Tag: wordpress tutorial

ReginaldChan.net Is One Year Old!
Today, 12th June 2014, marked my first year anniversary for ReginaldChan.net.

And I’m pumped. It has been a long road; probably a very tough one but I’m glad I made it through.

Phew!

Of course, I met with many friends down the road in blogging and thank you all for being there.

In this article, I’ll expose all my secrets that I had experienced with for the past 12 months:
- Traffic
- Success and failures
- Events
How did ReginaldChan.net score in building blog traffic?

My traffic isn’t huge and I am a strong believer that quality over quantity. This means that I focus on a very simple blogging strategy; more targeted traffic.

As seen from the image above, I managed to gain 111,648 visits which equals to 306 visits per day. Personally, not much of an achievement compared to blogs who makes thousands of traffic a day.

Google is still my main powerhouse for traffic followed by social media and email marketing. Contrary to what others claimed about social media being the main generator of traffic, if search engine (Google in particular) isn’t your main drive in traffic, you’re definitely doing something wrong!

Want to build more blog traffic? Follow these steps:
1. Do aggressive keyword research (my personal favorite tool ~ Long Tail Pro | Read my Long Tail Pro review here)
2. Write articles over 1,500 words and highly optimized (I uses Scribe SEO for the matter)
3. Perform on-page and off-page SEO strategy (very important)
4. Share it on blogging network such as DoSplash, Klinkk, BlogEngage and Blokube
5. Publishing on social media using social media automation (my personal favorite tool ~ HootSuite)
6. Build a newsletter and even a small list is better than none. I highly suggest GetResponse since it is an extremely versatile email marketing services (and easy on your wallet too). I also have a GetResponse tutorial which will guide you to setup your first campaign.
ReginaldChan.net successes within the first 12 months

I believe the biggest success is still my blog earnings. Here are my current (average) earnings:

Affiliate sales ~ $500 +/- per month

Ad banners ~ $150 +/- per month

Business consultations services ~ $1,500 +/- per month

Featured posts ~ $50 +/- per month

Total estimated earnings per month ~ $2,200 per month

On a bad month, I earn a mere $1,500 which is pretty A-okay to cover my spending especially with premium plugins, tools etc.

And if you think I’m making big bucks out of this, think again. There are many ‘gurus’ out there who earns at least 10 digits per month compared to my little blog here.

Honorable mentions is my second biggest success. I was mentioned many times in various blogs which I’m truly thankful of. Some of the biggest names that I can remember are:
- Harvard University’s Blog
- Yahoo Small Businesses
- SEMrush
- Shareaholic
- UpCity
- Traffic Generation Cafe
- Referral Candy
Not to forget, I was extremely lucky to be included in The Top 100 Bloggers on Triberr by Dashburst. It was a honor and thank you!

In the past 12 months, I was also able to meet up with several top guys in the market. Of course, I kick started my first experts share on SEO 2014 and it was one hell of a challenge!

On top of that, I was lucky to be able to connect with the decision makers in WP Engine, SEMrush and even landed myself some opportunities for beta testing apps.

And recently, I have just secured a place with a publisher to publish my first book!

ReginaldChan.net failures

Yup, we all have them and I will be lying if I tell you that I didn’t.

For starters, I wasn’t focusing on my blog enough to convert it into a business.

I wasn’t offering my services when I started my blog. I only did it down the road; after 3 months. Until date, providing consultation services easily land me at least $1,500 per month which is huge.

My failure? I didn’t start much earlier and didn’t capitalize my knowledge in blogging.

Moral of the story: Use your skills and knowledge to monetize your blog!

My second failure is that I was focusing too much on social media traffic. Don’t get me wrong, social media traffic (some call it referral traffic) is good but you are required to be active all the time just to get some quality traffic back.

Seeing my situation, I know I wasn’t able to cope up with all the work and I changed my plan to focus slightly more on search traffic.

The third mistake was a little odd (to be honest). I was focusing so much on specific traffic (for better ROI) but I left out the opportunity to make more money out of it.

Take it an instant where I have only 300 traffic per day. Advertisers aren’t interested with these low traffic figures. They want huge 4 or 5 digits traffic a day … even if you have a 90% bounce rate!

Specific traffic is good for affiliate sales but when it comes to Google Adsense or advertising, you’re on a huge losing side.

