The amount and quality of the material you have on your blog has a direct correlation to the search engine traffic you receive as well as the size of your audience base.

If you want to make money from your niche blogs, you really do need a consistent content development strategy that works.

Let’s address the obvious question first. Why would you want to get others to create content for your blog? Wouldn’t it be easier to do it yourself?

The benefits of outsourcing your content requirements are many and in my opinion, here are the two most important factors:

• Allows you to cover more niches. Delegating content work means that you’ll be able to set up more blogs in profitable niches. Now this is very useful if you decide to follow a multiple niche blogs strategy to make money.




• Saves you time and energy. Everyone who has ever owned a blog can attest to the fact that developing content is by far the most grueling process of blogging. Getting others to write for you allows you to avoid this taxing experience, especially when you don’t have a strong passion for the niche topic at hand.

Four Ways to Outsource the Content Creation Process

Outsourcing the content creation process usually involves some monetary cost or sharing of potential profit. It is difficult and nearly impossible to get bloggers to create content for free, unless you are able to offer them something in return.

That specific ’something’ usually comes in the form of publicity, links and money. With this in mind, here are the four main ways to outsource your content needs:

• Use Guest Bloggers. The guest blogging method is usually divided into paid or non-paid categories. You can choose to pay guest bloggers with money or perhaps they will be will to blog in return for the publicity they will receive.

  Which category your guest blogger falls into depends on your relationship with the blogger and the size or audience base of your blog. Guest bloggers are more likely to blog just for the publicity when you have a semi-popular blog or when you have a close relationship with them.




• Collaborative Blogging. Round up a couple of your friends who are interested in the same niche topic and take turns to blog in a week. Technically, you’ll still have to create content but this lightens the content load considerably while diversifying the blog marketing process. A drawback is that you’ll have to split any revenue that you’ll earn.




• Adsense Revenue Share. This is a process whereby the content writer stands to earn a share of the Adsense revenue on your blog. His or her Adsense publisher id will be used for the ads within the specific blog post page.

  The blogger’s publisher id will be rotated alongside your own publisher id. A 50% revenue share rate is the minimum and I recommend going up to 70% if your blog is very new and does not yet have much traffic.

  The beauty of this method is that you don’t need to bother with payments and accounting as Google will take care of that. There is also no limit to the number of bloggers you can include in the program. Wordpress bloggers can use the Adsense Revenue Share Plugin.




• Hire Staff Bloggers. Staff blogging is usually one of the most costly options and it involves paying a blogger to blog full or part-time on your blog. You can either choose to have the blogger take care of the marketing aspect and hence give him or her a cut of the overall ad earnings.Alternatively, you can limit their duties to content creation alone. Payment can be made on a per-post or monthly level.

How can I find a Writer/Blogger?

Finding a writer for your blog is not entirely a difficult process. There are three main methods you can use to seek out bloggers for any niche:

• Approach Bloggers Directly. If you are familiar with the bloggers in your niche, approach those whom you think whose writing style and ideas you like.If you are not familiar with a topic, do a quick search through Google Blog search, MyBlogLog or Technorati and spend some time looking at various blogs. Contact the ones you think will do a good job.




• Get Recommendations. This is often overlooked but recommendations from friends and other bloggers can be very useful, especially if they read widely. Ask around for bloggers within a specific niche and make a list of the recommendations.




• Put up a Job Ad. If you don’t have time for initial research, put up a job ad and then screen the bloggers who apply. The ProBlogger job board is a good high profile spot to start.If you’re not keen on spending money for an ad, I would suggest visiting the appropriate forums in your niche to broadcast your ad. This usually allows you to find targeted individuals with a high level of interest in the niche topic.

Niche Blogging Series

This article concludes my collection of niche blogging tutorials as I will be moving on to other articles on how to make money online. The niche blogging series was rather well received and I do thank all of you for the feedback.

Here’s a quick roundup of the various niche blogging articles I’ve written so far:

1. An Introduction to Niche Blogging
2. How to Create Your Own Niche Blogging Masterplan for Long Term Profit
3. How to Choose the Right Blog Niche: A Simple Three-Step Method
4. 5 Easy Steps to Choose a Great Domain Name for your Niche Blog
5. Networking within your Blog Niche: 7 Essential Tips for Bloggers
6. How to Effectively Create Content for your Niche Blogs: An Introduction

I’ll still be writing the occasional niche blogging article now and then but I’ll like to focus more on developing more articles on various other topics. I will perhaps do a series on creating fully automated websites which are heavily monetized though contextual advertising.

In order to easily receive updates on niche blogging and other future articles, do consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed via RSS or subscribing via email.

The Lazy or Smart Blogger’s Way to Create Content for Niche Blogs

Serving as the foundation for any sort of search engine traffic you will possibly receive in the long run, the content creation process is usually the most time and resource consuming part of blogging.

The frequency, quality and amount of content you are able to consistently produce will determine the eventual size, sustainability and most importantly, profit potential of your niche blogs.

Analyzing the Content Creation Process

There are several methods which will allow you to easy generate content from your niche blog and they are largely divided into two main categories: Creating content yourself and getting others to create content for you.

This post looks at the process of creating content yourself and will examine the various web tools and strategies you can use to single-handedly generate content for several niche blogs daily.

Content Development Tips: Four Blog Posting Guidelines

Here are some posting principles which I follow when I develop content for my niche blogs:

• Alternate Posting. This simply refers to posting on alternate days for each blog and not on a daily basis. This should be initiated after your niche blogs are set up, indexed and already receiving search traffic. This spreads out the workload and keeps your productivity level high. You don’t want to abandon the niche blogs early on because writing for them has become a chore.




