Avoid Scams Online

by admin

Sadly there are many scammers out there just waiting to fleece you of your hard earned cash. Some are done so well and are so tempting that you want to believe it and don’t realise until you are already inside, money gone. Let’s help you to avoid scams online.

When you start out

It is easy to get caught when you are first looking at starting a business. The minute you click on anything to do with home based business on any platform the adverts will start coming at you. You thought those social media platforms policed that sort of thing? Nope! As long as they are paying for ads they don’t care what they put in it as long as it meets the guidelines for setting it up. Let’s face it, the scammers are skilled at creating ads that work, look good to draw you in and sound plausible.

There are many legitimate online businesses that you can buy into or associate yourself with but always check for potential problems. Read on for some things to look out for when starting a new business.

What to look out for!

The first red flag

Is if there is a claim that you will get rich overnight or gain unbelievable wealth with almost no effort. If it seems unbelievable, it probably is.

Other common claims are:

Newbie friendly, a complete novice can do this.
Set up in 3 clicks.
Set up in 15/30 minutes, neither is plausible because if you check carefully there will be videos to watch.
You can start earning money within 2 hours, 6 hours, 24 hours or any other variation. In that short space of time, no one is going to know you are there, unless they are personally going to share your site everywhere with paid ads or on large social media accounts.
Already has content reviews. That of course is pointless as Google will see it as plagiarised content and not index it. Why? The same content will be on all the other sites that have just been sold. Unless of course you can alter it or add your own which usually means shelling out more cash.

Be sure to read user reviews from reputable websites and check consumer reporting publications and websites. With all the information available online, there is no excuse for being taken advantage of, although having said that, it is easy to be caught on the spur of the moment.

What else?

Some will show you a big house with an expensive car as ‘proof ‘ of the lifestyle you can live if you just buy that super duper ‘system’. Occasionally you see the person sitting at a kitchen table or worktop on their laptop, kitchen is huge, immaculately clean and not a personal item in sight usually. All very staged, these will usually be for the more expensive ‘systems’. These types were very prevalent a year or two ago but not seen any for a while, though it doesn’t mean they aren’t there targeting new users.

Remain Sceptical

Never believe it when someone tells you that a business will practically run itself. It will not. The effort you put in will be directly proportional to the results that come out of it. Nothing will ever replace hard work, dedication and a vision for the future.

If you do affiliate marketing you will get passive income from sites that no longer need much doing to them, just a post a week perhaps to keep them going. But by then you will have others you are bringing along to the same point.

Testimonials

If you read testimonials that are glowing and sound like they are coming straight from a script – they probably are. It is quite likely that these people have been paid to say the things they are saying, or they may even be total fabrications. Ask for direct contact numbers for anyone claiming to vouch for the business opportunity, and ask them specific questions that they would only be able to answer if they were actually real business owners who had used the product and sold it to clients.

Plus if you see many of these selling pages you will start to see the same pictures and names.

Upfront Payment

Be very wary of anyone who asks for a large upfront investment of cash, especially if it is nonrefundable. Ask questions about “free trial” periods, making sure to read the fine print. These offers will often require you to give a credit card upfront, which will be charged the entire fee for buying into the business. Then if you have issues or do not want to continue, you can request a refund of this fee. You can bet that it will not be easy at all to ever get this refund. If they are genuinely offering a free trial, then it should be free, with no upfront cost whatsoever.

Can’t Look, Don’t Pay

There are many that don’t allow a look inside until you pay, this is usually because you wouldn’t bother and would run the other way feeling you had a lucky escape. So if you can’t look inside without giving a credit/debit card first, don’t bother. Legitimate platforms/sites have nothing to hide and willingly let you spend time there. The one I am on, Wealthy Affiliate, gave you some free training too and I built a website and talked to members of the community. When they are legitimate they know that once you have a look round and see what is on offer, if you are serious about starting a business, then you will want to join up for even more training and everything else you get. See this blog post HERE if you are interested in seeing it.

Don’t be pushed

Never give in to high pressure tactics and immediately cut off communication with anyone who tries to reel you in this way. It is indicative of desperation and an attempt to get you signed up before you can realize the flaws and inherent dangers in the program or the product. They may also be trying to get you to “sign on the dotted line” before reading the small print and the required commitment. Always take as much time as you need to think it over and to determine whether it is the right business for you.

