However, on this post, I want to talk about another component in the money making sauce mix that you need to generate an online income – that is the motivation to do it.    I know this answer should be easy.  You’re motivated by the money you can make online!  It’s so obvious!  If that is the case, why is it so many web entrepreneurs fail?  It could be that they are not working hard enough, true.  But the hard work has to be driven by some sort of motivation.  So what is yours?

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t motivated by the money.  However, at this point, I still have my full time job so obviously, I’m not making enough to quit.  But my full time job pays quite well so why don’t I just leave well enough alone and spend my free time doing something else?  Goodness knows it is like having an extra job bringing all your online money making ideas to fruition.  The reason is because I derive some satisfaction by my creations.  It’s fulfilling to me that I can say I’m an online entrepreneur and I know that my web sites will create a perpetual income for me down the line.  If I want a raise, I don’t have to ask my boss and hope I get a good performance appraisal to justify the increase in salary.  On my own, I know that in my business I just have come up with new ideas for websites to generate however much I want.  This keeps me going when the work gets me down and I question why I’m even doing this when financially I’m doing okay.  Perhaps it is ego that I want to one day answer that I am self-employed, I have my own online business when I’m asked what I do for a living.  And as shallow as it seems, I want to have the finer things in life.  I want the beautifully furnished house, the cars, gadgets and toys.  I want to be admired.

If these things do not motivate you, what does?  I will say that having the right motivation is a vital part of your online success.  People who want to get rich quickly probably don’t have that level of motivation to see their online business idea through to complete website creation.  And then there’s the web marketing aspect which is probably the most painful part.  It is a huge amount of work.  So what will get you through these tough times and self-doubts?  Perhaps the answer lies with your family.  Perhaps you have kids and you want to leave them a business that practically runs itself after you have taught them how.  You want to spend more time with them and running a web business from home will accomplish this goal.  Families are a big motivation for some people and it drives them to succeed.  What will drive you to succeed in accomplishing your online business goals?  To do this for the long haul, you definitely need to keep motivated.

To keep up with what is going on in the industry, I follow forums and subscription sites and it always upsets me when desperate people say they need money by this and this date so they are making a niche web site hoping the money will fall from the sky.  It really isn’t that easy.  First off, you need a good online business idea and then you have to create a web niche for it.  Let me emphasis the words online business and web niche.  Is it a smart business idea that will generate some commercial value?  You also have to factor in is it worth the visitors or consumers to buy a product or a service online from a niche web site?  Frankly, most newbies don’t have the knack for picking out a buying keyword yet.  You’ll go through a lot of website ideas that fail before you have a few that generates income.

So, there’s the blundering of new online entrepreneurs who are getting their feet wet with finding the right online idea.  Then there’s the issue of marketing the niche sites.  As stated earlier, you need to market your web sites.  This means making friendly with other niche entrepreneurs and writing online press releases and submitting articles to article directories.  The name of the game is getting links from other web sites.  Google considers these links as a sign of authority of the site.  If your niche sites have authority, then they will rise in the search engine results pages.  The first page is where you want to be and the higher the position the better.

All this is to say that for even if you have a great business idea for the web, that’s not all there is to it.  You have to outwork your competition and if you do, were you correct in your assumption that your niche site will pay well?  It would suck that you did all that work only to find that there’s no commercial value for it.

Even with all that warning, I would still say that the web business is a wonderful way to make money on the internet.  The overhead cost of starting an online business website is so low.  Seriously, name a business that could cost as little as ten dollars a month to set up?  However, as stated, due to the low cost of business start-up it seems as though every Tom, Dick and Harry are trying to do it.  That makes for a lot of crap on the internet.  To stand out from all online entrepreneurs who are just pretenders, you need to have the work ethic to write well for your website.  For those who were never good at writing, do not fear that this is something you cannot do.  Negative thinking is never good for business.  Now, I know that a lot of A-list bloggers will say content is king and all that but in reality, the content doesn’t have to be of Shakespearean quality.  It needs to be informative and convey the message and that’s it.

I know that people struggle with this writing concept a lot.  They will agonize over their words because they are perfectionist.  I used to be that way as well but I’ve since then, I’ve found that I should just let my fingers go.  By over thinking, I realize that I’m not building.  I’m not building out for my money making web properties.  So now I will put it all on the page and screw the editing.  If the readers are serious about finding a solution on my web sites be it a make money product site or a CPC information site, it’s all there.  If the readers of my sites, even though they are commercial niche web sites, are serious about what it is they seek, they will be motivated enough to sieve through my online stream of thought.  So, all this to say that you want to give value to the readers no matter what type of online web idea you are trying to commercialize.  I tend to over inform but frankly, I don’t see this as a bad thing.  The blueprint for online business success is just to take action.

So all this to say that you have a lot of writing ahead of you – not only for your own site(s) but for marketing purposes drumming up business.  For those would be online web entrepreneurs, this will separate those who are truly in it for the long haul and those who are only in it for a quick buck.  I’m not saying you can’t make quick money on the internet, I’m just saying it’s probably not a sustaining income.  Things in life don’t come easily and neither does making money on the internet.

Now, how do you come up with profitable online business ideas?  Remember, these are niche sites we’re building and truth be told, some might work out and some might not.  Therefore, in order to generate a good monthly income, we need to have lots of sites.  These business ideas are not the next big thing we’re talking about here.  For the volume of sites we’re generating, these are products and services we’re repackaging in niche sites.  For these sites, I want to have ultra low competition.  To determine how to gauge niche site competition, read my previous post on How to Turn Great Ideas to Make Money Niche Sites.

