When unemployment meets frugal spending you get internet sites offering a happy median for both. If you need to make extra money and the traditional job hunt isn’t working, then consider one of these 6 websites that offer more of a non-traditional approach to making money. I must warn you, some of the sites require you to be a bit on the creative side, be open-minded, and at times have a good sense of humor. However, none of these sites require you to have a special skill set, it’s all about what you are willing to do.

Task Rabbit

Task Rabbit is currently available in Boston, SF Bay Area, New York City, Chicago, LA, Portland, and Seattle. This site helps you connect with people in your area that need things done. The process is simple – you can either become a Task Rabbit or you can ask a task rabbit for help. You can make money by signing up to be a Task Rabbit and then just find a task you are willing to do for some money. Here’s how an overview of how it works:

• Someone posts a task
• The task rabbit that makes the lowest bid gets the job
• Once the job is done, you get paid

In order to sign up to be a Task Rabbit, you have to agree to the application process. This process is a bit tedious, as it includes an essay, video interview and a background check. After this is complete, however, you can then get online and start looking for tasks to complete. The task poster lists the task along with how much they will pay. The Task Rabbit finds a task that suits them and then they counter that offer with what they want to be paid – the lowest bid gets the job! The available jobs fall into all different categories such as Holiday Help to Handyman to Delivery. If you can name it, it’s on there.

Zaarly

Zaarly is a site that helps you sell stuff or buy stuff. The idea behind the site is that people near where you live can make a request for things and others in the community can meet the request. You can use Zaarly to make some money by using it to find new business or just earn some money on the side.

It works by allowing “buyers” to post what they want and what they will pay. Zaarly then connects the “buyer” with people that can fulfill the request. The one thing I like about Zaarly is that it lets you search by category. Below are a sample of some of the categories you can search by and a screen shot of what it looks like when you search in your area.

• Bartending
• Cars
• Catering
• DJ
• Graphic Artist
• Party Planning
• Rides
• Tasks

Other users will be alerted about the “buyers” request, and it will automatically alert your Facebook and Twitter connections if you choose. Buyers and sellers can anonymously message each other, and you can schedule an in-person or virtual meeting as you see fit. This site is still growing and jobs might not be available in your area.

Fiverr

Fiverr showcases a variety of tasks that random people will perform for $5. The concept is simple–people list what they will do for $5 and others will take them up on the offer. As you can imagine, there are all sorts of things people will offer to do – some funny and some serious. So, if you are in the market for $5 (technically $4 after fee) then get on Fiverr and list what you will do for the pay. Many people create videos which get a lot of attention. If you need something done and are willing to pay five bucks, then you can search on Fiverr to see if anyone has listed your gig.

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk allows businesses and developers to have access to people who can preform the work they need. There are a variety of available jobs that only take a short time to complete. For example, you might see a post that is asking to translate a paragraph from English to French or spell check a letter. Each job tells you what the pay is upfront. Many of the available jobs only pay a small amount like 5 or 10 cents, but the jobs only take a small amount of time to complete. There are other jobs that pay more and take more time.

To get started just sign up to become a worker and from there you can start searching for jobs. Here’s an example of what you will see when you are searching:

Agent Anything

If you are a college student in the New York or New Jersey area, then you can sign up to become an Agent. Agent Anything is currently only available in the New York and New Jersey areas and you have to be a college student in order to make money. With this site there are Clients and there are Agents. The Clients need things does and the Agents get it done. If you want to start running what the site calls missions, all you have to do is sign up. Once you are an agent you can see available missions via Twitter or get text updates. There are 3 simple steps to getting started:

1. Click Run a Mission
2. Find a Mission that you want to run
3. Click “Accept Mission” or “Make an Offer” and confirm with your university e-mail address and password.

If you want to become a Client and post a mission, the process is also simple. You just list what the mission is and how much you are willing to pay. You have to provide a credit card, but it won’t be charged until the mission is complete.

Do My Stuff

On Do My Stuff you can make money by doing other peoples chores. People post things they need done. If you are willing to do it, then you can make some extra cash. You will find work like picking up the dry cleaning, walking the dog, and cooking dinner. If you find a chore that you can handle, then you bid on the job. If accepted, then you get the chore and the money when it’s complete. Chores can be day to day or they can even be long term with a beginning and ending date.

There has been a poorly kept secret circulating among personal finance bloggers over the past few years. And with the publication of a Wall Street Journal story yesterday, the secret is out of the bag. So I thought I’d bring it until full focus today. And the secret is that several popular personal finance blogs have been sold to major corporations over the past few years for seven and even eight figure deals.

Here is a list of personal finance blog sales based on publicly available information:

A few things to note about the above table. First, the asterisks next to the dates indicate my best guess at the date of sale. I could not find a source to confirm those dates. Second, for moneybluebook.com, I’ve referenced the whois record that shows Quinstreet as the owner of the site. Third, as you can see, Quinstreet does not disclose the purchase price of the personal finance blogs it has purchased. Under SEC regulations, it must disclose acquisitions material to its financial statements taken as a whole. Apparently, it concluded that these acquisitions were not material. I firmly believe, however, that each of these sales were for at least $1 million and some perhaps as much as $5 million or more.

And that raises an important question–how in the world could a personal finance blog be worth so much?

The Value of a Personal Finance Blog

What do personal finance bloggers write about? They cover debt, credit, banking, investing, credit cards, retirement, and a litany of other topics related to money. Each of these topics relates to industries that are willing to pay large sums of money for marketing and online exposure. Any website that can rank well in search engines for keywords related to these topics can generate a lot of advertising revenue. And the sites that have sold to the likes of Quinstreet and Bankrate have done just that.

Will I Ever Sell the Dough Roller?

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have discussed the sale of my site to large companies in the past. But these discussions never went very far for one simple reason–valuation.

Let’s assume that a blog generates $100,000 a year in income. We’ll assume that the $100,000 is after expenses and after taking out the value of the time the blogger spent on his or her site. In other words, the $100,000 a year is pure profit. What is this site worth?

Buyers typically value websites based on a multiple of yearly income. So the big question is what multiple should be applied to a personal finance blog. And the answer depends on one critical factor–how well is the blogger monetizing his or her site.

Imagine we have two blogs each making $100,000 a year. Blog A makes that income even though the blogger has not maximized the potential of the blog. As a result, a buyer could come in, make some changes to the site, and immediately increase revenue. In contrast, the blogger behind blog B has done a great job maximizing the site’s potential revenue, such that a new owner could not easily increase revenue.

In this hypothetical, Blog A will sell for a higher multiple than Blog B, all other things being equal.

Now back to the real world. What I’ve found is that for a personal finance blog that is well monetized, the typical multiple is 2 times annual income. Note that I have no idea what multiple was used to value the above blogs; 2 times annual income is based on my own experience and research. And at that multiple, I would never sell my site.

When we evaluate stocks, one consideration is the P/E ratio (price to earnings). A typical P/E ratio of a large corporation might range from 10 to 20, although many companies trade at much higher multiples. At a P/E of 10, it will take an investor 10 years at current earnings to earn back the purchase price of the stock. At 2 times annual income for a blog, we are talking about a P/E ratio of 2!

In fairness, it’s not meaningful to compare the valuation of a large publicly traded corporation to a personal finance blog. Because these blogs depend heavily on search engine traffic, and because search engines are extremely fickle in how they rank sites, any business built on this type of traffic comes with substantial risk. But a valuation of 2 times earnings for a site generating a full-time income is, in my opinion, a non-starter. In fact, I turned down a verbal offer for this site a little over a year ago. Since that time, the site has earned almost the value of the offer.

Inspiration

I don’t know about you, but I find the above sales to be inspiring. Each of the bloggers behind the blogs worked hard, built great sites, generated presumably a full-time income for themselves, and eventually sold their sites for a lot of money. Most bloggers I know want to generate enough income to blog full time. The above bloggers show us that it can be done, and they deserve a lot of credit for what they have accomplished.

Now It’s Your Turn

If you’ve thought about starting a blog, the sooner the better. The most valuable blogs are those that have been around the longest. So starting a blog today is better than starting one tomorrow. And if you don’t know where to begin, check out my tutorial on how to start a blog.

I’ll be updating the above table as new sales occur and as I learn more information about the above transactions. If you know of sales that should be added to the list, let me know.