If they start pushing hard, back away, anyone legitimate doesn’t push if they know what they have is worthwhile.

What do you think?

Do you think you will recognise the scams now? I hope so. Always remember though, “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is”.

Forewarned is forearmed, so you can go forwards now and get that business started or move forwards with your new business. Have to say though when you are overworked and still waiting for that first commission or sale they can be hard to resist. Be strong.

Enjoy your new business and your new life.

Thank you for visiting. I hope you found this blog post useful, if so please share for others to enjoy.

Comments and questions welcome.

Common Business Mistakes

by admin

We are talking Home based online businesses here. There are many common business mistakes that people make here are a few key ones.

Many people love the idea of working from home running their own home-based business. While it’s a growing field and very lucrative, there are certain things you need to watch out for as you get started. Once you get the idea it’s easy to get carried away and rush into it.

When I started my first online business 10 years ago, I thought I just had to open a shop on a big site and that was it. You know how it goes, display my goods and the sales would pour in. Boy was I mistaken!

Decisions

First off

What are you going to sell? Actual goods that you will buy and sell on or goods you make yourself which is crafting. If crafting it is what you are making and selling.

Dropshipping is another option. You display a company’s goods of your choice on your website, when a customer orders and pays, you then send that order to the company. They package and post it.

There is affiliate marketing which is a massively growing market.

Buying and selling domains.

Creating websites and managing them for clients …… and the list goes on.

Take your time

Just don’t get too hasty when selecting a product, service, or company to sign up with. You want to make sure you investigate thoroughly and have chosen a good option for you to pursue. Research is very important for any venture.

Once you have decided on a direction you need to decide whether you will hire people to set things up or do it yourself. If doing it yourself do you need training? Is it worth investing in yourself and paying for training which will pay dividends in the future and save on costs in the long run.

Just because you have selected the right company or product doesn’t seal the deal. You’re going to want to in order to make your business a reality. What is it going to take to get things off of the ground. What does your competition look like? Again, it’s research and more research.

Investing

First of all, will be the time investment required to get your business off the ground and make it grow. How much time you invest will be the difference in how quickly it grows and how soon it makes money.

You will also have to invest some money into your business opportunity, but you have to operate off of a budget. Have you worked out the costs. Website hosting, domain name buying, maybe a better laptop. If selling goods there will be packaging costs, besides the buying or making costs. A printer for invoices and address labels, with that comes the need for ink, paper, labels etc.

Many people get started and stake too much money from the beginning. This is a mistake.

Still, other people get their business going and decide that they don’t want to invest money when it comes time. This is also a mistake, as it could be what’s holding them back from getting things really going.

It’s great when things get going, but if you don’t have a record of it, you’re going to regret it. All outgoings and incomings must be noted and logged. You must make sure you keep well organised records, both for business purposes and tax purposes. This is extremely important.

Finances

Another common mistake that many people make is not separating their personal finances from your business finances. This is quite a major mistake as you could either end up underpaying or overpaying on tax. Neither is good especially if they decide to randomly check YOUIR business. This has to be done correctly from the start or you’re going to have everything confused and disorganised.

Some people are soft when they start out, and they don’t operate with proper business sense. They are so anxious to get started with customers that guess what? They aren’t charging enough for their products and services. This is quite common especially in the crafting community. By under charging you are doing a disservice to yourself and other craft businesses trying to make a living.

It’s wrong to undercharge for anything as you will struggle to make money and when you realise this and try to put up the prices the customers you have will go elsewhere. You need to work out proper price and stick with it.

Another mistake is continually having sales. Why? Because your customers that like your products will just wait for the next sale, knowing that once things are slow you will have a sale. How do I know? I made that mistake. Then when I complained on a forum that I only sold things when having a sale, another crafter said, it’s simple, stop having sales! So I did and put up my prices which were too low and it went upwards from there.

Website

It’s that old favourite again, research. Look at the options, look at what they charge and what you get for your money.

Check around with other website owners. What is the support like, do they respond quickly? Do they actually fix problems? Are they easy to contact? Is the site easy to use and set up with what you want? So much to know!

