I Earn Online Front Page

Posted by ruby on November 5th, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Niches in Blogging

Understandably, blogging beginners will talk about the topics that are closest to home: personal experiences, what they ate for breakast, rants about traffic, work and home activities and others.

Now, the question is: can a personal blog earn? The answer is yes!

If you modify your blog theme a bit and make it travel-related, you will have a travel blog with a personal touch. Travel is a very hot niche in the online world and hotels and resorts will always be in need of sites to promote in.

If you love to talk about your day to day life, maybe you can describe the places that are worth visiting in your hometown, or the weather nowadays. Is there a storm coming? Is the neighborhood having a fiesta or a community event soon?

What Makes a Travel Niche Hot?

• The whole travel industry depends on international marketing and visibility over the internet. Online is where they kick ass, and this is the place where they really entice people to visit. Sure, there are magazines and reading materials, but since blogging about the places they are promoting is the trend now, they look at these places to promote in.
• Travel is not just for the wealthy, it is also be for those who are persistent enough to go abroad and look for work. Think of your ‘personal blog” as your way of helping these people read about local news and occasions.
• The online dating industry is sizzling! International interaction means there are more people now who are curious about the culture of their online friends. Someone who could be looking to marry a pinay or pinoy will go to your site to find out which traditions are unique to the race.
• There are more homesick people in the world than we know of. In particular, the massive number of Filipinos who left the country to try their luck in other places will always search the net for information about their hometowns.

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Posted by ruby on September 19th, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Content Writing, Niches in Blogging

So you’ve read my previous post and now have an idea what your blog is going to be about. You are now struck with another dilemma: what to talk about within your chosen niche?

How to Narrow Down A Blog Topic

The ‘categories’ feature of a Self-hosted Wordpress blog comes into play when you need to narrow down your blog topic. You can split your general niche into several smaller, more specific subject areas that will get displayed on your sidebar.

Anyone who comes to your blog for the first time will wonder what topics you talk about, and they will be able to narrow down their search for a particular post just by viewing your category list. The category names must be succinct and specific, so that there’s no mistaking what the posts under them are all about.

Example: Food Blog

For example, you have a blog about Food and you want it to stand out amongst all the other food blogs in the blogosphere. What are the categories that you could go for?

1. Sort your posts according to region of origin - French, German, Asian, Filipino food… the more specific, the better. e.g. Spicy Filipino Food, Sweet and Sour Asian Dishes
2. Ingredients - Some visitors could be looking for recipes according to the raw materials they already have. Helping them brainstorm what to cook for dinner by categorizing your posts according to the main raw ingredient in the recipe will lead to more subscribers.
3. Dish Type -  Soups, Main Dishes, Appetizers or Desserts?

Running out of Topics?

If you have been blogging for a while and you realize that you have covered every single recipe that you know, is it time to stop writing on that blog and just let the residual income from ads and affiliate links collect? The answer is NO.

An active blog has a lot of regular readers, and these readers comment on particular posts. This will give you an idea on what your regulars want to read on your blog; the topics they keep coming back for. A bit of research won’t hurt. For this, you will need a good visitor tracking system like google analytics. This will tell you where your visitors come from, which pages they visit and what they typed in the search bar to get to you.

A niche blogger must trust his gut feeling on the way his topic is slowing down or speeding up (e.g. are there new developments or research related to some of the things you have been posting about?). When the post ideas trickle rather than surge, it’s time to introduce another category; one that your regulars can relate to.

In our food blog example, your visitors could be those who are just learning how to cook, advanced cooks who are looking for new stuff to experiment with; or really homesick expats who want to know more about the dishes in their home countries. Some recommended topics to expand your food blog with include cooking wares, preparation techniques, famous chefs (and their cooking styles) and nutrition details of the different food groups.

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Posted by ruby on September 9th, 2008 in Blogging / Marketing, Content Writing, Niches in Blogging

The idea of placing your thoughts on the net is attractive, as I’ve been discussing with a friend a while ago. It’s gratifying, completely affirmatory and overall quite fun!

The only question is: What is its purpose?

Adding Value

We’ve all used the nifty tool called search and more than once, we’ve found what we wanted. But there are times when we arrive on a page and become disappointed that there isn’t much info about the topic that we intended  to look up. Using a personal blog, one could be talking about experiences and things that aren’t meant to be “helpful”, but we all work under the assumption that someone, somewhere could be looking for that particular topic and when he finds it on YOUR blog, he shouldn’t be disappointed at the lack of thought put into the article. At the very least, he should be entertained.

I Know Something Some Don’t Know… You Know?

When another blogger friend told me that someone asked him to post the rules of a sport he is passionate about, he was shocked to realize that certain things we previously thought to be “common knowledge” aren’t as commonly known. Every blogger is a resource person of sorts, and we can all share a part of what we know to those who don’t.

Why Do People Go to the Internet?

If you are really clueless about what you want to talk about in your new blog, this is the question you should ask yourself. Why do you, or anyone you know, hit the net? Some come here to find recipes, some to find out prices, reviews of household items they want to purchase, or just to ogle photos or videos of things they desire. If you don’t have a domain name yet, here are some nice words to include:

• About
• Best
• Easy
• Howto

While one may not know the exact reasons why people go online, we can start second guessing their intentions by catering to what WE would go online for i.e. needing a convenient way to do something, and wanting information on the best and easiest ways to do things.

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