Once you’ve signed up for the service, they will get you to perform a task to confirm that you have an account with one of the websites from their list. You’re able to sign up for as many as you like, and they will send you an email when they have a task ready for you to complete. Usually this will be something like visiting Digg and ‘Digging’ something like four stories. Once you do that, you click a button to verify that the task is complete and your account gets credited 75 cents, its as easy as that!

You can also earn extra money for referrals, you get an extra 10% of whatever your referrals earn which is nice as well and the cashout minumum is only $10. So if you’re looking to make a little bit of extra cash online, subvert and profit looks like a nice, easy way to do it.

Sign up for Subvert and Profit Here!

This is the most important step if you are going to make money with your niche website, you need to choose what that niche is going to be. Your main goal here is to find a niche that is high paying, but has low competition. You will also want your niche to have keywords with a decent number of daily searches, as most of your traffic will come from search engines. Finding a balance between these three points will be the key to success with your niche website.

There are a couple places that I would recommend you go and look at to find your niche topic.  The first site is Ezinearticles.com which is one of the biggest article directories on the web. Take a look at their categories on the site  to get a good idea of some niche areas. Also take a look at some of the articles in those categories to see which ones are getting the most views. You want to find articles on a topic that people are actually interested in, which means there is more of a chance that they will visit your site. A good number of views for an article in your prospective niche is about 20 per day to get a good return on investment with your site. You can find this info by clicking on an article and scrolling all the way to the bottom. There it will show you how many views it has, and when it was published. This method will help you with a ‘popular niche’, but what about finding a high paying niche?

One of the best places to go to find out how much a niche will pay is SpyFu. It is a great PPC analysis tool that gives an estimate of what people are currently paying for keywords and phrases. It was designed as a free tool for Search Engine Marketers to spy on their competition, but is also great for researching niche keywords. You will not be able to find exact numbers, but it will give you a good idea of what to expect so that you can make a better decision about your niche.

Type in the keyword for the niche that you are thinking about targeting. This can be something that you found on Ezinearticles.com, or just some other topic that you think might be a good choice. Try to be creative here, you’d be surprised as to what strange keywords pay really well! After you’ve done your search, you will be shown a whole bunch of data for that keyword or phrase. The main thing that we are concerned about here is the Cost/Click. This shows approximately how much advertisers are paying for these keywords, so if the advertisers are paying more, you will receive more money from Adsense for each click.

For example: If you do a search for “mortgage” you will see that advertisers are paying between $1.00 and $16.60. But if you search for “camping” you will see that advertisers are only paying between $0.40 and 1.03 per click. This tells us that as Adsense publishers, we are much more likey to make money with a site on mortgages, then if we had a site on camping. You generally want to find a niche that is paying about $1.00 per click on the low end.

Now that you’ve got your niche topic chosen, it’s time to start building your site. In part 3 of this series, we will look at building the content for your website, and how you can target long tail keywords to increase your rank on the search engine result pages and increase traffic to your site.

Stay tuned!

I’ve doing a lot of reading over on the Digital Point Forums and I usually check the “sites for sale” forum when I’m there, just to get an idea of what some things are worth. One type of site that seems to appear on a regular basis is a site on a travel niche, focusing on information about a specific travel destination. These sites seem to get a fair number of bids, and seem like a decent niche to focus on. They are pretty specific, which means less competition, and there are lots of opportunities to target your content to specific long tail keywords, which will help with the SERP.

I found a user who said they were clearing up room on their server and had 10 sites for sale, all at different prices. There wasn’t a lot of information given about the sites, and I think they were assumed to have very little traffic. I didn’t give much thought to it when I first saw the post, but I left my browser open and noticed it again the next day. Most of the sites were blogs, but I noticed one was a travel niche site which was priced lower than most of the other ones.

I took another look at the site, and really liked the design, there was some effort put into it and it didn’t just look like all of the other travel niche sites. I also saw some quick improvements that I could make to improve the monetization and SEO, and got some ideas for a bit more targeted content that would help with the site.

The site was already indexed by Google, as it has been around for at least 6 months. Although it didn’t have any PageRank, this is still a positive note as it gives me more to build on and improve.