Many people fail to employ search engine optimization strategies and techniques as well. No one said you have to do it all yourself. Keep in mind though that it costs money to get someone to do it for you, unless you have a friend that can do it for free or cheaply. It is mandatory in order for people to see your site; it’s just part of the action. Good SEO means Google will index and move your site up the ranks so it gets seen better.

So you must familiarise yourself with the market, and you might be surprised at just how much you can do on your own.

Your business site needs to be easily navigable and very user-friendly.

I recommend Wealthy Affiliate. I would use them for hosting alone as it is very secure you get the use of ten sites, the support is fast and very good at fixing any problem rapidly. The training provided is top notch and the community is excellent.

Still want a business?

When it comes to operating a home-based business, it’s important that you avoid these and other common business mistakes This is an exciting time, and you want to succeed. Continue to learn more information about these tips and others you read. Learn everything you can and then get started today setting your home-based business up the right way.

It’s hard work, there is much to learn but there is also a lot of information out there readily available to help you.

There is nothing better than working for yourself, choosing the hours to suit you, loving what you do and discovering that it doesn’t feel like work because you are having so much fun.

And of course you can go and visit friends and relatives, go on holiday and your business can go with you. No need to shut it down, do the minimal amount while you are on holiday but still keep earning.

I recommend Wealthy Affiliate as you can try it out for free. It is certainly worth checking out and comparing the quality and what it provides against other sites.

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Thank you for visiting. If you found this post helpful please share.

Questions and comments welcome.

Affiliate Marketing Myths

by admin

There are many myths flying around the affiliate marketing space about how to be successful, how hard it is to be successful and what you actually need to have a successful affiliate marketing business. So let’s look at affiliate marketing myths and show you that this is a viable home business opportunity.

Size Of Email List

The size of your email list is one of the biggest misconceptions out there. People say you need a HUGE list to make money with affiliate marketing. NOT TRUE! The quality of the list is more important than the size. Subscribers, even in the thousands, does not necessarily mean you will make any sales. Having a list that is much smaller but comprised of buyers is so much better rather than a list of subscribers that have only opted in for a free report/Ebook.

Now, those free subscribers can and will make purchases but someone that has already purchased from you are already starting to trust you and will make more purchases because you have recommended it to them.
So the buyers email list will produce more in sales and commissions which is exactly what you need.

What do they want?

It’s not just about delivering promotions to them all the time but also giving them advice and showing them results. Sending clickable link/s in each email is important so they can view your recommendations regularly.
“Emailing daily is a must to keep you and your brand at the top of your subscribers mind and inbox. Don’t let yourself get forgotten. If you are not emailing your list AT LEAST once a day you are leaving money on the table.” This is general advice given out but from personal experience if emails come through too often I just delete them or unsubscribe. The daily ones I will endure in case anything interesting turns up but more than once a day is an instant delete and unsubscribe.

How often you choose to email your subscribers is entirely your choice, for me 3 times a week means I actually open the email and look at it.

When building a new email list the idea always seems to be that bigger is better and an email list with a huge number of subscribers is a successful one. Well, at some point it’s important but not the sole measurement of a successful affiliate email campaign.

Many marketers worry about the size of their email list and try hard to keep their overall numbers. Keeping subscribers is important but it’s not the only stats to focus on. There are other metrics that you should consider to determine how good your email list is and how good your email campaign is such as message open rates, clicks through your links and sales conversions.

Technical Barriers

Someone who’s starting to be an affiliate marketer might think about creating their first blog, making a niche website, or establishing an online store because these websites are platforms to generate profits. These websites will be more likely to require your precious time and specific skills and knowledge and every from of website has their own issues particularly in starting to make profits online.

Setting up your own blog might be simple and easy from the start but it’s not the same story as you go through the process. How to get a good amount of viewers/readers to your blog post is the biggest problem for new bloggers.
It’s definitely hard to engage enough people when you are creating your new blog. You have to realize that you are competing in a huge and populated market that makes for very tough competition.

So what can you do?

