 |
How to Get Profitable Business Ideas from Your Blog for Under 100 Dollars.
If your blog is no longer just a hobby, it's time to start thinking about how you can make money from it. This post will show you how to get profitable business ideas from your blog for under 100 dollars.
There are a million different ways to make money from your blog. Selling advertising, affiliate links, selling eBooks, making videos that you sell through your website or even through a membership site is another way to make money with your blog.
You don't need a software application or complex process to start making money with your blog. All you need is some creativity and the desire to make money with your blog.
If you're here, you probably already have the desire to make money with your blog. The rest is easy once you know that you can get profitable business ideas from your blog for under $100.
Here's how I did it…
After spending time in the advertising industry, I decided to start a blog about online advertising. In addition to learning more about blogging, this also gave me a reason to learn more about online video advertising and Internet marketing.
What this blog post is about:
Finding profitable ideas for your business from reading other people's blog
Setting up a simple system to find every possible profitable idea from the internet using a keyword list of the most popular search terms in each topic.
Using these ideas to grow your income and business faster than you ever thought possible.
All you need is a laptop, an internet connection and time.
Do you have all three? Good.
Today, I will show you how to make money from your blog for under $100 in 3 simple steps…
Step 1: Read Every Single Blog Post on Your Topic with a Keyword List and Profit Matrix Spreadsheet. For your purposes, I'm using Internet Marketing related blog posts and keywords, but this can easily be adapted for any topic. The Profit Matrix spreadsheet includes all the keywords I use to find every possible profitable idea for my blog in an easy-to-read format.
Step 2: Take Every Idea and Share It With Your Crowd. You'll post an excerpt from your post on your blog along with your own thoughts and comments and share it on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Pinterest, or any other social media that works for you. The goal here is to get as much exposure for as many of the ideas as possible.
Step 3: Reap Your Rewards. Wait a few weeks and watch your income grow. I'll keep you updated in my next post.
Before we get to Step 1, let's look at an example of how this can work for you…
Online Video Advertising Sucks? Here's How to Fix It! (For Under $100)
First, you need to find a keyword list of terms that your target audience is searching for. I always use Google AdWords (google.com/adwords) to find my keywords because you can see what people are searching for and how much they are willing to pay for it.
When you run a Google search, your results will look like the graphic below, except it'll contain search queries people are using to find what you're selling instead of "internet marketing.
The first thing I did was a search for "online video advertising sucks" using Google Adwords. I clicked on the following results…
I took a screenshot of the AdWords search results and used it to create my Profit Matrix spreadsheet.
I added this list of keywords to the columns on the right side of my Profit Matrix spreadsheet (Step 2).
Once I had my keyword list, I could start finding profitable ideas from around the web.
While sorting through all the ideas, I kept a few things in mind:
The term "online video advertising" was probably the most popular keyword out there. The goal was to make money from people searching for something much more specific. So, I focused on finding profitable ideas related to "video lessons" or "how-to video."
A lot of videos were using the same strategies. In this case, it was a "How to create an animated explainer video" or "How to make a viral video." It was apparent these videos were using the following tactics:
Create an interesting topic. Create a catchy title such as "how to create viral video" or "how to create an explainer video." Make the video short and sweet. The shorter, the better. Could you keep it simple? Only use bullet points and text – no voiceover or fancy graphics. Add multiple tags. For example: #viral, #howtocreateanexplainervideo, #explainervideos.
All of the videos focused on the same few things:
Creating an eye-catching title, including an attention-grabbing tag. Creating a compelling but straightforward video using a series of bulleted text and voiceover. Adding multiple tags to help Google find your video in autocomplete or getting it to be ranked higher in SERPs.
How to build a YouTube Video SEO Audience?
You are going to want to be able to add as many specific tags as possible. So make it your goal to have a long list of them, but you should really focus on the ones that will help you most in terms of ranking. These are the ones that I recommend adding to your video descriptions:
1. Your main keyword
2. Descriptive tags
3. Location-related tags (ex. San Diego, CA)
Write a catchy title and description for your video that is compelling and really interesting to read. The simpler, the better! You don't want the viewer to click off your video before it finishes loading because it's too dull or unappealing. Add multiple tags to help find you in Google search results and YouTube search results so that you can get discovered more easily.