I got pretty excited the more that I thought about and decided to make him an offer for the site! I offered him half of what he was asking and then waited. While I was waiting, I thought more and more about the site, and decided that it was something that I definitely wanted, and actually sent him another offer, increasing my bid if we could close the deal that day.

He got back to me within a few hours and everything was set, I was now the new owner of RomeTravelGuide.net! I even got my first AdSense click on my first day hosting the site, I’ll take that as a sign that it was a good purchase!

I’ve made a few quick improvements, such as blending the AdSense colour schemes in with the the rest of the site and changing the header graphics for the articles to styled <H1> tags. I’ve also added an extra page of content for a long tail keyword that I’m going to see if I can target, but my facts about Rome page isn’t finished yet.

I’ve already got some traffic coming in from Google, and I”m ranking well with a few good keywords, so I’m thinking positive that this site will do well.

Take a look at the site if you want, and let me know what you think or if you have any ideas for improvements. You can find it here: Rome Travel Guide

It’s not to tough to find lists online of dofollow blogs, but the problem with these is that its tough to find blogs with content that is similar to the site you are trying to promote. You don’t want to be sifting through these long tedious lists, hoping to find something that might be related to your site. A backlink from a site with similar content is much more valuable then just trying to spam your links onto any random blog.

The search query below will help you to find blogs with commenting available with whatever keywords and phrases you want. Just replace <Target Keywords> with some of your keywords from your blog and see what you can find. Start with the first results, as they will generally be higher ranked and more popular pages, and those are they types of backlinks that you want.

Here is the search query:
<TARGET KEYWORDS> “Remember my personal information” “Notify me of follow-up comments”

Don’t forget to view the source of the page to make sure that the blog isn’t using “nofollow” links for comments. And please make sure to try to post a somewhat reasonable and intelligent comment. Comment spam sucks, and if the blog is moderated there is a good chance that your lame excuse for a comment won’t get added, especially on a dofollow blog.

Good Luck!

If you have your own blog, then chances are very high that there are several other blogs that you read regularly, if there aren’t then you should definitely find some! Two blogs that I love are DoshDosh and College-Startup, check them out if your feed list is empty!

Keeping up to date with other blogs can help you in 3 ways, especially if they are on similar topics to yours.

1. Reading other blogs can give you ideas for new posts on your own blog. Discussing another blog article in your own posts is a good way to help build a relationship with another blogger. Maybe they will take note of your blog and become a reader. Not only could this add a reader to your blog, but it is a reader who could potentially blog about one of your future posts.
2. You can easily find interesting articles to read and comment on them. Usually when leaving a comment, there is also a field for the URL of your website, so commenting and adding this can help increase traffic to your site. It adds a backlink to your site if the blog isn’t using ‘nofollow’ for comment links, which can help with search engine results and page rank. Also, if you leave an intelligent or interesting comment, other readers may be inclined to check out your website to see what else you have to say. Many people look down upon the idea of adding poor comments just to try to increase traffic to your page, but I’m not going to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. Just remember that a good comment can have more long term benefits then a quick pointless comment for a link to your page.
3. You keep up to date with news and other people’s ideas. This helps you to demonstrate yourself as authoritative in the field that you are blogging about. Readers will recognize this and keep coming back to see what else you have to say.

So this brings me back to my original question, when you’re reading your favorite blogs how are you doing it? Do you just have them bookmarked and check them every day or are you using a news reader to track updates through RSS feeds?

I’m currently doing a bit of both. I have many blogs bookmarked which I check frequently, and I also subscribe to some using Google Reader. I also have feeds showing up on my Google homepage for things like Lifehacker and Digg. I’m just not quite convince that Google Reader is the best one out there, it works, but I’m not hooked enough to check it every day even though there are still blogs which I do check, and which I should check on a daily basis.

So leave a comment and let me and the the other readers know what applications you are using for reading RSS feeds and blogs.

Now I’m not saying that you’re going to start of making thousands of dollars a month without any effort, this will require some work on your part, but once you get your first site up and making money, you can leave that one and start working on the next site. With each site that you add to your portfolio, the more your monthly income will increase because each site is adding a small passive income.

