Some people claim to make as much as $10,000 per month ($120,000 per year) through building and promoting niche sites, however, most people should not expect this kind of success, especially if you are very new, as that kind of success usually only comes with experience and acquired skill. A reasonable income to expect from a niche site, after you have worked for months to gain traffic and are hooked up with good affiliates, may be $500-$1,000 per month. However this is recurring income, so you will make that much monthly off of the efforts you put into that one site, it is not a one shot deal.

After you have a successful site, most choose to continue to build niche sites. The more sites that you build, the better an income you can generate. Some also choose to build very fast and very short sites over sites that are slightly longer in length. It should be noted that the larger each of your sites are, the more income you will likely generate off of them.

When starting out, it is important to remember that your first site will always be your hardest, since you are just learning the ropes of the business, and that not everyone is cut out to market and promote niche sites. It may not work out for you and you may end up losing a little bit of money, but that is a risk that everyone in this business has to take.

The important thing is that you don’t give up without a good shot at it, if this is really what you want to do. Your first site may take a long time, the work may be tedious, and you may feel like throwing in the towel. However, if you give up too early, you will never know what could have been. And who knows, you may be the next great website marketer!

Articles directories are a great place to put your articles so that they will make you money. By using this method, people who are interested in your product or service will see your article, view you as an expert in the subject, and will visit your website. Even if you cannot write or do not have any knowledge on the subject on which you are promoting (for example for you run an affiliate website), you can always hire a writer to do the work for you. Getting quality articles written will be expensive up front, but they will pay for themselves in no time, either through affiliate sales or selling your own services, and everything from then on is pure profit.

Let’s take a real life example. Imagine that you are an accountant working from home. You write an article on an accounting topic and place it on various article directories. Those who are looking for the subject you wrote about will read your article, see that you have the knowledge and skill that is needed to do a job for them, and visit your website or contact you via e-mail. Your article just gained you a new client who may use your services regularly, but will definitely give you a nice profit at least once.

Furthermore, since you have posted it on a free article directory, others who have affiliate websites about accounting will inevitably use your article for their website. Since they must attach your byline to it, this will bring you even more exposure for every website that re-posts your article. This because you will be benefiting of off the traffic that they get to their website.

There are numerous article directories out there for you to utilize. Your bet best is to put a copy of each of your articles on every one for maximum exposure. It will eventually help to bring more traffic and customers to your website, which will lead to new orders and more profit.

Since you will be promoting a product or service, you will need a killer sales pitch and website content to get your readers interested in the product, convince them that they cannot live without the product, and to keep them coming back to your website time and time again for more recommendations and your useful content, which will get them clicking on your links once again. Although many affiliate companies only give you money off of the first sale you make from each customer, you have the option of promoting a good range of companies so that you can still make a profit off of your returning customers.

If you cannot write this kind of content of your own, there are many ways to pick up free or paid content to place on your affiliate website. There are many reasons why paying for such articles would be to your advantage. First, you will be able to tell the writer exactly what you want, what product you are trying to sell, and what direction they can go in to keep your readers interested and informed. On the other hand, when you search for free content, you are limited to what is already out there. Secondly, you will own the copyright to this content. That means that no one else can reuse it without your consent. If you opt for free content, you will be sharing that content with an unknown amount of other affiliate websites, plus the original author will be able to place their byline at the bottom of the article which could result in them stealing your traffic.

There are many products that have nice affiliate commission rates for those who know how to pre-sale their product and deliver click through customers who are ready to buy. As long as you choose to promote a product or service that can be very useful to a wide variety of people, then pre-selling your chosen company may not be that hard at all. The key in this situation may likely be getting those customers to your website so that they have a chance to see your recommendations and click on your affiliate links.

Although this can sometimes be the only option for those who are running on a non-existent budget, it is not a way that will effectively build your website or revenue. There are a few potential reasons why this may be detrimental to your business building efforts.

Problem #1 – Search Engines

Search engines will only look down upon your site if it has the exact same duplicated content than other sites. The more sites that share your content, the less it will help you achieve good search engine rankings.

Good search engine rankings are essential in getting visitors to your sit so that they have a chance to click on your affiliate links. If you cannot even get visitors, then will never make an revenue. Working on the search engine optimization of your site so that you will eventually be high enough in the results to get customers, should be priority one.

Problem #2 – Getting visitors to click

Although getting your site high on search engine result pages and acquiring site visitors is hard work, unfortunately this is only half of the battle. You must also be able to convince those visitors to click on your affiliate links. If your visitors see the same content they have seen on a multitude of other sites, they will be least likely to click on your links. This is because most people want to buy things that are recommended by people that they trust or whom they feel like are an expert on the subject.

If your content is just duplicated from other sites, you will be exposed as someone who does not really know what they are talking about and therefore will not look heavily on your product recommendations. This will reduce the number of website visitors who will be willing to click through.

