To make money from a website you need two things - traffic and a way to turn that traffic into revenue. Not just any traffic will do though - you need search engine traffic because this can continue to drive traffic for months or even years to come without you having to do anything else. In this article I'll show you how to research the potential of both those factors.
How Much Traffic Does Your Niche Have?
How much traffic is enough? I have been making a nice income (4-figures) on my blog from just a few hundred visitors a day. 500 visitors a day is a nice number to aim for. Now unless you are an SEO expert, it is virtually impossible to predict how much actual traffic you might get for certain keywords and it's really not worth going into that much detail.
A much more general ballpark is simply to see that there are a nice handful of sub topics within your topic that are being searched on within Google and are getting several hundred (or ideally in the thousands) of searches. If there is and you write about them on your site then you'll grab a share of that traffic from a multitude of different sources.
So what we need to do is find out how many searches are being performed. The best way to do this is using Google's own keyword tool which is free. Just search for "good adwords keyword tool" to find it. All we're going to do here is determine the traffic levels and brainstorm the kinds of sub topics and keywords in our chosen niche.
By default the tool will show data tailored to your country but we want to show ALL data so using the link 'Results are Tailored To', make sure that you select 'All Countries and Territories'. With that done the first step is to start with some very broad one-word search terms related to your niche such as 'gardening', 'golf', 'money', 'cats' etc.
Obviously these big words will show lots of results but what you're looking for here are all the related keywords - this tool will bring back ideas for keywords relating to the one you typed in and shows the traffic potential for them. If you type in 'cats' for example, you get tons of keywords back that show you potential sub-topics such as cat grooming, Persian cats, cat diseases etc and all of these are potential blog topics.
What we should now have are potential sub topics and depending on how broad you started out each one may even have the potential to be a website in itself. But from here we can do down further. Type in one of the specialised keywords to get even more specific keywords. So a search for cat health might show topics such as dental issues, fur condition etc. If you see several levels of keywords like this then your topic has great potential.
On the other hand let's say that you've chosen Carp Fishing as your niche but you are only interested in Carp Fishing in France. If you type in 'carp fishing france' into the Google keyword tool you get quite a few related keywords come up but they each have very small traffic numbers - each has less than 100. This is not good. You're looking for a topic where the top level topics are getting thousands of visitors so although Carp Fishing is a great niche, specifying France only is too small.
What Are The Monetization Options Like?
Using the same keyword tool from Google, as you do your searches look at the column that says 'Advertiser Competition'. This is the number of advertisers that are paying Google to advertise their products and services to people who type in that keyword. What you are looking for here is HIGH competition - this is good because it means that people are making money from those keywords and if they can make money then so can you! Well, maybe :-)
Now of course this only shows you the number of advertisers, it doesn't show you what they are selling. You might be worried that perhaps these advertisers are all selling their own products and you won't have anything to sell. If that's the case we can do some additional specific research to find some products that you could sell.
Now one place where you are almost guaranteed to find an affiliate product for absolutely any niche is Amazon.com. Go to their website and simply type in some keywords relating to your topic. If something pops up (and it will!) there are products to promote as Amazon have an affiliate program for everything sold.
Some marketers don't like Amazon because their commission is small however that's missing the point really. What we're trying to do here is establish the profit potential of your chosen niche. If Amazon have a whole bunch of products relating to your niche then it is another indicator that it has good profit potential. Later on when you develop your site more fully you can go on to create your own products and services.
How Much Traffic Does Your Niche Have?
How much traffic is enough? I have been making a nice income (4-figures) on my blog from just a few hundred visitors a day. 500 visitors a day is a nice number to aim for. Now unless you are an SEO expert, it is virtually impossible to predict how much actual traffic you might get for certain keywords and it's really not worth going into that much detail.
A much more general ballpark is simply to see that there are a nice handful of sub topics within your topic that are being searched on within Google and are getting several hundred (or ideally in the thousands) of searches. If there is and you write about them on your site then you'll grab a share of that traffic from a multitude of different sources.
So what we need to do is find out how many searches are being performed. The best way to do this is using Google's own keyword tool which is free. Just search for "good adwords keyword tool" to find it. All we're going to do here is determine the traffic levels and brainstorm the kinds of sub topics and keywords in our chosen niche.
By default the tool will show data tailored to your country but we want to show ALL data so using the link 'Results are Tailored To', make sure that you select 'All Countries and Territories'. With that done the first step is to start with some very broad one-word search terms related to your niche such as 'gardening', 'golf', 'money', 'cats' etc.
Obviously these big words will show lots of results but what you're looking for here are all the related keywords - this tool will bring back ideas for keywords relating to the one you typed in and shows the traffic potential for them. If you type in 'cats' for example, you get tons of keywords back that show you potential sub-topics such as cat grooming, Persian cats, cat diseases etc and all of these are potential blog topics.
What we should now have are potential sub topics and depending on how broad you started out each one may even have the potential to be a website in itself. But from here we can do down further. Type in one of the specialised keywords to get even more specific keywords. So a search for cat health might show topics such as dental issues, fur condition etc. If you see several levels of keywords like this then your topic has great potential.
On the other hand let's say that you've chosen Carp Fishing as your niche but you are only interested in Carp Fishing in France. If you type in 'carp fishing france' into the Google keyword tool you get quite a few related keywords come up but they each have very small traffic numbers - each has less than 100. This is not good. You're looking for a topic where the top level topics are getting thousands of visitors so although Carp Fishing is a great niche, specifying France only is too small.
What Are The Monetization Options Like?
Using the same keyword tool from Google, as you do your searches look at the column that says 'Advertiser Competition'. This is the number of advertisers that are paying Google to advertise their products and services to people who type in that keyword. What you are looking for here is HIGH competition - this is good because it means that people are making money from those keywords and if they can make money then so can you! Well, maybe :-)
Now of course this only shows you the number of advertisers, it doesn't show you what they are selling. You might be worried that perhaps these advertisers are all selling their own products and you won't have anything to sell. If that's the case we can do some additional specific research to find some products that you could sell.
Now one place where you are almost guaranteed to find an affiliate product for absolutely any niche is Amazon.com. Go to their website and simply type in some keywords relating to your topic. If something pops up (and it will!) there are products to promote as Amazon have an affiliate program for everything sold.
Some marketers don't like Amazon because their commission is small however that's missing the point really. What we're trying to do here is establish the profit potential of your chosen niche. If Amazon have a whole bunch of products relating to your niche then it is another indicator that it has good profit potential. Later on when you develop your site more fully you can go on to create your own products and services.
About the Author:
Caroline Middlebrook has been blogging about Internet marketing since 2007 and her popular blog generates a 4-figure revenue-stream every month. She teaches people how blogs make money and offers downloads of her free guides & courses from her website.
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