Photo Credit: ~jjjohn~

As somebody who runs an Internet business, I’m always interested in learning how others make money online. What really excites me is to hear how one person, with a lot of hard work and determination, builds an online business that generates a full time income. And that brings me to an eBook called The Truth About Six Pack Abs.

As you might guess from the title, the book is about how to develop a tight mid-section. As somebody with low back problems, working on my core muscles is a regular part of my physical therapy, so I purchased this eBook over the weekend. I’ll talk a little about the book in a minute, but the focus of this article is about the business behind the book.

Meet Michael Geary

The author of this eBook is Michael Geary. Michael is a certified nutrition specialist and a certified personal trainer. He developed the first version of his book in 2005, and it’s generated a full time income for him since about 2007. So guess how much he makes from the sale of his eBook and related products.

Well, about two years into selling his book, he earned $50,000 a year. Now that seems like a lot of money, and it is. But keep in mind it took him two years working like a dog to get to that point. I have no doubt there were plenty of times he felt like giving up. I know there were times early on when I felt like giving up. At the beginning of most online businesses, you’ll invest a lot of time with little financial return.

You won’t believe what happened starting in year three for Michael. His income jumped to $3.6 million, then to $6 million, and today he makes $11 million per year! Can you imagine making nearly $1 million a month from an eBook? You can read more about his story on Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Work Week blog.

It’s Not All Peaches and Cream

Needless to say, the results Michael Geary has enjoyed are not typical. More importantly, the first time you launch your own product, there’s a good chance it will flop. This weekend I was reading a story from Martin (of Studenomics fame) who published a guest post over at The Financial Blogger called Do You Want to Blog Full-Time? Here’s a Reality Check That Nobody Else Will Give You.

Martin describes how he launched an eBook of his own. As you’ll read in his article, the results have not been so good. I mention Martin’s case study for a very important reason, which I’ll get to at the end of this article.

So now on to why 6-Pack Abs has been so successful.

How to Launch a Successful eBook

So what are the ingredients of a profitable information product? More specifically, what has 6-Pack Abs done (and not done) to reach 7-figures in revenue?

Pick the right topic: While there are plenty of topics you can choose for an information product, there are also a lot of topics that will limit your money-making potential right from the start. In the case of 6-pack Abs, it appeals to both genders, people of all ages, and is not country specific. In fact, Michael Geary has a Spanish version of his book.

Most importantly, the eBook should solve a problem that your market really cares about. For example, I’ve often thought about selling an eBook on how to make money blogging. I know many bloggers who struggle to make even $1,000 a month, let alone a full time income. Now this market would not be nearly as a big as the market for 6-pack abs, but it is a market full of passionate bloggers.

Produce a great eBook: 6-Pack Abs is a serious book. It’s 152 pages long and covers everything from nutrition to workouts. It includes pictures of the exercises Michael recommends, and meal plans to follow his nutritional suggestions. It no doubt took months of research and writing.

Writing a great eBook is important for a lot of reasons, but I’ll mention two. First, you should offer your customers an unconditional right to return the product for a full refund. All products sold through ClickBank (more about ClickBank in a minute) must offer a 60-day refund. You don’t want unhappy customers. If they don’t like the product, they should be able to return it. And a great product will have a low return rate.

Second, you want your customers to tell their friends and family how great the eBook is. Customers can be the best source of marketing. If you produce a poor quality product, word eventually gets out.

But as important as producing a great eBook is, remember one thing–the best eBook in the world, by itself, will not be successful. In fact, writing the eBook is about 5% of the total effort that goes into a successful informational product. Marketing the eBook is a critical component, which we’ll turn to now.

You need a website: I’ve seen many bloggers launch an eBook on their blog, but nowhere else. Certainly marketing the book on their blogs, particularly if the two are related, is a smart idea. But if you are serious about promoting your book, it needs its own website, too. The good news is that building a blog or website is easy.

A separate website allows you to focus entirely on the book, tweak the site in ways that would be difficult with a more general blog, and market the book more effectively. As an example, we’ll look at two important marketing strategies that Michael used to propel his success, both of which require a website.

1. Affiliate Marketing: If you’re not familiar with this concept, affiliate marketing is simply paying others a commission when they sell your product. In the case of an informational product, you can use a service like ClickBank to track all the traffic affiliate sites send you, the sales that traffic generates, and the commissions your affiliates earned.

One strategy that Michael employed was to pay his affiliates 75% of the sales price. That may seem like he’s giving away all his profits, but keep in mind that he’s selling an eBook. Once you’ve written the book, there are no more product development costs. So he can pay out 75% commissions and still make a nice profit.

2. Paid Search: Paid search involves using services like Google’s Adwords program to drive traffic to your site. Depending on what you’re selling and how much traffic you want to drive, the cost can range from hundreds to literally millions of dollars. Obviously you’ll want to work within your budget and start off slowly. But paid search is a great way to quickly test your product and marketing materials.

There’s a ton to learn about both affiliate marketing and paid search. And a lot of learning comes from experimenting. But there is one free source of information that is instructive at two levels. The free source is 6-Pack Abs affiliate page. You can sign up for free to Michael’s affiliate email newsletter on the page.

As I said, this newsletter is instructive at two levels. First, the newsletters I’ve received so far have been packed with great marketing ideas. I don’t plan to market his product because I write about personal finance, but the ideas he discusses can be applied to anything online. Second, it shows you just how much Michael wants his affiliates to succeed. He’s spent a lot of time creating content to help his affiliates. And of course, the more they sell, the more he makes. But if you get his newsletter, you’ll see why I say that the eBook itself is just 5% of the work.

Don’t buy an eBook on how to launch an eBook: Yes, there are eBooks on how to launch a successful eBook, but I wouldn’t recommend them. It’s not that there aren’t some good ones out there. But what you really want to see is an insanely successful eBook. If it happens to be about writing eBooks, fine. But in my case, I bought 6-Pack Abs not just for the content, but also to get a glimpse into how a successful eBook operation works.

And I learned a lot. Of course, I got to see the eBook, which I wanted for the content anyway. But I also got to see the landing pages he created for the sales cycle, the email he sends after a sale, the additional products he cross-sells with the eBook (e.g., meal plans), and the newsletters he sends out to subscribers (he has about 680,000 of them!). To me, this information was far more valuable that an eBook about eBooks.

This has been a long article; far longer than I anticipated. But I have one other piece of advice that I alluded to earlier–prepare to fail. If your goal is a full-time income, don’t expect to achieve that on your first launch. In fact, your first launch may be a complete failure. Michael Geary worked for two hard years to get to $50,000. It didn’t happen overnight. Setting this expectation upfront is important, otherwise it’s very easy to get discouraged.

As always, if you have any tips on creating a successful informational product, please leave a comment below. And if you want incredible abs or just want to see what a $1 million a month eBook looks like, check out Michael Geary’s The Truth About Six Pack Abs.

This year marked the fourth year anniversary of The Dough Roller! Before starting this site, I had no idea how to set up a blog. I’ve come a long way. Recently, several people have asked me to walk them through step by step how to start a blog using WordPress.

The good news is that setting up a blog is quick, easy, and inexpensive.

Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 3 Easy Steps

You need to do three things to set up a WordPress blog:

1. Get a domain name;
2. Sign up for web hosting; and
3. Iinstall the WordPress software (which is free).

So let’s cover each step, and by the end of this article, you should be all set to start your first site.

How to pick a domain name

There are a number of factors to consider when picking a domain name. And the first thing you should consider is why you are starting a site in the first place. Do you want to set up a social blog where making money online is just one of many goals? Are you setting up a site solely to generate revenue? Or Are you setting up a site to promote an off-line business? There are a lot of different and valid reasons to set up a site, but it’s important to know the purpose behind your site when you pick a domain name.

With that in mind, here are some of the factors to consider when picking a domain name:

Branding: If you are promoting an off line business, a domain name that matches the name of your company is critical. But even if your business is entirely online, a memorable domain name can help you build reader loyalty and trust. This is the approach I took with the Dough Roller. Exactly how well I accomplished that goal I’ll leave to you, but the people I talk to say its catchy and memorable. That’s the goal if your focus is branding.

Generic Domains: With a generic domain, you focus on what the site is about, rather than your own brand. For example, if it had been available, I could have named this site www.personalfinance.com or www.money.com. Those domain names were taken, but it gives you the idea of what a generic domain name is.

