Now we get into the nitty gritty, where we need to make a decision on which niche to go with. Many people tell you should follow something you are very interested in, or passionate about. I’m not too sure about the practicality of that, although it does have its positive aspects which means that you probably wont lose interest in the topic, whereas if you pick a niche that holds very little interest to you at all, then chances are, once you start seeing little of no results for all your hard work, you’re more likely to let it go, than if you were interested in it. So, I’ll leave it up to you to make up your own mind as to whether or not, you’d prefer to follow a niche of interest.

Now, when it comes to finding a niche to do the research on, I have several ideas that help kick start my decision making process.

1)  I look to books like ‘dummies’ series, as these are all thoroughly research proven niche markets that the ‘dummies’ company has done all the work for you in researching whether or not there is a viable market in that particular niche or sub niche. You really cant go wrong selecting a niche along the lines of one of their books

2)  Research the bestselling books (non fiction generally) on Amazon.com. Amazon being the biggest book seller in the world, provides a wealth of information on which topics are hot, and their range of subjects and topics is as wide as your imagination

3) One of my personal favorite methods in addition to the above, is to browse through the PLR sites, that offer Free PLR Ebooks, and articles. Their subject matter, and topics, are also often highly sought after, valuable niche markets, where there is an evergreen need for specific products. Be careful with this method though, as the content from these free PLR sources is likely to have been used thousands of times, so whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of copying these PLR articles and ebooks for future use, as this will just impede your progress in getting ranked in Google (more about this later) due to Google’s demand, and requirement for original high quality content.

For my own niche market selection, I like to spend a lot of my time on picking the right niche market, and then once I’ve narrowed down two or three niche markets, hopefully within the same vertical, I will then spend the vast majority of my time researching the keywords.

So, between now and the next post, I will make a decision on my niche and then I’ll reveal the processes I go through to discover my primary keyword.

Till next time.

Creating a Passive Income online isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to achieve. The biggest problem with creating an online passive or residual income is deciding which business model you want to achieve this with. You see, there are literally hundreds (if not possibly thousands) of varying strategies and techniques to achieve the same goal, so therefore this first post is all about the self discussion as to which business model we are going to channel our efforts into to achieve our ultimate goal of having a ‘job replacement’ passive income.

The first thing I really ant to discuss is the end goal, for without an end goal (or should this be an interim goal) we are really just driving in the dessert without a map, and a compass. We would have no idea where we are going, or even when we got there, let alone the possibility that we could end up going round and round in never ending circles actually going nowhere.

Right then, I’ve decided for the purposes of this particular niche site that the initial goal is going to be $100 per month. Once I reach this goal, I will review the site and it’s potential to determine whether or not it is better to;

a) Keep adding content and growing it into an authority site, and accordingly grow its earnings further, or

b) Put it into maintenance mode, and try and replicate this with another niche site

The other possibility might be that no matter what I do, I might have selected a bad niche site to build, and that it really doesn’t have a great deal of potential. (It happens) Therefore, I’ve also made another decision that after 4 months of consistent efforts, if the site isn’t achieving any notable rankings, and also it isn’t making a dime, (plus or minus a dime) over that 4 month period, then I will either quite it on Flippa (if it has a value) or I’ll let it go, and move on to another niche site.

Having said that, my intention is to follow the business model, whereby I will monetize it with adsense, possibly CPA, and relevant affiliate products. Depending on the niche site, I might also decide to create a product, or ebook to include for sale on the site. Likewise, I will also be trying to build up a list associated to this niche.

Well there you have it in a nutshell. That’s my plan at this stage. I’d love to hear your comments, and, if you’d like to follow my progress, then please join my list, and watch this whole thing unfold together .

It’s been a while since I made a post on this blog, but I wanted to write something that has over the past few months been gathering some momentum for me, and that’s the creation of a stable and regular passive income by way of a number of good performing niche sites.

It’s no secret, that many people come to Internet Marketing through the lure of instant and fast riches, and if you’re prepared to work a certain way, then there is the possibility that could happen for you, however many of the tricks and secrets used by these types of people just doesn’t sit well with me. I’m more your traditional business person. I like to create a business that has respectability to it. Something that you can be proud to say you have built from the ground up, and also something that you know will still be there, working well for you in several years time.

The purpose of this post, really is to let you know that I intend to setup a whole new niche site, from scratch, and that I’ll be reporting my progress on this blog site so that you can follow my experimentations, see what worked, understand what didn’t, so that you can hopefully learn how to create your own sites without having to invest a fortune, but hopefully setting yourself up to make one over a period of time.

This won’t be a race, as I’m not setting myself up to achieve or fail inside a set time period, rather I want to have certain goals, I can aim for, and hopefully achieve in whatever time period I set myself.