The concept is pretty simple, do some research and find a focused and potentially profitable niche. Then setup a simple website, write some articles that focus on that niche to give it some content and add in some well placed AdSense advertisements (or something similar). And then all you have to do is build up some targeted traffic to your site, and let the advertising revenue roll in.

Now how much money can you make doing something like this? A niche website isn’t going to make buckets of money all by its self, but this is where building portfolio of niche sites is useful, because each one is bringing in that small passive income, that when added together, adds up to some nice extra income. If you do your research, a site that is bringing in $2-$5/ day in ad revenue can be considered a success. Once you’ve built your first site, and it’s bringing in some revenue, you then move onto the next. And since these sites require little or no maintenance, it’s just all about selecting a profitable niche, filling it with content, and leaving it.

In order to make this work, you’re going to need to chose a niche, and target keywords that you are confident will give you some good search engine traffic, this is where you will get the majority of your visitors, and hopefully the majority of your ad clicks. You’re not going to try to get repeat visitors, because that would mean that you would need to add new content, and that is going to be to much work. Also, repeat visitors are often less likely to click on an advertisement, they are there because of the content and often tune out the ads that you have placed.

I will go into more details about how to chose your niche and keywords in my next update.

CashCrate is a ‘Get Paid To’ (GPT) website that allows you to make money in two ways:

1. Completing Offers: The website provides a list of possible offers for you to complete, each with they’re own payout value which is presented to you when you are choosing which offers you would like to do. These payouts can vary anywhere between $.20 and $50 depending on what is required of the user to complete the task.
2. Completing Surveys: You can complete one survey each day and are payed a flat rate of $.80 per survey.
3. Referring Others: You will also receive a commission for users that you refer to CashCrate. You receive 20% of what your referrals make, and 10% of referrals that your referrals make. You also get a bonus if any of your referrals reach the $10 minimum payout level.

Before signing up, I did a lot of research to see what experiences other users had, and whether the company actually paid out and was happy to see a lot of positive reviews, and many users showing proof of payment. I haven’t received any payment yet, but I have not done enough to reach the minimum $10 required. I just signed up, and after a short amount of time, I’ve already been credited with $8.

The one problem that I see with this site is that the majority of the offers are for users in the United States and I’m in Canada. This wont be a problem for most people, but for me, it means that there are not as many offers to complete. I can still complete surveys each day as well as some of the offers, but I can still also make money though referrals which is nice, there seem to be a lot of people who use this as their primary method with CashCrate.

On the other hand, you do not need to make referrals, and can still do really well by just quickly completing the offers. It’s not that tough to make an extra $100 a month just by completing offers if you live in the USA.

Conclusion

CashCrate isn’t a scam although you might be skeptical at first. You can take a look at their forums to learn more about their program and the see user testimonials and payment proofs. It offers 3 different ways of making some extra money online, and when combined will work as a great source of some extra money each month. Some people have made over one thousand a month with Cash Crate consistantly. If you are going to sign up, I would appreciate if you used my referral link HERE to help me out a bit as well!

Feel free to post any comments on your experiences with CashCrate!

Start Making Money With CashCrate!

The main reason for focusing on these long tail keywords, is because instead of using popular and more broad keywords which are generally much more competitive, you optimize your site for longer, more specific keywords which generally are much less competitive. When your keywords are hit, there is a much greater chance that your site is going to be returned on the front page of the search results, which increases your chances of a new page visit.

Many people tend to focus on the popular keywords, then end up sending the majority of search engine traffic to their sites. And when an optimization is done, that increases the traffic on those 10 or 20 keywords, people rejoice. This goes along with the 80-20 rule, that says that the top search terms provide 80% of the page views. The problem is, that after looking at a lot of different sites, this doesn’t really seem to be the case anymore, especially for small to medium sites, that just can’t compete with the giants.

In most cases, yes, those top 10 keywords that you’ve chosen for your nice website will provide you with a lot of search engine traffic, but not necessarily more then all of the other focused search terms added up. Think about all of those specific keywords that bring 1-5 visitors to your site, the ones that you don’t really put much thought into. Add all of those up, and chances are, it’s going to result in more total visitors then your favorite keywords that really bring in the visitors from search engines. This is the foundation of the long tail theory, that the length, or the total number of low-number search terms, out numbers the height, or the total of the top 10 or 20 terms.