Celebrating ReginaldChan.net first year anniversary

Yes, I’m not letting you go empty handed. I’m giving away 6 months FREE hosting for you!

I have several reseller hosting accounts and I believe it is time to give back.

So, how do you claim your free hosting?
1. Signup for my newsletter (skip this if you have already subscribed) | Sign up right here!
2. Email me at reginald[at]reginaldchan[dot]net with the title “6 months FREE hosting”
3. Sit back and relax (while checking out my cheap web hosting plans)
Important note:
- Free hosting is only applicable for yearly hosting
- The cost of hosting per month is $4.99
- You will entitle for 50% discount for the first year (you only pay $29.94 upfront)
- All hostings come with a full 60 days money back guarantee
- Free website migration if you need
- Free website speed optimization and recommendation if you need
I hope you enjoy this (small) celebration of mine. Again, my success isn’t huge and I am looking forward to grow even biggers.

Thank you guys for all the support and I really appreciate it!
February 19, 2024
115 Bite Size SEO Tips and Resources
Looking for the best SEO tips and resources guide? Well, you don’t have to look any further.

In this article, I’ll be sharing 115 SEO tips and resources that you can instantly use for any SEO campaigns.

And these are not your average tool to be honest. I use each and everyone of them at least once a month.

So, yes! Rest assured that these are the real deal!

I hope you enjoy reading these bit size SEO tips and tell me what you think using the comment form at the end of this article.

