1. create site with ads or affiliate links
2. drive traffic to said site
3. PROFIT!!

Oh, if it were only that simple!

First, the creation of content for the site can be tedious…especially if it’s in a niche about which you only know a little.

Second, driving traffic is a function of having good content on the page, as well as a good backlinking strategy.  And one of the best backlinking strategies is article marketing.  But it can get tiresome writing article after article.

I know from experience, as well as from lurking on lots of Internet Marketing forums, that CONTENT IS KING, but Content Creation is one of the biggest hills to climb for most folks.

So I created “Uniquification“.

It is a program that helps people who need content.  Whether it’s writing posts for their blog or website, writing articles for article marketing, or creating a “free report” to give away for an opt-in, this program can help make content creation FAST AND EASY!

Check out “Uniquification: Unique, Original Content…Fast“.

But it’s a common problem.  You want to make your blog profitable, but you run out of ideas about which you can write.

I have developed a package called Uniquification which solves two problems:

1. getting over writer’s block and finding topics to write about
2. generating unique content quickly and easily

In fact, I’ve created an entire blog over at No Duplicate Content (www.noduplicatecontent.com) to help document strategies to solve those two problems.

If you have trouble coming up with you next post, or if you don’t know what to write, check out the ideas at No Duplicate Content.  The Uniquification report is free!

Here’s a taste:

• special searches you can do for your niche to find hot topics
• one of the biggest sources of content that is NOT indexed by the search engines, but easily lends itself to creating blog content
• how to convert exisiting content on the web into your own, original, unique content for your site

I even have some macros that you can run in your web browser that automate some of the brainstorming and content-gathering.

So check it out, and drop me a line to let me know how you like it!

Uniquification – Generating Unique Content Quickly and Easily

Oh…these ideas apply to way more than just blogs.  If you are doing article marketing or want to develop your own free report (or paid report!), these ideas will help!

I’m one of those “go-with-what-you-know” guys.  Start with something you feel passionate about, because that is something that you will most easily stick with, and you’ll probably have an easier time finding and building out content for your websites, ebooks, etc.

Still, we can all use some help when it comes to this kind of brainstorming, so here are some questions I like to ask to get the thoughts going:

• What are your hobbies?
• What problem have you solved recently?
• What information have you searched for on the internet recently?
• Go to Yahoo Answers, and plug in a keyword related to a niche you think you like.  Browse through to find out what questions people are asking about that topic.  Can you answer any of them?  (Don’t do it yet…wait until you have a site to link to.  But if you can answer them, that means you have content in your head that people are looking for!)
• What forums to you frequently read?  What forums are related to your potential niche?  (hint: google the word ‘forum’ with your niche keyword)  What questions are people asking on the forums?  What are the hot topics about on those forums?
• If someone offered to buy you lunch if you would present on a subject, and speak for 30 minutes, what would you talk about?
• What have you and your friends been talking about on Facebook, MySpace, etc.?
• What was the last exciting thing that happened to you?  Could you talk about that for 30 minutes?

With these questions in mind, you can usually narrow down from a broad niche to a specific subset.  The next question you need to ask is extremely important:  “How do I monetize it?”  That’s what it’s all about, right?

To figure out ways to monetize the niche, try some more Google searches (replacing niche with your specific one), like:

• affiliate niche
• review niche
• niche accessories

Then try searching Commission Junction, eBay (if you’re lucky enough to be an affiliate of theirs), ClickBank, PayDotCom, $7 Offers, etc., for related products to market.

Hopefully those questions will give you a place to start.  For me, once I pick a niche topic, it’s then pretty easy to drill down into the different aspects of that topic by visiting a site like Yahoo Answers.  That site is worth its weight in gold for determining what information people are looking for.

I was one of the casualties hurt by eBay’s decision.  I had an ebook that had been selling well every month.  For a while it was making me a ton of money.  As more competition crept in, it ended up making me only a small amount.  However, the ebook was loaded with other affiliate links…so I was happy anytime someone took it, even if I was just barely breaking even.

So, when eBay decided that they weren’t going to allow Digital Delivery, I pulled down my auctions, and my ebooks sat on my hard drive.

