AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Content Ideas For Blogging

How do you come up with content ideas for blogging? If you’re a blogger, chances are good that at some point you’ll face bloggers block. Or writers block anyway! Blogging is a good long term strategy to get free traffic to your affiliate offers and/or business. But unless you keep it up, and keep up the momentum, your blogging can easily lose momentum and you’ll also start seeing a drop in traffic too, if you had it to begin with.

Keeping up your blogging is as much about maintaining your own motivation as it is about coming up with ideas. If you keep learning and growing, blog post ideas will come to you more easily. Read books on your topic, look at Quora.com for the kinds of questions people are asking in your blogging niche. Above all, keep going! So here’s a few content ideas for blogging which I use to keep coming up with fresh content for my blog. If you know any more, please share in the comments below.

Content Ideas For Blogging – Your Own Knowledge & Books!

Nothing quite beats your own knowledge for content ideas. If your chosen topic means a lot to you, it’s much easier to maintain your interest in blogging over the longer term. If you don’t care about your topic, it’s much harder to sustain the effort for the duration. Likewise, writing about a subject you know about will have the words flowing. Writing about something you’re unfamiliar with is much more difficult.

By choosing a blog area which is aligned in some way with your own personal growth, passion and interest, you can keep reading new material, growing and all the time writing new and informative content – based on what you learn.

I’m personally a big fan of self help books. So some of my ideas come about through the books I read that inspire me. See motivation books pdf free download for a few I share on this site.

Content Ideas For Blogging – Quora.com

Quora.com is a great place to go if you’re lacking in imagination for blog post ideas. Quora.com is a question and answer website where people post questions and have them answered by experts in their fields.

You can find your blog topic or niche with a quick keyword search on the site. You’ll then be shown questions which relate to your blog topic. These are questions which your target market or audience will want to know about. So they are great for delving into the mind of your potential audience.

Whatever your niche is, you’ll likely find content on Quora.com to inspire you to write some fresh content. Plus, you can also answer questions on Quora too and drop links back to your more lengthy descriptions on your blog. This is a great resource to build traffic to your blog. See affiliate marketing on Quora.

There’s other Q and A sites too such as Yahoo Answers, Linkedin Answers, Answers.com etc. Have a look at these sites and you’ll find a resource to build links to your blog from too!

Content Ideas For Blogging – Keyword Research

Your blog titles can get you a heap of free traffic over time. Especially if you find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. With a long tail keyword, you have so much less competition than with shorter term keywords. So you have more chance of getting your content to rank on the search engines. To find these gems and get more traffic, you can use Google’s keyword planner. Type your main keyword into the planner and it will give you a bunch or related terms which people are searching for on Google.

By scrolling through these keywords, you can find those which give you some kind of inspiration. Look for long tail keywords which are suitable for your target audience. Those kinds of keywords which your perfect customers will want to know about. That way, you know when someone comes to you through that piece of content, they are all the more likely to want your service/product.

You can also use Google’s keyword planner with your main keyword using questions which will bring up an array of longer tail keyword questions which you can create content for. Use the following keywords with your main keyword in the planner:

What
Where
When
Who
Why

This should bring up the most commonly asked questions within your niche!

Ubersuggest

Neil Patel has a great resource called Ubersuggest which lets you plug your website (or a competitors) into its tool and it kicks out some keyword suggestions.

This can give you a tonne of ideas if you use a keyword, your website or a website similar to yours for ideas.

Answer Your Own Questions

I’ve often asked myself what the best kind of content is to put on my website. A lot of it comes from my own research using Google and simple search queries. When I started out online, I wanted to get more traffic. So, I would research “Get traffic to your website free“, with a simple Google search. As I put what I learned into practice, I became more comfortable with the ideas so I would share them on a blog post.

Every time I learn something new, which is relevant to my blog, I tend to share some new content which helps other people with the same problem. So if you do a Google search for something, follow it up with a blog post when you have some answers.

By now you will probably have some content ideas for blogging from reading this post. If your topic is around the blogging sphere, you can write some information in a post about blogging ideas, having read this post.

Create An Ebook

Ebooks are great lead magnets and they are a good way of focusing your attention and creating content.

You can also use existing content on your blog to write an ebook with. Consider your audience and your topic. What would be the best ebook for those visitors? What’s the biggest problem you’ve had that you can solve in your ebook for your visitors?

I’ve written a couple of ebooks and offer them as lead magnets for my blog visitors. Once you have written an ebook you can also continue to write content which will draw more people to it organically through using keyword research. For example one of my ebooks is called Niche Blogging For Profit.

To get more traffic to this book, I write around the topic of blogging, affiliate marketing and other related areas to draw in people who might be interested in my ebook.

Ezine Articles

Ezinearticles.com is not only a great place to grab and paste awesome articles for free, but it’s also a huge source of inspiration for your blog posts. Yes that’s true! You can go to the site and simply copy and paste content from other contributors on Ezinearticles. The only requirement to do this is to give credit to the authors when you do this. They receive a link back to their author bio and/or website. You get their content to share on your website! It’s a win win!

Lacking Inspiration – What Lights You Up?

If you’re lacking inspiration, ask yourself what lights you up? What inspires you? If your blogging topic doesn’t inspire you, you might have picked the wrong blogging niche. Blogging takes time and you need to maintain your focus for it over the longer term. If you find yourself getting burned out, take a break. Focus on something else and look for inspiration for yourself, not just for your blog!

