How to Research Blog Topics
If you are thinking about starting a new blog then the first step is to do extensive research. This might be the most important step in determining whether you make money or not with your online venture. If you skip your research step then you are setting yourself up for failure before you even put any work in.
What do you need to research before starting your site? The first thing you need to know what people are looking for. This can be a product or information that they need. It can be a question that needs answered or a problem requiring a solution.
The second step is to figure out what you can offer them. Can you become an affiliate for products that provide the market with the solution they are looking for? Can you make enough with your percentage to earn a profit?
The three different types of research you are going to have to do are: niche, product, and keyword.
Are there existing products available or can you create your own? Are there customers looking for the products offered?
You need to have both a customer base and something to sell them. The bigger the niche the more people you can sell to and the higher your profit potential. If the niche is small, then you have to sell products with high margins for yourself in order to make a lot of money. If you enter a small niche where your earnings per sale is small then you won't make very much money.
Once you find a profitable niche, the key is to match the audience with a product that they want. It all boils down identifying the target audience and their problem, figuring out how important it is for that audience to find a solution, and offering them the products that will do so.
You will have to compare the available products, find out what is selling the best, and then market that to your audience. You can sell either physical products or digital ones. I prefer digital due to the higher commission rates, but there is also money to be made promoting things people can touch and feel.
When choosing a product, it's important to make sure that it is worth your time. You should be making more than $20 per sale. Some other quick tips on product research are to go with items that have been around for a little while. If it's doing well after a few months on the market, chances are that it matched up pretty well with what people were searching for.
Keyword research - This is how you make predictions on your traffic. How many visitors will you receive and how many sales you can expect on that number of visitors.
You want to rank at the top of the search engines for the keywords that you target. This means that if you are just starting out don't go after the most competitive keyword, it will take you months or possibly years to get to the top of the results, and you won't have made any money in the mean time. Start smaller, make a few sales, and work your way up the ladder of competitive keywords.
The easiest way to start small is to focus on targeted, longer tail keywords. If you are building a site around hair loss, you don't want to rank for "hair loss" but rather "how to stop losing hair." Something that the user is specifically looking for with the intention of buying. My SEO keyword strategy article has plenty of ideas for beginners if you want to read more.