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If you don’t know what a niche is or why you should pick a niche, please refer to the niche marketing articles on the main site for more information. When you understand the principle, you’ll often find that either you know exactly what topic you want to start a blogging business in or you face the difficult decision of picking a niche that you can be successful in.

Some people feel picking a niche market is the hardest decision to make when starting a blogging business . It can certainly be a frustrating process of trial and error before you get the right mix in the complex recipe that needs to incorporate demand, products and a playing field at a level you can compete on. If you pick a highly competitive field with experienced players while you yourself are a mere beginner you are unlikely to succeed. If you pick a low demand niche with only a few products to promote then your results may be insufficient to warrant the time spent on developing a blogging business around it.

Don’t pick too competitive niches to start with

Although high demand niches in topics such as golf, dog training, pharmacy, forex, insurance, gambling, dating, real estate and marketing products have a lot of promotable products and PLR and MRR material to use, unless you have insider knowledge (ie you play golf, you have worked in real estate) then these topics may be just too competitive for a beginner.

Having an inside knowledge of a topic is the best place to start when picking a niche market and you may be surprised to know just how much inside knowledge you already have about a niche that can turn out to be very profitable.

As an example, many people, especially since the release of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” film and book have an avid interest in being more proactive about reducing their carbon footprint and making “green” decisions regarding their waste, their appliances, their heating and water usage and cleaning products - to mention just a few issues. So within the wide topic of environmental conservation there are many small green pastures where someone new can place a toe in the water and get a feel for the potential in a specific niche.

Do pick a niche that you may have some insider knowledge of

Let’s imagine that solar panels are something that this new marketer has either installed (to heat their swimming pool) or is considering using to do so. They make a note of sites they visit and get product brochures as they research for themselves what brand to get and how it can be used. In the process they learn a great deal about the topic so that they can make an informed and economical decision. If that research is expanded somewhat, then the information that has been collected can help someone else reach a faster decision, especially if you draw up a few charts with comparisons. (example: for energy saved, capacity, price, location, installation, weight, modifications to existing structures, solutions for problems that may occur etc.)

So the first place to go looking for a niche to pick is in the topics you may already have done some research or had some education in already. Being an “expert” on a topic is so much easier when you really do know what you are talking about! Making a list of your job descriptions and home improvement skills is a start. It is highly likely that if you have spent time researching a topic, that other people will also have done so, and therefore new people will be starting to. This may be a good niche for a blogging business.

Get new ideas for niches by visiting bookstores

The next step, if this avenue doesn’t throw up something you want to use, is to visit a library, a bookshop or a magazine area in a large newsagency. Wherever there is a large range of books or magazines on a topic, there is likely to be a high demand for niche information within the topic. Make notes about large topics that you might be interested in but don’t leave the store without narrowing down five possible niche sub topics to do some further research on.

Unfortunately, research is somewhat addictive and you will need to be extremely firm with yourself to overcome the mind numbing procrastination that can occur when there is too much to choose from. Imagine Mary Poppins ( or even better the teacher at school that didn’t take sh** from you or the boss who is always looking at his watch) standing over you and commit to decide on five possible niches before you leave the store.

It is preferable to pick one topic with five niches - (example: “native [to specific area] flowers for rock gardens” - succulents, perennials, bushes, rockery landscaping and water features) than to pick five topics with one niche each (example:  “collecting” - [your country’s] stamps, “cooking” - bread recipes, “work at home ” - selling brick a brack on ebay, “cars” - how to avoid buying a lemon, “finance”- setting up a trust fund for your granchildren.)

You can also niche market research to pick a niche using various “analysis” or authority internet sites for inspiration. The page link above has several links to sites that will help you with more advanced niche choices by displaying trends and high search topics.

Keep a niche ideas notepad for future blogging business projects

By all means keep a “niche ideas notepad” with these new great ideas in them but when you are just beginning, diversifying too soon will give you insufficient time on each project to develop it into a business that will make an income for you. Try to pick 5 niches within one related topic at first, so that your site can really offer benefit and diversity to a reader. You will gain by being able to cross promote related niches and also have more approval from search engines for your main topic when you can add internal linking to your promotional efforts.

When you have built your mini “book” made up of niche chapters around a sub topic and monetized it with products or advertising and have spent some time promoting it and building rank and links, only then move on to the next topic to start the process again. You will still continue to promote and maintain your first sites but at a lower level of activity so you will then have time to start and develop the new project. Doing several projects at one time can work for some people, but in general, most people will merely end up with several never finished projects.

The last piece of advice I have is to start as soon as possible to treat your hobby as a business. It is normal to try this and that, and dilly daddle about experimenting while you are learning and it’s a good thing to do, but each new thing you try eats into your time. Incorporating adsense, affiliate products, your own product, a membership site, a forum …. all these things take time. You cannot know if this is how you want to make money until you try it .

It is part of the learning process we all go through, generally on our own without anyone to guide us. Only the written words of prior travellors - most of whom are hoping to be sent a cut of the cost of your education.

Take nothing as given until it has proven itself to you by you doing it.

When it has been proven a good strategy continue your education by investing in better tools and organizing a schedule of work that moves your business forward in the proven direction. When you know something already, stop researching for more information and use your knowledge to improve your business. Further free products are a distraction from your goal and a waste of time that could be spent doing a task that will improve your business. Never forget your goal, whatever it is. Playing the field won’t win the game.