• Future Posting. This is a rather useful technique for those of you who prefer to work in concentrated spurts or have unpredictable timetables. This involves writing up several posts at one go and then editing the post time stamp so that they will be published at a future date. Note that this method is not good for time-sensitive material but rather general informational/opinion-based articles on the niche topic.




• Weekly Linkbait. It is important to write at least one detailed and extensive article every week. These type of articles attract the most incoming links and referral traffic. Write these types of articles little by little over several days or slowly over the weekend, because they can be too difficult to finish in just one sitting.

Seven Content Types for Niche Blogs: Post Options to Consider

Here are seven types of content you can create for all your niche blogs. I’ve included a brief introduction to their methodology and have also listed the approximate amount of time each content type will require, although this will vary from person to person.

Mixing up different content types will give you flexibility during the content creation process and allows you to prioritize effectively. For example, when you’re writing a linkbait article for a specific blog, use a simple video post for another blog to save time and energy.

1. Lazy News Blogging. This is quite an art form and involves timely posting about breaking news or developments in your niche topic while adding a brief personal opinion, which usually comes in the form of one or two paragraphs.

   Method: Use social news aggregators or meme trackers to source for the freshest news on any topic. Techmeme, Megite and PopURL.com are the three websites that I recommend and you can easily pull a story out from these sites for a blog post.

   Time needed: 10-15 minutes

   
   
   
   
   

2. Speedlinking or Link Posts. This is the one of the quickest ways to drum up a blog post. Depending on how you write them, they can be seen as a networking tool and a way to make your blog seem more relevant to the niche.

   Method: Grab a social bookmarking account from a website like del.icio.us and set up an online feed reader account with a list of the relevant blogs in your niche. Track your feeds daily and when you come across a link-worthy article, bookmark and tag it.

   Do the same for sites you come across while researching online. Whenever you need a speedlink post, pull up all the links under the specific tag and publish them. Remember to editorialize the links by adding your own thoughts to them.

   Time needed: 5-10 minutes.







3. Video and Image posts. Visit Flickr, StumbleUpon or YouTube and type in your keyword. Grab an image/video and then write one or two keyword-rich lines about it. Publish and you’re done.

   Time needed: 5 minutes or less.







4. Roundup Posts. A roundup post is simply a post that includes links to note-worthy articles on your blog within a specific time frame. This can be published on a weekly basis if you write two or more posts every day.

   If you only write one post a day or every alternate days, publish the roundup post either bi-weekly or on a monthly basis. Here’s an article on how to create your own roundup posts.

Time needed: 10 minutes







5. Article Republishing. This involves using relevant articles from free article directories. Visit a website like Ezine Articles and do a keyword search. After which grab the entire article and publish it on your site. I recommend only using free articles if you are going the smaller and multiple niche blogs route.

   I don’t really use free articles because it’s rather easy to come up with a similar unique article in a few minutes. The high republish rates for some articles means that there are already several other websites already ranking for the same specific key phrase you are targeting.

   Time needed: 10 minutes







6. Linkbaits. Linkbaits are simply detailed and original articles that are likely to attract from links and traffic from other websites. Depending on your ability and the type of linkbait, they can take several hours to create.

   However, the overall structure of a successful linkbait is no mystery when you carefully examine some social websites. The Del.icio.us Popular pages can easily allow you to see what types of articles attract the most attention.

   Time needed: Indefinite







7. Opinion posts. These are usually the easiest to write because you don’t need to perform much research online. Drawing upon your personal experiences will let your audience feel that they know you better as well, which is important for visitor loyalty. Pick a specific topic and share your experiences or thoughts about it. These posts usually do not require too much energy to write.

Time needed: 10 minutes to 2 hours.

Web-based Content Development Tools/Resources for Niche Bloggers

In my previous post on creating your niche blogging plan, I’ve mentioned that you could either create multiple smaller blogs for search traffic or several medium-sized blogs, each with a strong audience base.

However both niche masterplans share a common ground in terms of content development and these web-based resources can be very helpful regardless of the type of niche blog you are creating.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a passive way of doing topic research as it only requires you to set up alerts for specific phrases or words that relate to your niche. Depending on your settings, you’ll get notifications on the topic sent to your email inbox either daily or weekly.

This is useful when combined with alternate posting or when you really don’t have the time to source for new information. To get more out of Google Alerts, I recommend setting up alerts for variations of relevant keyword phrases instead of just a single keyword.

Personalized Start Pages

I love using personalized start pages like Netvibes because you can aggregate a lot of informational content within a single page.

Here is what I normally do: Set up a Youtube and Flickr column according to specific keyword tags and include feeds from all the blogs in the niche I follow as well feeds from the usual news agencies. I will also include a customized search function for podcasts and blogs.

A To-do list for the specific niche blogs will also be helpful and I’ll then set the start page as my homepage or keep it open on a single tab in Firefox. Keeping everything you need within a single page can be a huge time-saver when you need to come up with a blog post for any topic.

News Aggregators & Blog Search Engines

Social news aggregators like TailRank, Megite and Techmeme are repositories of large amounts of news and are usually reliable indicators of buzz. Social voting platforms like Netscape, Digg and Reddit can also provide you with a broad spectrum of hot and interesting topics.

If you are looking to reference other blogs, blog search engines like Google Blog Search or Technorati can be useful. I do prefer using Google Blog Search because its very responsive and you can filter news according to the specific time frame.

For instance, if I’m writing an article on a specific celebrity I can choose to browse through the freshest blog posts, published in the last hour or more. This allows one to stay relevant and up to date on any topic as well.