Until now.

I received an email newsletter the other day with information on a new book about using Kindle to sell ebooks.  Now, I get about half a dozen newsletters a day, usually with some pitch to some product to help me make more money…and I usually pass, since they are nothing new.

But Kindle Secrets was different for me.  It gave me the tools I needed to start selling my ebooks again…with LESS effort than eBay. With eBay I had to go in every two weeks and setup a bunch of auctions.  With Kindle, I set it up one time and I’m done.

Not only does Rebecca teach how to use Kindle to start moving your ebooks (with the power of Amazon and all its affilates behind you!), but she provides some excellent ways to find content for new ebooks!  I’m talking EASY (and FREE!) ways of getting a ton of new content for whatever niche you have.

I’m now taking that tool and creating new ebooks every day!  And I now have a world of blog content using the techniques she shows in her book.

The Kindle Secrets guide is an awesome way to help you create a digital delivery network of your own.  Combining those strategies with some of the other strategies here on this blog, and you can really jumpstart your online revenue stream!  Check out Kindle Secrets!

Video Proof:

If you want to see a really quick video that gives a great overview of how this works, check it out:

Video of the Kindle Secret

Let me share a strategy that I use from time to time. I don’t do it every day, but it only takes a few minutes. So if I have a few spare minutes, I’ll use this to make some money for free, very quickly!

I’m assuming that you have a blog with Adsense. (If you don’t, read the Step-by-Step Profit Guide from the menu at the top. It tells you how to setup a free blog and put Adsense on it.)

So, how do you get a surge of traffic to your site, spending very little time on it?

Three quick steps:

1. Hot Keywords – go to Google Hot Trends
2. Thought Stringing
3. Social Bookmarking

Hot Keywords – Go to Google Hot Trends.  It shows what people are searching for RIGHT NOW…the top 100 phrases by search volume.  (It’s updated every hour or two, and tells when the last update was.)  See any words that look interesting to you?  See anything that is related to a product?  Keep in mind that many of the searches will be of celebrities.  But you can find hot news stories, or hot products that are being searched heavily.  Something got mentioned on CNN or Oprah and everyone’s checking it.  You can click on the keyword phrases Google lists to see what the top news and blog articles are.  (Hint:  you have almost instant content.  Read a few of the articles and restate them in your own words for unique content relevant to a hot topic!)

Thought Stringing – Thought Stringing is the process of connecting related thoughts.  So, if a hot topic is the phrase “Madonna Divorce”, think about a thought that might be related to that phrase, or even use that phrase.  (You usually don’t want to copy that exact phrase because there will be WAAY too much competition for it.)  So, think about related phrases:  “madonna split up”, “madonna break up”, “madonna custody”, or think of a sub-phrase (one that contains the hot phrase.  it won’t get as much traffic, but will pickup some): “madonna divorce settlement”, “madonna divorce terms”, “madonna divorce agreement”, “madonna divorce rumors”…  The point about thought stringing is that you need to think like someone searching for information about the hot topic.  Pretend you just caught a snippet of the story on the news, or over-heard someone talking about the story.  If you wanted to learn more about it, what keywords would YOU use?  Chances are, others will, too.  (Maybe “madonna getting divorced”?) If you are stuck and have a mental block, you can use a tool like Keyword Elite, which lets you plug in a phrase and it comes up with thousands of related phrases very quickly.

Write a blog post on your blog, using your thought-strung keyword phrase as the title.  In addition to making it the title, make sure it appears in the first and last line of the blog post.  I prefer to re-type the title, and enclose it in <h1> header tags at the top. (That tells search engines that your page is primarily about this topic.)  I restate my conclusion at the bottom, using the phrase again, and surround that statement by <b> bold tags.

Almost there!  Now you’ve got good content about a heavily-searched keyword phrase…and a unique phrase that possibly hasn’t appeared on the web before, meaning less competition!

Social Bookmarking Marketing – copy the URL of your specific post (not just the main page of your blog), and head over to SocialMarker, and submit your blog to the major Social Bookmarking sites there.

Even if YOUR page doesn’t get in the top 10 of Google quickly, chances are good that a Propeller page or a Digg or Mixx page will!