Offering a unique product is good, however you have to deal with facts and provide information to any questions. Knowing what your audiences really want is your ultimate goal in promoting your product. Also, don’t forget that you are selling something that is not tangible. You have to work on your revenues from ads and from other working affiliate links in your blog.

However, if you want to generate real profits you have to create a big audience. Niche websites are also easy to make but it is also the same reason why the competition is greater. In order to get a large number of visitors to your sites, you have to enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) skills since search engine traffic contributes to a large part of total traffic going to a niche site. SEO can be time consuming and is always changing.You can outsource this to always stay in the search engine rankings.

You can learn about SEO and then it becomes second nature as you write. Yes google makes changes but if you stick with high quality content and good keywords you should be fine.

Social Media

Now this is something that many marketers seem to overlook. WHY? I have no idea, though it could be that it used to be seen more as a socialising thing rather than for business. That was a long time ago though.

Now it is very important, at least I think so. While you are waiting for Google to discover your site, trust it and move it up the ranks, social media can be bringing you traffic.

Let’s face it, people mainly click on links if they are interested in the subject or want to find out more. Those are the people you need. If they like what they see, find the information interesting rather than boring, they will be back to visit.

So my advice is open business social media accounts sooner rather than later. The quicker you build followers the better.

What are Bonuses?

Bonuses are products designed to encourage your customer to buy through you and not someone else. Everyone likes extra value added to a purchase and even more so if the value is greater than the original product. In other words they are Freebies and lets face it, everyone likes a something for free.

In fact most of the time, bonuses are usually worth more than what the products are worth. Yes, you are selling the same thing as other affiliates in the same market but a good bonus will have them buying through you rather than someone else.

Bonuses give a greater incentive for the customers to purchase through your link. They are obviously designed with the aim to increase sales and must be readily available and accessible to all the customers once they have made their purchase.

A well put together bonus page can make a big difference to whether your customer goes through you or someone else.

Where to get the bonuses

Creating your own products, such a special report, an ebook or a course that would be useful is one way. Yes it will take some time to prepare but once made it can be used multiple times

Some software you buy that is a new product will often be offered with the right to sell on, to encourage buyers. This can then be offered as a bonus. Over time you can build up a stock of these.

There is also Private Label Rights or PLR as they are known. Private Label Rights products are created especially for selling on. Many you can change the pictures on and rewrite some of the wording to make it more your product and some can be given away as a freebie. It’s alway a good idea to check the license with it before you do anything.

What about creating a number of different bonus items?

It’s actually possible even if you don’t have enough resources. Negotiating a joint venture with other affiliates can be very beneficial to both of you if follow this route. This becomes a viable option when affiliates in one joint venture add individual bonuses to create a great bonus offering to your customers. But of course the return of investment from a joint venture must be fairly distributed to each affiliate. This strategy enables you to secure a sale by giving the customers more than what they have paid.

Has this helped?

Has this post helped with affiliate marketing myths? There are of course more, as there are about anything.

We have learned that an email list is good but the size of it isn’t as important as you think. That affiliate marketing is an excellent business to get into and can reap great rewards if you put in the work and the effort to learn about it.

That SEO is important but you can pay to get it done for you if necessary. We have also learnt that social media can play an important part too.

I recommend

Wealthy Affiliate is my recommendation. It has everything you need to start a business.

Hosting, websites, security, support and an amazing community to help when needed and most of all the Training. Training on every aspect of building and running a website/blog. Everything you need to know about blogging and being an affiliate or about other businesses you can run online.

I am affiliate for Wealthy Affiliate because I am on this amazing platform myself and I want others to know about it.

If you join through my link You will get bonuses from me. Read about it HERE!

They aren’t set bonuses because that’s what I got and cannot even recall now what it was. I know I never activated it because I was so involved in learning the basics and getting my website in place and how I wanted it.

So its ebooks on any subjects you feel will be helpful to you and a course, video and book offered the same way.

If you have ever dreamed of having your own business and then after lockdown thought you would prefer it to be online, Wealthy Affiliate is your best chance to do just that.

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Questions and comments always welcome.

Tips for a Successful Blog

by admin

Now this blog post could cover pages and pages if I am not careful. There is nothing more exciting and fun than helping others. Like most people I love to impart the knowledge I have learnt, so I decided to pass on some tips for a successful blog.