Part II of Content Development Tactics for Niche Blogs

Hopefully, this article has offered some useful tips for some of you out there who are gradually becoming weary of creating content for your niche blogs. Perhaps these tactics and tools will make things easier for you.

In the next article I will examine the other side of the content creation process or more precisely, the various methods to get other people to create content for your blog.

This is a natural procession from developing content on your own and is a good way to sustain your niche blogs while moving on to other profitable online projects and interests.

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How to Effectively Create Content for your Niche Blogs: An Introduction and Guide

These readers are very likely to follow your blog because the content you offer is relevant to their interests.

Another explicit benefit of networking with other niche bloggers is that you’re likely to receive consistent referral traffic and links from them as well.

A core audience base and a strong overall link profile gradually leads to increased traffic to your blog, thereby allowing a lot more monetization options in the long run. This is particular important if you are using niche blogs to make money online.

Seven Strategies to Network within your Blog Niche

A new blog often suffers from a small to non-existent audience base and has a rather weak link profile. Instead of heading to forums and requesting for link exchanges, I think it would be far more beneficial to do some effective niche networking.

Networking for your niche blogs is actually a fairly simple process. Here are the seven networking strategies I employ after carefully choosing my blog niche, setting up the niche blogs and creating at least a week’s worth of content.

1. Comment voraciously. Make a list of the high traffic blogs in your niche and be sure to comment on them everyday, preferably as soon as they publish any new articles. These blogs should be kept in your bookmarks and made very easily accessible from your browser. Don’t leave signature links in the comments and try to actually contribute to the discussion.




2. Follow the news. To interact within the niche, you’ll need to know what’s buzzing and what’s going on. Subscribe to the feed of every notable blog within your blog niche and keep track of them. I usually set up a separate online feed reader account so its mentally easier to spend some time daily to go through the feeds.




3. Link generously. The best way to make friends with another blogger is to link to them very often and reference their blog posts. Bloggers love links and this is a surefire way of getting yourself noticed. Try to send out three to five links to different blogs within each article. This adds value to your readers while inserting your blog into the overall discussion on any specific topic. To avoid possible bitterness, I suggest practicing unconditional linking, or linking without the desire to get a link in return.




4. Focus on the Small. Do not focus too much on getting links and attention from A-List bloggers because the chance of receiving a reciprocal mention will be quite minimal. Focus instead at the other spectrum: blogs of a similar or even smaller size. These are people who need exposure as much as you do and referencing them is a great way to get some exposure in return. Remember that small blogs can grow to become big blogs. Ignoring their potential is short term thinking.




5. Socialize within communities. Almost every possible niche has a forum or social network which is relevant to it. Find these communities, join them and start participating in discussions. Communities allow you to gain new readers quickly and also allows you get some backlinks from forum signatures and other community pages.




6. Send out Email Tips. Getting into direct contact with fellow bloggers via email is a good idea but you don’t want to pester them with link requests or excessive questions. Sending them tips on topics related to their niches is good for several reasons: You contribute to material on their blog, get into a regular email flow and will most likely get credit via a link if they decide to use the suggested tip. You can then proceed from this stage to deeper email conversations.




7. Offer assistance. Do you have any specific skills like programming, web design or copywriting? Volunteer your assistance to other bloggers for their online projects. You’ll find that doing favors for others is a remarkably easy way to establish long-term relationships. Remember that its always important to check your personal/professional schedule in order to avoid over-commitment.

The blogosphere and online universe is interdependent. Networking with other bloggers benefits not just yourself but the other blogger in question as well.

No successful blog exists in a vacuum: they are all sustained through editorial links and recommendations from others.

Understanding this from the onset will greatly improve your chances of gaining monetary profit from whatever online niche projects you pursue.

If you’ve enjoyed this post and would like free updates on niche blogging and monetization, do consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed.

Networking within your Blog Niche: 7 Essential Tips for Bloggers

As I’ve mentioned in my introduction to niche blogging, the emphasis on a tight content focus is very important and your domain name can reflect your overall commitment to the field either through keyword relevance or effective branding.

In terms of niche blogging, picking a domain name simply requires you to align your choice of a domain name with your overall niche blogging masterplan.

Are you planning to build a flagship blog with a large audience? Or do you want to create multiple smaller blogs which focus primarily on search engine traffic? Your choice of the flagship or brute force method will determine the type of domain name you will choose.

Many articles about domain name selection primarily focus on several key points such as the length of the domain name, keywords vs. brand, suitable top level domains as well as multiple domain name registrations. Problogger has a useful article on choosing your domain name, which covers the above factors in greater detail.

While there are many differing opinions on the various factors surrounding domain name selection, the process of choosing the actual domain name for your niche blog is surprisingly simple and straight forward.

Five Easy Steps to Choose a Good Domain Name

Here are five steps which I personally use to choose the domain names for my niche blogs. Note that before embarking on the following steps, you should already have chosen the appropriate niche for your blog.

I would suggest reading my post on how to choose your blog niche if you have not already decided upon a specific niche topic.

1. Determine your niche blog strategy. If you are focusing on search traffic and multiple small blogs, go for keywords in the domain. If you are building a flagship or medium-sized blog, pick a domain name that is brandable, short and memorable.




2. Make a list of keywords. If you’re using a keyword for your domain, come up with 10 different keyword variations. For example, if you are writing about ipods, you could try ipodlove, ipodreviews, ipodfetish and ipodjunkie.com. If you’re short of time, run your primary & secondary keywords through a domain name generator.




3. Brainstorm domain name brands. I personally use Urban Directory very often if I’m going for branding because they offer multiple slang-based variations of your keyword that are often catchy, brand-able and search traffic friendly.




