to set up shop in every city, an individual trying to make a living through online marketing should stick to several small niches, at least till they start making the big bucks.

By small niches, I mean specific niches. So, instead of making a website about Ford Mustangs, a niche marketer would make a website about the 1993 Ford Mustang GT Convertible. The reason for this is that you can rank much better on search engines with a specific topic.

The hardest part may be coming up with enough material to write about your specific topic. There's only so much one can write about a 1993 Ford Mustang GT Convertible right?

That's where creativity comes into play. One has to think outside the box. There are tools available to spin content but it's not advisable to use them as they can cause your site to be de-indexed by search engines, if you have been found to use them.

Another big aspect to look into is how much traffic you can hope to receive from your niche. For this, one must research keywords and how many daily searches can be expected from each. By keyword, I'm actually referring to key phrases. I'll post again later (possibly right away) about keyword research. Know for now that these are the phrases that you will be focusing on to get traffic to your site.

For instance, they phrase "1993 Ford Mustang" gets around 38 searches per day according to one of my keyword research tools. However, it also has a quoted competition of 376,000. In other words, you could spend months trying to get your site to rank for this phrase and you'd never get even close to the front page.

Using a phrase like "1993 Ford Mustang GT Convertible" is much better in that it cuts down on the number of competing sites. In order for a site to be competition, it must also be trying to rank for that phrase. So there are many less sites trying to rank for our long-tail(as it's called) phrase. The competition for the quoted phrase "1993 Ford Mustang GT Convertible" in Google is around 2500 sites. This is much easier to compete against generally.

I'll get more into what all this means in later posts. Generally it is very possible to make money by blogging. A site completely about 1993 Ford Mustang GT Convertibles probably wouldn't do too well because no one actually searches for that phrase. It was merely an example of the type of phrase you'll be looking for. I'll be posting about how to tell if a phrase is worth the effort later.