What to blog about and writer’s block hits every single person and it’s worse for those trying to make money online. But, do these 2 things, and you’ll be cured, 100% guaranteed.
There have been 3 articles I’ve written so far on the topic on what to blog about to help people when they’ve run out of ideas, but this one, the 4th is more specifically aimed towards those whose writing efforts are made to try and make money online.
In my experience, if you follow the following 2 options I am about to show you, you will not only improve the chances to earn more money through your efforts, but you will also have a large number of ideas that will keep you busy writing for quite sometime, and by that I mean months and possibly even years.
What to blog about to make money online (What to Make YouTube videos on as well):
This personal video I made on the subject will explain everything:
More details about what to blog about (and make YouTube videos on):
Here they are in detail (And again, they work. Every. Time.):
1) Product reviews.
I have seen time and time again that if you write about specific product reviews that are in your niche topic, you will always get a buyer ready audience. I’ll give you examples shortly…
2) Topics about your niche that are generally problems.
Every niche topic out there has an audience associated with it that has questions and problems about the niche. These are called hungry niche audiences.
If you know the topic well, and find the hungry audience, think about specific questions that audience may ask and write about the problem and solution to it on your blog.
You can also share personal experiences and case studies here as well if they are relevant to the topic.
Why blogging about, and making YouTube videos on these 2 things will lead to your blog/channel making more money online:
Any type of blog that aims to monetize HAS to target a niche topic (a hungry one is even better) and if it does, the next most important thing is to make sure the blog is targeting relevant topics that deal with the niche.
By targeting those 2 types of options above, you are going to attract the type of audience seeking solutions to your page and that is the BEST type of audience you can attract, the reason being is that they will come to your page with a particular problem in their mind and in hopes that your content will solve it.
Think about this:
If a person lands on your site because they were looking up reviews of a particular product. What do you think they are seeking to find on your page?
Generally:
- They want to know if it works.
- They want to know if it’s the best solution for them.
- And if it’s worth buying.
And what about the other option?
Well if a person lands on your site because they typed up a certain problem they’re having on Google and this brought up your page and they clicked on it, they will want to see right away if you have the solution.
The big picture:
In BOTH cases here, we are attracting an audience that is seeking a solution and those are the audiences that are MOST likely to buy stuff. And guess what? Audiences who are most ready to buy stuff are most often the ones who help a blogger bring in the most profit.
And I can speak about this because I’ve lived this in the sense that my most profitable experiences in making money online have occurred when this principal was correctly followed (see an example with this 1 page site).
So naturally, these are the types of people you’d want to bring into your page as often as possible and by following the above options, you absolutely will bring them in.
An example of how to apply both options to a specific niche:
Let’s take a simple, yet big niche topic: How to get six pack abs.
I think we can all agree, it’s popular. But how would we use the above 2 options for this niche topic? Well it’s simple:
Option 1: For product reviews…
We need to find products that help people get six pack abs. We’re talking supplements, fitness machines, fitness programs, diet regiments, and ANY sort of product that can help them get those abs. Seriously, look these things up and you’re bound to find a plethora of stuff to blog about (start a list to record the things you’ll find, you’ll need it).
I would personally head over to Amazon and by simply typing in six pack abs in the search, and I would get a list of tons of products to review. In this case, I would guess there’s at least several 100 different products I can review and that’s considering I do about an hour of research time. Imagine what hours of research would produce…
And each of them (the products I find) can be it’s own article that I can write about (do a review on).
By the way, six pack abs are an example of just one niche. I’ve got at least 50 more profitable niches to share here. And considering how each of these niches perfectly has a plethora of product reviews to do, good luck ever “running out of ideas”.
Option 2: For the popular topics option…
It would benefit me most to personally have experienced what it’s like to get six pack abs. By possessing this knowledge, I would know about the common questions people ask about it and for EACH, I can also write an article.
Now if you have issues or lack of experience with this, another cool branch of this idea you can use is to look at popular blog sites and/or popular YouTube videos which cover the niche topic in question.
These sources alone can give you plenty of content ideas to work with. BUT another cool thing I would recommend you utilize is the comments of these sources.
Often times, you can find plenty of content ideas from questions people ask in the comments.
Here’s an example on this:
Let’s say I am not too knowledgeable about getting those six pack abs, so I find a viral YouTube video that explains how to get them. Maybe in the comments section, someone asks how long it takes to get these.
That question alone can help me come up with another blog post to write about:
And that’s just 1 example. And through it, I find a popular, profitable keyword that I can write a blog on.
Think about all the questions your niche audience asks or can ask and if you run out of ideas, find them on the big sources like YouTube and other big blog sites.
I can’t tell you just how many times I’ve gotten new ideas on what to write about thanks to comments I’ve gotten on my page/s. And that is in addition to also knowing about my topic as well.