The idea that sparked this post

I was reading a blog post about reasons for starting a blog. The writer said it needed to be personal which is correct. I call this the Why (read more HERE!). This is your reason for wanting to blog in the first place. It was reading that blog that gave me the idea for this blog. I started thinking about all the reasons people want a blog to start with.

My first blog

Many years ago I had a blog to showcase crafts, mine and other peoples. My particular ‘thing’ or style I suppose became a poem or ditty. I did a daily blog and always added a verse of some sort, usually related to what I had showcased, the theme. Sometimes it was about world situations or even the weather.

It built up regular viewers very quickly and was popular. Unfortunately people did not tell me until much later that it really helped their sales to be on there.

I also had no idea about monetising a blog in any way. I didn’t have time to read other blogs between family, work, making my own crafts to sell and blogging daily. So I missed an opportunity and gradually stopped blogging so much because it took up a chunk of time I needed for making, then it gradually stopped as life took over.

The trouble with something like writing a blog is, you need to be consistent. If you write regularly, it becomes a habit you do automatically. Miss a few and the habit is disappearing, blog sporadically and the habit disappears altogether.

Create your style

The blog also has to be personal in that you give it your voice which is your style.
That’s why copy and pasting doesn’t work, it looks and sounds impersonal. Plus if you have some or all of your content written for you, your blog won’t reflect your style or voice. Once you have attained success and have many followers then it is easier to let others write for you, a good writer will be able to give the writing at least some of your style and voice.

Many leaders in the blogging industry have a team that does the day to day stuff for them but the team will know how the blogger prefers each post to be.

People have a need to connect with other people. When your writing has your voice, that tone that makes it easily recognisable as yours, they will feel a connection that brings them back, again and again.

How to give it a Voice

That’s easy, make it about something you are passionate about. Do you have a hobby, an interest, something you do for fun or used to do before life squeezed it out?

Can’t think of anything? What do you talk to others about? Gaming? Crafts, Books, sports, health, wellbeing, keep fit, weightlifting, needlework, embroidery, baking, cars, bikes, motorbikes, gardening? The list is endless, it could go on for pages and pages. This amount gets the point across though.

It helps to know something about your subject which if it’s something you already love, you will know quite a bit about it.

If you can write as if you were talking to someone in the same room, explaining all about your passion, it makes the writing more personal and interesting to read.

Why do you need a blog?

Mainly because we all like to check something out before we buy. Also we don’t always know what we need so we go in search of answers to a problem.

Say you have a particular niche on …… gardening which is a growing interest not just to look pretty but for growing food. So those that are new to it but really fancy growing organic produce will go looking for information on how to make a start. They want to know what to grow and when and most importantly how to prepare the soil, whether raised beds are better and so on.

So the blog writer will consider all problems growers have, from new gardener to the experienced gardener and write posts on solutions. Then you will have products, affiliate or otherwise, that you will recommend and they will find useful.

The gardening niche is just an example but it works much the same way in other niches.

How soon will I make money?

Like any business it will take time to build trust, via your blog posts and you will need to have quite a lot of posts on your site for Google to rank them high enough to get seen often. Google and other search engine rankings is what brings organic traffic to your site. These are the people specifically searching for what you are writing about.

You will research and use keywords to bring those people to you. The keywords are the search terms people are using the most in search of information that they need.

So how long? Months if not a year or more. Though that depends upon how much time you have to research and write your posts and how many posts you can do in a week. If you can write quality posts every day, that will obviously make a difference to the time frame.

However, it is not a fast process, so earning will not be immediate or even in the near future. However once your site builds trust and the search engines decide you are an authority then traffic will build and along with it the chance to start earning sooner.

Mind you, if you have got to the point of asking about blogging or are looking for tips, you probably have the blog set up, if not actually started writing and you will know that it is not a fast solution to earning.

Pro’s and Cons of blogging

It can be hard at first, getting into the habit of writing more than a thousand words but it’s surprising how quickly you get used to it and the words start to flow without having to think too hard.

Many worry that they will run out of things to write about. I did at first but again once you have written several posts you find there are more and more ideas that spring up.

What about the research? That can be time consuming but mainly because you end up finding interesting ideas for more blog posts.