Google Webmaster Tool
1. Determine top landing pages and find ways to monetize them
2. Find current backlinks and check for any penalized sites
3. Using Fetch and Render features monthly to have a fresh crawl
4. Submit Sitemap to Google for post indexing
5. Crawl error provides issues on the website that could lead to 404 errors and page not found
6. Check for manual web spam penalization
7. Check for HTML improvement and recommendation from Google
8. Determine the top keywords and phrases for your website as indexed by Google
9. Using Data Highlighter to help Google understand the website layout
10. Unshow or disable sitelinks which are not relevant to search queries
11. Determine which is top performer in terms of keywords
12. Information on Click Through Rates (CTR) and adjust title to boost CTR rate
13. Getting specific keyword ranking on Google
14. Checking if the site is HTML ready and if structured data is enabled
15. Blocking URL which are not relevant or links that you do not Google to index
16. Setting up demographic features and targeted country (optional for bloggers but useful for eCommerce websites)
17. Setup website to redirect to www or non www to avoid duplicate contents
Google Analtics
1. Determine demographic traffic
2. Data of traffic source; referral, direct or search engines
3. Provide information of age and gender
4. Detailed information of visitors (new vs returning)
5. Learn the engagement level of visitors with the duration of the blog visitors
6. Provide information of the technology used to visit the blog (smartphones, tablet or desktop)
7. Understanding general flow of visitors (sales funnel)
8. Find the best keywords that provides the most clicks and traffic
9. Determine which page or post that are providing the most CTR and traffic
10. Insight of landing pages and indirectly, providing ways to improve conversion rate
11. Creating custom reporting to track traffic and conversion changes
Google Keyword Planner
1. Find keyword ideas based on seed keywords
2. Providing an estimated search volume per month
3. Providing historical search volume and trends
4. Determine the average number of competitions for Adword users
5. Provide an estimated value of Cost Per Click (CPC) for those who are bidding for keywords
6. Availability of keyword search based on geographical value or general
7. Find new keywords based on keywords, related phrases and even websites
8. Filtering keywords based on specific requirements
9. Get search volume using specific codes (example: [exact match keywords], “related keywords” and general keywords)
10. Free keyword suggestions by using keyword lists and suggestions
Google Places (Local SEO)
1. Extremely vital if you’re running an eCommerce website
2. Placing a map and even enable Google Places could boost local search
3. You can increase local SEO by using directories but it should not
SEO tips for homepage, posts and pages
1. Using heading tags of H1 to H4 for markup value
2. Focusing on keyword density (recommended below 3%)
3. Using keywords which has search value
4. Using Bold, Italic and Underline to boost readership
5. Providing valuable and relevant tags
6. Permalinks to be clean and readable
7. Make use of alt tags and image title
8. Using caption and description on images to create value
9. Focus in using one main keyword and several other related keywords per article
10. Providing short but quality meta description
11. Avoid keyword stuffing
12. Each post should have a balance internal and external backlinks
13. Avoid sharing external links which are low quality
14. Avoid link exchange
15. Use NoFollow tag for low quality or non related links
16. Articles should be at least 600 words
The importance of blog marketing for SEO
1. After publishing a blog post, market it around to get a faster indexation
2. Submit blog posts to content syndication sites
3. Build links to the blog posts but providing value (indirectly increases the chance of trackbacks)
4. Share the posts on social media and receive temporary traffic (and ranking) boost
Guest posting
1. A great way to get more backlinks but submit guest post with moderation
2. Only accept quality guest post
3. Avoid link drop at all cost
4. Only write for quality and authority sites
5. URL shared should only be your best articles
SEO tips that you need to do for your website
1. Use quality hosting for better loading speed
2. Domain name to be short and memorable
3. Avoid rude words on the domain name
4. Exact match domain isn’t compulsory but recommended
5. Focus on mobile SEO (mobile responsive themes, layouts etc)
Looking for backlinks tips? Here are 7 to get started with!
1. Focus in creating quality backlinks instead of numbers
2. Getting one backlink from authority sites values more than hundreds from spammy sites
3. Avoid black hat SEO unless you REALLY know what you’re doing
4. Use a mixture of exact mach anchor text with related and general ones
5. Focus in building a large ‘range’ of anchor texts
6. Avoid over optimizing specific keywords
7. Certain social media platform provides DoFollow backlinks
General SEO tips for beginners
1. If you’re just starting up, avoid the ‘try to dominate Google’ thinking
2. SEO is usually overrated; just enjoy the whole SEO process
3. Not doing SEO for a day won’t kill your traffic overnight
4. If you want to master SEO, you need to read … A-L-O-T
5. SEO results will not happen overnight; it takes time (months)
6. Follow as closely as possible with Google guidelines and you’ll be pretty safe from any penalization
7. Not all SEO tips works for everyone; just choose those which are relevant
8. Avoid sitewide URL (placing URLs on footer or sidebar for example)
9. Use robot.txt to ‘guide’ crawlers on your website
10. Avoid stuffing over 1,000 links or files in your sitemap (you can have more than one sitemap)
11. SEO plugins and tools like Yoast SEO, Raven Tool and Scribe SEO doesn’t guarantee good ranking; they just help to optimize your website by providing suggestions
12. There are over 200 ranking factors to consider according to Moz (read more)
Recommended free SEO plugins and tools to use in 2014
1. Google Keyword Planner (general keyword research)
2. Google Webmaster Tool (check for any crawl errors and keyword ranking)
3. Google Analytics (general data on keywords and geographical research)
4. Bing Webmaster Tool (alternative to Google Webmaster Tool)
5. WordPress SEO by Yoast (helps to provide simple SEO insight and analytics)
6. All In One SEO (alternative to WordPress SEO)
7. Google XML Sitemap plugin (good combination to All In One SEO)
8. Squirrly SEO plugin (freemium SEO plugin to help with advance SEO analytics)
9. Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool (test your website if it is HTML5 and markup Schema.org)
10. Google Trends (a great way to see what is trending and what’s not)
11. MozCast (my personal favorite when it comes to checking Google algorithm changes)
12. SEOquake (great FireFox plugin to check on on-page SEO)
13. MozBar (alternative to SEOquake and great on Chrome)
Best premium SEO plugins and tools (evergreen)
1. Long Tail Pro (my personal keyword research tool ~ Download it for free and get $20 off if you decide to buy)
2. Market Samurai (my second go-to tool for keyword research ~ Try it for free here)
3. Scribe SEO (the best SEO plugin that provides excellent analytics and keyword suggestions by CopyBlogger ~ Read more about it here)
4. SEOpressor (the best worth-for-money SEO plugin for beginners ~ Free trial)
5. SerpBook (easy to use keyword tracking which updates twice a day ~ Check it out here)
6. SEO PowerSuite (value for money and all-in-one SEO tool ~ Free download)
7. Genesis Framework and child themes (the only WordPress themes that comes with superb inbuilt SEO setting ~ See StudioPress themes gallery here)
8. AhRefs (this is my main backlink checker and probably the one that provides the most accurate data)
9. MajesticSEO (a good alternative to AhRefs)
10. Moz Pro (the pro version provides extremely detailed information and most of the time, comparable with Raven Tools)
11. Raven Tools (excellent competitor to Moz Pro and this is also a great all-in-one SEO tool for agencies)
12. SEMrush (a good alternative especially when you are need deep insight of your competitor and high CPC keywords ~ Try SEMrush here)
Is there really the best SEO tools?