I find inspiration flows much better when I’m not struggling in the present moment too. So if your creative juices aren’t flowing, it might not be the right day to be blogging. Read a book or someone else’s blog for inspiration. Write down your ideas when they pop up so you don’t forget them.

How To SEO Optimise A Blog Post

How to SEO optimise a blog post? Before starting out optimising your blog posts, remember that there’s a tonne of competition out there through other bloggers. So it’s best off to start with long tail keywords which offer lower SEO difficulty. With a shorter phrase in your title, you’ve much less chance of getting it seen using SEO. But with a long phrase title, like the one I’m using here, there’s more chance of success!

Let’s have a quick look at the way I found this blog title as an example! Here I am on Google’s Keyword Planner. I started out with a phrase “how to optimise content”.

This gave me the longer tail keyword “how to optimise a blog post”. A quick check on Google showed me that this was a relatively uncompetitive keyword term.

See the number under the search bar? That’s a big number but still less than many other search terms. With a phrase search you get a little more insight into how competitive this search term is too:

That’s a pretty low number! So I took a “punt” at this article because it’s fairly uncompetitive. With only 20 monthly searches for this term a month, I’m not expecting a massive rush of sales from this article. But if I use this same tactic many times, I’ll get some traffic from my blogging strategy over time!

How To SEO Optimise A Blog Post

Next comes writing your blog post. I use an SEO tool to help me write blog posts for optimal effect. Yoast SEO is a simple plugin which helps you write SEO friendly content. See also best free blog plugins for WordPress. It will help you get your keywords in your titles, description, image alt tags and sub headings. It also reminds you to get a good balance of inner linking and out-linking to other websites other than your own.

Once you have installed the plugin, you should see the SEO dashboard underneath your blog post. Write and optimise to “green light” everything on the list before hitting the publish button!

I try and write at least 1000 words too, to give my posts the best chance of getting a ranking. However, in some circumstances your posts won’t rank, because there’s too much competition, or another competing website has a greater authority than yours.

How To SEO Optimise A Blog Post – Deep Linking

Once you publish your post, you should also keep creating new content. New content can be used to deep link back to older content using your focused keyword/s. “Best free blog plugins for WordPress” is an example of a deep link. The text in the link is also my focused keyword I’m attempting to rank the article for. Deep linking lets search engines know through your on-site back links what you intend to rank your content for.

As you create more and more content, you should add links like this to help optimise your content and connect your web pages in a congruent fashion.

Back Linking – Off-Site

Off site back linking can also be used to build SEO authority with your content. Back links can be built from other related websites within your niche. Reach out to website owners and offer to write guest posts. Blog comment on other blogs with your website links. You can also outsource back linking through sites such as Fiverr.com.

To optimise a blog post, link back to it a number of times from other websites. A blog post often won’t rank as well as your main landing page/homepage. But you can give it more clout by linking back to it many times using various text within your links. Don’t always use the keyword within these back links because Google will see this as an unnatural link profile and may penalise you for it.

The best back linking profile will look more natural. So have a variety of back links from multiple sites with different link text in each. Many will contain your main keywords but some will say “here”, “click here” or have the domain url in them, for example.

Blog Promotion

Whatever you do to SEO optimise your blog post, you may still find it doesn’t rank on Google. Google is a tough nut to crack and you’ll need a lot of good content on your website to raise your authority with Google. A single blog post on a low authority site, may still rank lower than an inferior one on a high authority site. So build your site’s authority over time by adding more and more content, linking back to it and sharing via social media.

Blog promotion is pretty important, especially when starting out. Without it people won’t see your content and Google uses people’s reaction to your content as one of its ranking algorithm signals. So getting people to your blog post is pretty important for SEO and of course for promoting your business in its own right.

Assume your blog post won’t rank and work hard at promoting your site! This has the effect of getting you traffic. So whether you rank because of SEO or not, you’ll still have traffic, which is the all important factor of making money from your website or blog – assuming that’s your goal!

Automate Blog Post Sharing

A great little plugin I found is called Revive Old Posts. This WordPress plugin lets you automate the syndication of your new and old content throughout your social media platforms.

This is a great idea to implement because the more automation you can enlist in your marketing strategy, the better.

Another plugin which will help your SEO and marketing is a social share plugin. You’ll see these on most blog websites and for good reason. If you can get people to share your blog posts it will encourage more and more visitors; great for SEO and for traffic!

Summary

To optimise a blog post first start out with research. Find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. Then, use an SEO plugin to write the best possible content you can write on the subject. Content is really king. Quality content will stand the test of time and more people will read and share you content if it’s a quality piece.

Once you have finished writing, your job isn’t over. You’ll need to link back to your older posts from newer content and outside websites. Use social media to share your content and automate this process through the use of plugins mentioned in the article.

Even with all this, your post still may not rank. But you’ve still written it, and shared it and ideally automated it’s promotion for the longer term. SEO takes time and should your post actually rank on Google, it still may take several months for this to happen. Look for other search engines too which will often rank your content more quickly for your chosen keywords: Bing, Yahoo and Duckduckgo are good places to find your blog posts ranking, even when Google isn’t ranking your content!

Good Luck! If you’ve enjoyed this post, please share it!

