Archives for March, 2011

31
Mar

Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Search optimization is the process by which you make your content visible to search engines and thus to people who are looking for what you are selling or talking about.  It is when you make your content ‘search engine friendly’; content that places like Google and Yahoo will want to rank.  Search engine optimization is an art and a science; it’s all about balancing readability with the proper implementation of keywords and the proper set up of your website..  You can hire people to write correctly SEO happy articles and set up your site, or you can do it yourself.  Properly optimized websites are going to have the following characteristics, so keep them in mind when you are doing the work.

Proper Site Set-Up

It’s not enough to simply set out to make money online fast, you have to have a proper plan and a good place to do it from.  Proper site set up is one of the keys to getting good attention from the search engine robots.  When you are setting up your website, make sure to choose a domain name that most accurately describes what you are selling or doing and in as short a name as possible.

Then, your site has to be set up so it is as easy as possible for visitors and ‘bots to navigate.  Make sure you have a site map, deep links (links on your page that goes to other pages within your site), and prominent heading tags that make it obvious what you’re selling and dealing with.  These kinds of things take practice, so starting with a platform may be a good idea if you’re a complete newcomer to the practice.  The bottom line though here though is to keep your site dead easy to navigate; remember, the search ‘bots aren’t people and they need their ‘hands’ held every step of the way in order to go through and properly index your site.

Keywords

Keywords/key phrases are the target words or phrases that you want search engines to concentrate on.  Examples are things like: ‘leather belt’, ‘making money online’, or ‘cheap textbooks’.  Searching out the correct keywords for your money making endeavours is mostly a matter of research.  You can use the Google keyword search tools such as the Wonder Wheel to narrow down specific niches within broad keywords.  For example, if you want to make money online through the selling of movies, you would narrow down this broad topic to things like ‘cheap movies’, ‘cheap movies online’ or ‘find cheap movies online’.

Researching keywords and phrases takes time, but it’s well worth it as it gives you a framework from which to launch your online career and make money fast!

Getting People to You

The final way to make money online is to of course set up your site in such a way that visitors will actually show up.  This is where things like a short and easy URL (domain name) and your meta tags come in.  Meta tags are the tags which tell both the search engine and possible visitors who and what you are; make sure that they include your main keyword/phrase and are catchy enough to bring people to your site.

Search engine optimization techniques are like the proper placement of bulletins, ads, and your presence for an offline store; it’s all about attracting the right attention and keeping it that way.  Search engine optimization is very important if you want to make money online and the better you do it, the more easy money you will make, so be sure to do it right!

29
Mar

How to Choose a Profitable Niche Online

Obviously at least one of your niche websites you will choose because you want to make money off it.  While going by your passions is a good idea, you should opt to have at least one ‘money making’ site; one that is far more likely to net big profits.  That’s why knowing how to choose a profitable niche online is important and who knows?  It could be that you’ll enjoy doing it anyway and if you’re careful about your research, you can find something within your passion that is still profitable.

There are a surprising number of free tools out there geared towards helping you find profitable niches, keywords and popular searches if you just know where to look for them and how to use for them.  You can also take advantage of trial software that can let you do the research into your profitable niches for free while the trial is going and then you can either buy it outright or just dump it and use your notes.  Proper utilization of these tools will allow you to build niche sites that are more profitable quicker and thus can fund your passion fuelled sites as well as the rest of your life.

Google Research

Google has some very useful tools that can help you choose a profitable niche online.  The WonderWheel allows you to choose good niche keywords to target based off of larger keywords and phrases which you type into the search engine.  The WonderWheel is not specifically geared towards finding profitable sites, but you can figure out a good list of possible niche keywords to target since it will show you stats such as how often that phrase is searched.  The more profitable your niche the more money you will make online. Another good search tool is the Google Word Tracker which can tell you how often a cluster of words has been searched in a day.  It’s a good idea to aim for niches that are searched a bare minimum of 500 times a day. Other wise you wont make enough money for your efforts.

You can also check to see how many backlinks your competition sites have in order to check on demand.  Yahoo Site Explorer has an option whereby you type in a domain name and you can check to see how many backlinks it has by checking URLs linking to it (aside from it linking to itself of course).  This will give you a good idea of how competitive your niche is.  Optimally, you want the top sites to have less than 100 backlinks so that you aren’t eternally backlinking yourself. You always want to balance how the amount you make online and your time spent working

Software

There are a number of programs out there that can help you figure out some profitable niches online by telling you statistics for searches and letting you do keyword research.  Market Samurai is a well known one; it is a comprehensive, easy to use tool that has a thirty day trial period, but there are plenty of other ones out there too.  You don’t have to use any software at all, but if you want more automated research, you can give it a spin.

In order to make a profitable site, you have to do the research into choosing a profitable niche online.  This usually at least takes a few hours or a couple of days, but it’s well worth it.  You’ll have a roadmap of articles to write, an idea of affiliates to join up with and of course a better chance of making more money online.  Make sure to do the work needed to choose a profitable niche online and you’ll make more money online by doing so.

28
Mar

Make Money Online Consulting

Maybe you don’t want to sell products and you aren’t too terribly interested in freelance writing or particularly blogging.  What else can you do to make money online?  This question may seem as though it has no answer, but as long as you have some expertise in something, there is a niche for you: making money as a consultant online.

An online consultant is someone who helps people with their problems, concerns, questions or dealing with something in life, just like a ‘real life’ consultant.  As an online consultant, you can help people with a range of things.  Some of the most popular things to consult in include money, relationships, nutrition/diets and tech, though in all honesty, if you push yourself as a consultant, you can help out people in a whole range of subjects; after all, everyone goes to the ‘net now for information!

You will have to start in the traditional manner though: writing articles, doing blogs, and/or social media marketing or else no one will know what you are selling.  However if you really don’t want to do this, you can always hire others to do this work for you or make these articles and social networking part of your research into your larger projects and services so that some of the work will already be done when you go into consulting full time.

The trick to making money as a consultant lies in doing things like writing E-books on your knowledge and skills, doing videos showing people how to do what you do or putting out e-courses.  All of those gurus you see online professing to be able to do everything from help you to lose weight to saving money are all at least claiming to be consultants-whether or not they actually help is another matter of course!  Go with your strengths; offer information on things you actually know a lot about and then put it in a format you feel comfortable working with.  For example, if you don’t like writing, go for a video or something auditory like a podcast.  You can then sell your info-product on your website, through E-bay or any other site like that.

If you don’t want to just put out info-products, you can also sell your time as a consultant.  You can do things like put out webinars where you can communicate directly with your public and give classes or seminars for money.  You probably won’t have much success doing these right away unless you’re already well known for something, but it is something to consider once you start getting well known with your products and want to move on to something else.  Other things you can do include teaching courses on your specialities or mentoring people.

Being able to make money as a consultant online is a great way to share your knowledge with others and make money at the same time without selling products or doing affiliate marketing.  If you have an expertise in something that other people will want to learn more about and the ability to convey it in a way that will actually be helpful for others and profitable for you, then you should become an online consultant.

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