There are tons of internet money making opportunities out there, and the list grows daily. You have affiliate programs, multi-level marketing programs, investment programs, pay for offers programs, etc. The list goes on. Some of them offer the promise of a quick fortune; some of them offer sustained income. The technique that I most often recommend is niche marketing.

Niche marketing is a very simple concept: you find a niche, develop a website around that niche, get people to visit your niche site, and find a way to collect money from those people. Seems pretty simple, but with many seemingly simple concepts, there are things that work and things that don’t. One niche marketing technique that does work is called “article marketing”.

Article marketing is the practice of writing articles and using those articles to drive traffic to your niche sites. That traffic is then converted to income by means of direct sales, affiliate sales, or advertising revenues. I personally use a combination of affiliate sales and ad revenues. These concepts can be a little tough to grasp for a new niche marketer, but I’ll post some resources at the end of the article that can help you. Here’s how it works (in a nutshell).

• Find a Niche – Finding a niche can be difficult for a beginner. I recommend starting with something that interests you and researching the marketability of that niche. A good tool is the Google Adwords tool. You can use that tool to gauge how many people search for keywords related to that niche. They can also give you an idea of how much money people pay to advertise those keywords.

• Get Your Keywords – Decide on a main keyword related to your niche, as well as some secondary keywords.

• Start a Blog – Start a blog around your niche and write articles that target your keywords. Post these articles to your blog.

• Get Traffic to Your Blog – This can be the hard part. You will want to find ways to get other sites to link to your blog. The two easiest ways to do that are by submitting articles to article directories and asking other blogs for link trades.

• Set Up Adsense – Adsense is free. You set up an account with Google. You agree to post their ads on your site, and they agree to pay you when people click on those adds.

• Set Up Affiliate Accounts – Another great way to earn income from your niche site is to set up affiliate accounts with vendors that offer products that relate to your niche. People go to your site, looking for information about your niche, they see an affiliate ad for a product that they are looking for, they buy that product, and you get a commission.

The great part about this type of niche marketing is that they are inexpensive to get going, easy to maintain, and offer long lasting, residual income. The money doesn’t start flowing in from the first day, and it takes some work to get started, but that is true with any business. If you do it right, you will get back what you put in.

To help save you a lot of time and frustration, I have listed the resources that I use to do my niche marketing. Using these tools will be a huge help to you in ensuring your success:

Sign up as an Amazon Affiliate – Amazon.com has a great affiliate program that will allow you to advertise their products to your visitors.

Go to the Keyword Academy – The keyword academy will walk you through the entire process of keyword research, starting your blog, monetizing it, etc. The info is extensive and easy to follow. They do charge a small monthly fee for their service, but it is worth every penny.

Be a Keyword Academy Affiliate – Webmasters Earn Money Here!

Check out Unique Article Wizard – They will help you to get unique versions of your articles out to hundreds of article sites. I could not imagine doing article marketing without this service.

www.GoDaddy.com – Domain names and hosting. Very inexpensive and great customer support.

Need some quick cash? Try Project Payday.

It is very important you submit these articles to the right websites so that people find them while they are looking for different information. When it becomes part of their searching they tend to value the information more. This is where an article management system comes into play. This system will allow an administrator to assign rights to different users and these users can then contribute content based on those permissions. This eliminates repetitive articles and reduces the amount of time you would spend looking for content. Another benefit of this system is custom content creation because the articles are being created on topics of your choosing. You have the ability to select the form and style of the article also. This will help you to product content that will produce effective results on the Internet. You may also want content that would encourage potential customers reading a printed advertisement to purchase a product. This can also be accomplished with this system because it can assist you in two important phases. These are creation of the content and implementation. When you need to distribute these articles to clients, publications or websites you will be able to do so easily with the use of this system.

When writing your articles, it is best to make use of your targeted keywords. Try to include your niche topic keywords in the title and throughout your article so you will be easily found for those particular keywords.  Long tail keywords are more likely to be found than shorter keywords. For example you are not going to be found using the term ‘loans’ because it is a very competitive keyword and there are likely to be thousands of higher ranking articles and sites for that keyword. However the more specific you can be the more likely you are to be found. Using ‘self employed unsecured personal loan’ is far more specific and more likely to be found than just using the term ‘loan’.

Once you have written an article on your chosen niche topic you can submit it to various articles sites such as ezinearticles.com , goarticles.com or usfreeads.com. These sites allow you to place your articles with them together with a link to your site or blog.  They are then picked up by the search engines and drive traffic to your website, blog or hub.

The more links you can generate to your site, the further up the Google rankings your site will appear since Google likes incoming links and uses this as a marker to establish how good your site may be. It is better to have several links from various sites than to have links from only one source however.

The other thing Google likes when trying to bring your blog higher in the search engine list is regularly updated content. Keeping a site updated with new articles and blogs is another good way to establish yourself on the internet.

You can use social networking sites to drive traffic to your site, however, targeted traffic from Google is much much better. The reason is that visitors coming from your article writing are interested in your subject area and are much more likely to either buy an affiliate product or click on one of your adverts. Traffic generated from social networking sites tends to be more general traffic will less or no interest in your subject. They are far less likely to want to click on a related topic advert or buy a related product.

Many opt to hire others to do the writing for them. The results are sometimes questionable. If you’re the kind who wants to generate their own content, there is one simple thing you can do to improve your results and that’s to set goals.

The single piece of advice that has made a difference in my own efforts wasn’t what I thought it would be. My early efforts focused on getting sites up or researching trends and keywords. It wasn’t until I was told to set a minimum goal to write X number of words per day that I began seeing significant changes in my earnings.