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Chances are you’ve heard of trackbacks but probably you don’t know what these are and what they have to do with your blog. Many bloggers don’t quite understand how trackbacks work and why they are useful for their blogs. So we’re going to go over
trackbacks—what they are, how they work, why they are important to blog traffic, and how to get more trackbacks. After you’ve read this, you’ll know practically everything there is to know about trackbacks.

What are trackbacks?

The concept of trackbacks is a bit hard to explain. So we’ll use an example to explain it in the best way possible.

OK, say you see a great blog post on another person’s blog and want to link to it on your blog. You could do this the old-fashioned way by manually placing a link in a post to
that blog. However, if you do it this way, the person whose blog post you are linking to may not pick up that you are linking to them unless you tell them.

This is where trackbacks come in. Under the post while you are writing it is a trackback box. So as well as placing the link in the post also place the url into the box. If you are using several urls, leave a space between them so the program will know they are separate urls. The trackback program will then notify the owner of a blog when one of their posts has been linked to at another blog.

How do trackbacks work?

Wordpress has a system incorporated in a new install but an older install may not and you may need a plugin. A blog that has a trackback system set up will have a link at the bottom of every blog post but you may need to actually open the single post to see it.

What I mean by this is to click on permalink or the title of the post (if that is a link) so that you can see the whole post with comments. Then to enable trackBacks in WordPress , go to Options > Discussion.

Check the checkbox “Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article”(for sending a trackback) and also check the checkbox under it ”Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.) “ (for receiving a trackback)

When these are enabled the person who posted the original blog will then be notified that their blog posting has been linked to. From that point forward, the “Trackbacks” link will keep track of how many people have chosen to blog about that particular post. So after the first trackback, it may say “Trackbacks: 1”. The number of trackbacks recorded will be updated as they occur. Or it may place a trackback excerpt in the comments field.

If that all sounds a little complicated watch Jack Humphreys Video Tutorial on Trackbacks in the library for more clarity.

Why are trackbacks important to blog traffic?

The easy answer is that trackbacks are important because they increase awareness of your blog. Trackbacks also make a blog seem more credible. After all, people have to think your posts are good enough to be trackbacked.

When a person makes a trackback on your blog, they have made a post on their own blog about your blog. This, in turn, lets their readers know about your blog. Chances are, their readers will want to visit your blog to see what else you have and you’ll have a whole new fanbase of readers. That means more traffic for your blog.

Imagine what would happen if 5 different bloggers trackbacked a post on your blog? Depending on how popular their blog is, that’s potentially as much as hundreds of new readers for your blog! So it’s worth doing, right?

Also, every trackback made, assuming it is a legitimate one(and some trackbacks are spam, especially if they are there only to link to another site) adds credibility to your blog. Blogs with high amounts of trackbacks look credible because lots of people like the posts enough to trackback them.

How can I increase the number of trackbacks I get?

The easiest and best way to increase trackbacks is to frequently post(2-3 times a week), good quality content.Quality blog posts are those that people can relate to and are easy to read. If you post a decent sized article or rant that is entertaining (and that people are likely to agree with), and you get a bit of traffic, eventually you’ll get trackbacked.

The number of trackbacks you get is totally dependent on the number of visitors your blog receives and how frequently you are able to make quality posts. Trackbacks are a wonderful thing for every blog. You are able to know when your blog posting has been posted about at another blog, plus you potentially gain more visitors.

It’s a win-win situation for both you and the other blogger! In fact if you have friends blogging, try to exchange trackbacks regularly, it will help both (or all) of you a great deal.

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There are now a number of sites that aim to give a value to your blog. These can be worth a visit to get an idea about what to charge for text links if you aim to use these for monetization of your blog. They can also give you a picture that will lend your blog some credibility by indicating to your visitors that an independent site has assessed your effort and put a monetary value on it. For example the one link says my blog is worth 105,800!!!

105,800
How much money is your blog worth?

Honestly, this is really an exercise in ego stroking but it is still rather fun and it is also an indication of improvement even if the value that is given is quite probably far less than they say. These are two sites I discovered but there are probably many more. If you really want people to be impressed visit

http://www.myblogvalue.com

You need to fill out a survey for this. I suggest the first time, you fill it out as honestly as you can so that you can see how it works. You’ll still get the ego stroke at a fairly high level and then (if you don’t mind lying), do it again to get a more impressive sticker for your blog that says that you are worth far more. It’s a silly game after all and you yourself should not be too impressed and start banking the money!

This was my first and honest result, I didn’t go back for a second run as I’m not so easily impressed but I don’t mind displaying the result and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was happy to see I didn’t bomb out!

For a more realistic result visit the following url, type in your url at the top and click CHECK

http://www.dnscoop.com/

A page will pop up that analyses your backlinks, alexa rank. page rank etc and offer more conservative estimates about what your blog is worth. This site does the work for you using an algorithm so you can’t fudge the result and big note your blog. Your best option for comparative analyses here is to enter several urls to sites that you know. Perhaps you have a blog or two that has barely any content, compare their result to the blog you are working to promote, then put in Pro Blogger or a similar very popular blog and compare their results with yours. Then you have a benchmark so you know how far you have come and much further you have to go.

 

My Site is worth
$1,524

How much is
your site worth?

If you feel that your blog needs a jazzy sticky image to show it’s worth something - go for it. Your knowledgeable customers won’t be impressed but less experienced bloggers and readers will have more respect if you can show them that you know what you are doing enough to create a sticker showing a high value.For myself, as I build more links and continue to promote, I will return to keep checking progress for my own research, to make sure I’m still progressing upwards in the value stakes.

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