4. Check for Domain availability. After coming up with a list of the keywords, visit AjaxWhois or DomainBot to confirm if the domain names are taken. These domain name checkers operate via Ajax and are quickest ways for you to test all the various domain names you’ve written down.




5. Register your domain. Proceed to the domain name registrar and purchase the domain you want. Consider buying other top level domains (.org, .info etc.) if you are going the flagship route.

And you’re done! You should take no more than one hour to come up with the domain names for several blogs. Spending any more time on this isn’t productive because other tasks such as setting up the actual blog will take a lot more time and energy.

Some might suggest buying a domain name research tool but I honestly do not think they are worth your money unless you are planning on solely earning income through domain name investing.

The free tools I’ve mentioned above are really all you need and the search advantages that will come from using paid domain name tools can easily be offset by effective on and off-site SEO for your blogs.

Seven Day Niche Blog Challenge: Update #3

Today is actually the last day of my personal goal to set up seven niche blogs in a week and I’ll be creating the final niche blog a few hours from now.

I’ve meant to update more frequently but the lack of time has prevented me from doing so. But I’ll definitely continue with the list of niche blogging articles/tutorials, which are mainly constructed from notes I’ve taken during the entire seven day process.

Hopefully I’ll finish publishing all of these articles by the end of this week, by which I’ll be able to offer some more retrospective insight on the entire process.

Meanwhile, do feel free to let me know if you have any thoughts on the articles so far and what you’ll like to see or learn more about in the upcoming posts in this series.

5 Easy Steps to Choose a Great Domain Name for your Niche Blog

Picking a profitable blog niche that is of personal interest can be a difficult process, not to mention that you’ll have to single out a niche amongst an almost infinite number of unique topics.

Not all blog niches are inherently profitable because the topic you choose, often determines the future size and profitability of your blog to some extent.

It is important to pick a niche that you have genuinely interest in because the natural passion you have for the topic sustains the content creation process and will actually make the whole chore of blogging enjoyable.

In this post, I’ll outline some of the methods you can use to select an appropriate blog niche that is not only potentially profitable but challenging and relevant to your interests.

Characteristics of the Ideal Blog Niche

Here’s a list of the factors which I personally think, constitute the ideal blog niche:

• Personal interest in topics within the niche. You enjoy reading, learning and writing about these blog topics.




• Networking foundation. You are already active in several networking groups or forums within the niche.




• Moderate to high search volume. The blog niche has a moderate to high search volume, meaning that people actually do search for more information on the topic.




• Potential for Monetization. Ideally, you’ll want a blog niche that actually serves up relevant contextual ads or has a range of affiliate programs which are at least partially relevant to your audience’s needs.

My method of choosing a niche is surprisingly straightforward and the research process is very easy to perform. You should be able to pick a suitable niche in an hour or much lesser, by using the simple three step method that I’ve outlined below.

Step #1: Narrow your Interests

This is the logical place to start because blogging about something you have a natural interest for is personally enriching. What I usually do is to pick a few general topics I’m interested in and put them through a couple of websites and tools.

Recommended Tool: Wikipedia.

You can use search engines to perform niche research but I particularly like using Wikipedia to narrow down my focus in a specific field because articles in Wikipedia are very well interlinked and are generally informative.

For example, see this Wikipedia page on surfing. In the first paragraph itself, there are links to several topics related to surfing, such as surf boards, wind surfing and big wave surfing.

Scroll down to the end of the page and you’ll see even more subsections like surf culture, surf music and surfing competitions.

Wikipedia can also be used as an informational tool which gives you more background on any topic. thereby allowing you to eventually decide if it is something you want to pursue.

You should end up with a short list of niches you want to target, which leads you to the next step.

Step #2: Assess the Traffic Potential for the Niche

To assess the size and potential of a niche involves discovering the number of people who actually search for information on the given topic.

This is important because you don’t want to be pursuing a niche that is inherently limited by its weak organic search traffic.

Now is not the time to target your actual keywords so you don’t need to always go for the high volume search terms. As long as the overall search volume is moderate, that should be fine.

Recommended Tool: SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool

I like using this tool because of several reasons: It provides suggested monthly regional search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and churns out direct links to Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery and Google trends, all of which are other tools you can use.

After typing your keyword (e.g. surfing) into the search box, you should focus on the vertical length of the results instead of the actual search volume for the keyword.

The length of the list determines how deep you can go with this specific topic and also how many keywords you can effectively target for traffic. This is an important point: Never focus exclusively on the main niche keyword but the overall search depth for the niche topic.

Once you have found a suitable niche with a moderate search volume, you’ll need to run a quick check on its monetization and profit potential.

Step #3: Determine the Monetization and Profit potential for your Niche

This step is fairly simple. There are two ways to monetize any new blog: One is advertising networks (e.g. Google Adsense, Auction Ads) and the other method is the use of relevant affiliate programs from websites. Let’s split this section up into two.

Recommended Tools for ad networks:

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator and Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

These are currently two tools which can provide a rough estimate for the profitability of a niche. While the results are limited to Google Adwords/Adsense, I think they are reliable indicators of the niche’s general potential.

Here’s what you’ll see from Google Adwords Traffic Estimator after I did some basic keyword searches:

While other information such as the estimated cost and clicks per day are included, you’ll only need to focus on the figures in the estimated average CPC column.

Generally, the higher the Cost per Click amount, the more the advertiser has to pay and hence its possible that you’ll earn more by creating content which reflects that specific keyword.