Visual Appeal: You should also consider things like the length of the domain name (the shorter, the better) and use of hyphens (none is best).

Top Level Domains: Does it matter if your site ends with .com, .net, .org, or some other TLD? Yes and no. Domain names with .com extensions are more valuable than other TLDs. It’s as simple as that. In addition, most folks assume that a website is a .com, so they can have trouble finding your site if it ends with a different extension. I have no doubt that some have had trouble finding the Dough Roller because it ends in .net. I think that’s why I get a handful of visitors each day who find the site through the search term the dough roller.

Availability: So you have a great domain name in mind and want to know if it’s available. There are a million places on the net to find out if a domain name is available. I use www.hostingsesame.com. It’s easy to use and will give you alternative suggestions if the name is not available. You should expect to try a lot of domain names before you find one that you like and that is available.

Hosting your site

There are many hosting services to choose from. And if you ask five bloggers which is the best, you’ll get five different answers. I’ve used several hosting services over the past four years. Of these, Hosting Sesame is my top pick. It’s inexpensive, reliable, and the telephone support is top notch. It also has a hosting package specifically designed for WordPress blogs.

And one other thing. Hosting Sesame is running a special where you can get your domain for just $3.99 (normally $10) if you purchase a non-domain item (which you must if you want hosting!). You can check out the details by clicking here.

Of course, you don’t have to use Hosting Sesame. There are plenty of good hosting companies out there. For the rest of this tutorial, however, I’ll be using Hosting Sesame. So let’s get started.

Since we are building a WordPress blog, the starting point is the WordPress hosting package. At Hosting Sesame, the option screen looks like this:

My suggestion is to go with the Deluxe Plan for 12 months or longer. The cost comes out to about $7 a month, which is hard to beat. Once you complete your purchase and sign in to your account, you’ll see a list of the items you’ve purchased (which at a minimum needs to be the domain and hosting). To get starting, find the hosting you purchased and click the Launch button, which looks like this:

And this is where buying hosting specifically designed for WordPress makes things really easy. When you launch your web hosting product, you’ll see this screen:

You’ll notice I’m using the domain hackerpress.net, which I purchased just for this tutorial. Hosting Sesame automatically fills in whatever domain you’ve purchased. Simply complete the rest of the fields, and Hosting Sesame will install and setup WordPress for you. It’s that easy.

How to Install WordPress on BlueHost

Now at this point you may be thinking that we just installed WordPress in step #2. We did. But that’s because Hosting Sesame makes it so easy. Many hosting companies require you to install WordPress on your own. So if you aren’t using Hosting Sesame, you’ll need to read this section.

Most hosting companies use what’s called cPanel. This is software that runs all of the applications available to you on the server. From the cPanel, scroll down to the Software/Services panel and click on the Fantastico De Luxe button. The image below was taken from Bluehost:

This will take you to the Fantastico page where you can click on the WordPress link in the left sidebar underneath the “Blog” heading. Here’s what the WordPress installation page looks like:

From here click the “New Installation” link to go to the WordPress installation page. In the drop-down box at the top, select the domain name where you want to install WordPress. In my example, I’m installing it in the CoolMoneyTools.net directory:

After that just work down the page inputting primarily the password you want to use and email name. Once you’ve filled in the required fields, click the “Install WordPress” button and Bluehost takes care of the rest. The next page will allow you to email the installation details to an email address of your choosing. This is very important, as you’ll want to save this information.

You can also use a program called Simple Scripts to install WordPress, which is also available with BlueHost and most other hosting services.

I know this has been a long post, but as I said, I do plan to cover this information in detail. Next week I’ll cover choosing a WordPress theme, including the SEO considerations that should go into your decision.

Web hosting service can make or break a blog or small business. I didn’t fully appreciate this when I started the Dough Roller more than four years ago. Since then, however, having built many websites and used several different web hosting services, it’s clear that picking the right web hosting for a site is critical.

So I thought I’d share my experience with three hosting services that I think are the best web hosting for a blog or small business: Hosting Sesame, DreamHost, and Media Temple. Each serves a different but important niche, and it’s important that you pick the right one for your website.

In a nutshell:

Hosting Sesame: Low cost and excellent telephone support. Great for new bloggers or new website owners. Powered by GoDaddy, Hosting Sesame provides great tools to build sites, and customer support has answered every question I’ve ever thrown at them.

DreamHost: Low cost (although a little more expensive than BlueHost), excellent user interface, and the ability to expand as your site grows.

Media Temple: High cost, but also high performance. A great choice for developed sites with more traffic, and what I now use for Dough Roller.

So with that, let’s take a look at each web hosting option in more detail.

Hosting Sesame Web Hosting Service

There is one reason Hosting Sesame is popular for new sites and blogs–cost. With a two year commitment, the cost comes in at just a few dollars a month.

Hosting Sesame is also very easy to use, which was important to me because I knew absolutely NOTHING about how to start a blog or website when I launched the Dough Roller. I’ve written a detailed, step-by-step guide on how to set up a WordPress blog with Hosting Sesame, if you need some guidance.

Hosting Sesame even offers a special web hosting package designed specifically for WordPress. In addition to hosting, this package comes preloaded with hundreds of free plugins and WordPress themes you’ll need to get you blog up and running. And it makes installing WordPress a snap.

The other key feature Hosting Sesame offers is free telephone support (it’s an extra cost with Dreamhost). When I was starting out, Hosting Sesame’s telephone support was critical on several different occasions. Coupled with its low cost and ease of use, the telephone support is why Hosting Sesame is great for new bloggers and website administrators.

You can check out Hosting Sesame at www.hostingsesame.com.

DreamHost Web Hosting Service

Dreamhost is also a low cost web hosting service with an excellent user interface. While Dreamhost costs a bit more than Bluehost, it offers greater flexibility as your site grows. Dreamhost does this by offering what is called VPS, or a virtual private server. Rather than sharing server resources with other sites, you can obtain your own dedicated resources through VPS.

VPS is not necessary for most new sites with little traffic. As sites grow and start receiving thousands of visitors a day, however, VPS may become necessary. At Dreamhost, VPS adds at least $15 per month to the cost, and it can go up to an extra $400 per month depending on how much memory your site demands. This cost shouldn’t scare you away; only an extremely large site would ever need to spend $400 a month on VPS.

For shared hosting, Dreamhost costs $9.95 a month on a one year contract, or $8.95 a month for a two year contract. If you lock in for 10 years, the price drops to $5.95. These prices include one free domain registration.

Here’s a quick list of the features you get with Dreamhost:

• Unlimited domains
• Unlimited e-mail accounts
• Unlimited disc storage
• 1 free domain registration
• PHP5 Support

You can check out Dreamhost at www.dreamhost.com.

Media Temple Web Hoting Service

I now run Dough Roller on Media Temple. Unlike shared hosting at Bluehost or Dreamhost, Media Temple offers dedicated virtual hosting. That means that I’m not sharing server resources with other websites. That’s the good news. The bad news is it’s a lot more expensive ($50 per month). Media Temple’s least expensive solution is $20 a month, so the cost is significantly higher than Bluehost or Dreamhost.

Media Temple also does not use cPanel. Instead, you access your servers through a progam called plesk. While it works just fine, it is a bit of a learning curve if you are coming from a shared hosting environment. On top of that, Media Temple’s documentation is not great. But they do have telephone support that is extremely helpful.

Here’s a quick list of the features you get with Media Temple:

• Unlimited domains
• Complete control of the server
• One-click software install
• Resell hosting
• Virtually unlimited scalability

If you want to check out Media Temple, you can do so at www.mediatemple.com.

If you are just starting out and no little or nothing about building websites or blogs, I’d recommend Bluehost. The free telephone support will come in handy and the cost can’t be beat. If you are more comfortable with building sites, Dreamhost is probably worth the small extra cost in exchange for the VPS option down the road. And if you know your site is going to need more than shared hosting right from the start, Media Temple can’t be beat.

If you have any questions or want some help getting started, just drop me a line.

One of the best things about making a living online is the incredible diversity. The Dough Roller is of course about personal finance, investing, and money in general. But there are thousands of profitable topics just waiting for a creative, enthusiastic blogger to come along. So in this article we are going to look at five ideas that I believe, if done right, could generate a full time income.

