As discussed inPost 2 (Part I), choosing a keyword is an important task but in my opinion, the most difficult part of making money on Niche Content sites. I went through a pretty specific process to identify my niche and want to present that in this article.

One word of caution, I am trying this out as I go. I have done a lot of reading and research on the topic of monetizing niche sites and have created this process. I am not suggesting it is the best way to go about it, or even if it will be effective. It is the system I am trying to use.

The steps I followed to identify my keyword(s) were:

1. Use the eBay category list (http://hub.ebay.com/buy) to scan and drill down to areas of interest for me. For example, I enjoy skiing so I looked in sporting goods and identified some categories about skiing. If it is not going to be of interest to you, then why bother.
2. Enter the keyword(s) that I came across into Good Keywords to receive the number of searches that were made for that keyword. Make sure you select Overture US in the drop down box to ensure you are querying US data.
3. Scan the output in Good Keywords to see the number of searches. What I was looking for was a good number of searches per month (5000+) and some keyword combinations that were also received.
4. Open Firefox to Google and enter the search term, in quotation marks (“like this”) and hit search.
5. Note the number of search results and the number of sponsored links (on the right hand side). The lower the number of search results, the less saturated the market is for your keywords. The higher number of sponsored links, the more opportunities for advertising clicks there may be on a site and the more competition there will be for those keywords from advertisers.
6. In Excel, create a spreadsheet that looks like the following:



This is where the analysis and comparison comes in. What I did was create a ratio between the number of searches (from Good Keywords) and the number of search results (from Google). The higher the ratio, the better the results may be. Again, all I was looking for here was some way to pick a keyword that provided me with an opportunity and the way I see it, the more searches done and the less search results means that there may be opportunity to make money on a niche content site.

7. Once you have chosen your keyword(s), go ahead and start researching potential domain names. I wanted to include the keywords in my domain name, but there is some debate out there if there is any value in this. I decided to include them, but you may not. I went to the site that does my hosting and domain name registration and began entering domain names to find one that was available for purchase. I didn’t have any trouble getting the one I wanted so I bought it. You may need to try different combinations (hyphens, additional words, etc) to find one that is available.

That is what I did to get to this point. All in all, it took about 5 hours to get to this point as it was difficult finding a niche that fit the criteria and that I was interested in. I am confident I have a good niche and now it is time to start building the site.

The next post in this series will cover the factors and considerations I took in when designing the site. Stay tuned for Making Money on Niche Content Sites - Post 3 Designing and Building the Site.