On the other hand, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool gives you a lot of keyword suggestions, each with their search volume or average CPC. You’ll just have to type in one main keyword and the tool will generate a list of results.

For example, here is an example of some results when I type in ‘web hosting‘.

This basically gives you an estimate of the monetary value of all the longtail keywords you will be naturally targeting when you are writing in depth on a topic.

A word of caution: Don’t just go for the keywords with the top CPC averages because these are usually targeted by many other webmasters as well. Generally, if your niche has a Adwords CPC average of $2-3, it should be profitable while allowing a low barrier of entry for new websites.

Recommended Tool for affiliate programs: Search engines + Affiliate networks

The easiest way to find affiliate programs for your niche is to do a google search for your niche keyword + “affiliate program“. You’ll usually be able to tell at once if there are adequate programs available.

In any case, there are also a large number of affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, Shareasale and Click Bank so there shouldn’t be any difficulties in finding affiliate programs for most niches.

Seven Day Niche Blog Challenge: Update #2

So far everything is going well. I enjoy setting up new blogs, even though the process can be repetitive. I’ve largely followed the three steps that I’ve mentioned above while picking my niches, although I did perform some alternative research to develop a more rounded social media outlook on the niche.

Here are two additional tips, both of which I personally use in addition to the three steps I’ve listed above.

Additional Tip #1: Use Community Specific Searches for Buzz Value

The method emphasizes on performing site-specific searches on various social websites and forums to assess the overall popularity of the term.

I’m going to focus on quite a bit of social media marketing alongside the usual search optimization so its very helpful for me to know the popularity and traffic value of a specific term within the social community in question.

For example Fan Forum is the largest online celebrity forum on the internet. If I wanted to promote my content on the forum, I need to know if the sub-niche or topic is widely mentioned and hence attractive to the forum users.

Here’s an example of what I would do if I were performing research on the topic of Lindsay Lohan.

Open a new browser window and go to google.com. After which, type in the following command:

site:fanforum.com lindsay lohan

Which would bring me to this search results page with a list of the number of times Lindsay Lohan, or the niche topic is mentioned. According to Google, there are 1,410 results for this term on fanforum.com alone.

On the other hand if you were to do a similar search for Chuck Norris, you’ll only come up with 3 search result terms. This just means that Lindsay is hot in Fan Forum and unfortunately, Chuck is not.

To get the same information on other websites, you’ll just have to replace fanforum.com with the url of the site you want to explore in detail.

Additional Tip #2: Use SearchSpy tools for Out-of-Box Research

If you absolutely can’t think of any interests or are far too lazy to do any research at all, fear not for there is still a solution. Some search engines often have a spy page which allows you to see what people are searching for in real time.

Dogpile’s SearchSpy tool is one tool that I recommend. Basically all you’ll need to do is to sit back and passively view the stream of searches that show up on the screen. When you see one that interests you, middle click on it to open it in a new tab. After you feel that you’ve opened enough tabs. Click off the spy page and then sort through the results.

This is a an excellent way to think out of the box and I’ve come up with some valuable niche topics with this method. It’s also a more relaxing way to go about the process of selecting a blog niche.

I usually run Dogpile for a few minutes at the end of the day to see if I encounter something worth researching in detail.

It is important to note that search spy sites do not offer package solutions, I’ll still recommend that you run some of the niches that you’ve found through the three steps I’ve listed above.

More on Niche Blogging to come..

The weekend’s here but I’ll try to put up some more short tips on niche blogging when I have the time. The next article will lightly touch on the domain name selection process and hopefully I’ll be able to provide a blog setup checklist all of you can use.

If all this has been rather new to you, I recommend reading my introduction to niche blogging, which will provide some background information on niche blogs and how they can help you to make money online.

If you’ll like to receive free updates on future posts about niche blogging, do consider subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed.

How to Choose the Right Blog Niche: A Simple Three-Step Method

Reviewing my experience with niche blogs, I’ve realized that you need to have a clear personal goal as its easy to be sidetracked by factors that are not a priority at all.

Having a long-term perspective is essential as well, especially if you want to make these niche blogs a profitable source of revenue.

Creating your own Niche Blog Masterplan

There are basically two main options here: Quality or Quantity. While they aren’t mutually exclusive, these are essentially two divided routes, each with their own growth patterns, marketing techniques and monetization strategies.

Let’s split this up and take a closer look at each method.

Quantity or the Brute Force method

This means creating as many niche blogs as possible (till a manageable limit) and writing one post a day or every alternate day on each of them. Your profit strategy is simple: To create multiple blogs, hoping that each of them will pick up search traffic and hence ad clicks.

This method is commonly used by many Made-for-Adsense blogs or websites, which aggregate or scrap content from blog feeds or search engines like Google blog Search.

I’m not suggesting that you do the same thing because these types of blogs are not profitable, despite being fully automated.

• Traffic source: Your main emphasis is on gaining regular search traffic through the gradual development of many long-tailed keywords.




• Development plan: Create content on a regular basis to keep the blog fresh.




• Monetization Goal: To get as many ad or affiliate link clicks as possible through targeted traffic (i.e. search engine visitors.)




• Link building/Marketing strategy. Article or Press Release submissions to article directories for backlinks and possibly Pay per Click advertising if you are mainly monetizing through affiliate programs.




• Benefits: Less pro-active work needed. Most of the time, you’ll just need to consistently develop content. Less emphasis is placed on actual networking and blog marketing.




• Disadvantages: Difficult to manage and time-consuming unless you hire bloggers or writers to create content for these blogs on a long-term basis

Quality or the Flagship Method

This means creating one or two niche blogs at one time and spending time on building your brand and site reputation. The goal is to become an expert on the topic, which naturally draws in referral traffic and links as well.