Before we get to the blog topics, it’s important to consider a few things:

• 5 Topics is Just the Start: While I’ve listed five ideas below, use the list as a starting point. With enough time, I could have easily listed 500 topics. The takeaway from this article shouldn’t be to pick one of the five ideas (although it’s perfectly fine if you do), but rather to see the potential in profitable blogging so that you can come up with the best idea for you.
• Think Scope: Beyond the topic you pick, the scope of your website or blog is critical. I generally tend to pick broad topics, like personal finance. But sometimes a narrower topic can be just as profitable and easier to market. For example, rather than personal finance, I could have built a site focused just on investing (like the Oblivious Investor), or even narrower and focused on dividend investing (like the Dividend Guy), or even narrower and focused just on Roth IRA investing (like Roth IRA). The key is give some real thought to what your site will cover within the topic area you choose.
• Stand Out: One question to always ask yourself is how will your site be different than other sites in the same niche. You want a point of difference. Exactly what that difference is depends on your niche, your personality, your background, your time commitment, etc. But spend some time researching sites in a niche you are considering, and find a point of difference. If you can’t find a way to distinguish your blog, think long and hard about whether it’s the right topic for you. For a few examples, consider Deposit Accounts (a site about bank rates that distinguishes itself by covering more banks than just about any other banking site on the net), Credit Card Offers IQ (ditto, but with credit cards), and Budgets Are Sexy (J. Money brings a freshness to the personal finance community, and he also introduced Love Drop, which is a great way to give to those in need).
• Be an Expert or Enthusiast: You’ll often hear about people being passionate about their blogs. I’ll let you in on a little secret–I’m not really “passionate” about bank accounts, credit cards or budgeting tools. But I am interested in these topics, expert in some, and an enthusiast in others. The point is that the more you know about the topic you choose, the more you’ll enjoy the work. Your knowledge of the topic will also show through in the quality of your content.

So on to the five blog ideas.

5 Profitable Blog Topics

1. Photography Blog

Photography is a hobby enjoyed by many, and it presents a wealth of blogging opportunities. Amateur photographers want to learn how to take better shots, how to get the best equipment at the lowest price, and to have a place to show off their best photos. For this reason, photography presents a blogging topic that is ideal for building a passionate community.

Perhaps the biggest question here is scope. Do you focus on all issues related to any type of photography? Or do you more narrowly focus the site? However broad or narrow the focus, there are many ways to monetize a photography blog:

• Equipment: Reviews of cameras, lenses, books and accessories present a great opportunity to generate income. The Amazon affiliate program is an ideal choice, as you can find just about everything related to cameras.
• Software: With digital photography comes editing software like
  Photoshop CS5. The key here is not simply to review a program like Photoshop, but rather to teach your readers how to use Photoshop to improve their photos. This is a perfect example of why having advance knowledge of your topic is so important. Adobe, the maker of Photoshop, has an affiliate program through Commission Junction. You can get more information on the Adobe program here.
• eBooks: Many photography bloggers have created and sell their own eBooks. These downloadable pdf books typically focus on one aspect of photography and can not only generate a stream of income, but also give you credibility.

Here are two examples of photography blogs:

• Digital Photograph School: Started by Darren Rowse of ProBlogger fame, the Digital Photography School is an excellent example of a first rate blog. Note that the site doesn’t try to be an eCommerce site, although it undoubtedly sells a lot of equipment. Instead, its primary goal is to teach. Selling comes second. The site has an excellent newsletter and markets some very popular eBooks.
• Improve Photography: This week I was reading an article on Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog about writing epic content. In the article Pat showcases a relatively new photo blog called Improve Photography. I liked the look of the site and the content is well written. I don’t know Jim Harmer, the guy behind the blog, but you would do well to study his site, even if photography is not your thing. By the way, as a good example of a post that should generate money for Jim, check out The Best Memory Card for the Nikon D7000. What I like is that he’s not just trying to sell something. Instead, he is offering his experience to showcase the best option for a particular camera. That’s what sets a blog apart from an eCommerce site.

2. Chess Blog: If I had an unlimited amount of time, a chess blog is one site I’d start for sure. And what I like about this example is that it shows the diversity in topics when it comes to making money online. As a tournament player, I’d focus the site on several things:

• Instruction: I can’t say it enough–if you can teach something that folks want to learn, even in a smaller niche like chess, you can create a fun site that generates a solid income.
• Problem of the Day: Chess players love solving chess problems.
• Chess News: Yes, chess is in the news if you know where to look. Did you know that Ponomariov Beat Nakamura In Dortmund? And to see Nakamura in action playing speed chess, check out Speed Chess and the Art of Patient Investing.
• Product Reviews: With chess comes books, sets, clocks, and software. I’d review these products over time, and publish detailed articles on how to use software to improve your game.

I have one word of caution that applies to a chess blog and may apply to a niche you’re interested in–expertise. While I enjoy chess and know more about the game than many, I’m not a grandmaster (or even close). And there are grandmasters who have started blogs. The point is that I’d be up against some stiff competition. Fortunately, the grandmaster bloggers don’t know much about SEO or making money online! Still, it’s always important to know your competition.

In searching for chess blogs to show you as examples, what I found was fascinating. Actually, it was what I didn’t find that was so interesting–chess blogs that rank well for competitive, profitable search terms (think chess sets, chess pieces, chess clocks, chess software, chess books, etc.). There are basically three types of chess sites: (1) eCommerce stores; (2) playing sites (like chess.com–my Username is Doughroller (of course) if you ever want to play a game online), and (3) chess blogs that have not done a good job monetizing their sites.

And that means there is room for a really good, profitable chess blog. How much could such a site make? I don’t know, but there’s one way to find out! If you have a great chess blog, please leave a comment below so we can check it out.

Before leaving the chess blog topic, I will leave you with one site: ChessLecture.com. This site has created/accumulated more than 1,500 videos of chess instruction, and charges a monthly membership fee. It goes beyond what you would think of as a blog, but it takes a creative approach to the topic that is worth studying.

3. Home Theater Blog

Who doesn’t love a great home theater? Whether you are talking about an actual in-home movie theater or just a tricked out family room, there is great potential for a blog here. Topics could include building your own theater, choosing audio and video equipment, lighting, furniture, configuring equipment, reviews, and photo sharing (who doesn’t like pictures of great home theaters?). The possibilities are endless.

Monetizing a home theater blog is, for the most part, pretty simple. Just about everything you can put in a theater or family room can be purchased online. Again, Amazon’s affiliate program is a good place to start. But there are other options that you can find on Commission Junction and Linkshare. Apart from equipment, there is also cable and satellite providers that have affiliate programs, such as Direct TV, Verzion FIOS, Cox, and DISH Network.

As for examples, it’s worth checking out Home Theater, a blog by ZDNet. True, it’s a professional blog, but it gives you an idea of the topics and style of writing. Another good blog to check out is Home Theater.

4. Fishing Blog

My step father was a bass fisherman. We’re talking about a tournament attending, power boat buying, depth finder using, plastic worm jigging, fisherman. He had multiple tackle boxes that when expanded must have had a wing-span of 10 feet. At $2 to $3 a pop, his collection of lures was easily worth thousands of dollars. And his graphite rods and reels numbered in the dozens, which he managed to use all at the same time when we were out on the boat (who has time to change a lure?).

And from this experience I learned two very important things: (1) I HATE fishing, and (2) those that love fishing are absolutely nuts about the whole affair.

And that brings us to blogging. Fishing provides all kinds of possibilities for blogs. Rather than describe the possibilities, let me show you–Fishing Fury. As soon as I saw this blog and its tagline–A Fishing Blog With Attitude!–I knew I had a keeper.

And the About page of the site tells you all you need to know:

Fishing Fury is a group of friends with an overwhelming passion for the sport of fishing, the great outdoors, crazy adventures, exploration of the world around us and doing what makes us happy. Our eventual goal is to one day have a TV show where we take you the viewer along to experience fishing and the great outdoors as we do, introducing you to interesting and unexpected topics, people, and circumstances.

That’s exactly what blogging should be about. They are obviously knowledgeable about the subject, enjoy writing about it, and have built a great blog.

And there are many ways to monetize a fishing blog. If you check out Fishing Fury, you’ll see how they do it. I’ll just add one idea–you can link to boats for sale on eBay and make a nice profit!

5. Travel Blog

As the final example, the travel industry provides many possibilities when it comes to blogging. You can review travel destinations, help folks find great vacation deals, provide travel tips, or a little of everything.

