Discover the Secrets of Niche Blogging

On July 12th, Unique Blog Designs announced the new version of Affiliate Theme – version 1.2.

With the earlier versions, Affiliate Theme was already the easiest way for me to set up a new blog for any niche and have it running in matter of minutes with the products and offers showing. How easy it is with this theme doesn’t stop to amaze me. Well, anyway – the new version is out and it has some new functionality in it that I was waiting for after reading the upcoming features from the support forums.

The new version totally changes how the headers of the theme is handled. Earlier, it was either pre-made header graphics, custom header or just text. So getting individual header up there, one had to do it or get someone else to do the custom graphics. Now, with the new version, the header graphics are in the background instead, which means that any custom TEXT can be added on top of them.

So using the pre-made niche related header graphics is now even better as the blog title and tagline can now be added there with ease. Of course, one can still do custom header, but for a quick niche blog, it’s now up in minutes WITH great, eye-catching header..

What else is new with Affiliate Theme version 1.2?

• Improved Theme Settings interface
• Change the page and sidebar width
• Display navigation below or above header
• Open Conversion URLs in new windows
• Add “No follow” to Conversion URL’s
• Choose to float on-page Media Boxes Left or Right
• Improved header display system
• Improved system for handling the “separate blog” functionality

I’m loving the last two improvements. Like I mentioned, it’s so easy to make great looking header now when the header graphics can be used as background and add my own custom text on top of the header.

And of course, like in this blog, I’m running the separate blog in nearly all my niche blogs, so getting the improvement to the handling of that is a great bonus!

Read the whole story from Unique Blog Designs post at AffiliateTheme.net.

And like getting this new version wasn’t good enough, UBD is already in the process of building the next version of Affiliate Theme!

p.s. the new tutorial video series available to the Affilita Theme owners will walk you through how to integrate offers from Azoogle, Market Leverage, Clickbooth, Pepperjam, Neverblue, Motive, and many other popular networks.

As you probably figured, I like this theme a lot, but if you want to read more of my thoughts and experiences with the theme, check this post: Affiliate Theme First Impressions.

When you’re looking for a profitable topic or niche to start or expand your online business into, you want to go where the money is. But you also want to go where there is no or very little competition. The combination of these is your answer to finding a profitable niche, and thus topic for your blog.

Of course, you can jump into the overpopulated niches, where the competition is fierce as there is so much money around. Examples of niches like this are the make money niche, or search engine optimization, SEO niche. You can choose a topic like this and make a killing, but for beginners and for most experts too, it’s a lot more profitable to find those hidden, untapped niches.

Go Where the Money Is

You can go at this two ways:

• finding first where the money is and then check if there is (too much) competition or not, or
• look for niches with little to no competition and then see if there’s any money in there.

Usually it’s easier to find the products you’d like to promote first. You can start by looking at the best seller lists on different sites and the popular products on affiliate networks (e.g. Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.). Also, look into the popular searches in different search engines to see what people are searching at the moment. And continue on by searching for keywords related to the products you found.

For more examples on how to find profitable niches and keywords, consider checking out the videos James Jones of Micro Niche Finder has put out for you. Check out the following link, sign-up with your email address and Get Instant Access to 5 Free Videos.

Have you read my review on Micro Niche Finder already?

If you haven’t, check it out here it here: Micro Niche Finder Review

Are you considering to start a blog and make it your business?

Maybe you just want to share your thoughts and experiences and don’t care about making money?

Or perhaps you’re accomplished Internet marketer and you’re looking for yet another niche to start a blog in and make money from advertising, affiliate marketing or your own products?

Whether you’re looking for a topic for your very first and only blog or your 7th niche blog, you start here, on topic selection..

Every blog starts with a topic selection, and the topic you choose, might make or break your blog in the future, so it is very important to take your time and make sure that the topic is right for you and for your purposes.

Take Your Interests, Passion, Hobby or Business

Picking a topic to blog about for a hobby blog or a personal blog is pretty straight forward, and you could even combine those two. But it could be hard to monetize a blog like that, not impossible, but hard. A blog about things you love is perfectly fine and you should go for it if you want.

If you’re about to start a blog about your existing business, you have at least the top-level topic at hand already, but perhaps you could dig deeper and hit more targeted audience. Or maybe you’re thinking about starting a blog and turn it into your business or have goals on making some money online. Remember, some niches are more profitable, and some others are harder to monetize, so choose wisely.

When you have decided to start a blog, whatever you’re situation is, you should think about the topic for your blog, niche if you will.

There are a lot of things that go into successful topic selection, but the resources and tools on this blog will help you find your answer.

If you’re looking for a blog topic for one, main blog that you plan to keep yourself, try this:

Simple Blog Topic Selection Formula

Look Into Thy Heart

Answer me these questions three:

• What Are You Passionate About?
• What Are You Good At?
• What Do You Enjoy Learning More About?

In your answers to these questions three, lies the seed of the topic for thee.

For a niche blogger, add three more questions:

• Is there enough demand (e.g. monthly searches for related keywords)?
• Are there (popular) products on the niche for you to promote?
• How much competition there is?

To get started in niche blogging, consider the above and

• Brainstorm,
• Research,
• Analyze,
• Decide.

Take your time before you jump into a niche, but not too long, sometimes it’s beneficial to start early and test if your assumptions on the market potential were correct. And experience goes a long way, so start learning and experimenting in different niches, it’s a whole lot of fun.

Before I discovered Micro Niche Finder, I was doing all my keyword research with free tools and keyword search services, like SpyFu and Google:

First I researched for keywords about the products I wanted to promote. Then I tapped into the Google Keyword Tool and looked up how many monthly searches those keywords were getting. From the results I picked up the best keywords, the keywords that were getting enough searches to make it worthwhile to drive traffic with. I tried to find targeted phrases, instead of individual keywords. In the end I had a long keyword list that I started working with and I imported the list to an excel sheet with all the data from Google.

The first thing I did with the list, was go through the estimated advertising cost and competition for the keyword. Why? As this tells how many other marketers are competing for those keywords, if the competition is high and average pay-per-click cost is up, the word is most likely profitable. But this brings on the problem: Should I go after the same keywords and phrases as the other marketers and compete for the rankings or ad placements? Or should I try and find keyword phrases that:

• Get enough search engine traffic (more than 1000 searches per month), and
• There is very little or no competition (not too many search results with those keywords)

I usually go for the latter, as it is easy to get FREE search engine traffic by targeting low-competition, high search volume keywords.

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