A brief case study is posted on the SearchEngineWatch forums which shows one company receiving about 225,000 visitors from search engines, but only 70,000 came from their top 23 keywords which each brought over 1000 visitors each, the rest were all from these long tail keywords. Even Amazon.com once reported that they make 57% of their sales from keywords that aren’t in their ‘popular’ list.

Another benefit of using these longer, more specific keywords, is that it increases that chances that a visitor to your page actually wants to be there, and will find your site valuable. You will have less visitors that will quickly scan you site and navigate away, realizing that wasn’t quite what they were looking for. This means more page views once they’re there, an increased chance of a new subscriber for your blog, more ads they will see and potentially click on, and the potentially more sales. This means that there are two important benefits to using long tail keywords to increase traffic: more visitors AND visitors that actually want to be there! It’s a win-win situation.

Here are a few ways that you can this information to your advantage:

Keyword Analytic and Tracking Programs: Google AdWords, HitTail and 103bees are three programs that you can use to help determine these keywords for your website. Google’s tool will scan your website, and suggest keywords based on the content. It will also give specific information on each search term, such as how high the competition is, and how popular the search term is. The other too programs require you to add a few lines of code to your site template and they will start to suggest long tail keywords for you to used.

Analyze your competition: This is especially useful for websites that are just starting out. HitTail and 103bees aren’t going to be as helpful if your site isn’t already generating some search traffic. But if you start analyzing websites that are similar to yours, chances are they have already targeted several long tail keywords. Find out what some of these are, and start optimizing your site around those, or variations of them, and begin to create new content pages that include those keywords.

One way accomplish this is to visit their websites and analyze there webpage. Take a look at the source code, check out their title and met tags, and maybe even backlinks.

Another way to do this, is to use a tool like SEODigger to quickly find out what keywords a website is targeting, all you have to do is input their URL.

Brainstorm a list of long tail keywords and use them! This may seem like obvious advice, but sometimes the most simple solution is overlooked. Try to come up with a list of keywords and phrases that really describe the content of your site, and start creating new content that includes the phrases. Especially with something like a blog that is just starting out, you need to keep adding new content frequently. Create new posts make sure that you are using your keywords and phrases in the titles, tags, and inside the post as well. The key here is to add this new content frequently, and add a lot of it. This will help you to start to increase your visibility on search engines, and start to attract new visitors to your site.

Whether you are just starting out with a new blog or website, or you already have a profitable and popular site setup and running, making sure that you are aware of your long tail keywords, and how you can use them effectively, will definitle help you increase traffic coming from search engines.

Google’s patent application for the process reveals the positive and negative factors which are used to determine how the blog search ranks its search results. For more details, you can take a look at an article by Bill Slawski over at SEO By the Sea. There, he goes into more details about exactly what each of these points mean, and what Google says about them.

Positive Factors

• Links from blogrolls (especially from ‘high quality’ blogrolls or those of ‘trusted bloggers’)
• Links from other sources (mail, chats)
• Using tags to categorize a post
• PageRank
• The number of feed subscriptions (from feed readers)
• Clicks in search results

Negative Factors

• Posts added at a predictable time
• Different content between the site and the feed
• The amount of duplicate content
• Using words / n-grams that appear frequently in spam blogs
• Posts that have identical size
• Linking to a single web page
• A large number of ads
• The location of adds (”The presence of ads in the recent posts part of a blog”)

In order to do the actual ranking of the search results, Google combines the quality score obtained using the positive and negative factors above, with the relevance score for the actual search query. The IR score may be determined based on a number of things as well, such as:

• The number of occurrences of the search terms in the document
• Where the search terms occur within the document (e.g., title, content, etc.)
• The characteristics of the search terms in the document (e.g., font, size, color, etc.)
• The weighting of one search term versus another when multiple search terms are present in the query
• The proximity of the search terms when multiple search terms are present

Not that a lot of this information is surprising, but now we know what can be done, and what can be avoided in order to help increase your blog’s rank with Google’s Blog Search.