Filtering out both options so you get the best ones to work with:
Let’s face it, if you use option 1 and find 100’s of products to review, you’re probably not going to get through all of them and for all you know, a bunch of them might be useless and things people aren’t even interested in.
And for option 2, perhaps the topic you think is popular may not actually be popular enough for people to search on Google.
And with both options, we really want to take the most popular products we can find for our niche as well as the most popular topics to maximize our blogging efforts and get the most traffic out of this.
So how do we filter this stuff out? Simple: Do keyword research.
For option 1, every product you find, run the name of it through a keyword tool like Jaaxy and see if it gets searches. If it does, review it. If it doesn’t, X it out and move onto the next one. Only review those that get searches.
Note: Also make sure the keyword competition of the product is small! Here’s a tutorial on checking a keywords competition.
Now for topics (option 2), it can get a little bit tricky because sometimes you can think up a topic that is popular, but when you run it through a keyword tool, you may find that it gets no searches. However, if you experiment with the wording of the topic, you will often find that if you rephrase it a different way, you will find that it gets searches.
So for option 2, don’t give up on a topic you think is popular because a keyword tool says it doesn’t get searches. Rewrite it in a different way and you may find it is popular. Here is an example:
Specific sites that’ll help you maximize the effect of both options:
Option 1: For just about ANY niche site out there, there is no website better to find products on than Amazon.
But what I want to share is a cool “trick” I learned to find the most popular products in your niche there. Use this Amazon best seller strategy and you’ll cut down on research time substantially and review only the most popular products in your niche.
Doing so will bring in the big traffic to your page and in turn bring in the most profits.
Now the only kind of niche topic I’ve seen that doesn’t work well enough with Amazon is the actual make money online niche.
For that you will need different sites to gather ideas for what products to review. So here you go:
And speaking of these 4 sites, you can also use the last one, Clickbank for other niche topics.
And if you are in the make money online niche and want to know more details on the other options:
- I’ve got a full article on JVZoo here and how to promote products there.
- And here’s a full article on the Warrior Forum and how to promote products there too.
- And finally, here is an article on Muncheye which also explains how to find products on that site and promote them.
These last 3 sites in my opinion usually offer a lot of bad products, but they get attention, meaning they fit into both categories of what to blog about if you run a make money online site, so you can leverage them and write reviews, but promote better systems and I have done that with a promotion that isn’t part of those 4 sites: Wealthy Affiliate (And I made nearly $300k).
Option 2: For blogging ideas, we really have to go back to the following options:
Your own experience. From that you can gather topics that your niche audience asks.
Other popular blogs/YouTube. Simply search up the niche topic/question on Google/YouTube, find a popular source and get content ideas from there.
Remember, the key is to find topics which are actual problems and questions people ask. Just like I said before about the product reviews bringing in more likely to buy audiences, when you target topics that are problems and provide solutions, you are also going to attract the same type of audience.
Extra help with writing product reviews (in any niche):
1) Writing product reviews is tough when you’re new to it, but here is an article on how to write affiliate product reviews that will help you a lot!
2) If you decide to use YouTube, here is a post on creating product reviews on YouTube.
Use Google alerts as well. They will help enhance these 2 options.
Using Google Alerts is pretty effortless and it will help you get notifications of topics about your niche, whether it be products or topics related to it that you can then use to blog about on your site. This is also a good strategy because you can get high rankings for the blogs you write for a lot of the alerts you get because in many cases, they will be trending news that is actually new and has very few bloggers talking about it.
My final thoughts:
I would recommend you re-read my big picture point I made above because that will ultimately explain the brilliance of these 2 options I listed in this article. They work and they will bring in the buyer traffic to your site.
As long as you keep using these ideas and filtering them out the way I showed you, not only will you keep bringing in more of the RIGHT traffic to your site that will be ready to buy, but you will also keep increasing your site traffic and profits as long as you keep repeating this.
And finally, this option also gives you a lot of work to do. While this sounds bad to some, let me tell you that the more you blog about the right stuff, the better your site will perform on Google and get more traffic.
Most bloggers can’t last more than a few weeks because they run out of ideas on what to write about. With this strategy, you will have months and years worth of GOOD work to use to your advantage and profit of. So the more work you have here, the better, believe me.
More content brainstorming ideas you should check out:
So as I said, I have written previous articles on this stuff before, although this one was as I said, much more oriented to the crowd who wants to monetize of this…
Never the less, these additional articles will also give you plenty of additional ideas and I will be surprised if you still have issues on what to write after reading all of these resources:
1) You will most likely hit a point in your blogging efforts known as the “writer’s block”. This article will show you how to stop writer’s block. And again, refer to this article and use those 2 methods.
2) Like I have said, these 2 methods allowed me to make 1,000’s of articles, 900+ of which are on this site, and here is proof:
What you’ll find is that the more often you use these methods, the more and more ideas you’ll get and what you’ll also find is that you’ll probably even want to start new sites from this as well.