To give you and idea of the possibilities, here are three popular travel blogs that each approach the topic from very different perspectives:

• FlyerTalk: Imagine a site dedicated to frequent flyers. Talk about a niche. Yet FlyerTalk is a huge success. If you want to compare frequent flyer programs, it’s the place to go. And how does it make money? One way is through credit cards, which makes sense given the lucrative airlines credit card market.
• The Art of Non-Conformity: Chris Guillebeau of Art of Non-Conformity fame takes a totally different approach to travel. He writes about his world travels, and he sells a series of eBooks to fund his unconventional lifestyle.
• Adventurous Kate: The last example I found really inspiring. According to her blog, Kate quit her job to travel the world. And now she is developing online businesses so she can remain self-employed and continue traveling. Her site includes video, and I found this one rather funny:

So the question is, what are you waiting for?

I recently published an article describing how my wife and I paid off more than $200,000 in debt in five years. The post covered what you’d expect from an article on debt, including the importance of an emergency fund and avoiding credit card debt. But the secret weapon that really propelled us out of debt was earning extra income from blogging. And it was that aspect of the article that garnered the most comments. Here’s an example from one reader:

How to earn extra money – that is the hard part. Help us to make money online without being scammed.

The article was picked up by the MSN Smart Spending blog (thanks, Karen!) where the comments really get fun:

Good for the writer but useless article (for the most part) for everyone else. No details whatsoever and basic information. Kind of like trying to teach Business 101 to the Wharton MBA students.

And I like how he mentions “Oh yeah, I started another internet business which flows the dough while I still work my 9-5.” That is how I really paid the debt off. Why would MSN even post this bologna?

And my personal favorite:

What a bunch of whiney comments. Obviously you don’t have to earn as much money or have as much debt to pay off as these people did to take something of value from this article. Those who are focusing on those two aspects of the article are just using how it’s not EXACTLY their situation as an excuse to do nothing to improve their debt situation, probably just like they always have done.

For example, ” The only advice given is to get another job, which does not work for most people” commented by So Yeah. He never said to get another job, he said to find a way to earn more money. There are TONS of ways to do that from simply asking for a raise at your current job to selling stuff on eBay or Craigslist that’s just laying around your house or even cleaning houses on the side.

I took these comments to heart (both the good and the bad) and decided to write this Beginner’s Guide to Making Money Online. There is no way I can cover everything I’ve learned about blogging or how to make money at it in a single article. But this article will be a good start, and there will certainly be more to follow. So let’s get started.

My Blogging Story

I started the Dough Roller in May 2007. At the time I new absolutely nothing about building a blog. I had no idea how blogs made money, and I didn’t know any bloggers. With the help of Google, I researched everything about blogging, from how to set up a blog and publish my first post to how to get traffic to my blog.

For more than two years, I was up at 5 am seven days a week to work on the Dough Roller for two hours. During the week I worked on the site on the subway into work; I worked on the site at lunch; I worked on the site on the subway ride back home. And I’d work on the site after the family went to bed. With the help of others, I’ve now been able to slow down the craziness, but the Dough Roller is still a daily labor of love.

Today, Dough Roller receives over a million visitors a year (maybe over 2 million this year), is syndicated by the likes of U.S. News and MSN Money, and provides a full-time income. In fact, I now make more money online than I do practicing law (I’m still a full time lawyer as well as a blogger). The chart below compares my income from practicing law to my income blogging, with a very conservative estimate for 2011:

And of course, making money is only part of the blogging experience. I’ve met a lot of great bloggers, attended blogging conferences, learned a ton about the technology behind blogs and search engines, and have expanded my knowledge of personal finance and investing. It’s been great fun.

How do bloggers make money

Before you can even begin to think about earning some extra income from a blog, it’s critical to understand how blogs make money. And it’s the most frequent question I hear when folks learn that I make money online. Below I’ll cover the three high level ways bloggers make money, but first there is one extremely important thing to keep in mind. No matter how you monetize a blog or website, the key to making money is traffic. And the most profitable traffic comes from search engines. Building traffic will be the topic of an entirely different article, but it’s important to keep in mind.

So how do blogs make money? Bloggers make money in one of three ways:

1. Contextual Advertising: Contextual ads, like Google’s Adsense, present ads that are relevant to the content on the page. These types of ads are easy to add to a blog and present products and services that are relevant to your readers. Bloggers typically receive a small fee each time a reader clicks on an ad. The fee can range from just a few cents to $20 or more. While you may hear that not much money can be made from Adsense, don’t believe it. I’ve had months where Adsense revenue has more than paid my mortgage, and I know bloggers who make 5 figures a month with contextual ads. Besides Adsense, other contextual ad networks include Chitika, Kontera, and BidVertiser.
2. Selling products of other companies: Also known as affiliate marketing, selling the products of other companies is how many bloggers make big money. The concept is simple – companies with products or services to sell will pay blogs and websites that refer it traffic that results in a sale. For example, if you have a blog about cell phones, you can join many cell phone affiliate programs (e.g., Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Amazon Wireless). When a reader clicks a link say to Amazon Wireless in a review you’ve written about a cell phone, you get paid if your blog visitor buys the phone. Depending on what you’re selling, the fee can be less than a dollar (e.g., a $10 book from Amazon will net you $0.40 to $.60 typically) to more than $50 (e.g., a cell phone from Amazon Wireless). Now just imagine you have a targeted site with great content that gets 10,000 visitors a day. Easy to do? No. But if you succeed, the biggest problem you’ll have is what to do with all of your cash.
3. Selling your own products or services: Some bloggers also make money selling their own products. Some write eBooks that help people solve a problem. Other bloggers build iPhone apps for sale. This is an approach I’ve given a lot of thought, but never pursued. If executed well, however, selling your own products can be lucrative.

How to get started

So we know money can be made online. And we know how bloggers make money. So now what? Getting started is the hardest part. I think we mix in a fear of the unknown (how do I build a blog? Where do I get a domain? What do I write about? Will anybody come to my site?) with a healthy fear of failure. And the result is often inaction.

The fact is that building a profitable blog is simple. Note that I said simple, not easy. There is a difference.  Profitable blogging requires “just” three things:

1. Picking the right topic for your blog.
2. Creating the right content for your blog.
3. Marketing your blog.

Picking the right topic

A lot has been written about picking a blog topic. Some tell you to follow your passion. Some say to create a niche site that targets a single term that people frequently search for on Google. This approach often leads to ridiculous domain choices like best-gynecologists-in-north-toledo.us.

I do think it’s helpful to blog about something that piques your interest. If nothing else, you’re likely to know more about the subject. But beyond your interest, you’ll want to understand the revenue potential of the site and how competitive the vertical is. As a general rule, the more profitable a niche the more crowded the competition.

Some time ago I wrote an article on this subject – How to Pick a Lucrative Online Money Making Topic. In addition to my article, here are other articles that are worth perusing:

• Principles of Choosing a Profitable Blog Topic (via ProBlogger)
• How To Choose A Profitable Topic To Blog About (via John Chow)
• Ridiculous and Interesting Passive Income Topics | The Smart Passive Income Blog (via Pat Flynn)

As you think about possible topics for your blog, ask yourself this question–What can I teach that others desperately want to learn? If you can answer that question and execute, you’ll have a blog with a passionate (and hopefully profitable) following.

Creating the right content

Content is the lifeblood of any blog. Some say that content is king. While great content alone is not sufficient to build a successful blog, it is absolutely necessary. Of course, the type of content will vary based on your own writing ability, personality, and the subject matter of your site.

As the sole blogger at Dough Roller when I started, it took me a lot of time to build a solid foundation of content. At my most productive, I was publishing about 15 posts a week. Considering that some personal finance blogs have thousands of pages of content, you can appreciate how slow the process can be. But as a friend often reminds me, slow and steady wins the race.

There are some sites and articles that provide useful information on writing great content. Here are a few I recommend:

• How to Write Great Blog Content (via ProBlogger)
• How To Write Excellent Blog Content – What We Wish We Knew (via ProBlogger)
• How to Write Remarkably Creative Content (via copyblogger)
• The Importance of Writing Great Content (via Blogussion)

Marketing

So you’ve picked a topic, built your site, and are on your way to creating compelling content. Now what?

