Passive Income Project: The At Home Couple

I have mentioned The At Home Couple blog before because not only is it cool but it offers some great tips on building an online income.

At the moment Veronica and Elijah have just started a series of videos called the Passive Income Project and this is definitely one that it is going to be worth following along with. The first video in the series set the scene and outlined some of the key areas that they are going to cover. So far, so good.

The second video PIP Module 1: Finding The Money Niche steps it up a notch and really demonstrates some great tips for finding profictable  niches, researching keywords and finding out which ones receive high search volume and have reasonable competition and then they show how you can set about monetizing these niches.

This is valuable stuff and what’s more it’s free, quality info. Check it out and look out for the follow up videos too. I know I will be. Race you to the domain.

Profitable Niche Markets: How To Track Them Down

If you want to boost your online income, niche markets are your key to success. Niche markets are sub-categories of broader markets, and can be very profitable. The key to the high profitability of niche markets is their specificity. For example, it’s much easier to find and market to people who are interested in 1964 Ford Mustangs than it is to market to people who are interested in cars in general (or even Mustangs in general). Plus, the people who comprise your potential customers in niche markets are usually quite passionate about their chosen interest, and are ready to buy if you’ve got the right marketing message. So how can you find hot profitable niche markets to boost your online income?

Some people look at the headlines in magazines or best-selling non-fiction books for ideas. However, there is a much better way to find niche markets with the most eager buyers. One is to search on eBay. The front page of eBay will show you the top 10 most frequently searched categories on the site. These are categories in which people are actively looking to buy. You can then find these categories in the categories menu on the left-hand side of the page. Click on the appropriate category link, and it will show you all of the sub-categories associated with it. These are niche markets and if there are buyers on eBay then they are most probably profitable niche markets.

You can see just how many people are selling things in those niches, just by scrolling through all the listings. More importantly, to see how many people are buying and how much money they are willing to pay, scroll through the list of items for sale in that niche and see how many bids there are on the items there. If you find a niche with a lot of bidders, and with less than 1,000 items for sale, you’ve found a profitable niche market but with little competition. This is a niche you should get into and one which with a little research you can start to source products for, and by all means use one of the larger affiliate product providers such as Amazon, eBay, Commission Junction or Linkshare. However, there really are a wide variety of companies out there who have affiliate schemes and thus you should spread your net as wide as possible in order to profit from niche markets.

Day 4: Keyword Density – How To Get The Balance Right

On Day 1 we looked at the reasons we target keywords at all in our content, Day 2 we looked at what keywords to use for your niche , Day 3 we turned our attention to keyword tools and on this the penultimate day we are going to consider keyword density.

What do you know about keywords? They improve how the search engines perceive your content. But, too many can also get you a bad name. Learn about keyword density and how to mix and match for the perfect combination.

A Keyword Myth

Common sense is not always the best approach especially when thinking about keyword use. Your mind says that if such and such keyword is the one you should be using to attract customers, then it should appear everywhere. So far, you are right.

This next part is where many veer off the track. Putting them everywhere doesn’t necessarily mean stuffing your content like a keyword burrito. At one time, you may have gotten away with that but search engines have evolved much like anything else. They are smart enough to know that a keyword is not going to appear in every third sentence as the normal course. This is keyword stuffing.

Keyword Density

A search engine is a complicated mix of algorithms that the average person won’t ever hope to understand. All we know is that it tells the bots to do their thing and they do it. They search for keywords that are entered into the search box on thousands and thousands of sites, blogs and the lot indexed all over cyberspace.

Keyword density is a measure of how many of those particular words appear within text. For instance, if your article is around 500 words, bots will calculate how many times a certain word appears within that text. Internet gurus used to always say that a safe keyword density was anywhere from 3-10%.

But, search engines have their own ideas about what constitutes the proper density for their rankings. Now, it can be as low as 1-3%. For a 500 word article, that would be 5-15 occurrences for any keyword. Most err on the lower end just to be safe. Besides, in 500 words, encountering the same keyword fifteen times may seem a little banal depending on your subject matter.

Keyword density also takes into account the number of words in your target keyword. Long tail marketing has become popular and can further focus your content and website for a larger, well-defined market.

But keyword density also works for your website in general. Using keywords in picture tags, as anchor text within content and as subheadings as well as headlines will also get you noticed. The content will get people to visit you over and over, but your entire website will be the linchpin that can help you gain and stay on the first page of search results.