Traffic wise, there is honestly no limit to how much of it you can get using these 2 methods.
- So analyze your niche.
- Use the 2 methods to find content ideas.
- Create high quality content with every single one you find.
- And you’re going to be amazed at how well your online business/site grows from this.
And by the way, if you’re into creating YouTube videos, guess what?
These 2 methods can also be used there too! I have a tutorial on making money with YouTube here.
3) If you’re interested in knowing the income reports I have from using these methods (affiliate marketing), I have a whole article on affiliate marketing here.
Even more help should you need it:
So I hope I made this article resourceful enough to help you figure out what to write on your blog/s, but if you have ANY issues you want to ask me about concerning your own site/s, please let me know below.
Remember, it is IMPERATIVE that your site be a NICHE site so before you ask, please make sure you have a niche topic covered on it so I can better help you out.
Yeah I have seen the first two articles, and I would say they are awesome. Thank you for this, I have been hearing about Jaxxy but have never fully understood how it works.
The importance of choosing the right relevant topic to blog about is really key here or find topics which are actual problems and questions people ask.
Spot on Rahye! For a more in-depth look at Jaaxy, read this.
Great post. I’m getting to this stage with my website. I have a lot of content already that certain people will be interested in but it’s not content that will convert. From reading this post I can see the direction I need to go in; solving problems and also finding products that will help solve those problems. You have indeed given me plenty to work with for years on end. do you have any ideas on optimal price points? I guess that might depend on the niche and target audience but is there a price point that gets easy sales for someone just starting out who needs the vote of confidence?
Hi Alison, well you are right when you say it depends on the niche as this does affect my answer to your question. My personal viewpoint on the prices of products you promote should ideally be something that is not a rip off. For this, I advise the person with the niche site know the pricing of products in their niche subject so they have an average amount to look at, then to promote a fair product that is of high quality within that range.
Hi Vitaliy,
Really enjoyed your article. Very well written and informative. I have found that I get the most of out articles that talk about something I am interested in from an experts point of view initially. So if I wanted to get 6-pack abs I would simply research online “how to get 6 packs abs fast”. From there I would read from people who have actually accomplished it.
My next step would be to look for reviews of how they did it and if so, what products did the use. So I would of course look for folks who have used the products and reviewed their effectiveness. You article makes complete sense!
Do you find that more people search for reviews or more of someone’s expert opinion?
All the best,
Mat A.
Hi Mat, great flow of how you find content and write it. As for the question on if people look more for people’s expert opinion or reviews, I’d say it depends.
People who don’t have an authority to look at/for when it comes to a niche will likely turn to Google and look for sites with the content that answers their question. From there if they find a site with a person whose content resonates with them, they will likely look at their thoughts on other subjects moving forward.
Hello Vitaliy,
I don’t know whether I should call this an addition to your two options or a suggestion which I’d like you to confirm if it’s great: Doing product comparisons.
While product reviews may seem great, I found that many people get confused between two products. And helping them find the best one out there would come in handy for them as well as you. Do you agree?
Oh absolutely Dave! In fact, when you do product reviews, you are essentially comparing the product you are reviewing against the one you are promoting with the latter being the one you promote, thus it is best to pitch it in the form of a comparison.
This is exactly what I do on my articles which involve reviewing products and it indeed works very well!
Thanks for these great tips on what to write about. After reading this, it does make complete sense as to why this method works so well.
Also it explains why some people who have hundreds of posts written aren’t converting people into buyers. I’ll be sure to stick to this page and look back on it time and again to remind myself what to write and what not to write.
Thanks.
No problem Michael!
Hello! Thank you very much for your article.
I always try to address my blog posts to a certain problem my audience might have. Somehow, I still don’t understand keyword research completely. Sometimes, I’ll think I have a really good keyword that should drive a lot of traffic to my website, nevertheless, in the end it does not. Then, I also have keywords where I thought they are not very good (e.g. only 3-5 visitors per month) but they drive the most traffic.
I still have to learn more about keywords! 🙂
Regards,
Mia.
Hi Mia, this kind of “phenomenon” happens and I’ve experienced it too. Sometimes you may get inaccurate info on keywords as they may be a new search happening so the keyword tools which collect the data don’t get it fast enough to show the true numbers.
But in any case, you should always aim to think of keywords from the point of view of the visitor who would type them and how they’d do it. Also do aim to never stop looking for keywords through the 2 methods I mentioned, they are the most narrow approach to finding the profitable ones. And perhaps if you need extra help with keywords, I have a feeling this tutorial may help you.
I gained some great insight and ideas to help increase traffic for my blog with this article. Getting additional material from your comments was not something I had thought about.
Do you purchase the items you are doing a review on? I guess you don’t have to but, to me, it might enrich the review if I can share my personal experience. Would love to get your insight.