How To Optimise Content For SEO

Wondering how to optimise content for SEO – search engine optimisation? Your content is a valuable resource which if properly used could be bringing in more customers to your business. So if you have a bunch of old content, which isn’t working as well as it could, by optimising it you can increase traffic to your website.

A simple way to do this is to use a plugin. Yoast SEO is a great WordPress plugin which helps you write SEO friendly content. Upload the plugin and the interface will show up inside your website as you create blog posts and other content. Find your older content and rewrite it to give you the best SEO score according to your plugin.

If you’re not using WordPress and can’t upload this plugin, you can go through older posts and make sure you have your main keywords in titles, image alt tags and throughout your text. This takes a little more effort so it’s worth finding a plugin which helps you if you can.

How To Optimise Content For SEO – Off Page SEO

Off page SEO is just as important as on-page too. So if you’re trying to get a boost in the search rankings you should also look at building back links and sharing older content on social media. Get a plugin which lets your visitors share you content easily. A social media share plugin will do this and it only takes a minute to upload it to a WordPress website. See best free blog plugins for WordPress.

One of the other plugins which can help with your SEO through sharing is called Revive Old Posts.

Revive Old Posts allows you to automate the posting of your older (and new) content throughout your social media profiles. This can build more readership of your content and encourage people to like and share your posts, further adding to your overall SEO strategy.

How To Optimise Content For SEO – Deep Linking From Newer Content

Creating new content is always a good thing for your SEO too. With new content, you show the search engines that you are current. Whereas an older website blog can easily get forgotten about, a new post every week, or even every month can help.

When creating new content you can also include deep links to your older content, which tells the search engines what your older content is about. Use your keywords in the links on your own website which link back to older content. This is known as deep linking. It’s an SEO strategy which should be used in your own content.

I shared a deep link earlier to some of my older content. Here it is again: best free blog plugins for WordPress. Deep links should be relevant to your content and the link text should be keyword targeted.

Linking From Outside Your Own Website

Links like this should be used more sparingly from outside websites however. Your “link profile” is a major SEO signal to Google (and other search engines). If all your links had the same text in them, it shows an unnatural link profile. If people were naturally linking to your content as a resource, they would ordinarily use a variety of linking techniques.

Links might have your url in them, or say thinks like “click here” for example. They won’t always contain the keywords which you want to rank your content for when linking back to you. So you shouldn’t be overly keen to do this when building links from other websites outside your own. If you do this, Google will see it as a sign you are trying to “gear” the algorithm. It will likely punish you for it!

You can hire outside help to do your link building for you if you’re unsure. Look on Fiverr.com for link building services.

Summary

Optimising your content can go some way towards increasing your SEO and getting more traffic. But ultimately whether this increases your traffic will depend on many things:

The relative competition
The amount and quality of content on your website
How Google/search engines perceive your content and service
Inbound links to your website
and a lot of other variables.

The main things you can do are to optimise using a plugin (Yoast SEO) and put a social share buttons on your site. Use Revive Old Posts plugin and start a content marketing strategy which means building new content on your site. Outsource a link building campaign or start reaching out to other websites in your niche looking for back links.

Low Cost Advertising Techniques

Whether you’re an affiliate marketer, or in business for yourself, you can benefit from low cost advertising techniques. See also unpaid advertising examples. These might include strategies such as blogging, video marketing and using some low cost paid advertising. With paid advertising, you can set a small budget you’re prepared to work with. This can be increased as your campaigns become profitable and you get better at it.

Google Ads is an example of a paid marketing platform which any business can use. Set a small daily budget and target search terms which are specific to your business. But there’s other strategies you should be using if you have a local business. The main one you want to use is Google My Business. Google My Business offers a free marketing opportunity for all locally based businesses. It takes only a small amount of time to set up and it can bring in customers for a lifetime!

Low Cost Advertising Techniques – Website, SEO & Blogging

It sounds obvious to have a website for your business, but many people still don’t have one! If you have a locally based business, you can also benefit from a keyword targeted website which is built around your main keywords and city name. See also building a niche website for a local business.

Once you have a website, you can start a blogging campaign as a cheap marketing technique. Blogs can increase your web presence dramatically over time, so it’s a technique worth pursuing over the longer term.

A simple blog strategy is to find keywords which are being searched for within the remit of your business. Use Google’s free keyword planner to find keywords related to your business. Do this by typing your main keywords into the search tool. You’ll be given a number of keywords which are already being searched for. You can even target your local area by limiting the search to your neighbourhood.

Once you find the right keywords in your area which relate to your business, you can create blog content targeting those specific keywords within your blog post. See also find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

Low Cost Advertising Techniques – Facebook Groups

Another simple advertising technique any business can use is through Facebook. Set up your personal or business profile with your business offers on show. Offer something clear and concise to show to prospective visitors on your page. This could be an ebook, some discount code or simply a clear tagline which explains what you do/offer.

Here’s an example of one I set up regarding the affiliate coaching program I offer on my Facebook page:

Once set up you need to find groups where your target audience might be hanging out in. Make sure you learn about your target audience first before you do this. See how to know your target market.

Facebook has many groups where you can find people discussing all kinds of topics. The groups where you find your best customers will relate in some way to your business/service, so, look for groups which will relate to your business.

Find and join several groups which relate to your business and start interacting with people in those groups. Make sure you follow the group guidelines and rules and don’t spam the groups with your business links.

