As explained in my last post, I am putting together a 3-part series on how you can start to make money online – this is where you begin:

This is a very basic method that is easy enough for just about anyone to do. You are going to build a site with content that you will write and links to products related to that content.

Overview of the method:

You should assume that any link within this post is an affiliate link for which I might receive compensation.

Part 1

Determine Product/Category

**Read entire step before taking any action**

Your product or category is often referred to as the “niche.” I gave you homework (if you read the last post) which was to figure out 3-5 things that you are interested in that does not involve sitting in front of the computer. Basically – your hobbies that are not internet related. Why not internet related? Because I do not want you to start by trying to make a site around digital products – I want your site to be based upon physical products for two reasons:

1. The perceived value of digital products is much less than that of a physical product – one less hurdle to overcome when you are just starting.
2. The return rate of digital products can be quite high – much less in the physically delivered product world. You don’t need added discouragement when starting out.

So if you haven’t figure out 3-5 areas of interest yet – do it now before continuing.

You need some ideas?

Golf, knitting, cooking, reading, pets, toys, boating, exercising, collectibles, electronics, guitar, kites, shoes, handbags, electronics, hand tools, gardening – you get the idea. I want you to pick a hobby or area of interest that has associated items that you could go to the store or find on Amazon.com and buy right now.

Once you have picked out 3-5 areas of interest, I want you to seriously think about which one you have the most knowledge in, and are most interested in. Unlike a lot of other marketers who will tell you that you just need to pick a hot market and you don’t need to know anything about it, I will tell you from personal experience that when you are starting out – pick something you are interested in and something that you know a whole lot of other people are interested in. Your entrance in the world of internet marketing will be a lot more fun if you choose a topic you are actually interested in. Pick something you have no interest in and this will become work – trust me.

Now that you have picked your top item, I want you to go to Amazon.com and type in your broad search term (the hobby you are interested in) – and see what kind of items it returns. Are there a wide variety of items? Did it show you items that you as someone interested in that hobby might want to buy? If not, you will need to figure that one out. Why aren’t there many items listed related to your chosen hobby? Maybe you chose “cockroach racing” as your hobby – if so, this is where you are going to have to put your thinking cap on and figure if that is something a whole lot of other people are interested in. If you think your market will be very limited, drop that one and go onto the next “best” one on your list and repeat the process till you find a good one – make a bigger list if necessary.

Once you have chosen your topic (we will use dogs for our example) you will then need to start your keyword research – this is where you are going to dig down deep and find the niche you are going after.

Keyword Research

This is often overlooked – or just plain skipped by many new to internet marketing, but it is absolutely essential that you do it. I am going to give you a brief tutorial on how to do it for the purposes of this method. This is not keyword research for your content, but for the overall “tone” of your site. Do this right from the beginning and things will go a lot better for you. I recommend you browse through (and use) the free tools that I link to in my article on keyword research for more in-depth information on keyword research.

So I said I am interested in dogs, but just thinking about consumer habits, do people just go and pick up a dog at the store on a regular basis? No, that is usually a big decision for a person to make – and I don’t think you can buy a dog on Amazon.com – at least I hope not. Besides, when I look at Google’s keyword tool, I notice that there are 37,200,000 monthly searches that include the word “dogs” – that means that there are also a whole lot of websites out there with the word “dogs” in it – much too broad a category for me. However, I know from doing a little research into my niche that pet owners spend a lot of money on their pets – an estimated $45.5 Billion according to the American Pet Products Association – that looks like a big market that I might just be able to get a little slice of the pie from. So I think about dogs and the products associated with them, and I am absolutely fascinated with dog collars – not really – but I am very interested in dogs and dog behavior. The collar chosen can make a big impact and I know something about dog collars – so I am choosing this as my “niche.” So I go back to the Google keyword tool and put in the search term “dog collars” – which returns a list of search terms – those would be all the ones listed under:

BREAKAWAYCOLLARS.COM CHAINDOGCOLLARS.COM CHOKEDOGCOLLARS.COM CUTEDOGCOLLAR.COM DAISYDOGCOLLAR.COM DESIGNERLEATHERDOGCOLLARS.COM DOGCHAINCOLLARS.COM DOGHARNESSESLEATHER.COM DOGLEADSCOLLARS.COM DOGLEASHLEATHER.COM DOGMARTINGALECOLLARS.COM HOLIDAYDOGCOLLAR.COM LEATHERSTUDDEDDOGCOLLARS.COM LUPINEDOGCOLLAR.COM NYLONDOGLEASH.COM PERSONALIZEDLEATHERDOGCOLLAR.COM PINKLEATHERDOGCOLLARS.COM PREPPYDOGCOLLARS.COM ROLLEDLEATHERCOLLARS.COM SHOWDOGCOLLARS.COM

Then I copy and paste keyword domains into the Google keyword tool once again – removing the .com and making spaces between the words and I get even more results which I run through GoDaddy’s bulk register tool and these are the best ones it returned:

ADJUSTABLENYLONDOGCOLLAR.COM DOGBLINGCOLLARS.COM DOGCOLLARGOLD.COM DOGLEASHESCOLLARS.COM DOGNAMECOLLAR.COM DOGNYLONCOLLARS.COM ROLLEDDOGCOLLAR.COM SPIKEDPINKDOGCOLLAR.COM

I first thought of going with DogLeashLeather.com from the first group which which has a broad keyword match of 18,100 searches per month, but after reviewing the second group, I found DogLeashesCollars.com which has 60,500 searches a month – that is a good domain. Now just a note, some will say that an exact match is what matters most for the domain and this may be true, but it is increasingly difficult to find these – broad matches do work!

So quickly, what was all that work for? You want a domain name that is as close as possible to a popular search term for your particular niche. If you do this from the beginning, it will be a lot easier to rank higher in Google for that search term.

Acquire Domain and Hosting

This is a very simple process – many of you will have already done this, but for those that haven’t – this is all you have to do:

Follow the above steps to find the domain name that you want and you can purchase it with your hosting package or if you want to grab the domain by itself if you aren’t ready for hosting, then purchase your domain from www.GoDaddy.com or www.NameCheap.com.

If you are ready for hosting, just go to www.HostGator.com (trust me on HostGator) and get your hosting. If you are nervous about this and want someone to walk you through it via skype of Yahoo Messenger, I might be able to help (click here) – but you’d have to contact me before you purchase your hosting. All you need is the “Baby Plan” which you can pay the full year upfront, or pay monthly.

Now you have your domain and hosting – it will take a day or so for your domain to propagate – which just means even if you put your site up, you wouldn’t see it on the internet right away.

While you are waiting for step 2, familiarize yourself with your c-panel – it may like difficult, but it really isn’t. You will not use many of the features, but some of them will make your life so much more simple – especially when it comes time to put up your site which will be a Wordpress blog – if you don’t know about that – you can read up on it at WordPress.org – don’t download it though – there will be no need for that.

That’s it for now. You may have a lot of questions – please feel free to ask below and I will do my best to answer your questions.

Similar Posts:

• What’s in a name?
• Making Money Online
• Anchor Text 101
• Master of Your Own Domain
• Discover the Hot Search Engine Keywords with Keyword Research Tool

This entry was posted on April 15, 2010 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Make Money Online. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.