STEP ONE:
'WHAT WILL I WRITE ABOUT?'
You are the expert on what you do. Think about it: you are the expert on YOU!
Are you passionate about something? Is there something you're good at? What do you love so much you can write about it on a daily basis? Do you know some tricks of the trade that others would love to learn?
You can write about your passions, hobbies, expertise, family, work, stories - real or fictional, travel experiences, photos, opinions, favorites restaurants, pets, cars, movie stars...
Believe it or not, folks are interested in what you have to say, especially when it is helpful to them, when it benefits them, when they learn from it.
Folks search the internet for information. And that's what most websites and blogs are: information providers.
It can be as simple as how to throw the best kiddie parties, or giving recommendations for best restaurants, best bargains, best pet grooming center, or how to restore a particular car model.
So the first thing to do is brainstorm (it would be better if you can throw your ideas around with others, like friends or members of your family). And in brainstorming, all ideas, no matter how goofy, are valid. So do not discount anything. That 'obscure' topic about the chinese bamboo you're growing in your garden might just be the one that will bring you the most income!
STEP TWO:
KEYWORD RESEARCH
A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. So the next step would be to find out how many folks are wanting information on that topic. In other words, who is your target audience? Is it a big or small audience?
Since you are looking at your market, you should know that the rules of supply and demand apply here. You should look at your competition and gauge if you can do better.
So, here's what to do:
1. Search for your topic or keyword and see how many are searching for your particular topic using keyword research tools. You are now checking the demand.
2. Search for your particular topic or keywords and see how many pages on the web reference it using the top search engine like Google and Yahoo. You are now check the supply.
3. Visit the top sites and do some detective work and see what makes them work. You are now checking out the competition.
Keyword tools: For websites I use Wordtracker (take the free trial), to find popular seached topics for blogs I use Google Zeitgeist, Yahoo! Buzz. I believe anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is and if your writing is precisely focused then your site should be successful.
STEP THREE:
CHOOSING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
Let's say you feed your dog vegetarian dog food because it's a 'philosophy' you want to spread to the world. You produce your own, have a recipe database, and may want to sell products or a book in the future. And you know instinctively that there are millions of folks out there, who own pets, who love them and want the best for them.
Let's say your keyword research shows that there are 140,000 results for vegetarian dog food. Know that there not 140,000 SITES, just 140,000 REFERENCES to vegetarian dog food. So you think, "It's easy to get on page 1 of the search engines, I can top this list!"
Then you check your keyword tool and find that there are ZERO searches for vegetarian good food. So now you're thinking, "Oh, no! No one is interested in vegetrian dog food, and much less in buying some, so lets scrap the whole thing!"
But WAIT, if you use the keyword tools correctly, you may find that folks are actually searching for "healthy dog food" or "organic dog food!" So you check again and see if you have a lot of competition for those particular keywords.
Then you use the Keyword Effectivity Index (KEI). The formula is how many searches (customers/demand) versus results (suppliers/supply) to pinpont which keywords are most effective for you.
Suppose the number of searches for a keyword is 486 per month and Google displays 214,234 results for that keyword. Then the ratio between the popularity and competitiveness for that keyword is 486 divided by 214,234. In this case, the KEI 0.002.The higher the KEI, the more popular your keywords are, and the less competition they have. That means that you might have a better chance of getting to the top.
What you should remember is that there are real people behind these search these terms. They may not necessarily use the words that you use. So it's good to have a gauge of their search behavior.
STEP FOUR:
SELECTING YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME
When Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name? A rose by another would smell as sweet" the internet had not been invented!
On the internet, your domain name (the www.yourname.com) is your business address while your website is your storefront (that which is visible to your customers) while your email address works more like a business phone (with a fax machine).
Your domain name should, as much as possible, be:Short. Of course I wanted to buy www.baguio.com but it was taken immediately, as was www.baguiocity.com or www.baguio-city.com. So I lined up a few other choices and decided that the shortest name. I could work with was www.gobaguio.com. Of course the word 'go' was nice, too, because it was to be for a travel website.Memorable. The domain could have been www.bcphil.com for Baguio City, Philippines but how catchy is that? Plus, it would not meet the next two criteria. Initials, unless you're IBM, may not always work well for you.Related to your company, product, subject, topic. In fact, it's better if it contains your company name, product, subject or topic. No one would have guessed that www.bcphil.com was for!Hard to misspell. Had I used www.bcphil.com, folks might spell it as busyphil,or vzfil.A lot of the good names have been taken, so many folks have been using keyword phrases as domain, too. Like www.kiddiepartyideas.com
or www.kiddie-party-supplies.com. As much as possible, try to avoid the dashes because it hard to tell your friends that to visit www dot kiddie dash party dash supplies dot com.
Please read my article on Why you should have your own domain name.
Now we move on to the fun part, let's get started with building your website or blog.
WAIT!
DOES EVERYTHING SO FAR
SOUND ALIEN TO YOU?
Let's stop for a bit and let me reassure you that, while we're trying to be 'scientific' here, a lot of the processes are intuitive, really. I did not know all this when I started. Market behavior can change, too. What's important is that you understand the basic concepts first.
Keywords are the foundation for your site. It gets easier now.
Chuvatech aims to explain, in the
simplest terms, how you can make
money without leaving your home or
your country by sharing with the world something you already know