Just interact and connect with people and help them with the discussion. Over time, group members will naturally browse your profile as you become a more interactive member of the communities you join. Some will see your profile and be interested in what you have to offer. This takes some time and patience but if you keep it up and put in some work every day over a long period, it can be a good way to generate interest in your business.

YouTube & TikTok

YouTube and TikTok are both great places to showcase your videos. By tagging your videos with appropriate keywords, you can attract the right audience who are interested in your business. Although there’s plenty of competition on these platforms, if you consistently create high quality videos which relate to your business in some way, you should grow an organic stream of visitors straight from these platforms.

Again, as a cheap advertising technique this one takes some time and commitment. But you can also create a single marketing video and put a small daily marketing budget towards placing it in front of the right kind of audience.

With paid marketing you set the budget, so you can still consider this as a low cost advertising technique if you stick to a low budget.

Summary

Some of these low cost advertising techniques will take longer than others. In general, if you’re not paying for advertising it will take longer. Blogging for example can take months and years before you see any big leap in your traffic generations and sales. But ultimately it can work if you stick to a long term strategy and keep going.

Paid strategies will bring in results far quicker, so it’s worth doing these alongside your other longer term strategies. With paid marketing, you should also be tracking everything you do. When you make a sale, if you can attribute it to a particular advert, you’ll know where to put your money in future. If you’re disorganised, you can lose track of where sales are coming from!

One of the best thing you can do for a locally based business is get a free listing on Google My Business. This can make a big difference and it’s totally free. Other strategies like niche website building, blogging and organic video marketing can take longer, depending on the niche you are in and the relative competition.

If you only have a low budget for advertising, it’s still worth running some adverts on Bing or Google Ads. Set your budget at a rate you can easily afford and build up slowly. You can run adverts which are very specific to your website keywords, so this can be very effective form of advertising. Just be careful with your daily budget and keywords when you start out!

Make Money With Google Adsense Without A Website

It is possible to make money with Google Adsense without a website. Adsense lets you place advertisements on your content to make a share of revenue from advertisers. You can use platforms such as YouTube and free blogging platforms like Blogger.com. Switch on earnings and create a Google Adsense account through your blogger account. The minimum payout is $100 which means you’ll need to earn at least that amount to get paid.

Other free blogging platforms such as WordPress also allow you to monetise with Adsense. The main problem with this strategy is getting enough traffic to your free blog content to make this worth your while. But if you’re committed to create and share a lot of content, it can work.

If you’re going down this path, however, it’s worthwhile considering purchasing your own domain name and hosting. Owner created websites have more pull with Google in the search engines. While free blogging sites often get less coverage because so many more people use them.

Make Money With Google Adsense Without A Website

You can join Adsense here and connect your account when you open an account with Blogger.com, WordPress.com or Hubpages.com, all of which offer the ability to monetise through blogging.

Remember that you only earn income from Adsense when your visitors click on your adverts. So you’ll need a huge amount of traffic to your blog posts in order to make this profitable. You can’t click on your own ads either, so don’t even try. Google will know and you’ll get your account shut down.

To generate a lot of traffic to a free blogging platform takes a lot of time and effort. Write content and connect with other users. Share your content on social media and create links to it from other sites which have similar content to yours. You can also use blogging sites like Ezinearticles.com to create content and link back to your posts on your blog.

Keep doing these things and keep creating content. Over time, if you make this a regular habit, you should see some traffic.

Make Money With Google Adsense Without A Website – Your Competition

Remember there’s a lot of competition from other bloggers doing this too. There’s hundreds of thousands of blogs just like yours. In a competitive industry this is all the more difficult because you’re competing with the rest of the noise out there. Ideally choose a blogging topic which you can sustain over the longer term.

Many bloggers and affiliate marketers will quit because they don’t get the traction they want, after only a short period of time. The key to making your strategy work is to keep going for the longer term. See affiliate marketing failure rate.

While using free blog platforms isn’t the same as affiliate marketing, there’s a lot of similarities. It might even be worth using affiliate products too if your blog platform allows it – which some don’t.

YouTube

You can make money through YouTube by applying and being accepted to the YouTube partner program. However there’s certain requirements which make it more difficult to join. Here are the minimum requirements:

Follow all the YouTube channel monetisation policies.
- The YouTube channel monetisation policies are a collection of policies that allow you to monetise on YouTube. As a YouTube partner, your agreement including the YouTube partner program policies require compliance with these monetisation policies to potentially earn money on YouTube.
Live in a country/region where the YouTube Partner Program is available.
You must have no active Community Guidelines strikes on your channel.
You can’t have more than 4,000 valid public watch hours in the last 12 months.
Have more than 1,000 subscribers.
Have a linked AdSense account.

So as you can see you will need to build quite a following before you can be accepted on the program. If you haven’t already started creating videos on YouTube, it might be worth considering using the other blogging methods. Otherwise, you’ll have quite a mountain to climb in order to meet the minimum requirements.

Summary

To make money with Google Adsense without a website is quite difficult. Even when you break through, you still need to earn over $100 to actually get paid.

You need traffic which is the most difficult this to get, especially when using free blogging platforms! Ideally create your own website by buying a domain name and getting your own hosting. This gives you more credibility as a publisher of content and you can get more traffic from the search engines.

I tried Adsense for some time but eventually switched to affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, a single sale can be worth a month’s worth of Google Adsense commissions, depending on how far you get with it. Plus if you choose to use recurring commission affiliate programs, you can earn ongoing commissions from each sale you make.