It’s 50/50, sometimes I do purchase the product, and sometimes I don’t depending on it’s price and/or if it looks like a bad product. I’ve often said that knowing your niche also means knowing the products in it and being able to be a good judge at grading them, even without having to purchase them.
I think you might have really hit the proverbial nail on the head here with your 2 blog topic choices.
Product reviews, in my experience, work very well. they get traffic, plus people are generally further along in the buying cycle.
Solving a problem builds trust, and people are often so grateful for a possible solution that they will make a purchase of a product to help resolve their problem.
Great post.
Thanks Darren!
Hi Vitaliy,
What an eye opening posting! I used to avoid writing on my blog anything to do with product reviews because I thought it was a hard thing to do, but you have made me see the deeper truth- that product reviews attract visitors who are seeking and hoping to have a solution in the content. So I’ll start trying to do more of them. I have a question, though, do I have to use every single product so as to write a credible review about it and my experience in using it?
-SmileAfresh
It certainly benefits you if you have personal experience with the product as people love to read personal experiences, but ultimately, no, you don’t have to. If you know your niche well as well as it’s products, you will be able to see which products are good or not.
Hey really good article and very informative. I always run into writers block when trying to figure out what to write. I have learned a lot and I do a lot of keyword research to make sure I have a chance to get good rankings with my keywords so it may take me a while to get a good article going! Keep up the good work!
Well if you have a lot of keywords saved up, then you already have a lot of content to write on each of them Justin and it’s really a matter of disciplining yourself to do it.
Thank you for your insightful blog post on creating the right type of content to monetize your blog. This is a real headache for newbies. Someone also told me to make up a profile of a member of your target group and then think of the questions they might ask Google. Have you tried that?
Well I’m not sure I completely understand the question Anita but it sounds like you just have to imagine yourself as the target audience and what they would think up. If that is the case, then yes it is a good idea.
Once I realized that reviews were a great way to break up my blog, I started alternating reviews with helpful tips and keyword optimized articles. It took me a long time to discover a product that sells. I really appreciated the method of checking the bestseller lists and writing reviews on those. It makes so much more sense than the shot in the dark approach I was taking! Thanks for the great information!
No problem! Yeah that best seller approach has provided me with amazing traffic results! Definitely use it!
No problem Dave!
Wow, Vitaliy, I learned something, we are always searching for unique keywords and I have usually scrolled right past the keywords that don’t make grammatical sense but you shared how to form them into questions and actually came up with a few searches! I will definitely remember that. Thank you.
No problem!
I know this about the solving problems thing but I always forget how important this simple little thing is. It’s so easy to get lost in so many other ‘ways’ of selling online or in any venue really. Thanks for the reminder! It’s going to save a LOT of time being more focused on the audience and solving their problems. Would you say that specific health-related problem solving is best? What do you think is the most popular problem people search for? For me its a toss up between money problems and health but there might be an even bigger one I haven’t thought of?
Hi Gord, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not really a question of which problem is bigger or searched for more, it’s figuring out which specific one you know most about, then finding the niche audience to help out with the problem.
Health related problems can be a number of things: Heart disease, obesity, joint pains, ect…
If you know about one of these, make a niche site on that and help the audience that way. All of those topics get a lot of searches.
For money problems, again, you’re looking at a topic that also has numerous branches: making money online, making money after retirement, entrepreneurial ideas, how to save money, ect…
Thank you. You just gave me more ideas to write about. If you want to be a good blogger you must try to think as the audience. What will they really want to know when they visit my site?
That way you know what exactly to write about. I like the fact that you mentioned a keyword tool in here as one can really not talk about blogging without using one.
One of the best ways to know your niche audience is to actually be part of it. This allows you to connect with them 🙂
Thanks for the very informative article! I fall into the category of topics about my niche. I have an extensive background and experience in the niche; but I did not think about my personal experiences and actual case studies – I’ve just been sharing information. I appreciate you “kicking my brain” into a slightly different path. 🙂
My biggest challenge (being a fairly new blogger) is to build up some speed! It feels like it often takes me way too long; but I guess that is just cured by practice, practice, practice!
Hi Leissa, practice indeed will speed up your blogging speed. But on the initial thing you mentioned about not sharing your personal experiences, that is actually one of the best ways to connect with the audience and I would absolutely recommend you start doing that on your blog. You will see a much better result in terms of the overall feedback from your visitors.
Thanks for another absolutely brilliant article that I can use for creating more content for my blogs. Honestly I never really have too much trouble coming up with ideas for my content, however I always like learning ways to make sure that the content I am writing is what people are looking for, people that will buy. I love the suggestion of looking at the comments section, that is a sure way to figure out what people want to know. I need to go back to an article I read yesterday and read some of those comments, I was researching for an article for my brand new website that I launched about 2 weeks ago!
It’s awesome when people comment on your blogs Lynne, but it’s even more awesome when they give you even more ideas to work with from those comments. It further shows your audience that you listen to them and are willing to help them out further, which further builds trust and the business.