The first thing to understand is that your site will likely receive very little traffic in its early days. Marketing a website takes time–time to get to know other webmasters, time for others to hear about your site and appreciate your work, and so on. At a minimum, you should expect to put in six months of hard work on a daily basis before seeing results. And even then it’s still a process that evolves over years of running a site.

Second, it is a big mistake to equate marketing with search engine optimization (SEO for short). SEO is the process of getting a website to rank well in search engines. While SEO is an extremely important part of marketing a website, it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. Eric Ward, who is a recognized expert at getting backlinks (links from other sites that point to your site), recommends going about link building as if search engines didn’t exist. In other words, does the link you’re trying to get from a website have value apart from its potential to improve your rankings in search engines? If the answer is no, the link isn’t worth your time and likely will not carry SEO benefits.

So how do you market a website? The answer to that question depends in part on the topic of your site. You’ll market a site about chess a lot differently then you will one about investing. But there are some methods that are effective for almost all types of sites. Here are a some ideas, along with additional resources:

1. Get to know your community: If you start a blog about chess, you should research the top chess blogs, websites, and forums. Not only will this research give you ideas about your own site, but it will also give you a list of sites and webmasters relevant to your site’s topic. Part of promoting your own site is engaging in the online discussion, and you can’t do that if you don’t know your community.
2. Get to know relevant reporters: One of the best ways to market your blog is get a link from mainstream media. The level of difficulty depends in part on the topic of your site and your expertise in that field. Using Google News and Google Alerts, keep track of the reporters that write stories relevant to your topic. And then look for ways to help these reporters. Whether it’s information or data relevant to their field, or perhaps a story idea, you’ll find many reporters far more open than you might expect. Also, sign up for HARO (Help a Reporter). You’ll receive daily emails listing stories reporters are working on who are in need of an expert in the relevant field.
3. Publish a guest post: A guest post is an article you write for another blog or website. In exchange for free great content, the webmaster will include at least one link back to your site. If you decide to write a guest post, keep three things in mind: (1) Seek to publish guest posts on the top sites relevant to your niche; (2) Recognize that you may get a lot of rejections before you find a site that will publish your article; and (3) when you do get your chance, make sure the article is your very best work.

The above three ideas are just a drop in the bucket. Here are some additional resources on how to market a website:

• The Blogger’s Guide to SEO – by Aaron & Giovanna Wall
• WordPress SEO – The Definitive Guide
• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic

There is another article that is important for you to read – How to Survive the Affiliate Evolution. This article was written in 2007, but is as relevant today as ever. The article deals with sites that make money through affiliate marketing, and I highly recommend it.

Finally, if you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to either leave a comment below or send me an email at dr [at] doughroller [dot] net. I will have follow up articles that dig deeper into this whole crazy business of blogging for dollars, so stay tuned. . . .

A good friend of mine is an author, speaker and radio talk show host. Her story is amazing. Just to give you an idea, the tagline on her website is “From the Crack House to the State House.” And the other day we were discussing how to market a business on the internet. The first step, of course, is to build a website. As we discussed this, however, one thing she said really caught my attention. She said she had no idea how to build a site or even where to begin.

She then described marketing seminars she has attended. At these seminars, folks pay thousands of dollars to have somebody create a website and social media presence for them. In one case, she told me that a lady was “helping” businesses with social media for $8,000!

So today we are going to walk step-by-step through how to build a professional website for your business for about $100. Forget paying thousands of dollars, attending a seminar, or putting the future of your business in the hands of somebody you don’t know. And building a site is much easier than you probably think.

When I started Dough Roller, I had no clue how to build a website or blog. So I sat down at the computer and starting searching Google for all the answers. Today, it takes me about an hour to set up a site.

To build your business website, you’ll need just four things:

1. A domain: Sometimes referred to as a domain, domain name, or url, this is the web address of your site, as in www.your-business-name-here.com. Domain names cost $10 a year.
2. Web hosting: A web host is where your business website will reside. There are many web hosting companies to choose from (see below). While the cost can vary significantly, it’s easy to find a good web hosting service for less than $10 a month.
3. WordPress: WordPress is software that can power a website or blog. While it isn’t the only option, I think it’s the best option for many small businesses. And it’s free.
4. A WordPress theme: When you install WordPress, it doesn’t look all that great. Fortunately, WordPress developers have built what are called themes that can make a site look great. While there are free themes available, my recommendation for a business is to use a theme called Genesis. I’ll explain the hows and whys below.

Not only is this approach to a business website inexpensive, but you should have your site up and running in a few hours. So now let’s walk through exactly how to do that.

Domain Name & Web Hosting

For most businesses, the best domain name is simply the name of the business. Because a domain name that matches your business name may not be available, however, you may need to get creative. It’s easy to determine if a domain name is available. To check availability, go to Hosting Sesame. On the home page you’ll see a search box where you can see if the domain you want is available.

If the domain name you enter is not available, Hosting Sesame will recommend similar domain names that are available. And you can of course try other names until you find an available domain that you like.

Once you have a domain name, you need to sign up for web hosting. I think Hosting Sesame is a good option for several reasons. First, it’s cheap. You can get web hosting for a few bucks a month. Second, they offer free telephone support, which many hosting companies don’t provide. Particularly if you are new to websites, the telephone support is invaluable. I use Hosting Sesame for some of my sites and have been very happy. While you may end up going with a different hosting company, I’ll use Hosting Sesame screen shots for the rest of this tutorial.

Installing WordPress

Once you’ve signed up for web hosting, installing WordPress is a snap. BlueHost offers what is called SimpleScripts, which let’s you install WordPress with one click.

When you first log into BlueHost, you’ll see what is called the cPanel. The cPanel is a list of icons for all of the programs you can run on the server. And at first glance, it’s intimidating. The number of icons can be overwhelming. The good news is you can ignore just about all of them. All you need is to find the SimpleScripts icon for WordPress, which looks like this:

Click on the WordPress icon under the SimpleScripts heading. On the next screen you’ll see a button to install WordPress. You’ll be asked which website to install WordPress. Remember that you can host more than one website on the same server. If you’ve just purchased a single domain, however, you’ll only have one site to choose form. Under advanced options you can give your website a name, choose a username, and set your password.

Important: Be sure to write down the username and password. You’ll need these to log into WordPress once the installation is complete.

Once you’ve filled in the information, click the “complete” button and SimpleScripts does the rest. Congratulations, you’ve just installed WordPress.

WordPress Genesis Theme

If you visit your new website, you won’t like the way it looks. The standard WordPress theme is not much to look at. While there are free themes, in my view a premium theme is a much better option for a few reasons:

• They don’t cost much
• They look great
• They come with a lot of flexibility in terms of layout

The theme that I think is best for a business is called Genesis. It was developed by StudioPress, and there are several reasons why Genesis is perfect for businesses.

First, it comes with several pre-designed templates to choose from. Rather than paying somebody to custom design a site or trying to do it yourself, for less than $100 you get a professional looking layout.

While StudioPress offers dozens of designs to choose from, here are a few of my favorites for small businesses:

Second, it is extremely easy to customize the Genesis theme. Whether it’s adding unique content to a sidebar or changing the layout on a page by page basis, it all can be done in Genesis with a few clicks of the button.  Third, it’s inexpensive. You can get Genesis and one design (they call the designs child themes) for $79.95. If you want all of the child themes (there are more than 40) the cost is $299.95.  Finally, Genesis comes with a forum that can answer any question you may have. It is well moderated with folks who really know their stuff. And it includes text and video tutorials that walk you through how to set up the theme.

In the end, whatever theme you choose for your site, you need to install it on your serve. To do so, you need to download the theme to your hard drive (from the theme website) and then upload it to the server where your website is located. When you download a theme to your hard drive, it will be zipped, which is fine. In the current version of WordPress uploading the theme to your server is extremely easy.

To upload the theme, the first thing we need to do is log into the administration panel of your WordPress installation. I can recall back in 2007 installing WordPress and then spending about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to log in. Anyway, just type in the name of your website in your browser followed by /wp-admin. So if your website were www.mybusiness.com, you would type in www.mybusiness.com/wp-admin. You’ll be asked for your username and password, which you set when you installed WordPress (remember I told you to write them down!).