Access a free affiliate marketing video training series here to learn more.

Money Habits Of The Wealthy

By following the money habits of the wealthy, anyone can change their circumstances and attitudes towards money. The wealthy have good money habits which, over time, make them wealthy and keep them wealthy. If you have some negative views on money, it’s worth considering how they might be holding you back.

The wealthy know how to manage their money. By following those who are successful, we can learn new ideas and strategies which may have kept us previously in monetary strife and difficulties!

Money Habits Of The Wealthy – 1, Pay Yourself First

Pay yourself first is a phrase used by the wealthy. Most people pay their bills, buy their weekly food shop and pay their rent before doing anything else when they get paid. Then, whatever is left, they spend on themselves! Often, this means you over spend and put yourself into your overdraft before the next pay day! This cycle continues and you slowly fall into debt!

The wealthy pay themselves first. Before they pay anyone anything, they put 10% of their income away into a savings account. This has a twofold benefit. Firstly they are accruing savings which will grow with interest over time (and which they can use for investments/business). But they are also learning how to live on less than they are earning – a very beneficial skillset!

Money Habits Of The Wealthy – 2, Live Beneath Your Means

Those aspiring to be wealthy will often spend money on those things they have always wanted. They buy the nice house and a nice car. They go on holidays twice a year. As their income grows, so does their lifestyle. They get a nicer car, a nicer house and go on holiday more often. They continue to increase their standard of living as their income grows.

The money habits of the wealthy are opposite to this! They continue to live well beneath their means while their income grows. This means they can re-invest capital into money generating assets, rather than spending them on liabilities which make them look rich, but actually drain their capital.

“The median price paid by millionaires for their most recent acquisition was only $31,367. The typical price paid by decamillionaires was $41,997, nowhere near the $75,000 figure it is assumed that rich people spend on cars.”
― Thomas J. Stanley, Stop Acting Rich: …And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire

Money Habits Of The Wealthy -3, Stop Acting Rich!

In David Bach’s book the automatic millionaire, he talks about “big hat no cattle”. It’s the same idea conveyed in Thomas Stanley’s book Stop Acting Rich. Big hat no cattle refers to the compulsion to express your success through purchasing large expensive cars and houses.

A rancher has a big hat, but also a large number of cattle. But someone without cattle is a metaphor for someone with no money who drives an expensive car, and wears an expensive watch to show off their wealth. When in reality, the truly wealthy don’t do this.

The wealthy know that they can use the money it would cost to buy these superficial things to re-invest in money producing assets instead, and grow their wealth faster.

4, Know Your Latte Factor

This is another principle mentioned in David Bach’s book The Automatic Millionaire. Your “latte factor” refers to those small daily purchases which add up over the years. A latte coffee and a biscuit might be justified at Starbucks but this can set you back $5! Over a year of purchasing a latte coffee and a biscuit every day would add up to $1825 in a year.

Take stock of your own “latte factor” and you will see how your unconscious spendings are costing you thousands each and every year. By reconciling these small spendings, and diverting the habits, you can pocket the cash instead. Set up an automated payment into a savings account for the amount you would spend after giving up one of your latte habits. This is now money which can be used to generate income either through investing or simply saving.

Most people live to their means and only draw back their spending when their bank account is in dire straights! By taking stock of your weekly spending habits, you can save yourself a fortune and become more aware of how your money is being spent. Make a note of every thing you spend money on for a week and you will be shocked at what you can save.

5, Use Savings For Investments

Over time you should start to see your savings growing. This will depend on your individual situation, but even a small shift should allow you to control your money better. Learn to save money you would otherwise spend and choose to put money aside first when you get it. You’ll soon start living beneath your means and see your savings grow.

This money can then be used for other savings, investments and opportunities to build income producing assets. See smart passive income ideas and extra income ideas from home.

The wealthy know that in order to grow their income and wealth they need to generate leverage. While working at a job produces a regular income, it’s always tied to the amount of hours they can work. This means trading time for money will always be limited. One way to generate some leverage is through building an online business. Access this webinar and learn how to generate an income online.

6, Build Multiple Income Streams

Most people are heavily relying on a single source of income, usually from an employer. When that income is threatened, they are very vulnerable. Their income is capped because they earn only through trading their time in a job. The wealthy, on the other hand build multiple sources of income through various strategies. Robert Kiyosaki talks about the the different means of earning in The Cash Flow Quadrant.

S = Self employed

I= Investments

E= Employment

B= Business

The wealthy have a broad spectrum of earning strategies which come from all four quadrants. They build multiple income strategies and can earn from self employment, employment, investments and from businesses. Most people only earn from one and it’s usually from employment.

Ultimately the goal of the wealthy is to create more income and gain better control over their time. The wealthy therefore live very simple and frugal lives for longer than they need to in order to generate cash flow. Without the extra cash flow you can’t invest in property, stocks and shares, businesses and other income producing assets. You end up tied to a job, living payday to payday but never escape the cycle because you live to your means!

7, Read – (Self Educate)

85% of rich people read two or more education, career-related, or self-improvement books per month, compared to 15% of poor people according to Tom Corley – author of “Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits Of Wealthy Individuals.“

Corley’s research shows that both the wealthy and not so wealthy read. The difference is that the wealthy read for self improvement and the less so wealthy read for entertainment.