Remember that to drive organic traffic you need backlinks. That often means churning out articles with relevant anchor text in them. In addition, getting all that traffic doesn’t do you a lick of good if there’s no content on your site to support the traffic or give them the information or product purchase incentive they’ll need to turn from visitors into buyers.

By setting a minimum daily word-count goal, I find my productivity has gone through the roof. Not only do my sites rank higher in the search engines, but my visitors are greeted with plenty of high quality, informative content when they arrive.

The days of thin content websites holding top position in the search engines is waning. Search engines are getting smarter and the users experience is getting better. You can try to buck this trend at your own peril but wouldn’t it be nice to deservedly hold a top ranking spot attracting lots of visitors because you earned it? At the end of the day, whose results do you think will be most sustainable?

If you are a fledgling internet marketer you will probably struggle with the content part of things. After all, how much can you possibly write about a kids air mattress or, if you’re going real granular, Aerobed for kids?

If your business doesn’t target particular niches, the effort of writing should come easier. Produce content that puts your visitor in the product. Be descriptive and paint with words in ways that help your visitors envision themselves using or working with whatever products your online company may sell.

It’s important that, regardless your topic of focus, that you find creative angles of attack. Short articles may bring the reader in. They may even get your ads some clicks, but you’ll find yourself hard-pressed to hold onto your page position and your earnings if your work isn’t tailored to provide a positive user experience. That’s what your customers want. It’s what the search engines want you to provide and it’s what will make your business sustainable.

I will list and discuss many of the considerations that must be looked at by authors hoping to gain publication. It is my hope that this detailed discussion will assist the reader in determining his or her best route for success.

The Demand of the Market: In order to create something that people desire, you need to be mindful of what is going on in contemporary society. This can guide your choices on what to write about. Choosing a topic that is specialized for a niche audience is also appropriate.

The Internet: The use of blogs and social networking sites provide the resources to market articles. Additionally, using mass email is another way to bring a creation to many people. The internet allows people to communicate with a large volume of potential readers. It is also important to add your links to major search engines. Increase your chances for success by having your friends post your links to their own sites.

Sending Out Samples: Using a writing sample as advertising is one valuable approach to marketing. In fact sending a sample or an entire piece to a publisher is an old fashioned and well-respected technique. Using a directory of publishers which are put out yearly, you can begin sending your work out for consideration.

The Credentials of an Author: With the proper credentials either in education or with previous successes in the field of writing, an author can get his or her articles looked at with some seriousness. In this sense, having some accomplishments can lead to even more success.

Your Own Publication: By creating your own newsletter or journal, you can publish your own articles. This can give you an excellent way to create a catalog of published material.

Guerrilla Tactics: Perhaps using spam, fliers, or graffiti art can create notoriety for your own journal or online site. Illegal activity is not recommended for the faint of heart. Promote your journals or anthologies of articles at social events that are attended by your desired audience.

It should be clear now to the reader that there are many options available for those looking into article marketing. Hopefully authors will consider not only marketing options, but the market as well. The aforementioned tips should serve to guide authors through the process of determining the best option available.

To find the latest knowledge on article marketing, you can check out many websites that have the knowledge you need. Also, in order to get a good marketing business going, you should know about niche marketing.

Let me give you an example. I am a Seattle traffic lawyer. When I first started out, I’d been dabbling in some internet marketing on the side, so I understood what it took to get to the top of Google very fast. One of those things is to start a blog and fill it with content, keyword related content, that Google would see, like, and push me to the top with.

Because I needed a lot of content, and my small law firm startup was brand new, I thought, “why don’t I just tell people what we do.” It’s not rocket science, but it isn’t magic either. For the most part we lawyer up the ticket just like any lawyer does for anything else. The way I saw it, explaining how it could be done would do two things: it would show I knew what I was doing; and it would show people they couldn’t do it without me.

I wrote a couple of posts, climbed right up Google, and then I got a phone call. It was a different Seattle traffic lawyer, and he was pissed. He wanted to know why I was divulging all of our secrets on the internet, for everyone (including his potential clients), to see. I explained what I just explained and he didn’t seem to buy it. You know what? Who cares?

This is a competitive world. As long as you are doing things truthfully, honestly, and straightforward, to hell with everyone else. They don’t like it because they don’t want to do it, and they know it’s going to work. So keep it up. And good luck starting your law firm!

Besides, many of these online marketing gurus only outsource the work to other people, so they really just act as a middleman to your efforts. This is all fine and good as long as you are getting the results you are hoping for.  The problems arise when you are stuck at a certain place with your website and the consultants just promise a watch and wait approach.  While it is certainly true that much of the angst in the online world can be overcome with time, some things simply will not improve the longer you wait.  In fact, if you are in highly competitive niche market, your site will suffer more with more time.

What you need to do is learn some of the tricks that the pros use.  Some of these include things like article writing or article marketing as it is sometimes called.  What this is is simply a strategy of writing content that is similar to what you would find on your own site and then taking some main bullet points and writing a specific article just on that.  This then serves as an article that you can submit to a variety of online avenues in order to be published.  Once published, this content will serve as a source of added traffic and a link or two pointing back to your site.  As each link is added  to your site’s ‘library’, your site will gain strength in terms of authority and rank in Google and Yahoo.  These are the largest search engines and so you would be best served by having your site be ranked best there.

As discussed, there are a variety of places where you can publish these articles.  One such place is EzineArticles.  This site is one of the most recognized authorities in the online marketing world.  From here, many other sites have the option of publishing your material.  If they do, you will gain more exposure and even more links.  The best part is you are in control of the material and the type of link.  For more information about this type of writing for better website ranking, you can do a simple Google search for ‘article marketing’.  For a sample of such a site, go to EzineArticles.com, ArticlesBase.com or ArticlElements.com .