Hi there,
Thanks for that article, it is very informative and explores many parts unfortunately it does not include my niche since I have always believed in a news blog as my creation, so I want to ask, do you think that a news blog can work out and if it can, how much work should I put in every day?
It’s been awhile since I’ve talked to someone who mentioned doing a news type niche site Dave, but yes it is possible to succeed with it. The starting point on these topics though should still be a niche. What is your news site about? Is it about politics? Is it about the stock market? You have to pick out the specific topic and make sure it’s a popular one.
Once you do that, I can tell you this much: You’re actually going to have a lot more ideas to blog with because in the news sphere, especially with a popular topic, there’s ALWAYS something to write about. Set up some Google alerts to help those ideas come in faster but make sure that when something new comes out regarding your niche topic, that you immediately blog about it.
Typically news topics are so quick when they come out that their keyword competition is very low and ranking under it and getting that initial surge of traffic is easy. I’ve seen this happen on my diet site when I reported on celebrity weight loss stories (That counts as news).
Hi,
Thanks for writing useful information about writing articles for 2 purposes. One is educating and another one is reviewing. My only question is what should be the ratio between those two options? Presently I am writing in the ratio 1:1. Moreover, I see the your permalink is very long like. Is this helpful for SEO?
Thanks
Hi, first I’ll address the 2 topics. Whether you’re reviewing a product or doing an informational posts, BOTH are educating people in essence so one might say, they are both informational things.
However, regarding the permalink thing, it is ideal that your title match the permalink, for SEO purposes (meta info). However, for better looking rankings, it is better to have a shorter title, so in my case, the title for this article is a bit long. I have recently learned more about this and have been trying to cut down on it so when it ranks on Google, people can see the whole title and not a portion of it because it’s too long, so it’s something to consider.
Thanks for these 2 strategies and the very helpful articles. I have been already using them for some time, but you have really given more details how to do it properly. Do you think we need a balance of those two kinds of posts, let’s say like 50/50, or it does not really matter.
I would say it doesn’t matter as I tend to improvise on my site, meaning whichever post ideas come first, whether they are product reviews or informational posts, I just write them out as they come.
These are what I stick to as well. What I also do, is take the questions and problems that I myself have had in the topic and make them into blog posts. My own experience is my driving force sometimes. So that’s another way to come up with what to write about.
That’s good too and I would say in the initial stages of blog growth, those topics which you have had issues with make for great content ideas, then when you grow, if you get lost on where to get other ideas, then you can move into questions the niche audience has, whatever it takes to keep the content flowing.
Hi, I like your article about reviews, I have three sites and one of them is as a blog but I have bought a lot of things on amazon that I will use as sub subjects in my blog. Were I live the power goes out often without notice and can be out for hours, so I bought a generator. I will discuss the power going out while reviewing the generator.
Leslie
Interesting Leslie. I’d add 2 things to this:
1) As long as the products you purchase pertain to the niche your website is focused on, definitely review them.
2) I once had an idea to do a niche site on power generators. I believe I talk about it here. Check it out, it may help offer up some ideas.
This all sounds very good. In fact, it sounds to good to be true. Being an authority seems like something that is difficult to become. There seem to be so many authorities online already. How do you find a niche that is not already covered?
My husband suggested that affiliate marketing would earn money, but do you need to buy the products to try them out before writing a review?
Hi Sheila, I think you’re trying to find some kind of untapped, none competitive niche to make money off. I can assure you that there is no such thing, you need to enter niche markets you like and establish yourself as the best authority within that. You will always have competition, but not everyone in every niche market is as much of an authority as they claim, in fact, I’d say a majority of people aren’t as knowledgeable on a niche as they say, so that is an opportunity for you to establish yourself in that industry as the minority of people who are.
Hey Vitaliy! Thank you for the great article! I actually started a niche website 3 months ago. The niche is parenting, so I have a lot of opportunities to combine product offers inside my articles.
I do not write an article around the product offer, though. I write about topics that “burn inside me”, and combine the products “by the way”. Maybe this is my mistake? Because I didn’t manage to generate any income yet… How long it takes usually to start generating income?
Thanks!
Anna
Hi Anna, I think your niche topic is a bit too broad. There’s different age groups when it comes to parenting (infants, children, teens, young adults, ect…), not to mention boys and girls. I think if you targeted a particular age group and narrowed it down to a particular gender, you would be able to find more low competition keywords and get ranked higher, faster.
In addition, your site is still only 3 months old. Now I don’t know how many articles you’ve written in that time or how long they are, and what types of keywords you’re chasing within your articles, but this data would greatly help me, help you understand why there’s no income yet.
My best guess at this time is that the site is new and that naturally means low traffic for now, the niche topic is broad and you aren’t reviewing any particular products, yet.