Smart Passive Income Ideas

Smart passive income ideas can make you money while you sleep! While most people are caught up in trading time for money, those in the know have already started creating a passive income. Passive income is income which comes in rain or shine, working or not working. It’s the best kind of income to build because it’s not dependant on you turning up for work.

With a job, when you stop working you stop getting paid. With passive income you continue to get paid even after you stop doing anything! So here’s a few smart passive income ideas. Some of these will require investment of cash, and some will require a time investment. As you acquire more passive income, you should be creating more time and more money. This means you can continue to work on passive income streams and be less tied to creating income from trading your time for money.

Smart Passive Income Ideas – Invest In Income Producing Assets

This one sounds obvious but often people get stuck on buying those things which make us look wealthy rather than actually generating money for us. Robert Kiyosaki calls the two opposing things assets and liabilities. When you spend money on liabilities they make you lose money. You subsequently can’t therefore invest that money in more income producing assets! An asset isn’t necessarily what you might think. Most people think a car is an asset but it’s actually a liability because it costs money to run and it depreciates in value. A liability is anything which costs us money, an asset is anything which generates cash flow.

If you own a house and rent it out, it’s an asset. But if your mortgage payments are more than your monthly rent, it’s a liability! If you haven’t the capital to invest in property, you can invest in stocks and shares. A good stocks and shares app is Trading 121.com. You can even get the app on your smart phone.

What’s good about this app is you don’t need a fortune to start investing in stocks and shares. You can invest in stocks which offer dividends only too if you wish. This means you’ll get dividend payments when the stock is profiting.

MoneyBox

Moneybox is a UK based investing app which connects to your bank account and rounds up your spending on the go! So when you spend money using your bank card, it automatically rounds up to the nearest pound (or your country’s equivalent). This is pretty awesome and I’ve been using this app for some time now.

You don’t miss the tiny amounts which get invested while you can forget about the app! It’s a great way of investing and if you don’t have tonnes to invest you can start small and build up over time.

You can also adjust your investment level and include weekly payments. The app will also project your potential earnings over time so you can adjust your investment amount according to your longer term goals.

Smart Passive Income Ideas – REIT’s

REIT’s – or Real Estate Investment Trusts are trust funds built on property investment portfolios. If you don’t have a property you can invest in a REIT instead or as well.

In many ways REIT’s are better than owning a property and renting it out. With a rental property you have upkeep, damage, insurance and constant problems with maintaining your tenant’s happiness according to all their needs! With a REIT, you don’t have any of these problems. You simply invest and get paid dividends on your investment.

REIT total return performance for the last 20 years has outperformed the S&P 500 Index, other indices, and the rate of inflation. So they’re a solid investment as part of your portfolio. See more on REITS here.

Blogging/Video Blogging

Blogging is another smart passive income idea which although takes some time and energy to create, can serve you for a long time.

Bloggers generate an income from the internet either through using affiliate products or using Google’s Adsense or another similar advertising program. Blogging is a long term strategy to generate a passive income from the internet. Once you create a blog, you will need to build content on it and promote it through multiple strategies.

Once you start getting traction, people will visit your blog through finding you on the search engines, other websites and through social media channels where you share your content.

You can also do video blogging too. Upload videos to the major platforms like YouTube and TikTok, build a following and promote affiliate products from your content or use paid advertising to generate a passive revenue.

Smart Passive Income Ideas – Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be combined with blogging but you can build an affiliate business in several other ways too. Many affiliates will build an email list of subscribers and promote products and services to a growing number followers. Through using content, you can generate a “digital footprint” which can generate income for years to come.

Plus, through using recurring income affiliate programs, you can earn ongoing income from sales you generate. This adds up over time. For a $20 recurring commission, with 100 sales you’ll stand to make $2000 a month, providing your referrals maintain their memberships. Plus this is passive once you have done the work and made the sales.

Extra Income Ideas From Home

If you’re looking for extra income ideas from home, here’s a few things you can do. Earning an income from the internet can be done in many ways. Here’s some of the ones I’ve found over several years of searching for an online income.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Forex Marketing

Forex marketing is a tough business but if you’re prepared to study for it, it can pay well. You’ll need a trading bank and plenty of patience. I studied this for some time and have recently taken up an interest in it again after finding a Forex marketing teacher.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Freelancing

Freelancers make money from home by selling their particular skills. You can do this too! You’ll need some kind of marketable skill to sell and to sign up for an account with sites Upwork.com and/or Fiverr.com. As you browse these sites you’ll see a number of different things that people on their offer.

You can design logos, create content for people’s websites, and many other things to help out people with online work of any kind. So if you have some technical skill or even a creative flair, you can consider building some kind of reputation and gaining reviews on these sites to generate an income from your work.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Blogging

Blogging is a popular way some people make an extra income from home. Blogging is a long term strategy which takes some patience and time to build an income from. You can build an income from blogging using Google Adsense or promoting affiliate products from your blog.

Access a free video series here which explains the various affiliate marketing strategies you can employ to earn from affiliate marketing.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular business models to make money online. With affiliate marketing, you can refer customers to other people’s products on the internet. When you make a sale through your unique affiliate link, you earn a commission based on the sale. Certain affiliate products are more lucrative than others for affiliate though so it’s a good idea to look at the various affiliate marketing business models before starting.