Problem #3 – Author Bylines

Most free content is only given to you if you agree to place the authors byline under the article (you can get into trouble if you try to use it without following the stipulated rules). This poses a problem because most author bylines include links. When a reader gets done reading a really intriguing article, there is a strong possibility that they will click on the author’s byline link rather than your affiliate links. This is the entire reason why these authors offer free content to begin with, so that they may get their name and links out there to the public. Using this type of content may mean shooting yourself in the foot and losing possible profitable website visitors.

Once you put these three problems together, you are looking at a serious decline in revenue simply because you used free website content from article directories. Although it may be the only option for some, if you have the funds to buy your own original content, then you should go this route. If you don’t have the finds, however, you may be better off writing your own content and then hiring professional services once you have made a profit to work with.

First, you will need to know how to pick out the correct articles to make your sites successful. There are many types of content, from free content to high dollar content, and each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages (although high dollar content is more likely to give you a successful site in the end).

Second, you will need to know how to choose keywords that can help you get a good amount of traffic, without being too competitive to get on the first or second page. If you choose highly competitive keywords that are used by large, mammoth website, you are likely to never get up to those much needed first two pages.

Third, you will need to know how to optimize your websites for various search engines. Search engine optimization skills will allow you to get high rankings for your chosen niche keywords, which will help to get visitors and make profit.

Fourth, if you opt for a large website that you will focus most of your internet marketing career on, you will also need to know how to market your website to your intended audience through paid banner ads and text links. If you prefer very small 2-5 page niche sites, then promoting all of them this way will not be cost effective and will eat up more profits than it is worth.

If you can capture some of these skills and attack them aggressively during your first few small websites or the first few months of a larger website, then you will eventually become an expert. Since you can learn the ropes first hand on your own, the only thing that you will need to do before you begin your new career is to read up on how to get started (maybe purchase an internet marketing e-book or two) and make sure that you have the funds available to start a small site.

If you are new to the business, your best bet is to ease into it. If you jump in before you know what you are doing, you have a good chance of losing money and having nothing to show for it. There are several things that you need to make sure you know how to do before you begin creating your first site.

* Create your own great articles or hire someone to do it for you
* Optimize your website for search engines
* Find reliable web hosting
* Pick a catchy URL
* Create a small site that is easy to navigate, have one created for you, or pay to use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) website builder.

Research has shown that the most effective affiliate links are text links. Yes, plain text links. Not big flashy banner ads like most affiliate website are filled to the brim with. What happens is, you write a great article (or have one created) about the product or something related to the product and stick the link into your text. This allows interested readers to see the link as they are reading and click on it.

Of course, your article and your link have to work effectively together to make this happen. A bad article and an unrelated link to an unknown product are not likely to make the profits roll in.

So the next time you are out to choose an affiliate link, try placing a relevant link in a great article that is well optimized for search engines and see how it works out for you.

The more people who use your article as content as their website, the more potential traffic you will receive. These webmasters will probably be using SEO techniques, banner exchanges, and possibly even a Pay-Per-Click campaign to get visitors to their affiliate site. These are advertising methods that either take a lot of time or a lot of money and they will be absolutely free for you just because you placed your articles where others could use them.

There are many places on the Internet that offer to post your article so that others may view and/or use it. My advice is to place your articles on every single one of these sites so that you can reach as many webmasters as possible.

To get some ideas and inspiration, take a look at the various keywords that you have singled out for your niche to see if any of those have a catchy ring. You want it to be kind of “used car salesman” sounding, rather than something that is boring or does not have an original sound to it. For example, if your niche is “blah”, you could try “MegaBlah”, “Blah4u”, “HouseofBlah”, or “BlahKingdom”. These will all be original, explain what you niche is, and, most importantly, will be easy to remember.

How easy your URL is to remember is the most important so that your visitors will not have any trouble returning and clicking on more affiliate links!

When you start your search, you may want to begin with a very small group of articles, just in case you happen too hook up with a writer that you are less than thrilled with. It is important to keep in mind that there are several different types of writing and each writer might be highly skilled in one area, yet lack in another. For example, there is creative/fiction writing, biographical writing, news writing, general informational article writing, critical writing, copy-writing, poem/verse writing, technical writing, medical writing, essay/report writing, and sports writing. Although a writer may be highly skilled in one area, many freelance writers spread themselves out into others areas as well. So, it is critical that the writer you choose can produce the type of content that you need.

To find a freelance writer, you can look at various freelancing websites that will allow you to post the specification of your project and your budget.

From there, writers will make bids on your project and provide you with writing samples so that you can get an idea of their skill level. Make sure that you choose a writer who gives you a sample of the type of article that you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for a copy-writer, do not hire someone who only sent you a sports writing sample. He or she may be an outstanding sports writer, but copy-writing is about selling (a product, service, or yourself) to your website visitors.

In conclusion, the more you are willing to pay per article, the more bids you will get from quality writers who know how to entertain and inform your website visitors so that they keep coming back for more. Writers know that you will eventually make a ton of money off of each article or content piece. So although $30 or more for a 500 word article may seem like a lot, when you think about the service they are providing you and the time and effort that they put into your piece, then you will realize that it really is not a lot for that one article. If you pay for quality, you will be amazed at how much you will eventually make off of your articles.