Another great article Vitaliy! I’ve honestly learned a lot from your experience and this article once again manages to answer the age old question (for bloggers) on how to consistently find topics to write content about. The first option is definitely a good strategy for having plenty of things to write about because there is always gonna be a product to review for your niche out there. The second option is a good way to write too. Writing articles to help others out is definitely a necessary component for every blog on any niche and will most certainly help to build your audience in the long run.
Appreciate the advice,
Thanks
No problem my friend. I think if anyone examines which websites they follow, bookmark and buy from, they will find that it’s the ones which offer these 2 components I talked about. Thus they are successful, and therefore we should mimic that on our blogs as well.
This article has shed so much light on how to strive in the online business world, for all types of niches! I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with me!
Do you have any more ideas as to how I could find potential post ideas? Also, what would you recommend as the the best keyword search website?
The only website that gives you keyword searches is the Google one, otherwise, you need a tool, in that area, Jaaxy is best.
As for the initial question, honestly, you’ll have a plethora of ideas with just these 2 options Jordan. The only other thing I would add is possibly doing a daily blog of an experiment you’re running regarding your niche.
Example: If you’re running a blog on dropping belly fat, you can do a personal test on yourself and run a daily blog telling people how you’re doing on a specific workout routine/diet pill.
Hey so I’ve been doing keyword research and such and creating a website and reviews, but I’m not sure I understand exactly how the keywords enter into the equation, like how to use them, do you know what I mean? I don’t understand if you are supposed to use them as a title or a website name or just a sentence or if you just target that keyword behind the scenes? Not sure if i phrased this in the right way, but if you could give me any info i would really appreciate it, thanks 🙂
It’s actually very simple:
1. Create a website.
2. Find a keyword on a product that has low competition. Example: “so and so product review” gets a lot of searches and little competition. Perfect, use that.
3. Head to your website, create a new post or page, make the title of your post/page that keyword with other stuff in it like “My experience with so and so product. A full review”.
4. Write in-depth about this product and link to it in the page/post.
5. Repeat this approach with other products you find. In other words, make new pages/posts targeting new product keywords and basically repeat the whole process.
I can see how these two options, both used on a website can be highly profitable. Product reviews are difficult to write if you do not buy the product, and also time consuming to make your in-depth research to really be able to promote something. I am relatively new to the business, but I find product reviews extremely difficult for my niche site.
On the other hand, I have been amazed at how many searches, seen through a keyword tool, that many keywords get. And people are really looking for free information online, not just buy. At least that is my case. I strongly dislike when things are promoted to just make some money, although that is legit.
Thanks for sharing this article. Sure explains many things,
Oscar
What type of niche site do you have Oscar? I may be able to recommend certain products and types of reviews for you to do. I am guessing you have done very few of them or none at all which is why you say they are so difficult.
My recommendation for this problem is to understand your niche and the products inside it before you promote/review them. Your knowledge of the niche is essentially the key to making your informative articles and products reviews high quality. If you do not have this in your existing site, then perhaps a new niche website may be better to focus on.
Before buying anything, even on Amazon, it is natural for everybody who is familiar with online shopping, to look at the reviews. And you are absolutely right to apply this to your research and reviews too! Not only will it help your review, but it will also help clients make the right decision by seeing those reviews. And if they are very good reviews (for a particular product) then the number of people actually buying the product from your website will increase. That’s amazing. It’s a win-win for everybody.
Excellent points! A lot of the search traffic that looks at specific products and reviews for them does so on Google, so establishing a high ranking product review for a big name product that gets many searches is almost a guarantee that it will make money.
As always, another informative post. Thanks for giving me fresh ideas for growing my blog. I have used YouTube videos before, but not in this way – love it. I also realize I have not been adding any reviews on my site, which may explain why it’s not ranking well yet. Thanks for your insights and tips!
Lack of ranking may not necessarily be due to a lack of reviews, but due to a lack of overall content Tom. I would add more posts to the site in question and give it a few months to grow. I am certain it will rank better, especially if you will utilize these 2 options.
As for YouTube videos, absolutely make product reviews via this platform as well. I’ve done it and even went as far as directly linking from the video to an affiliate offer, and this has produced MANY sales for me. Here is an example. And honestly, I would even say that if you’re not too much of a writer and prefer video creation, this may be the way to go instead of the site. I just use both options.
I have never done product/service reviews and keep thinking about it as I buy from review sites myself so know they are effective. Interesting about looking at comments on viral YouTube videos for writing topics to help answer questions. I never thought about that. Have you personally found success applying these ideas?
Oh absolutely and not just YouTube videos, but also comments people leave on my site/s. The person who visits your niche site, and is interested in the niche may end up having a perspective on it that you didn’t, until they comment on a topic, mention that point which gives you a new idea to add to the page. I’ve had this happen numerous times. And this has also helped me find new products to review as well.
