Here is a guide on starting a new blog to earn online income from it. To find a profitable niche.
1. Choose the right topic or niche that can monetize
2. Check and make sure those keywords have at least 3,000 to 4,000 searches per month.
3. Do your keyword research with either paid tools like Market Samurai or free Google Keyword Planner.
4. When conducting your keyword search, make sure it is set in EXACT match.
5. Next, check for keyword competition. Just the top five in the search results will do. See whether is it easy or difficult to rank for those keywords in Google.
6. You do it by analyzing your competitors' keywords.
7. See whether they have keyword in the URL of the listed pages.
8. See whether they use keyword in the Title of the page and the description.
9. Check out their incoming links. And the quality of their links.
10. Study their content.
11. Now you find a niche that has a reasonable search volume and low competition, the next thing is to make sure it has earning potential.
12. You can find out from Google Keyword Planner. Look for its average CPC.
13. Be informed this is not about how much you can make from the keyword. The average CPC is the average amount advertisers who are using Google Adwords are paying every time someone clicks on an ad relevant to that specific keyword.
14. Remember, you only earn a percentage of the overall CPC per click.
15. The next way to find out whether your keyword has money-making potential is from Google search.
16. You type in your target keyword in Google and see what ads appear on the search result page.
17. If there is no ad, then forget about this keyword.
18. If there are ads showing up at the top of the page and/or the right side of the page; it means many advertisers are interested in this niche.
19. In other words, this is good keyword to monetize.
20. Go to Amazon.com and type in your targeted keyword in the search box.
21. Look for blogs using your targeted keyword. Go to Google type blog:keyword
22. From these blogs, check out whether they are selling, especially affiliate promotions.
23. Now, go and find out whether there are potential stuff that you could promote on your blog.
24. To do this, you go to Google. Then type in these followings:
"keyword" "affiliate"
"keyword" "for sale"
"keyword" "product review"
25. If you don't see any good results, then maybe you need to consider your selected niche.
26. Once you are satisfied with the above preparation, it's time to create your blog.
27. Create about twenty posts of about 200 to four hundred words.
28. Here is a quick tip on where to find ideas for your blog posts.
29. One easy way is to check out what your competitors are writing about.
30. Expand or improve on their content.
31. Another good source of ideas is Amazon.
32. Go to Amazon.com, select Books search. Type in your keyword to find books on your keyword or niche.
33. If there are books on your niche, click on “search inside this book".
34. Scroll down and look for its table of contents.
35. You can find points related to your niche.
36. At the same time, bookmark these books, as you can promote them in your blog.
37. To make your blog useful to your readers, create a couple of detailed epic posts.
38. I am talking about about an in-depth useful resource within your niche.
*Note: This is a simplified guide adapted from Pat Flynn's Passive Income site.