After you log in, you’ll see a menu of links down the left side of your screen. Look for the “Themes” link under the Appearance category. Once you’ve navigated to Themes, you’ll see a menu to install themes. From here you can upload the theme you’ve downloaded to your hard drive. The upload screen will look like this:

When you select the theme to upload, WordPress will ask you for “Connection Information.” The connection information is what WordPress needs to transfer the theme from your computer’s hard drive to the server at the web hosting company where you have your website. Here’s what the screen looks like:

This is probably the trickiest part of the whole process, and it’s not that tricky. The key to remember is that the username and password needed here is NOT the user name and password you use to log into your WordPress panel. Instead, you need a username and password for what is called an ftp connection, or file transfer protocol.

FTP is simply how you can upload, download, and edit files between your web server and computer. To set up ftp, log back into your web hosting to create the account. In Bluehost, recall that from the cPanel you clicked on the WordPress icon under SimpleScripts to install WordPress? It’s basically the same process to create an ftp account, except that you of course click a different icon. Here’s what it looks like in cPanel:

You can see the icon to the far right for FTP accounts. Once you’ve create the account, including a username and password, you can use this information within WordPress to upload your theme. And if you have any trouble creating the FTP account, give Bluehost a call, and they will walk you through the process.

Now all that’s left is to activate theme. Keep in mind that you can uploaded multiple themes into your WordPress installation. As a result, WordPress needs to know which one you want to use. So under “Appearances” go back to “Themes.” There you’ll see thumbnail images of each theme you’ve uploaded to WordPress. Simply click the one you want and activate it. All that’s left is to check out your site.

Of course, you’ll need to add your own content, including images if you want. You’ll undoubtedly have questions, most of which can be answered with a simple search on Google. Also, feel free to e-mail me at dr [at] doughroller [dot] net.

With unemployment going up, more and more people are looking for alternative ways to make money. One way is to make money online. It is so easy to start a blog about something you enjoy, and with a lot of hard work, start making some real money. I’ve often said that making money on the internet is simple, but not easy. It really does take a lot of work, but it’s not rocket science. Today, I want to share a free resource that can help you make some money blogging, whether you are just starting out or have been blogging for some time. The resource is called Flex Offers, which is currently offering a $200 sign-up bonus (more about the bonus in a minute).

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Flex Offers is an affiliate marketing program. Here’s how it works. Many companies want to advertise their products or services on blogs and websites (referred to in the business as publishers). Rather than developing the systems in-house to do this and reaching out to publishers one at a time, they use the services of an affiliate marketer like Flex Offers. Flex Offers does two things for these companies. First, it develops the relationships with publishers. Publishers sign up with the affiliate program, thereby gaining access to market the products and services of all the companies that have contracted with the affiliate. Second, Flex Offers takes care of all the accounting systems to make sure that publishers get credit for the sales they generate.

And that brings us to how publishers make money. When you sign up for Flex Offers, you get access to text links and banners for a variety of products and services that you can place on your website or blog. Here at The Dough Roller, I obviously focus on financial products, but Flex Offers has a wide variety of products and services to choose from. When a visitor clicks on a link or banner and buys the product or service, the publisher gets a small commission. The amount of the commission varies depending on the product or service and the volume that each publisher generates.

How to sign up and use Flex Offers

Joining Flex Offers is both free and easy. The first step is to sign up for Flex Offers, which you can do by clicking here (but make sure you read about the bonus below first). The sign up process takes just a few minutes. Remember, they will ask you for your social security number and eventually you’ll need to complete a W-9 (gotta love the IRS). Once you are approved, you can then apply to promote any of the products or services offered by Flex Offers. Applying to promote a given product or service is literally as easy as checking a box and hitting the apply button.

To give you an idea, here are some of the companies Flex Offers promotes:

• Overstock.com
• CompUSA.com
• Walter Drake
• McAfee
• iTunes
• WT Direct
• American Express
• Citibank
• Priceline.com

Flex Offer’s $200 Bonus

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Two readers recently contacted me with two separate but related comments about how I make money online. The first came in the form of an e-mail:

Hello,
I really like your tutorial on how to make money blogging except I am sort of confused. Can I make a site or host a domain about any subject really and make money or does it have to be about money in particular? Like your credit card site and your other sites seem to do with just particularly money or money related. I that the general theme for making the money, or can it be about say CD reviews or something like that? Any direction will be greatly appreciated.

The second came in the form of a comment to a blog post about how to earn extra income:

Hi DR,

I love your site and was wondering if you had completed the post on how you make $2500 monthly yet? I desperately would like to create a passive income stream, but have not been able to decide which path to take, so I would really like to see what works for you. Besides blogging?

Thanks for your help and input. I also liked your posts on the 4HWW (DR Note: 4 Hour Work Week). I also read the book and enjoyed it, but have yet to try anything. Once I decide what might work best for me though, I’m sure I will.

Thanks again.

Let me start with the second comment, which was to a blog post I wrote back in June 2007. At that time I noted that I was making $1,500 a month online (now I make that in under a week). I also promised to write further posts describing how I do it. The starting point of an online adventure, whether you want to start a blog or more traditional website, is to set up a well designed and optimized site. I’ve written several detailed articles describing how to do this. If you’ve missed them, you can check out these articles here:

• Make Money Blogging – Setting Up a WordPress Blog in 3 Easy Steps
• How to start a money making WordPress blog
• 5 Must Have WordPress SEO Plugins for a Money Making Blog
• How to Optimize a WordPress Theme for Search Engines

With that foundation in place, we now turn to the question of blog topics. Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced blogger looking to start another site, the question is the same: how do we go about picking the subject of a blog that can allow us to generate a steady cash flow online.

You can make money online in a thousand different ways with content on just about any subject. I write a lot about personal finance, investing and money management because that’s what I enjoy writing about. But people make a lot of money online writing about paintball guns, golf clubs, bicycles, politics, and anything else you can think of, including CD reviews. Here’s the fundamental truth about making money online; if you can drive the right kind of traffic to your site, you can make money.

That being said, picking the topic(s) that is right for you is a simple 3-step process.

Step 1: Follow your interests

As a starting point, I look for topics that I have an interest in and experience with. When I started blogging in May 2007, I wrote about personal finance and investing. I enjoy studying these topics, I read and analyze financial statements for a living, and it’s a lot of fun for me to write about these subjects. But there is something more fundamental at play here.

When you write about a topic you have some experience with, it shows. The writing flows much more naturally, and the content of your articles reflects a depth that only experience with the subject can produce. When you read a personal finance blogger discussing investing, you can tell quickly if they know what they are talking about, even if you do not agree with everything they say. For example, when you read Pinyo’s posts on investing on his blog, Moolanomy, you know he speaks from experience. The same is true with blogs about making money online. When you read my articles on setting up an optimized blog, while you may disagree with some of my approaches, I think you would agree that the articles reflect some level of experience with the subject.

You can blog about a topic you know little about. But the amount of work to produce the content will be greater (unless you pay for the content). My advice, however, is to stick with what you know.

Step 2: Decide how you will monetize the site

It is absolutely critical to determine how you will monetize your site during the process of picking a topic. As I’ve written before, there are countless ways to make money blogging. Generally speaking, however, making money online falls into two categories: (1) Adsense, and (2) affiliate sales. Yes, you can make money selling text links or banners, and there are ad networks that pay per impressions. But most sites stick with Adsense and affiliate sales.

On this site, I use both. Adsense represents a relatively small portion of my income. Last month I made about $1,500 in Adsense, and that was an unusually good month. More typical is $800 to $1,000. For me, most of my income comes from a variety of affiliate sales.

If you decide to monetize using Adsense, the analysis is quite simple. You simply have to determine how much potential traffic your topic can generate and the value of that traffic for an Adsense publisher (Step 3 below covers this research). If you are looking to monetize your site with affiliate sales, you should identify affiliate programs that offer products and services relevant to your site.

To use the music CD example referred to in the email above, there are several affiliate programs that would enable you to market and sell music.

Amazon: Amazon sells just about everything. From books, to music, to movies, to table saws. Commission rates begin at 4% of the purchase price, quickly go to 6%, and can go as high as 15% for top sellers. You can check out the details and apply for the program on the Amazon Associates Website.

eBay: Through the eBay Partner Network, you can display eBay ads on any product for sale on eBay. If a reader clicks through and buys the product, you get a commission from eBay. Commissions start at 50% of the revenue eBay generates from the sale and goes up to 75% for top sellers. You can also receive a commission if a user clicks through your site to eBay and signs up as a registered user. For a music CD site, you’d obviously have a lot to promote from eBay.