Very good read. Very informative and reliable information. I just started my blog Wolfgins Marketing focused on affiliate marketing and the home business industry. You are giving good advice in saying do reviews on products relating to my niche. I agree 100% with the 2 options.
I want to be able to find high ticket products in my niche to promote. Some that can pay a few thousand dollars in commissions. Do you have any resources for me?
My position on high ticket items is that if you’re promoting anything of the sort in the make money online industry (or home business), then you need to be very careful because while there are a lot of high ticket items in that field, most of them are scams with inflated information perceived as fair value.
There’s MLM programs out there that typically sell high ticket items but like I said, I’d be careful and honestly stay away from it. I wrote about high ticket items here and recommend taking a look. In my opinion (since I am in the same industry as you), it is better to promote cheap, yet high value products and services like Wealthy Affiliate and get a bigger volume of sales.
Vitaliy, I really like the ideas on product reviews. It never really crossed my mind to use amazon for product reviews. I have been doing reviews as well but mostly in the bizopp niche. I really like the 2 options you outlined. This gives one plenty of ideas to blog about.
For the business opportunity niche, you’re better off finding stuff on places like Jzvoo and Muncheye.com as they are both sources for online business opportunities specifically. On Amazon, you may find business books from popular, successful businessmen and if there’s a lot people interested in those things on Amazon, I would write about it too.
Another great article.
I really like the prospect of monetizing a blog. It’s funny, as someone who’s been writing on the web since 2013, the thought of actually making money for doing what I do never actually crossed my mind.
It wasn’t until I found WA that I decided I would throw my hat in the ring. I’ve been blogging on how to lose weight through mindfulness now for a couple of months but I’m honestly not even focusing on affiliate reviews yet.
But this is a long-term goal for the next year! Thanks for sharing and as always, much blessings!
Michael
I actually have a weight loss blog myself Michael and if you’re looking to monetize yours, my advice would be the same as I gave on this article. Specifically, reviews on popular diets. Try this strategy, I use that strategy on that blog and it has helped me in getting a lot of traffic.
These are some sweet tips! Keyword research is the most important part of running a successful site. I like the idea of checking out, for example, Youtube videos and look at the comments to get some fresh new ideas for new content. I’ve never looked at it this way and it will definitely help me out!
No problem! That is one of the more unusual yet underused ways of going about content creation, but it’s incredible for readers as it makes them feel like you’re addressing their specific questions.
Great! I’m so glad you used the example about getting a six pack, because that is the niche I’m aiming towards! I just started a month ago, and I’m relatively new still. I haven’t made sales yet, but I want to know a one thing:
How long did it take you to generate income when you started? I hope you can answer my question, thanks!
My situation was different and I’d say a few months, but that sales frequency snowballed as the business grew. My niche was very different than yours Marques, but I think if you read this article, you may get a more universal answer.
Kudos to you for the wonderful job done here! Certainly, most people are not making money online due to factors like these. They didn’t learn what needs to be learnt first before venturing into the business. Eventually, most people opt out and think making money online is impossible or difficult.
In the course of blogging, the topic or title of the blog which constitutes the blog niche is the most important thing to work on.
I want to add to that point and say it’s the title of each blog post you write, that is a branch of the overall niche topic that is important, it’s not just 1 blog post, it’s as many as you can write and with these ideas, the possibilities are not limited.
Hi Vitaliy!
I just stumbled upon your blog post, and it’s really helpful! Thanks for your time writing this. I had a couple of questions though:
1. Do you recommend using Amazon Affiliate links (in the reviews) in my blog posts over other affiliate links?
2. How can I write a negative review of a product and still make money?
Maybe you can make some blog posts about these topics :))
Thanks for your time!
1) Typically you should segment your blog posts and the affiliate links inside them. This means if you’re promoting a specific product from Amazon and you’re doing a review on it as well as promoting it, then only use that link on the page. It doesn’t make sense to use other affiliate links on the same page as it’ll confuse your reader/s.
2) Negative reviews should lead to positive alternatives and that’s where you should promote the products. So if I review something I didn’t like, naturally people will want to know about other options. Present that to them in the form of a link going to a positive product review and on that provide affiliate links to it.
As you suggested, I went back and re-read the first two paragraphs and all you wrote just clicked with me. I also do product reviews, but my niche is very narrow. I read and review books with my recommendation and then I grab the Amazon Affiliate link to that if someone is convinced to read a book I liked, they can click on the link and I get a small commission.
I usually read about a book a week, so I am blogging at least once a week.
Hi Debra, I have to ask, is there a particular niche (genre) of books you review? Because you didn’t really mention it, and that’s very important, because if you review books across different genres, then there really is no specified niche and that may hinder your ability to sell the book/s through Amazon.
Re-writing the keywords during a keyword search is a great idea! Thanks so much for the tip. I have been attempting to use keywords in my articles, but I am not sure how many times I should use them. I heard that keyword stuffing is a bad idea. How often should you use your keywords to achieve the right balance? Thanks again for the tip and continually providing great ideas. I am now a regular visitor on your blog.