• Traffic source: The emphasis is on both search traffic and also defensible referral traffic through social networking sites, forums etc.




• Development plan: To build a regular audience around the site. It is important to integrate your blog within a community and this involves socializing quite often with your fellow bloggers. A minimum of one post a day is optimal.




• Monetization Goal: Common methods used includes Adsense and other affiliate programs. This is not much difference between this and from the brute force method, except that you’ll have more potential for direct ad sales as well.




• Link building/Marketing strategy: More emphasis is placed on emailing pitches to other notable bloggers in your niche or developing the occasional linkbait for social websites.




• Benefits: The ability to branch out into ever smaller niches and bringing your audience with you. Higher potential for overall traffic and hence earnings if the flagship blog becomes popular.




• Disadvantages: Flagship blogs need a lot more personal energy because you’ll need to do a lot more marketing of your own material while interacting with the general community.

Picking the Right Niche Blogging Strategy

I’ve decided to go with a blend of both methods above and plan to build the niche blogs to to suit my personal skills.

For instance, I’m very familiar with most social websites/networks and I’ve decided to make sure that the overall style and content of each blog is palatable and attractive to social website audiences.

This also means that instead of just waiting for search traffic, I’m going to throw out a weekly linkbait article and promote it through social media websites and networks.

Seven blogs is a good initial number for me because I do eventually plan to outsource the content creation process by hiring writers or initiating a simple Adsense revenue share program.

This number of blogs is also manageable and allows me to easily measure their progress. Should I feel the need to create more niche blogs, I’ll probably develop them through the initial seven, which I plan to build into medium-sized blogs, each with their own loyal audience base.

Personally, I can blog very quickly on a wide variety of topics and updating these blogs daily should not take more than an hour if you know how to efficiently source for information.

I think its important to base your niche blogging strategy based on the following factors:

• Time. How much time do you have everyday to blog?




• Interest. Are you at least mildly interested in the topics you are writing about?




• Personality. Do you like interacting with other bloggers and marketing your content? Or would you prefer to just focus on your content and let the search engines find you gradually?




• Expertise. How well do you know your chosen topic? This determines how easily you can create content or interact within the community.




• Long term growth. Are you patiently in it for the long haul or are you just interested in making a few quick bucks?




• Budget. Will you be willing to invest money to grow your blogs or are intent on keeping costs as low as possible?

Seven Day Niche Blog Challenge: Day #1 Update

I’ve just started my first blog yesterday and it took around three hours to do up the entire blog. Most of the time was spent on doing research on the specific topics and checking out other similar websites.

I won’t reveal the domains for all the blogs now because I don’t want the niches to be overcrowded. Dosh Dosh has a fairly large audience and disclosing this would be detrimental to any actual ability to measure each niche’s profit potential.

I do however plan to reveal the revenue earnings and the topic at a later date so you’ll get a rough idea of the potential that each specific niche holds.

The next few posts will deal with how to choose an appropriate blog niche and domain/blog name as these are the main issues I had to deal with while setting up the first blog.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, you might want to subscribe to my blog feed for future updates on niche blogging.

How to Create Your Own Niche Blogging Masterplan for Long Term Profit

Simply put, niche blogs are blogs which exclusively focus on a specific subsection of a general and usually popular topic.

For example, gadgets and technology is a general topic field and a blog entirely about robotic pets can be called a niche blog.

Here’s another example: Japanese food is the general topic and a blog that focuses exclusively on bento box designs or Japanese set lunches is a niche blog. To provide more clarity, I’ve made a checklist of the key points which determine a successful niche blog.

Five Characteristics of a Successful Niche Blog

1. Laser-focused Content. The niche blog has a very tight content focus and all of its blog posts must be strongly related to the niche while only occasionally including material in the general field from which it is drawn.




2. Small Scope. The niche blog has a small content scope, which allows it to easily go in depth on the chosen topic and dominate it.




3. Unique Material. While niche blogs can be created through feed-based aggregation of content via search engines or other blogs, they have more longterm value for visitors if they offer content that is unique and currently unpublished on other websites.




4. Monetization-friendly Blog Template. Basically, you’ll need a fairly unique blog template that is easily customizable and flexible enough to accommodate heavy monetization.




5. Has an audience. It is important to choose a niche that actually has an audience, no matter how small. Ideally, the niche should be one that will naturally receive search engine visitors over time.

How do I Make Money with a Niche Blog?

Let it be known from the onset that the monetization strength of a niche blog lies in its exclusive and ever deepening focus on one topic and nothing else.

Niche blogs are remarkably easy to monetize and they can be very profitable in terms of ad earnings. For example, a niche product blog will do well with product and action-orientated advertising networks like Auction Ads and Chitika.

This tight focus on a specific topic also opens up a lot of doors to relevant affiliate programs, which can provide recursive income.

These ad networks can and usually are accompanied by Google Adsense, a popular contextual advertising solution that complements the keyword/phrase heavy content that are found in all niche blogs.

Google Adsense is a remarkably fuss-free way to make money from any website and niche blogs are no exception. Some reasons why Adsense and Niche blogs fit together:

• Relevancy. In most cases, Adsense provides targeted advertising that fits your content well, especially if your blog posts are keyword dense and doesn’t stray from the general blog topic.




• Effectiveness. Depending on your ad placement and blending, Adsense is one of the best ways to make money from search traffic. Visitors arriving at your blog are looking for specific information and Adsense tends to fill that need quite well.