There’s many ways in which affiliates make sales online. As mentioned already, some like blogging. But you can also build an affiliate business more quickly through using high ticket affiliate products, subscription affiliate programs and through the use of paid marketing and building an email list.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Self Employment

Anyone can use a free Google My Business listing and put themselves forward as a handyman from home! Or, a photographer, or a cleaner, for example. Set up a free profile and you can find business as a self employed contractor. So if you have some experience of something useful, look nearby at others doing this.

Extra Income Ideas From Home – Rent Out A Spare Room

If you have a spare room in your house consider renting it out to a lodger. A room rental can make you a nice extra income if you’re the home owner and you might even make a new friend!

Become A TV Extra

Although not strictly a “from home” job, TV extras work sporadically on television and film productions. They get called up when productions need people in the background for their shows.

TV extras work can be pretty enjoyable too and low maintenance. Just bring a book and be prepared for a lot of sitting around. To find a local extras agent near you use a simple Google search for extras or background artist agencies.

Build A Niche Website or Create Your Own Course

This is similar to the the blogging strategy above. If you have a particular interest or hobby, why not create a simple website around your passion? You can monetise with affiliate products which relate to your interest, or create your own email course and sell it.

To create an email course you can build a website and promote your course from it. See free autoresponder for affiliate marketing to get an email marketing service for free. You can look for other blogs for inspiration and you’ll notice many of them offer email marketing courses when you sign up for their free giveaway. This is often an ebook explaining their topic. See ebook lead magnet for more on this strategy. See also micro niche website example.

Survey Websites

Businesses are willing to pay people for their views and opinions. Survey sites will pay you to fill them out and provide the feedback businesses use to generate more customers and provide better value. Here’s a resource on how to make money from survey websites.

This strategy can take some time and some sites will pay more than others. But if you’re prepared to spend some time on them, it can give you some extra income. Don’t expect huge things with survey sites though as most of them will offer vouchers and tokens instead of cash! A lot of work counts for a small amount of money in most cases!

Summary

I’ve tried most of these strategies and found affiliate marketing to be the best. But everyone has different ideas according to how they want to work. Affiliate marketing is a good strategy because the work you do can build up over time. If you’re a content creator, like me, you can build a huge bank of content which can generate sales in your sleep!

Or build a huge email list and promote affiliate products using paid marketing. Affiliates can work in a variety of ways too, so if you’re into video creation, that’s another strategy you can use. Or if you like spending time on social media, there’s plenty of social media strategies which can be used for affiliate marketing. See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products.

Most of these strategies are going to take some time and dedication to make money from. But the ideal scenario of making money from home is worth the effort. If you’re interested in learning about the different online business models available, checkout this free video series.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing

Lead generation through content marketing can take a lot longer than through paid marketing. However, once you get traction with this strategy, it can work all by itself! Initially it’s worth identifying your perfect customer “avatar”. This is an important step in lead generation. By offering an attractive lead magnet, your efforts at content generation can go much further. If your visitor doesn’t match with your offer, you can have a much longer journey.

Website visitors will convert into subscribers much faster with well targeted content which attracts the right visitors. Likewise with your lead magnet. An attractive offer will convert more visitors into subscribers. So before creating a lot of content, decide on your target audience for both content and lead generation strategy – see how to know your target market. A ebook makes a good lead magnet. It’s simple and straight forward and your visitors should immediately see the value in it. See ebook lead magnet for more on this.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing

Once you are clear on your customer “avatar” and lead magnet it makes it much easier to identify content which your target market is interested in. You can then use Google’s keyword planner to identify content ideas based around your audience and your lead generation offer. You can also use YouTube’s search feature to find content ideas related to your main keywords. So whether you’re a blogger or video creator, you can find suitable topics to create content around using these strategies.

A simple strategy for blogging is to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. If you accomplish this successfully and create some great content, you can get ranked on Google (and other search engines) for free traffic.

But this takes time and there’s often plenty of competing content which makes it more difficult to rank your content. So it’s better not to rely on this happening and to create your own content marketing strategy as well. If you content does well, think of it as a bonus, rather than the sole goal.

Lead Generation Through Content Marketing – Promotion

Once you have created some content either through blogging or video, your job isn’t over. You need to get eyes on your content and you can do this in several different ways. Although “content is king” is the generally held view for search engine optimisation, content promotion is most definitely “queen”! Unless you promote your content in some way, it’s harder for Google to see how people react to it, and rank it accordingly. But promoting your content is also a means to getting traffic and finding people to put in front of your lead generation “magnet”.

So here’s a few ways to promote your content once you have created it:

Through social media – share your content throughout your social media presence. You can also get various plugins which do this for you. See best free blog plugins for WordPress.
By offering share buttons on your website (see above link)
Through building backlinks from other blogs and websites
Using paid marketing – Google Adwords, Bing, YouTube etc.
Through deep linking – keyword targeted back links from your newer content
Revive Old Posts is a great plugin which automatically shares your older content through social media

Lead Generation Prominence & Cross Testing

With a lot of content generation going on, it’s easy to lose track of your main goal: getting leads. Your content should be a strategy to get eyes in front of your lead magnet. A good lead magnet should be cross tested using different content pitted against each other. By continually cross testing your lead magnet you get to know which one performs the best. Try different colours, titles and text in your lead magnet opt in page, or images.