The answer is no. Each SEO tool or plugin works in a very different way. For example, I uses Scribe SEO for serious SEO analysis but it has lesser usage for beginners or leisure bloggers.

In the end of the day, it all depends on what you really need and from there on, choosing the best SEO technique to fit your style is the best way out.

Do you have any favorite SEO tools you would like to share? Tell me using the comment form below.
February 19, 2024
How To Import WordPress Comments To Disqus?
Disqus is a popular comment platform after the default WordPress comment system and CommentLuv (read more about CommentLuv). For many bloggers, the thoughts of exporting hundreds or thousands of comments from WordPress system to Disqus could be a very daunting experience.

Lucky for you, I’m going to share how you can easily import all your WordPress comments straight into Disqus … without hassle.

What is Disqus?

According to Wikipedia, Disqus, Inc. is a blog comment hosting service for websites and online communities that uses a networked platform.

What are the advantages using Disqus compared to CommentLuv or WordPress default comment system?

Here’s a real fact.

I know tons of bloggers who swear NOT to step foot onto my blog just because I don’t have CommentLuv.

Yup, seriously.

And the simple is really simple; they were looking for simple / easy backlinks (even though it’s pretty obvious that links on my comments are strictly no-follow).

Here are some reasons why I changed to Disqus from the beloved CommentLuv:
- Good by spam (Disqus help me clear over 200 spams a day)
- Easy moderation of comments on various blogs with just the Disqus admin page
- Disqus allows blog monetization (Yes!)
Here’s my confession. The reason of me changing to Disqus is simply because I hated the number of spams I receive daily. On a good day, I receive around 200 and on bad days, I get over 500.

How to import WordPress comments to Disqus?

The whole process of importing and exporting comments into Disqus are fairly simple. There’s no need for hair pulling if you are worried of that.

Just follow the steps below and you should be just fine.

1. Download the Disqus plugin from your WordPress dashboard.

2. Install and activate the Disqus plugin.

3. Go to Disqus settings to configure the plugin.

4. Enter your Disqus shortname (you need to register first before you can get the shortname – Register here). The shortname can be anything. For me, I choose something that is easy for me to remember. One shortname represents one website and thus, you may create more shortnames if you have more than one website.

5. Once you acquired the Disqus shortname, you should add it to Disqus and it will show automatically on your setting page.

6. The next step is to setup Disqus login for your visitors. See the image below. All you need to do is to click on the hyperlink to get your API.

7. The last step is to export all comments from WordPress default commenting system to Disqus platform. This can be done easily using the ‘Import and Export’ option on Disqus.

All you need to do is to click on the Export Comment button and just wait for it to complete. The more comments you have, the longer it will take for you to get the exporting comment done.

Grab a coffee or a smoke while waiting for the comment to be exported to Disqus.

It took me about 20 minutes to export over 2,300 comments from WordPress to Disqus.

Once that is done, the Disqus comment system is ready for using and you can turn off any comment system you have on your blog.

Do you find this tutorial useful?

Importing WordPress comments to Disqus is pretty easy and it wouldn’t take long to get the job done.

Do you have any issues with Disqus? Just fire up your questions using the comment form below and I’ll get back to you real soon!
February 19, 2024
Niche Blogging Case Study: Can You STILL Rank On Google?
When you talk about make money blogging, one of the fastest way is to build a niche blog. Yes, there’s no denial in this.

You can still make money from affiliate sales from your main website but you want the type of fast churn and turn, running a niche blog could probably be the best bet.

There are some serious advantages of niche blogging and here are a few:
- Building a niche blog is easy (and fast)
- Finding one good niche and then blast the way out
- Compared to running a main website, you don’t need much authority to earn your first dollar
When I published my previous article, Finding Profitable Niche Ideas, I received quite a few private messages and emails asking if I could show a step by step guide.

And I thought, “Hey, why don’t I start a niche blog instead as a case study?”

For starters, I have gave up niche blogging last year due to time constrain. However, I (basically) took the liberty to create this case study and ultimately, you can use them to start one or more niche blogs.