Traffic takes a long time to build up. Not necessarily. Organic traffic takes time to build but social media induced traffic can be much faster.
Make sure you set up social media business accounts from the start. If you only get a few minutes here and there it will help the followers to increase. The bigger the following the better the traffic.

What do you think?

Does it sound fun, adventurous, exciting, crazy, mad, daft or what? Some of them, all of them?

Me? I absolutely love it. It seemed a chore at first because I was constantly watching the word count but as I really got into it, I forgot all about how many words I was writing.

The amount of words became irrelevant, it was all about the information instead.

Where am I?

I am on the Wealthy Affiliate platform. They host my websites securely, have pretty much instant support and have an amazing amount of training on pretty much every subject you can think of to do with online selling and marketing.

I looked for a long time to find a platform like this. Am I biased. YES, I definitely am. I have been on Wealthy Affiliate for 15 months and loved every minute of it. I still love it and cannot imagine being anywhere else.

I have learnt so much in the 15 months. I can build wordpress websites, I learnt about SEO, plugins and keywords. I can research, write blog posts, know a lot more about social media and the list just goes on.

Nearly forgot another major bonus of the platform. The amazing and brilliant community. There are a lot that have been there many years and pop in and out to help and advise when they get the chance. People write blog posts on the platform itself and they are full of helpful and useful advice. If you ask a question it is generally answered quickly by different people.

If you haven’t already got a website or signed up for training, would you like to have a look at the platform I am on?

It is totally free to join and have a look about. No credit or debit cards asked for. Just a free membership so you can go in, have a look and have a go at the basic training. No strings, entirely your choice whether you stay or go.

Check this post HERE out to find out what you would gain by joining through my link.

Thank you for visiting. If you enjoyed this post, please share.

Comments and questions welcome.

How to start a profitable website

by admin

Why are you here?

With all that’s going on in the world right now more people are realising it makes sense to have a back up plan. What sort? How about an online business. You have obviously been thinking about it otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

You obviously want to know how to start a profitable website. Not much point wanting an unprofitable one after all.

So with more time you have been looking around online and if you are in the UK now know that lockdown will continue for at least another 3 weeks. Clearly a brilliant time to learn the basics and get a website up and running. The best time to create an online business.

Sooo….. what is the first thing you need to do to start a profitable website? Most people just leap in without giving much thought to what their website will be about. Surely its creating the website that’s important, isn’t it? You know, getting it built, adding the fancy bells and whistles to wow the customers. Not really. So how do you start a profitable website? Well you need to start right at the very beginning.

First you need to decide what the website is about.

Choosing A Profitable Website Topic

You can’t just create a website about anything, it has to be a specific topic on which you have a decent amount of knowledge and interest. Well you can, but it would be pointless. You won’t know what you are talking about and it won’t be enjoyable.

The first step, before we do anything, is to decide what the site is actually going to talk about. You need to create a “niche” website. Niche is a word that refers to a small, profitable corner of a market. This means that your site will be very specific and focused on one topic. Your goal will be to dominate this “niche” and become an authority in it. Does that make sense?

Let me give you an example.

You may love sport and take part in a few. Through the process outlined below, you decide on something within that topic that is the right angle for you. You don’t create a website about sport in general. You narrow it down to a very specific piece of this topic (a niche). Through your research you may decide it would be best to create a website about the training process of one particular sport or about the clothing required. Though with the clothing, it could then be narrowed down further into a particular part, such as footwear. Now, THAT is a “niche”. If you became an authority on that specific topic, it would be something that could be very profitable for many years to come.

Isn’t bigger better?

So, you may be thinking “Why should I narrow it down so much? Wouldn’t it be better to go after any sports or at least all equipment needed including clothes or even just clothing?”

I know I thought the same when I started. I had many thoughts along the lines of: What if I run out of things to write about? Surely I need a bigger topic for more variety to make the site more interesting. No and no. You won’t run out of things to say, unless you pick the wrong topic, such as something you have no interest in.

Too much variety on different subjects isn’t good because it means your customer struggles to find what they are interested in amongst everything else you have written about.

Less is good

Wikipedia states:

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that it is intended to target. It is also a small market segment.