• Passive Income. Adsense is more or less a set-and-forget system which allows you to concentrate on producing more content that attracts and retains visitors to your blog. It provides a basic monetization level that can be supplemented by other ad programs.

Seven Day Blog Challenge Updates

I’m planning to keep my blog posts on this niche blogging experiments short because I require a lot more time everyday for research and the actual process of setting up and optimizing each blog. That means no 2000 word posts from me. ^-^

I’m going to be terribly busy so content for this week will largely involve snap-shot style candid musings on the entire process, brief introductions to specific concepts and tips on niche blogging in general.

I’m not going to be vague about the whole thing and will focus on offering more direct advice on all the nitty-gritty details on things you need to know if you want to set up your own niche blog.

My next post will give a brief outline of my overall niche blog strategy/masterplan and here’s a sneak preview of what you will be reading in future posts:

• How to pick and choose a domain name
• How to perform keyword research on new topics
• How to assess the monetization and profit potential for a blog niche
• A checklist to follow and speed up your new blog setup process
• The Long Tail of Search and Google Adsense
• Content development strategies and tips
• Methods to get more search traffic
• Social media optimization and marketing for niche blogs
• Outsourcing your blog: Going the autopilot route

I would recommend subscribing to Dosh Dosh’s blog feed or subscribing via email as it will easily allow you to get updates on new content when they are published.

Any suggestions on what you’ll like to learn more about? Leave a comment!

An Introduction to Niche Blogging

I have an voracious appetite for experimentation and I’ve had my share of unfinished projects due to a lack of time or interest.

What’s important however, was that I learned a lot from each of them.

In fact, one of the main reasons why I’m still writing at Dosh Dosh on a daily basis after several months is mainly because I’m using this blog as a journal to record down the experiences and observations which result from efforts on some of my other websites.

Personal Knowledge and the Value of Case Studies

I’m a firm believer in developing knowledge through personal experiences. To learn if a specific method (e.g. blogging) will earn you a decent income requires that you set up a blog and try to do something with it

One cannot appreciate the potential of a specific niche or monetization method, nor understand its flaws and compatibility with your goals unless one has personal experience with it. Just reading the thoughts of others will not suffice.

Dosh Dosh’s Seven Day Niche Blog Challenge

From tomorrow onwards, I’ve decided to start a new blog everyday for the period of 7 days, by the end of which I should have 7 new blogs, each in specific niches.

Unlike Dosh Dosh, these blogs will be monetized early on and will be built explicitly for profit through contextual ad networks like Google Adsense and various other relevant affiliate programs.

Their purpose: to serve as case studies which will allow me to develop more definitive knowledge on search engine optimization, niche blogging and monetization tactics.

These additional blogs will allow me to develop more experience in different content areas and I expect to learn new things about ad networks like Adsense as well as effective methods to drive ever more traffic towards these blogs.

I’ll try to share some experiences I have with setting up and monetizing these blogs over the next few days as I’m quite sure that they will provide me with a wealth of material that might be useful for all of you out there.

Joining the Challenge: Creating Your Own Case Studies

If you’re interested in diversifying your website portfolio and revenue sources, now is a good time to do so. I would highly suggest setting a similar challenge for yourself, perhaps to also start seven new blogs in seven days or something else that suits your schedule and interests.

The best way to learn is simply to put what you have read into practice through your own money making projects. Experimentation with site building and traffic generating tactics will provide you with a valuable skill-set for future online projects.

If you own a blog about blogging, internet marketing or making money, you could also use these case studies as fodder to provide more valuable information for your audience.

You’ve watched other people make money online long enough. Now it’s time for you to take the center stage.

Niche Blogging: Seven Day Blog Challenge

I’ve already mentioned the benefits of being an authority in your blog niche, which includes advantages such as a higher level of visitor trust and personal influence, which allows you to maximize your ad and affiliate selling potential.

Being regarded as an authority on a topic enables you to be easily referenced by others while allowing you to develop several other ways to make money. This includes consultation services, conference speaking duties as well as paid guest author gigs on other blogs.

If you’re really looking to make money on the web, building niche popularity for your website or personal brand is very important. In many cases, the monetary benefits will far justify the effort needed.

Kicking off the Blog Niche Series

The first case study in this series is actually not a blogger, but a YouTube user that I’ve admired for a long time. While I can’t confirm the user’s gender, I’m going to refer to the user as a he just for convenience’s sake.

I regularly watch this user’s videos and I think his profile and work is a classic example which demonstrates how to become an notable figure in any blogging niche.

Introducing Hoopsencyclopedia: Internet Hoops Video Extraordinaire

Anyone who has ever looked for Michael Jordan videos on the internet or YouTube knows that Hoopsencyclopedia is the undisputed source for all things Jordan. This is an due to the sheer amount of material produced and uploaded by Hoops over the period of a little over a year.

While some popular YouTube vloggers have more than 10,000 channel subscribers, most of their work is based on their personalities and doesn’t specifically focus on a niche topic or market.

In comparison, Hoops is a user that only has 1,618 subscribers but his videos are very well received within a niche audience. Judging by the comments left on his profile and the videos he uploaded, there is a tremendous amount of respect by YouTube users for his work.

Produce Unique Material: Originality is Attractive

Most of the videos put up by Hoops are unique in Youtube itself, as most of the Jordan clips were manual edits of entire basketball games.

Hoops has painstakingly included all the noteworthy moments from Michael Jordan, to come up with material not found elsewhere. The attractiveness of his work to most internet basketball fans is primarily centered on its originality and archival focus.

I’ve personally seen several forums or websites reference these videos because they were not available elsewhere on either YouTube or other video websites.