What you will learn here (and coming articles):
1. How to find a good niche
2. What is the definition of a good blogging niche
3. How to create a GREAT blogging niche
4. How to monetize a niche blog
And yes, I’ll show you the exact steps I took to create this blog from scratch.

Tools I will be using:
- Google search
- Google Keyword Planner
- Long Tail Pro (try it for free plus $20 off if you buy it from me)
- Clickbank (website)
- Amazon (website)
- Keyword monitoring tool (my personal favorite – SerpBook)
Finding the right niche ideas

Here’s an important disclaimer. It is super tough to find a good niche for blogging. There are too many competitions and Google is definitely not fond of those thin sites.

On top of that, competing with big guns such as eBay, Wikipedia and Amazon could be a nut job.

The goal before even starting up a niche blog is to find a profitable niche to blog. There is absolutely zero reason to start a niche blog, ranking on #1 of Google with nothing to sell.

The choice of monetization methods are:
- Google Adsense
- Affiliate sales
- Ad space (when the traffic hits 1,000 a day)
Placing Google Adsense banner is pretty clear cut but for affiliate sales, it is a whole different story. Choosing the right product to market is important for any niche blogging.

If you are selling a product, here are some quick guidelines:
- Earns at least $10 per sale or recurring (I love recurring)
- Cost per click of around $1
My personal way of finding a good blogging niche is by soul searching; asking myself what I love most etc. If you are a beginner or needed some guidance, here are some quick but effective ways to find a good niche.

Using Amazon and Clickbank for keyword ideas

Check on the top sellers (I prefer top 100) and select the a product to market.

Let’s say the product is a Genesis Framework (click here to join Genesis Framework affiliate and earn up to 33% per sale). The niche you are looking for would probably be WordPress themes or premium themes for bloggers.

The second step is to find 2 to 5 related products which are highly recommended or compared by Google. On Google search bar, type in “Genesis Framework vs” and you will see a list of suggestions.

The suggestions that are provided are the most popular search topics used by us. Yes, human!

As you can see above, these would be great blogging ideas you can use when you start the blog. Of course, applying for the affiliate sales in advance (or as soon as possible) is a good move to ensure that there isn’t much wait time or time lost during the application period.

Checking the niche for profitability and chance of ranking

Niche blogging is all about make money fast and therefore, profitability and chance of ranking is more than just important.

For starters, you may use Google Keyword Planner to find a list of related keywords. Jot them down or list them down in an excel form. Keep in mind the important part are number of exact search per month and cost per click.

What I doesn’t like about Google Keyword Planner is that it doesn’t give competition analysis; the chance of ranking on search engines.

This is why I recommend bloggers to use Long Tail Pro. Long Tail Pro does the same job as Google Keyword Planner in terms of keyword research and on top of that, providing a chance of ranking that particular keyword.

I have selected the main keyword that has 3 words, 1,000 exact mach search per month and 2 other related keywords with moderate and low search values. The CPC value is roughly $1.34.

In terms of chance of ranking, Long Tail Pro provides a detailed ranking value of the top 10 results on Google as seen below.

Some criteria I usually look for are:
- Page Authority under 50
- Number of links are under 30
- The value of the backlinks on that page is under 10
- Domain authority as low as possible (recommended: Under 50)
- MozRank under 5
- PageRank as low as possible (I don’t really bother this)
- Site age as low as possible
Also, the ‘criteria’ are just my own. You could easily reduce or increase the number depending on the strength of the site.

Choosing a higher value will lead to more competition in niche blogging while lower ones would usually lead to lesser income.

Note: I’m definitely not out of my mind to be trying to rank a keyword which has 7 competitors (out of 10) having above score 80 in Domain Authority.

But why?

Take a look at the Juice Page Link and Page Links. The lower numbers show either these sites are ranking well due to the authority level of the root domains. Indirectly, they are enjoying the PageRank and authority flow.

Therefore, if you have a brand new domain with top notch article, you have a very real chance of ranking.

Literally speaking.

Searching for an exact match .com domain

This is important. I prefer to go for .com than any other TLDs. However, if .com is taken, you can also consider .net or .org (expired domains are good too).

Choosing an exact match domain is extremely important (even though Google say it isn’t) and just in case that domain isn’t available, you can opt for alternatives such as “keyword + addon” or “addon + keyword”.

In this case, addon are words like top, best, recommended, for boys, for girls etc.