And now you start to think outside the box. For example, you can promote online music downloading sites like Apple’s iTunes and Napster. Both have affiliate programs through Commission Junction.

Maybe you think about selling iPods and other MP3 players. You’ve already got the iPods covered through the Apple affiliate program. There are numerous affiliate programs that cover electronics, in addition to Amazon and eBay. Sony, HP, and Dell, for example, all have affiliate programs through Commission Junction.

Maybe you decide to branch out into DVDs. Not only can you promote DVDs through the affiliates listed above, but you can also promote Netflix and Blockbuster (yep, through Commission Junction). By now you get the idea. Your biggest limitation will be your own imagination. If you are looking for ideas, look at other blogs and see what they market.

Step 3: Research, Research, Research

No matter what topic you pick or how you plan to monetize the site, research is absolutely critical. So what exactly are we researching, and how do we go about doing it? At a minimum, we need to answer the following three questions:

1. What are the primary keywords that are relevant to the site;
2. How competitive are those keywords (i.e., how many other sights are working hard to rank for those keywords); and
3. How much are those keywords worth from Adsense.

So let’s do this analysis for a music CD site.

1. What are the primary keywords that are relevant to the site?

There are many online keyword research tools. Many are free, some require a monthly subscription. I’ve used both. But as a starting point, I always go to Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool. The tool is free and provides information not found with other keyword tools.

Let’s start by entering “CD” in the keyword box. Once I get the results, I typically click on the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column to order the list by search volume, from highest to lowest. Here’s what it looks like for the keyword “cd” (click on the image to enlarge):

Before diving into the results, there are a few options you should understand:

Choose column to display: In the upper right hand corner you will see a drop down box that allows you to display or hide various columns. We will come back to that in a moment, but recognize that the tool can provide more information than what is initially displayed.

Match type: Just below the drop down to select what information to display, you will see another drop down box for the match type. It is critical that you understand how this works. The tool offers four match types: broad, phrase, exact, and negative. Here’s what each means:

• Broad match: Includes searches for a keyword phrase in which the words appear in any order and in combination with other keywords. May also include searches with similar keywords. For example, broad match search data for the keyword music CD includes searches for CD music, CD with music, and my personal favorite, the music rocks that I put on my CD last night, dude.” I know, I’m so 1970s. Setting the match type to broad will result in the largest search volume total.
• Phrase match: With phrase match, the search volume data includes searches using the keyword phrase in the order listed, but possibly including other words. For example, phrase match search data for the keyword music CD includes searches for rock music CD, music CD labels, but not CD music.
• Exact match: Here, search volume includes only those searches for the listed keyword exactly as is with no additional words added in the search. For music CD, it gives you search volume for music CD only.
• Negative match: This match type is not all that important to us now, but it allows you to exclude certain keywords from the data.

So with this information, let’s check out the results for CD. With the match type set to broad, the keyword CD produces more than 20 million searches a month on Google alone. Now the question everybody asks is how to determine the number of search engine visitors a site would receive if it ranked #1 for a given search term. As a very broad estimate, I expect to get about 50% of the estimated traffic using the exact match type. For CD using the exact match type, Google estimates 165,000 searches a month. So the #1 spot would produce about 82,500 search visitors a month.

Now let’s head back to reality. The keyword CD is much too broad and competitive to target as a keyword for a new site. Just search Google for CD and check out the first page results. So let’s focus on a more obvious choice, music CD, and rerun the keyword tool with that keyword.

The results show that with the exact match, only music cd and music cds get any descent monthly traffic. After that, the results fall significantly. While these may be keywords worth targeting, focusing on the keyword music cd may not be the best approach. So let’s try music reviews.

The results show 12,100 searches using the exact match type. And here’s where you realize that the greater the search volume, the more competitive the keyword. 12,100 searches is not a big number, but the keyword music reviews describes quite well the site we are thinking of starting. You can continue to use this tool to research many other related keywords, but you get the idea.

And this brings me to step two of the research, our competition.

2. How competitive are the keywords we’ve chosen?

To assess the competition, the first thing I do is look at the top 10 search results for the keyword. A search of “music reviews” reveals some interesting data. First note that, at least as of this writing, the search returned 49,900,000 results. You will see the search result totals toward the upper right hand section of the Google search results page. I think small numbers tell you more than the big ones. Any search result with less than 1,000,000 results is small. Fifty million is big, but not necessarily indicative of how competitive the keyword is.

Next I look at the page rank of the top 10 results. There are several ways to get at this data, but the easiest is to use the SEO for Firefox plugin. This is a great tool that provides a wealth of information, including the page rank for websites listed in the search results. For music reviews, we see that the page rank for the first 10 sites ranges from 4 to 7. That alone tells me the keyword is very competitive. Certainly a new site has no chance of ranking in the top ten, but with enough time, quality content and backlinks, its possible. Certainly achieving a PR of 4 is not extremely difficult.

Another tool you can use to assess the competition for a keyword is the Keyword Difficulty tool available on SEOmoz.org. If you are not familiar with the site, you should be. It has both free content and premium content that requires a monthly membership. Unfortunately, the Keyword Difficulty tool and many of the sites other tools are available only with a paid membership. But since I’ve paid my dues, so to speak, let me run “music reviews” through the tool and see what we get. Hold on, I’ll be right back.

The tool produces a difficulty score of 71% (out of 100%), which indicates that this is a tough nut to crack. SEOMoz describes the keyword as “highly competitive.” In addition, it estimates that the term was searched over 35,000 times yesterday. A big difference from what the Google adwords tool showed, which underscores that search estimates are just that, estimates. Now does all of this mean we should give up on the site or this keyword? No!

I would do more research for additional keywords to target. You could look to longer tail keywords. For example, in addition to music reviews, how about jazz music reviews. You could focus on keywords related to specific artists, genres, recording labels, and so on. With something as broad as music, you could find plenty of topics/keywords to focus on.

Before we move to step 3, there are two additional points to keep in mind. First, it’s a good idea to look at the top 10 search results for a keyword you are targeting. For example, the #1 result for “music reviews” is Metacritic, a site run by CNET Networks. Metacritic is a professional run site, as are several others in the top 10 search results. This will give you an idea about your competition, including how they monetize their sites. Metacritic, for example, uses banners to eBay and, of all things, Discover credit cards.

Second, you can look to see what keywords these top sites target. Looking at the title bar in your browser while viewing MetaCritic, you will see “Music Reviews, CD Reviews – Metacritic.com.” That tells you the site is targeting music reviews and cd reviews. Some sites use meta keywords that you can see by selecting the view–>page source on your browser. Billboard Music Reviews, for example, which currently ranks #3 for “music reviews,” uses the following keywords on its homepage: Music Reviews, Business News Magazine, Music Executives, music trivia, and Music games.

3. How much are those keywords worth from Adsense?

Finally, if you intend to monetize your site with Adsense, it is important to understand how much you can make per click. As a starting point, go back to the Adwords keyword tool and type in “music reviews.” When the results appear, go to the “Choose columns to display” drop down box and select “show estimated avg cpc.” This will show you an estimate of what an advertiser would have to pay each time somebody clicked on their ad. There is more to it than that, but the key is that this shows what Google would charge the advertiser, not what you would make on your site per click. As a general rule of thumb, however, take about 25% of the listed amount and that’s roughly what you would make.

I should ad here that many, many factors go into how much a publisher makes on any given adsense click. But this will give you a rough idea. For music reviews, the listed cost is $.87. Multiply that by 25% and you are not left with much. By comparison, see what an ad would cost for the keyword “payday loans.” I’m showing $8.17. No try “Mesothelioma.” I get $23.65. The point here is simply that not all keywords or blog topics are created equal. Do your research and you’ll begin to get a good idea of what pays what.

Homework

Yes, there’s homework. Whether you are new to blogging or not, research a blog topic that interests you with the goal of selecting a keyword to target (whether it is for the homepage, category page, or an individual post). You should be able to answer the following questions about the keyword:

1. An estimate of the number of times the keyword is searched each month
2. An understanding of the top 10 competitors who rank on the first page of Google for the keyword. Things to look for with these competitors include: (a) page rank; (b) age of site; (c) backlinks; (d) and whether the result is to the site’s homepage, category page, or individual article
3. How you plan to monetize your site/page
4. The value of the keyword for Adsense.

I’ll be following these steps for my Energy Saving Gadgets site. Until next Saturday, happy blogging.