With the recent and ongoing Panda updates affecting many sites these days, it’s become vitally important that everything you do on the web, in terms of producing content now needs to be original, and valuable, otherwise you will be penalized in your rankings.

I have a few ideas I’ve developed of my own to help my sites get to high rankings in the SERPS, and over the past two and a half years, I’ve certainly learned a lot, bought a lot of tools, and training sessions (some good, some rubbish) and have developed some of my own strategies, again some that seem to have worked, and some that haven’t.  I’ll be laying everything bare on this blog, as I go from scratch to hopefully several thousands of dollars per month in passive income, and hope that you enjoy the journey with me. I’d really appreciate if you could show me your support by subscribing to my list, so that each time I post a new post on the blog, you can be kept up to date with developments.

And, just to give you an idea of where I’m at presently, I make some OK money from the web at the moment, but certainly nothing that could enable me to quit my day job yet, hence I’m treating this experiment as if I was a complete newbie when it comes to earnings, and that means I won’t be using any of my old subscriber lists either to enhance my subscribers or my income levels (which I hope to also be able to reveal to you regularly as well) as we go through the development of this niche site together.

So without further ado, let the games begin, and welcome once again.

Look out for the next post, which will be the start of the journey

Starting an Internet business, is probably in many ways the perfect business to start. You just need to determine what your market niche is, and what model you will use to make sales. This is often a problem many newbie internet business owners have, is that they think that there is some magic button, or secret system, they can have set up, and then they don’t need to do anything else, – that the money will just roll in. This is far from the truth, the business will take some effort and time (but not a lot of expense) to start, and being an internet business, it will also take often months for it to get ranked in the (free) organic search results, so it can be a long road before any profits are actually seen.

So, when you decide you want to startup an internet business, take the time to decide which of the market niches to focus on, and as a word of advice, identify a market where there is strong demand, and ideally a limited number of sellers. There will usually be lots of competition, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because if there is a lot of demand, and a lot of people/businesses competing for that demand, then that proves that there is certainly money within that niche, and it’s just a matter of setting up, and positioning your business to pick up your share of that market. Just remember, in a high demand, busy niche, there is usually always room for new entrants to the market, and usually plenty of money to be shared amongst all the participants.

So, as a final comment regarding your internet business start up, just concentrate on your market niche, and also try and work out what will make your business different. What will be your unique selling proposition (USP) as you need to set yourself apart from all the other competition in your niche.

Many people use the term free, because they are trying to set up their business on a shoestring, and usually have very little money to invest.  This isn’t necessarily a great way to start a business, as there is the latent belief that because I have started my business with little or no money, that I don’t really need to invest the time or effort into it, therefore if it fails, it doesn’t matter, because it hasn’t cost me anything.

When you have an investment in your business that is sufficient that you don’t want to end up losing it, then you are more likely to follow through and put far more time and effort into making it work. Therefore be careful when looking for free home based business opportunities, as they are seldom free, and if they are free, then there is bound to be a cost in a different form, and often that is your time. Also be very wary of investing your time for very little return, as time is one commodity that you cant regain once it is spent

For example, if you need to get money quick to cover the repair costs of a broken down car, then obviously, you probably need a few hundred dollars within a few days, which is entirely achievable through buying and selling products, or working some extra time at a job, however if you need to get money quick to cover off a $10,000 gambling debt, or else, you’re going to have your kneecaps crushed, then the options open to you are pretty limited.

So, the rationale behind getting money quickly is usually attached to some desperate personal crisis, and in times like this, the normal channels of working and earning money aren’t likely to provide you with the answers you need. Short of borrowing the money you need from family, or friends, a credit card, or a friendly bank, or financial institution, there aren’t really any ‘quick money’ legitimate business opportunities that are going to provide you with fast money.

Therefore, if you’ve got the thought in your head, that the Internet is somehow going to be a savior for you, and be able to provide you a fast cash windfall, you’d better think again. It won’t. If however, you’re thinking of staring an Internet business, that you want to generate you big sums of money over time, then yes, this is possible, but it may take years (just like any business take to grow and prosper) and lots of work, heartache, and  frustration, but in the end, there is the very real possibility an Online business could provide you with the wealth that you desire. It’s just that it wont enable you to get money quick.

Rather than ‘make easy money’, a better description would be “Use the Internet to create your own wealth building business” because in reality, we have never had a better vehicle in all of our lifetimes, than we have now, with the Internet to create true wealth and prosperity for ourselves and our families for years to come.

The Internet exposes us to the world’s population as possible potential customers for our online business, and with very little cost associated in being able to reach these people.

So, all in all, it’s not ideal to go in search of making quick easy money on the Internet, as you will expose yourself to those ready and willing to extract money from you by selling you unrealistic promises of quick wealth, and false expectations.

Be very wary of what you seek, and what attracts you, as there will be plenty promising you the world for very little, and in the Internet marketing world, anything that seems too good to be true probably is.