Niche Tip: If you produce unique material not found elsewhere, it will very likely to be referenced by other bloggers, some of whom thrive on linking to high quality original content.

Pick a Niche by Narrowing Your Focus: Be a Sub-Topic Expert

Basketball videos and fansites are all over the internet and NBA video clips are especially prevalent on Youtube. Most YouTube fans upload a wide variety of videos which includes game clips, music videos and individual tributes to current NBA stars like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade or Kobe Bryant.

Hoops stands out because he only focuses on Michael Jordan clips alone. He doesn’t upload any other videos and this dedication has eventually led to the largest and most renowned collection of Jordan videos on Youtube. This has, of course led to his notoriety and fame as an basketball video maker.

If you do a search on YouTube for ‘Michael Jordan’, you’ll be hard pressed not to find his videos showing up on the first page. Similarly, this intense focus on one topic will lead to strong traffic from search engines, primarily because all your blog posts will contain highly relevant and related content on the topic.

The volume of material published will also ensure that you’re likely to rank well for a massive variety of long tail keywords.

Niche Tip: Pick a popular field and narrow it down to a sub-niche that is manageable or not overly competitive. Dominate it by focusing exclusively on topics within the niche.

The general popularity of the field leads to a trickle-down effect: Readers will naturally gravitate towards sub-topic experts.

Provide Personal Commentary at all Times: Always Editorialize

While most Youtubers don’t describe their clips or only include a cursory one-liner, Hoops always offers his personal critique and analysis of the clips he uploads.

This often results in a three paragraph report which includes quotes, news reports and game statistics. See this video and look at description on the right side of the video for an example.

This does two things: It gives viewers a context from which to understand and better appreciate the value of the clip shown. It also adds to the overall viewing experience.

More importantly, this demonstrates Hoopsencylopedia’s knowledge on the subject (Michael Jordan) and instantly makes him a perceived authority who is very familiar and comfortable with the topic at hand.

Niche Tip: Providing a personal opinion on a topic can contextualize any content and make it more accessible for reader consumption. Commentary is important because it allows you showcase your knowledge on topics in your blog niche.

Interact with Your Audience & Peers: Develop Long-term Relationships

I particularly like the fact the Hoops interacts with his audiences by replying to specific queries about each clip and interacting with other NBA video makers. A look at his profile shows that he subscribes to other YouTuber user channels and has favorited over 35 specific videos by other users.

He isn’t just putting up videos and ignoring the viewers. He interacts with them and shares his knowledge freely without reservation. This allows him to get immediate updates on his specialized topic and generally allows him to garner a fair amount of respect among his peers.

Niche Tip: Networking and interacting with your audience or fellow niche bloggers allows you to share common knowledge on the field.

This builds long term relationships and positions you even more strongly as an expert in the field. This is particularly important when you are using your blog to pitch or sell specific affiliate programs.

Some thoughts on the blog series..

I am planning to make these case studies a regular feature in the hope that I’ll build up a large list of excellent examples, which will allow everyone to learn from these specific personalities/bloggers or social website users.

Any comments on what you would like to see in future case studies would be very much appreciated. Thanks!

Becoming a Leader in Your Blog Niche: Lessons from a YouTube Power User

This series of case studies to come will feature specific bloggers and will include analysis of their content development strategies, marketing tactics as well as their other efforts on building an influential social profile.

The case studies will also cover active social media power users and will include interviews of various bloggers and personalities.


Being an Authority in Your Niche Will help you Make Money

Why the emphasis on forerunners in a specific niche? Because being perceived as an authority on a topic or in an industry leads to many benefits for your blogging career, especially when it comes to monetization and the art of making serious money from your blog.

Being an authority in your niche will:

• Increase your readership and audience. When you’re considered to be an expert on a specific topic, audiences with an interest in the niche will follow your blog because it provides them with relevant information as well as inspirational fodder for their own blogs, businesses or websites.




• Make you inherently linkable. While not everything you write is link-worthy, the sheer amount of the people tracking your blog ensures that it naturally has a high link-attracting potential. Links will of course bring new audiences, SEO benefits and longterm traffic.




• Develop your Ad Selling potential. Your ability to negotiate for buying ad pricing and arrangements depend not only on your traffic levels, but also partly on your ability to influence opinion.




• Naturally develop word-of-mouth recommendations. If an absolute newbie were to ask you to recommend one website about making money with blogs, would you suggest Problogger instead of other newer or less established blogs? Authority blogs dominate the playing field when it comes to beginners who need information on a specific topic.




• Maximize your affiliate selling potential. Buyer consumption is heavily dependant on trust and and being regarded as one of the top dogs in a niche allows your personal recommendations to carry a lot of weight.




• Create money making opportunities away from your blog. Consultations, networking conferences, paid writing gigs at other websites, product sales, blog collaborations and joint business ventures are just some of the options that come from being recognized as an expert in a niche.

How You can Contribute to This Series

I already have some blogs/bloggers, non-blogging personalities and social media users in mind but I would really love to hear your suggestions on who you’ll like to see under the Dosh Dosh microscope.

Can you think of any blogs or personalities who are seen as established thought leaders and influential information channelers in your niche?

Who would you like to see interviewed, torn apart and studied in depth by yours truly? The case studies don’t necessarily have to pertain to the field of blogging, affiliate marketing or general money making.

Any niche, topic or field is fine with me. Please let me know your suggestions and I’ll definitely try to work on some of the ones I find fascinating and challenging.

I’ll also suggest subscribing to my blog feed, if you haven’t already done so as this will easily allow you to receive updates on the all case studies published.

How to be an Authority in Your Blog Niche: A Series of Case Studies on Dosh Dosh