A narrower niche means that there is less competition and the more you narrow down your topic, the amount of competition reduces further.

And the less competition, the greater chance you have of becoming an authority on your topic. When you become an authority it brings more people to your website, they learn to trust you and this brings them back.

HOW to choose your topic

Make a list of everything you are passionate about. Write everything down, everything you can think of.

Then, it’s time to research which of those passions and interests would make the best topic for your website. To do this you need to work out two simple things.

1) How many people are interested in your topic

2) How many other websites there are on this same topic. There are simple, free online tools that you can use to work it all out.

So, step number one is to see how many people are searching for your topic online. This gives us a rough estimate of how much demand there is for a website on this subject. Visit the “Google AdWords Keyword Tool“. This is a free tool provided by Google and it will let you know a rough idea of how many times someone typed any particular keyword into Google.

How does it work?

Lets find out. Clink on the link or type it in to google.

You should have a screen like the screenshot opposite. Then click on the blue button that says ‘Go to keyword planner’.

I am showing you as I do it for you, mainly because I have seen so many outdated instructions without anything to show you how it should look. Instructions are fine but you want to be sure you have the right page. Especially when you are discovering this for the first or even re discovering after a long time.

At this point I will confess that it has been a long time since I used this tool and it does look different. It’s also good for me to brush up on such tools and remember to use them. Such tools do make life easier.

And on to the next

So let’s say you decide you are keen on crafts, so you narrow it down to your 2 main interests in that very large topic, knitting and crochet. You put in crafts, knitting and crochet just to see what happens and to try out the tool.

There is less competition but still plenty of visitors looking and searching for information. So then you need to scan the list to find potential topics.

Altogether there were 2,651 results just from the 3 words.

Keywords that you provided:

crochet

100K – 1 M High

knitting

10K – 100 K High

craft

100K – 1 M High

So crafts and crochet both have 100,00 – 1,000,000 average monthly searches. So the narrower subject of crochet is more popular than knitting.

So we take that one and put that into the keyword planner. There are 667 results, just from crochet.

The top 5 that come up are these:

crochet patterns

10K – 100K High

amigurumi

10K – 100K High

free crochet patterns

10K – 100K High

crochet blanket

10K – 100K High

crochet baby blanket

10K – 100K High

So crochet patterns and free crochet patterns are highly popular searches with amigurumi in between them.

A topic of patterns could be narrowed down further into amigurumi patterns. You will have noted that Amigurumi was another popular search. Or baby clothes , blankets, or more specifically, baby blankets even.

While you are on the webpage “Google AdWords Keyword Tool“, spend some time playing with various words of ideas that interest you. then choosing narrower subjects from the words offered. This will help you learn how it works and make it easier and faster when you are needing particular keyword.

What’s next?

Now you know that it’s possible to make a site about crochet patterns, you need to check the amount of sites that there already are about crochet patterns. Of course, if you find that there’s 100 million sites about crochet patterns, you will need to go back and look at other crochet niches.

To find this information, all we need is Google. So type Crochet patterns into Google Now you look at the top of the page, just above the first entry where it says “About 132,000,000 results “.

This means that there is 132,000,000 web pages on this term. It may seem like a lot, but it’s not that bad because in reality, only percentage of those sites will be very good with high quality content. Compare it to the general term of crochet where you get: “About 891,000,000 results”. Plus google will have scanned the entire internet for that search term, so even a mention will have that page included.

Another popular search was Crochet Blankets. Put into Google it came up with: About 106,000,000 results so lower still.

Just play around with your words and ideas until you have settled on what you want your niche site to be about.

Niche done, ready to go

Well not quite but that is a major step forward you have made a start. Many jump into building a website, buy the first domain name they think of and the first topic they think of. Many also go for a topic rather than a niche at first thinking it will be easier.

Admittedly it does sound as though it will be. The reality is, that 6 months down the line, you are likely to scrap that site and start again, having taken the steps of choosing a niche and domain name carefully.

That time won’t have been wasted, you will have learnt a lot. The original site could be kept for trying out new ideas or plug ins before adding them to your main site. Also could be something you might want to go back to.

A little planning in the early stages can save you a lot of time later.

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