It took me longer to type this article than it takes me to enact it.  I can literally check Google Hot Trends, find a keyword phrase I like, thought-string it, post about it, and crank it out through Social Marker in about 10 minutes total.  FREE!  NO COST to me other than that time.

My results from this have varied.  I’m not promising that you’ll get rich doing this all day long.  BUT, I will say that I’ve had hundreds to thousands of visitors hit my site within 30 minutes of me posting a new post, cranking out the Adsense revenue!!  With that volume of visitors, people WILL click some of your ads (assuming you’ve blended them properly, etc.).  AND, the cool thing is that somehow these hot topics have a way of re-surging.  For example, two weeks after I made one of these ‘quickie’ blog posts, after traffic has gone away (because it wasn’t a hot topic any more), all the sudden a bunch of visitors hit my page again.  Some news agency picked up the story in some remote place and re-published it, or it made it into a magazine article that just got delivered or something, and there was another surge.  Once you create that post, it NEVER GOES AWAY, and you own that little piece of virtual real estate.

Keep trying.  You will have varying results depending on how good you are at thought-stringing, keyword competition, value of the Adsense that appears on your blog, etc.  Eventually you will start to ‘fine-tune’ the hot phrases you pick.  You will find that some work easier than others.  You will start to look for phrase combos that likely haven’t appeared before.  For example, if a hot phrase is “Fannie Mae”, because it’s in the news…chances are that there are MILLIONS of pages with almost every conceivable phrase related to Fannie Mae.  But a phrase like “Dillon Suicide” (totally fictional, assuming Dillon is a famous actor), probably hasn’t appeared before, and you can thought-string from there to find a common phrase with little competition.

One final thought…if you are lucky, you will find keyword phrases that you can also tie to an affiliate product. As you are examining the keywords, look for product-based phrases (which is tough…most hot topics are people-oriented, like celebrities). Almost any product can be sold through an affiliate. If you belong to some of the affiliate networks, like Commission Junction or LinkShare, then many times you can add links in your blog posts to your affiliate product. Generally affiliate sales pay more than Adsense, which is why I mention this.

Anyway, I hope you understand this method for making free fast money using hot keywords. It works if you work it!

Short version (for the details behind it, keep reading after the outline):

1. Become eBay affiliate. (Free)
2. Keyword Research on Hot Niches
3. Create Squidoo Lens for your Niched Keyword Phrase. (Also Free)
4. Add an RSS module to the Squidoo lens with the product.
5. Normal traffic-driving methods for the lens.
6. Profit!

First, become an eBay affiliate. eBay wants traffic, and if you drive traffic to their site, they give you a part of their profit (fees) on the completion of any sale. AND they pay $25 for people who signup for eBay if they came from you. Signup for the affiliate program at: http://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com

Next, research a product. Ebay itself can be a great resource for this. Visit the Pulse section of eBay at http://pulse.ebay.com to sift through most popular searches in a given category. Then use the Keyword Research tools like SEOPro and Google from the Tools section of this website to find related keyword phrases with high searches and low competition.  For example, Pulse shows that “webkinz” is a popular search term.  Entering “webkinz sale” into Google’s tool (without synonyms) shows how many searches there are…then hop over to Google for a given phrase (like “webkinz for sale cheap”) to find out how much competition there is for that phrase.  I like to have a thousand searches or more per month, with under 10,000 competition for exact match.

Go over to Squidoo and create a lens with the name of the lens being the keyword phrase.  Use dashes or underscores between words.  Choose “do your own thing” for the type of lens, and use some hot related keywords to start with when asked, based on the research you did.  When setting up your Squidoo lens, haven an Intro paragraph.  Do a quick Google Image search for a picture of what it is your lens is about, save the image to your computer, and upload it to your lens.  Then add a ‘My Favorite Link’ module (with the big arrows), and an RSS module, and a YouTube video module.  Go to eBay’s Partner Network site, login, and use their tools to generate a link for the ‘My Favorite Link’, and the RSS generator to create a feed to display in the RSS module (include all the details).  Have the YouTube module pick a video related to your keyword (helps with visitor likability, Squidoo ranking, and bulks up your content with related keywords).