Good news for you, Long Tail Pro (again) helps you to find available domains too. Guess that’s why I’m giving so much love to it right?

Try Long Tail Pro for 7-days FREE and on top of that, $20 off too! Try it NOW!

For niche blogging, most of my domains come from GoDaddy as it is probably the cheapest. Click on this link to buy a domain and use promo code “199scott” to get a special offer of $1.99 per domain.

The domain wouldn’t take long to kick into action and once it is ready, hook it up with your current hosting.

If you’re looking for a cheap but unlimited hosting service, you can try this one: Host With Me, which is a premium hosting managed by me. Alternatively, you can opt for premium hosting (if you are dead serious in this particular niche) like such as WP Engine.

Setting up the niche blog

This is rather simple. All you need to do are:
- Find a good theme (I personally recommend Genesis child themes as they are HTML5 and SEO ready)
- Prepare a good homepage with sidebars enabled
- Advertisement banners (Google Adsense)
- Pages such as ‘about me’ and ‘privacy’
Lastly, fire up your best post. Yup, kick start your post with a great article. My first post was around 2,000 words. Yes, hand written and zero copy paste.

Do you remember the earlier keywords recommended by Google? This is the time to use them.

Each post should have:
- 1 main keyword
- 2 to 5 secondary keywords
- Density of each keywords do not exceed 3%
- Each article should be at least 1,000 words
- Images, video and any visual effect are extremely important (keywords to be used on alt tags)
- Various heading tags (H1 to H3)
- Bold, italic and underline
- Permalink should either be /%sample-post%/ or /%category%/%postname%/ (I prefer the first one as it is shorter)
Disclaimer: You do not need to publish like 10 posts a day. One a day or even one a week is absolutely fine.

Results of my niche blogging case study after 48 hours

Drum roll please!

…

…

…

I started the niche blogging case study on 26th May 2014. Just for the record, I have did absolutely ZERO link building and even social media.

One post was published on the same day itself and another on 28th May 2014. And guessed what? The first post keyword has already ranked 34th on Google today.

Here are the stats as of today on Google:

Main keyword – 65th

Secondary keywords A – 26th

Secondary keywords B – 36th

Secondary keywords C – 38th

Secondary keywords D – 43th

Secondary keywords E – 43th

Here’s what it looks like for proof:

I don’t know you but I think this is explosive! Without doing anything, I’m already ranking 65th for my main keyword and even hitting the 26th spot with one of my secondary keyword.

Not bad for a day right?

Are you digging for more? Yes, more niche blogging results (and tutorials) to come, I promise!

This doesn’t stop here. I’m pumped to see how far I would go without any link building. I’m planning to start link building on my niche blogging case study only after week or so.

And I’m not going to keep you in the dark. I’ll post my updates on this and keep you informed of everything I had done so that you can use them immediately.

Want to stay tune to this niche blogging case study? Signup for my newsletter below!
February 19, 2024
Lesson 3: How To Find Profitable Niche Ideas For Blogging
Raise your hand if you have gone through this – Performed keyword research, found a profitable niche and starting a blog with that niche topic just to realize that after 3 months of hard work, you are no where near success.

You have carefully crafted the best blog posts (ever) but yet, the blog barely able to attract 1,000 or maybe even 100 traffic a day.

Demotivated, despair, frustrated and tired, you decided to quit that niche.

Without knowing, you started over a dozen blogs and yet, you are earning pennies.

And one day, you call it quit.

You join the thousands who started blogging with the hopes of making money only to discover the ugly truth in blogging; it is harder to make money online that you can ever image.

I bet the above sounds familiar. I’ve been there myself; failing over a dozen times and making pennies from my blog. Lucky for me, I learned my lessons.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no millionaire. I’m just an average dude who learned from my mistakes and makes enough to sustain a good life with my blog.

The lesson that you’ll learn today on Blogging University is how to start a blog. To be exact, how to start a successful niche blog, minus the failures.

For those who believe that niche blogging is dead, they’re extremely wrong. It’s just harder to earn money even if you’ve found a profitable niche idea.

Putting aside all those negativity, let’s kick start our lesson plan for the day and the biggest question to you is “Are you ready to make some serious money from blogging?”