Make sure your lead magnet is prominent on your website on all your content. Don’t forget your lead generation objective! If someone lands on your content, they only have a few minutes to decide what to do there. After that they are gone forever! But once you get them to sign up to your email list, you can communicate your messages over a much longer time period.

So make it a priority to test and measure your lead generation tools over 1000 or so web visitors. A good lead magnet can turn many more visitors into subscribers. So if you’re spending a lot of time (and money) getting people to your website, you want to make sure your lead magnet is converting them to leads. Consider using a lead magnet pop-up on your website and try out different strategies across a number of visitors to determine which works the best.

Summary

Lead generation through content marketing can take some time. But once your content starts generating traffic by itself, this can be a great strategy. You can see traffic from the work you’ve done previously. If you can convert this traffic into leads with a good lead magnet, you can earn money completely on autopilot!

First you should identify your perfect customer “avatar”. Create an enticing lead magnet which speaks to your audience and then start creating content which targets both your perfect customer and your lead magnet and connects them in some way.

Keep creating content which is targeted towards people looking for what you offer. You’ll also need a good content marketing strategy and you can outsource much of this too. Don’t just create content, but promote it aggressively too. Use social media platforms and the many available plugins which can help automate the process and encourage visitors to share your content.

Micro Niche Website Example

This website is a micro niche website example. The main topic of this website is affiliate marketing. But as a keyword, affiliate marketing is hugely competitive. If I had built the site around the main keyword, “affiliate marketing”, it wouldn’t have benefitted from the micro niche “affiliate marketing mentors“. Main keywords too are hugely competitive and there’s a lot of other competing websites for the common keywords in any niche; particularly in affiliate marketing.

A micro niche website can therefore benefit from longer tail keywords and less competition. A micro niche is a smaller part of the larger topic. Within the affiliate marketing topic, there’s many other topics to target with your micro niche website. Here’s a few other examples:

https://highticketsalesfunnel.com/ – Targeting the keywords high ticket sales funnel.
http://digitalsuccessmentoring.com/ – Targeting the keywords digital success mentoring.
https://highcommissionaffiliateprograms.com/ – targeting high commission affiliate programs.
Here’s another one which relates to my affiliate products and brings me a trickle of traffic for free: Lifestyle business mentors.

There are just four examples of micro niche websites within the topic (niche) of affiliate marketing.

Micro Niche Website Example – Finding Your Sub Niche

With a popular topic, you have less chance of getting your website to the top of the search engines. Google gives a lot of emphasis on site authority and ranks websites according to a number of criteria. One of these is back links. A new site will struggle to get free traffic from the search engines, particularly in a popular and competitive topic. But with a micro niche website, there’s less competition for the longer tail keywords within a niche.

To find the long tail keywords which are relevant to your topic, but give you more chance of getting free traffic, you can use Google’s free keyword planner. Type in your main keywords into the planner and look for long tail derivatives. Compare the keyword phrases you find with a quick Google search. You can type your keyword into Google directly and then with quotes around it (“like this”).

Look at the top of the search results on a desktop or laptop computer and you should see a number which correlates with the number of competing websites for this particular phrase. An open search gives you a clue as to the relative competitiveness of your search term, with high number denoting a lot of competition.

Using Keyword Research To Decide On A Niche Website

Keyword research should unearth some answers for you. Ideally you will want to find a sub niche which you want to build your blog around and which will also be profitable. So look for a good keyword which has a good number of monthly searches (using the planner), but also has less competition than most. This can take some time and careful planning.

Once you find your keyword phrase, you can head over to namecheap.com to see if you can purchase a domain name with your keyword in it. Ideally you want a dot com .(.com). Dot Com websites still carry the most authority and work the best.

Once you find your domain name and host it, you should install WordPress and get to work creating content. Here’s an article on those particular steps of building a niche website. To find topics for content use your keyword planner. Type in your main keyword and look for derivatives for ideas of blog titles. Use the same tactic (as above) to determine how competitive the keywords will be.

Micro Niche Website Examples – Niche Down

With a main topic such as affiliate marketing, you need to find derivatives of your main keyword. “Affiliate marketing for seniors”, “Niche blogging for profit” or “a beginners guide to affiliate marketing” are examples of niches within a niche.

Let’s say your niche is body building and you want a health blog. “Body building” is a competitive keyword so you might want a sub-niche so you can get your content seen more easily and tap into a less competitive sub-niche.

You might target “nutrition for weight gain”, or “bulking up in your 50’s” as less competitive sub-niches in this field. Think about what other areas in your field might be untapped and less competitive. You can use Google’s keyword planner to help you find long tail derivatives within your niche.

Here’s a few couple of other micro niche website examples I’ve built:

Affiliate Marketing Coach

What Is The Law Of Attraction?

Ready Made Sales Funnel

Summary

Building a micro niche website does take some time and effort. But ultimately they can give you free traffic which you can turn into sales! If you manage this well done, you’ve built an autopilot passive income system. Websites won’t get traffic unless you make them worthy of a listing. This should be done through creating some great content on them.

But you can also give yourself a head start by buying a keyword domain name which is in an uncompetitive sub-niche. This shows the search engines what your topic is very clearly. If you also create some awesome content on those sites, which cover your topic in detail, you further gain the trust of the search engines and you should get some traction!

A micro niche website example to leave you with is this one! Did you find this site through a Google search or some other way? Please comment and let me know! Much appreciated!