Do your normal traffic driving methods (social bookmarking, forum posts, blog comments, even other squidoo comments, comments on social bookmarking sites, etc.).  Squidoo gets indexed quickly with Google.  If you have other blogs, etc., make sure you link to your new lens.

Squidoo has built-in traffic tools, so no need for Google Analytics.  (I wish I could, though…GA is better…but still, at least you can do SOME tracking!)  Watch visitors hit the site…then those visitors go to eBay and eventually bid/buy/subscribe, and you get a check from eBay (or direct deposit into your PayPal account).

I know this tutorial was very ‘light’ as far as the details, but I’m thinking that you’ll be able to figure it out from here.  Try it out on a few lenses.  Soon you’ll be able to throw a lens together in about 10 minutes or less, and you can try multiple ones.

I’m all about cheap…this could be one of the methods you use to generate some cash without having to lay any money out.

Note: for an example of what a squidoo lens should look like when you’re done: Webkinz Polar Bear
. Admittedly I could have done better on the keywords (like gone for “Buy Webkinz Polar Bear”), but I only did this while I was typing up the post to provide an example, so I didn’t do all the research I would normally do.

Recently, I decided to give my wife her own blog.  She’s big into gardening, and very knowledgeable about it.  So I bought a domain name, installed WordPress on it, and customized a template that would fit her style/personality well.

I created an introduction post, and a page with some book recommendations (using my Amazon affiliate code and a cool Carousel widget).

When I showed it to her, she was tickled pink!  It took me all of about 20 minutes to teach her how to login and make posts.

I have admin access, so if she writes a post that has content that can be naturally affiliate-linked, I add the links in there.  That way she doesn’t have to do any ‘coding’, or even know HTML.  She just writes posts about her favorite topic!  She’s having fun, and it’s created another income stream for us along the way.

Her blog is a Vegetable and Flower Gardening Tips blog, called Green Thumb Momma.  You can find it at http://www.greenthumbmomma.com.

So if you have loved ones or friends who would enjoy having their very own site to blog on, give them a blog!  Tell them you’ll take care of coding in the background!  It’s a win-win situation!

When I say “child labor” most of the time the immediate image that comes to mind is a sweat shop where poor kids are working in dangerous conditions. But what I’m talking about is legal, ethical, and the kid will probably like it!

“Content is King”, when it comes to Internet Marketing. But usually the folks who are doing Internet Marketing are so busy with the marketing that they don’t have time for the content.

Before you go paying good money for Private Label Rights articles, or paying someone to write blog posts for you, why not leverage some good, free content? Tap the content rolling around in your child’s head!

Children’s opinions matter. They matter because of the marketplace. Most content can be related to a child. Find out what yours thinks and blog about it…or better yet, get them to blog about it if they’re old enough to type in coherent sentences.

Don’t restrict your thinking to content related to Toys. That’s obvious. If you have a niche about toys you can regularly share your child’s opinions about them and have instant content. I’m talking about getting a child’s angle on other niches. Here’s a few examples of what I’m talking about:

• a niche about a hobby – get the child to talk about the hobby, how their parents got them started in it, what they like about it
• a niche about a product – find out what kids at school say about the product, crazy uses for the product (that only a kid could think of), etc.
• philosophical ramblings – explain deep thoughts to a child and get them to summarize it in their words.

Hopefully you could think about your particular niche and figure out your child’s perspective.  Heck, even something like ‘Global Warming’…if you had a blog about enviromental issues and could get your child to offer thoughts about it regularly, that could become a featured item that would draw visitors.  (You can just type it for them, using their exact words.)

It becomes even more useful if they’re old enough to type.  If you’re up for it, register a domain name for them, set up a blog, a cool-looking template, related to something that really interests them.  Put some ads on it (instruct them NOT to click them, ever), maybe create some pages with affiliate links, and let them do the rest.  Let them blog their thoughts, while you build traffic to it.  Then come back and show them while you insert some affiliate products.  Get them to review a product (from a teen’s perspective).

Bingo.  Free child labor.  Good, unique, relevant content.