As long as your content is written and read naturally, there isn’t really a problem with using a keyword often Laura. However, my personal approach to this problem is to use the said keyword once every 100 words. This is actually the same idea I follow for affiliate links.
Thanks for the ideas. I’ve just started my website and have indeed been struggling to come up with things to write about, and that’s been causing me to procrastinate! I’ll probably start with brainstorming on “problems”, before moving on to reviews. Between the two, which is your preference, or which did you start with when you just started out?
Either is fine. I find that when I write too many informative articles, it gets boring and I want to switch it up to product reviews, and if I do that too much, that gets boring and I end up switching back.
I definitely prefer to write about problems for now. Product reviews just seem like I would be really biased in the favor of the product I’m reviewing because I want people to click on it. I like to just answer questions and then if there are any companies related to my blog I’ll add their links somewhere.
Is this a good idea?
Yes this can work fine Abe, but you should not look at product reviews this way. You can and should be promoting something that makes your niche audience happy. And you should also review bad products to tell people what they should stay away from. People in every niche also have problems with picking out a product/s that will help them, be the person who helps them figure out what works.
Awesome post and great ideas! I’ve actually been using both of these methods on my site and it’s good to see someone successful who is also using these techniques. I’ve been working on my site for a few weeks now and getting slightly discouraged by my lack of results, its nice that you show actual results on your site and I’m encouraged by your success.
It’s normal not to see big SEO results within a few weeks, even if you have a ton of content. But the existing work you put up will actually play a huge role in your SEO ranking moving forward, especially as your website ages past 3-4 months. Don’t get discouraged, if you’re already doing the things I suggested, you’ll see the results.
Keywords definitely drive all my blogs, especially since I’m in the early stages. Sometimes it’s hard though when you want to target low-hanging fruit keywords but still want the information to be useful and relevant. Finding a topic to write about can be hard but gets easier as you do it more. I like that tip on finding topic ideas in the comments though. Never thought to do that!
Yeah I get a lot of positive feedback from content creators regarding comments quite often Charlie, hoping it’ll be useful for you as well 🙂
These are great tips and ideas especially when you run out of ideas. I like the suggestion to merge the best of both.
It didn’t occur to me to use Amazon as a source for product review ideas. This is perfect because images and all of the detail product information is at your fingertips. (Until now I have been using it to post related products to my posts).
You’ve given me several ways to come up with content so that can get more traffic to my site.
Hi Lorrie, from what I know about images, if you are not promoting the Amazon product, you may have issues using the image on your site. If however, you are promoting it, then it should be fine.
These are good tips which I will definitely be sure to keep in mind if I ever run out of ideas. I currently have one site which is about video games and for the most part, I am able to come up with specific games/products to review, however, sometimes I will browse through Amazon as well as watching some videos here and there if I can’t make up my mind.
I also am interested in starting up a second site which promotes making money online in general. One thing I initially had on my mind though is coming up with topics to write about whether it would be product reviews, advice, or about problems others face in general.
After reading this though, I feel much more confident in starting up that next site and always having something to write about.
My question is, now that I have been working on my first site for a few months, would you recommend I start working on another site as well? Should I maybe wait after my site reaches the 1 year mark or when it starts getting some sales going?
Hi Arie, my advice for starting a secondary site is usually if the following things are going on. If they aren’t, perhaps you should still stick to your first one.
I like the two options you discussed about developing ideas to write about for a blog website. I guess if you want to make money with your blog you should search for products to review. Especially products that can solve our readers problems. I also never considered using a keyword tool to see how much search traffic individual products receive. What would you consider too low for a search result for a product you want to review?
I don’t have a specific criteria for that Edgar, you will find that any product that gets searches in general is worth reviewing. It may not get a lot of visitors, but reviewing it will add content to your site and help it grow, and when you do review the more popular products, the other reviews you made which may not be so successful will actually act as a bedrock to push the site higher in rankings, making the more competitive products you review have a higher chance of ranking better and getting you big traffic, so review any product that is related to your niche.
I started out doing product reviews for items I had purchased on Amazon, and have just recently started incorporating them into my blog. Thanks for a very informative post that provides great info. I would never have thought to check comments on You Tube or even other blogs. Thanks for the tips!
No problem Jennifer, as long as your product reviews are pertinent to your site’s niche, you will be able to produce excellent content from this. A product review is best when you use the said item/product personally, as people love to hear personal stories on what the person giving the review experienced.
I have started doing product reviews on my blog and it is a great way to supplement my income. There a lots of great tips on here, most of these I have used and there have been great for my website but theres one or two things that I forgot to implement so thanks for the tips.
I’m glad you are seeing income come in from doing product reviews, but don’t forget to mix in the other type of content I was talking about, it’ll help your site grow further as an authority for both readers and Google.