TIP: If you don't know how to create an informative video that teaches someone something, I'd recommend hiring a professional videographer to create an explainer video for you. It will get your message across much more effectively than you can on your own. Plus, it'll make the whole process of creating content and videos faster and will help you build a bigger audience in the process.
Reminder: The goal here is to find ideas related to your primary keyword. For those who are lucky enough to have an audience searching for related terms but are not yet making money from them, I recommend focusing on a different topic for now.
Set Up Your PPC Campaign for Video Ads
I quickly signed up for an AdWords account and started searching for profitable keywords associated with "video lessons" or "how-to video." If you don't know how to set up an AdWords account or do not have one yet, there are tons of FREE ways to do so.
Here's another list of ways to find profitable keywords for your video ads, although they will be less reliable as far as what people are searching for on the search engines:
1. Google Trends – type in the term you are looking for in a Google Trends search window and see what is happening. If it's increasing, then it could work for your purpose.
2. Google Insights for Search – you can use this to get a quick overview of how popular specific keywords and terms are. Other than that, I would not recommend using it too much as it doesn't give you the complete picture or explain to you how different terms compare to each other.
3. YouTube Analytics – use this to see which videos are getting the most views and how many searches they're generating on YouTube.
4. YouTube Insights – use this to see how your videos are performing, what sort of traffic they're generating, and what people search for.
5. Yahoo Search Marketing – (you'll need a Yahoo account) you can use this to find the keywords that people are searching for on Yahoo and the ones that Google is making money from.
6. Search Metrics – (you'll need a SearchMetrics account) you can use this to find keywords searched on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.
7. Search Engine Watch – this site will help you find related keywords to target in your video ads because it lists keywords related to your primary keyword. You should only try to target these keywords if you're already making money from them or have previously built an audience for them.
8. Impact Byshop – this software gives you a lot of information about each keyword, including the search volume, competition, and how much it's making on Adwords.
TIP: I recommend using the term "how-to video" rather than "video lessons" because it has a higher search volume on Google. "Video lessons" is the main keyword that I'll be targeting for most of my videos, so that will be my main focus.
A great way to check on how a keyword is doing and see if it's worth ranking is to use the AdWords Keyword Tool. I'd suggest checking it out, but there is a bit of a wait for some of the results.
For those who don't know what this tool is, it's basically a free tool that gives you information on how popular specific keywords are and how much they're paying out to people using them in their AdWords campaigns.
On Google, you can see a list of related keywords using this tool as well. This is great for finding new ones to target or seeing if your main keyword generates a lot of money for you. If that's not the case, then maybe you'll have better luck with a related keyword.
The more competition there is for a keyword, and the lower the search volume, the less money you're likely to make out of it. This means that you'll want to avoid the most competitive ones and focus on the ones with a higher search volume and less competition.
Here's another example of using the Adwords keyword tool for video ads:
I wouldn't recommend using this tool so much because the search volumes are often wrong, but you can get an idea of which keywords generate more traffic than others. You also have to be aware that some keywords might be referring to a different term than you expected them to, so always double-check what they are.
TIP: Make sure that the term "how-to video" is in the phrase "how to make money from videos." If you're targeting this specific phrase, you'll be able to rank for it easily.
You can also use your own knowledge about which terms people are most likely to search for and target those. To do this, search for a term that you think might get searched for a lot and see which ones have lots of search volume.
For example, I searched for another keyword and saw that "how to make money from videos" has over 90,000 searches every month and has a good search volume. So I know that I should target this phrase as well.
You can also use the YouTube Keyword Tool to find out how many searches specific keywords get on YouTube. It's very similar to the Google Keyword Tool, but it just looks at YouTube instead.
I recommend using the keyword tool from YouTube as it does a better job of finding out how many searches people are making on YouTube. And that's what you need to do to find the best keywords for your video ads – search for terms that people are searching for on YouTube.
You don't need a Premium account to use this tool, but you'll have to sign up if you want to view any of the data. After that, you can select the keyword you want to find out about and start looking around.
To get started, select a category and enter a keyword that you want to rank for. You'll be shown a list of related keywords that have more than 50 searches every month.
The first thing I did was look at the "how-to video" results because that's what I'm going to be targeting. You'll want to find a list of keywords that have more than 100 searches every month, but you'll also want to look for keywords with low competition as well.
I wanted to target keywords that weren't very competitive and had quite a lot of search volume, so I entered the term "how to make money from the video" into the search bar. This was quickly followed by "make money from videos" and "make money from video lessons."