What you will learn in this blogging lesson?
- What is the definition of a profitable niche?
- How to find profitable niche ideas?
- How to monetize a blog with specific niche?
The definition of profitable niche ideas

Blogging with a profitable niche means money. Two important key points to consider when you are finding profitable niches are:
1. The number of traffic
2. Cost per bid
In terms of traffic, general keywords such as ‘blogging’ would have a larger search value while long tail keywords such as ‘blog listings’ has lower search value. See the image below:

Do you think that the keyword ‘blogging’ is a good niche choice? With over 14,800 searches monthly and RM 6.08 (approx USD $1.85), it is a no brainer that it’s a good keyword to start with right?

Hell no! You’re wrong.

Choosing keywords like ‘blogging’ as a niche topic would be insane. If you are starting a blog, you’ll face enormous competitions from authority sites like Wikipedia and WPBeginner.

On the other hand, you might consider the keyword ‘blog listings’ as a good niche. With a small number of searches of 40 monthly, you could probably make a good living out of it right?

Again, you’re wrong.

From the image above, suggested bid shows nil (-) because there are no competition. While this could be a good sign, there is also very real possibilities that there is no bidders going for this niche.

In finding profitable niche, no bidder means close to zero chance of making a living out of Adsense or affiliate marketing (More information – Everything About Affiliate Marketing).

Actionable blogging tips: Finding a keyword which moderate number of searches and cost per bid would lead to a much better monetization.

Tools used to find a niche

Niche blogging is all about the right research and using the right keyword research tools will help you to find excellent niche ideas.

When it comes to keyword research, there are only two tools that really make the cut which are:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Long Tail Pro
While you are not obligated to use both, you would be able to find even better keywords faster and more accurate using both. More on this below.

Google Keyword Planner (free)

GKP in short, this is Google’s flagship and is definitely one of the most used tool in the world.

Advantages using Google Keyword Planner:
- Fast
- Accurate
- Did I mentioned absolutely free?
Disadvantages using Google Keyword Planner:
- Doesn’t show competition level and chance of ranking
As you can see above, GKP is a godly tool when it comes to finding profitable niche keywords. However, the downside is that it is not able to calculate the possibilities of fast ranking and the competition level.

Here’s a video tutorial on how you use Google Keyword Planner (read more):

Long Tail Pro (starts from $77)

LTP in short, this is one of the fastest keyword research tool that I have ever used to date.

Long Tail Pro makes the process of finding profitable niche in blogging as easy as 1, 2 and 3.

Advantages using Long Tail Pro:
- Detailed stats and results
- Multiple searches (up to 10 keywords at one time)
- Generate search volume, competition level and ranking opportunity under 3 minutes
- Extra $20 discount when you use this link
Disadvantages using Long Tail Pro:
- Long Tail Pro trial last for 7 days only
And here’s what it looks like on Long Tail Pro back end:

In just 3 simple steps, you will be able to find the right niche ideas for blogging.

So tell me. Is it a no-brainer that Long Tail Pro is a great tool?

Read my Long Tail Pro review or try it for free now. Download here.

How to make money blogging with the right keywords?

So, how do you really find a niche?

From the above, you’ve learn how to generate niche market ideas with both Google Keyword Planner and Long Tail Pro.

The process of finding niche market ideas consists of:
- The volume of search per month
- Specific geo-location
- Estimated cost per click
- Article writing
Volume of search per month

This is one process many bloggers do not take into consideration when it comes to searching for the right niche ideas.

Banging your luck on low search volume would easily affect your earnings while trying to rank on competitive keywords could easily land yourself in a pool dominated by the big boys.

Here are some guidelines which are best to incorporate with your niche blogging strategy:
- Search or keyword phrase lesser than 500 searches a month
- Competition for the specific keyword is low (competitors have lower PageRank and number of backlinks)
Specific geo-location targeting

One of the biggest mistakes done when it comes to finding a niche is everyone (yes, literally everyone) are targeting visitors from the United States.

Do you know that there are many locations which you target and still make a very decent earning from your niche blog?

While the earnings generated from United States bound traffic are good, there are others which you can monetize easier due to lower competition or challenge.

To name a few:
- United Kingdom
- Parts of Europe
- Australia
- Singapore
Debunking the myth of cost of click

Personally, I wouldn’t go for a niche or keyword which has less than $0.50 per click. If you’re planning to start a blog focusing on specific niche, make sure you’re targeting moderate to high paying keywords.

Here’s the deal:
- Minimum cost per click is $0.50
- Minimum traffic per month is 500
Let’s take math for a ride, shall we?

Assuming that you are getting 150 traffic per month and 85 (of the 150) would click on the ads, you’ll would probably be getting approximately $40 per month.

Make no mistake; the above is just an example.

When it comes to niche blogging, there are two ways you can go; high traffic and low cost per click (CPC) or low traffic and high cost per click.

Either way, there isn’t any basic instruction as it varies between niches, keywords, industry etc.

Just keep a mind on the above rule and you would easily make more money from your blogs.

Quality articles versus sheer numbers

Niche blogging is all about quality. Compared to the normal blogs, blogs on specific niches need to be more outstanding and informatics to ensure that you’re ranking well on search engines and readers will come back for more.

Finding niche market ideas is worth nothing if you’re not able to make money from it.

Once you have selected a good niche, start blogging constantly and find ways to build traffic.

Yes, not ways to make money but instead, building quality blog traffic. It is only possible to make money when you have sufficient traffic.

To give you an idea on the meaning of quality articles, here are some examples:
- Keywords are included in the title
- Keywords are used in the beginning and ending of the paragraph
- Keyword density is below 3% (this varies depending on self preference)
- Focus on facts only as informatics posts do get more traffic
Can you really make money online with niche blogging?

The short answer, yes! The longer answer would be, yes but with the right blogging strategy.

Through my experience, finding profitable niche blogging ideas is easy when you are using the right tools. The most challenging part is to develop the website and grow it into a huge success.

Before we wrap this up, here are some question for you:
1. Have you tried specific niche blogging?
2. If yes, how was it? If not, why are you not trying?
Use the comment form below and let’s discuss it further!
February 19, 2024
Google Panda Update 4.0: What is it and How it affects you?
A new update has been rolled out by Google 17 hours ago duped as Google Panda Update 4.0 and it is said to be a very delicate update.

Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Webspam, announced the release of Panda 4.0 update via the all-time-famous channel of his, Twitter.

Google is rolling out our Panda 4.0 update starting today.

‘” Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014

And almost instantly, it took the whole search engine world by storm (as expected). Various authority sites reported both improvement and reduction in search visibility.

@MarketingLand Google updates “Panda” filter, impacts 7.5% of search results. Source.

It was quoted from Google that “Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees” and “In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

History showed that this is possible the biggest Google Panda update since Panda 6 on 11th April 2011 (impacted 6 – 9% of search queries internationally).

Even Moz weather sees an extremely high temperature during that day.

Winners and losers of Google Panda 4.0

Data were collected by Search Metrics to determine the effect of Google Panda 4.0. Here are some of the initial stats.

Top sites which are suspected being affected by Panda 4.0:

Top sites who benefit from Panda 4.0:

Google Panda 4.0 is said to be ‘softer’ and and ‘delicate’

Let’s face the fact.

Not every Google update is beneficial for us. Sometime, we get affected by Google updates even when we are doing nothing wrong.

This particular update is meant to be a basis for future adjustments to the Google algorithm. Or least, that’s what Google wants us to believe in.

Until Google releases a new announcement (which is highly unlikely), we are left in the dark and playing the guessing game.

Preliminary analysis of Google Panda 4.0 Update

What have we learned from Panda 4.0?

One of the biggest analysis I personally seen is sites with lesser content loses visibility and search ranking.

Read more on how to increase search ranking here.

This means that sites need originality and tons of quality articles (for starters).

For example, majority of the sites listed in the ‘affected lists’ are mainly ranked with information from external sources.

But again, bear in mind that Google Panda 4.0 has just been rolled out and would easily take weeks to see the real results in the SERPs.

Personally, Google Panda 4.0 could be a good update with the assumption that it is learning from previous update mistakes.

How to be safe from Google Panda 4.0 Update?

There isn’t any visible or proven techniques yet but it is definitely safe to say that you should avoid using:
1. Syndicated content
2. Duplicate content
3. Low quality content
4. Spam contents
We all know that Google loves quality content and planning your blogging strategy is extremely important from now onwards.

Personally, staying safe and playing with Google rules is probably the best way for this short period to avoid Google penalization.

What do you think about Google Panda Update 4.0? Does it affect you in anyway? Fire up what you have in mind using the comment form below.
February 19, 2024