When trying to come up with ideas for niche sites, I like things that are off the beaten track.  Sure, there can be a ton of money made in stock market niches, weight loss niches, credit card niches, but those markets are highly competitive.  I like to make money online now.  You’d be surprised at how motivating that is.  Furthermore, I figure that there is nothing that prevents me from expanding my niche sites later into bigger sites.  It’s just as well to learn how to rank for niche sites now and gain authority and then have an easier time incorporating new products and ideas to the existing site.  You would not believe how many newbies I have seen trying to conquer a niche like money making online when it’s one of the most highly competitive markets out there.  In fact, I also shake my head at what I’m doing writing in a related internet business online niche.  Insanity.

In any case, this is a case of do as I say and not as I do although the rest of my niche sites are very low competition and in fact, very boring.  I love boring niches because well, no one can be bothered writing about them.  I come up with these online business ideas while I’m reading the newspapers or just walking down the street.  I’m actually not that observant but little things will pop out at me and I’ll jot the idea down to do research later.  I have to state very clearly that I’m not working trends but you can do so if you wish as long as you’re at the beginning of the trend and know when to get out.  Personally, I’d much prefer to build a site and forget about it and then come back to it every few months only for maintenance.  Of course if you’re stuck for business ideas, there are programs that you can buy or online subscriptions that will provide you with niche ideas.  However, let me just say that you’re not the only one that is buying them so you’ll have a lot of other people competing for the same niches.

Being an online business entrepreneur means having the knack for spotting a great online business opportunity and then running with it.   As you gain more experience with running multiple Internet business sites, this skill will come.  In the meantime, setting up niche sites is a relatively cheap thing to do and you will learn as you go along what works and doesn’t work.  Coming up with online business ideas just takes practice and that’s the best tip I can give.

Let me explain further by what I mean by a buying market.  On the Internet, there is such a movement called social media.  This is the next big craze to make the web more interactive by taking the pulse of the online world and what they are thinking and feeling.  Respected news sites like CNN use Facebook and Twitter to gauge the reaction of the public because it gives instantaneous feedback.  However, in terms of a business model to induce Facebook fans or Twitter followers to buy something you’re recommending is not what I would call sure fire sales.  For one thing, it’s a ton of work to gain that kind of credibility to influence the buying habits of others.  Let’s face it, you’re not Oprah and this isn’t the book of the month club.  Furthermore, as Facebook itself found out with its ill fated Beacon project, people don’t want to be constantly pitched products by their friends in a social setting.  Oh, and it was a breach of privacy as well harvesting their shopping habits but that’s beside the point.

In order to find buyers, why not let your potential buyers do all the work and find you?   Of course, in order to be found, you need to be at the right place at the right time which is at the top of the search engines when there is a need for the product/service.  And let’s face it, Google is the only one that matters in the search engine game.  Also, let me just make another important point that for you to make sales, it needs to be a buying term that you have ranked for in the first page of Google.  The term or keyword that people are searching for has to be able to eventually be converted to money – either by you for selling your own product/service or for selling someone else’s product/service where you get commission.  Another way to make money online is by generating traffic for someone else and letting them to close the sale which again you would get monetary compensation.  The key here is that the visitor who came to your web site already has an interest in buying.  All you need to do is match the product/service to what he/she is looking for.

Now, once again, you might have a wonderful online business idea but without the right Internet marketing know-how, it might not go anywhere.  Let us suppose that you are ranked number one on Google for a buying keyword.  However, that keyword only generates 50 searches a month.  Unless that is a big ticket item that you have found the proper form of monetization, 50 searches a month just doesn’t translate to a lot of buyers.

As you can see, you need to find the right balance in Internet marketing: a good buying keyword that you can dominate in the search engines and one that generates enough traffic to make it worth your while to set up an online niche site.  Oh, and for a starting entrepreneur, it should be relatively low competition as well.  How exactly do you find this perfect niche keyword?  Google itself can provide some answers.  The keyword research tips I’m going to share below I have amalgamated into my own system which I originally learned from the keyword academy, make money online and blogger unleashed.  All these blogs I highly recommend but you need to find your own system that works for you.  You’ll probably have your own criteria of keyword research after you start making an online income.

In order to find the buying keyword that reflects your online business idea, you will first need to download a free tool.  Yes, I said FREE.  Download the Firefox plugin SEO Quake and install it.  This plugin will let you see your keyword competition.  Now, go to Google and type in your keyword in quotes like this: “red widget”.  The quotes mean you are looking for an exact match.  Hit search.  The search engine results page (SERP) will return to you the competition along with their page rank (PR).  We are looking for something that is in the 2 to 0 range or N/A in the first 10 results.  Also, on the right hand corner of the SERP, we are looking for Results that are less than one hundred thousand.  What I’m trying to determine here is how competitive the market is.  In this case, one hundred thousand pages to beat is nothing considering how much electronic pollution there is in the Internet.  In reality, we just really need to beat out whoever is sitting at the number one spot.  PR gives us some indication of how Google views the trustworthiness of this web page.  However, PR is not the sole indicator and in fact, Google itself is trying to wean webmasters off this ranking system but it is one of the few things we have to work with so we’ll go with it for now.

Next, we go to the Google Adwords tool and we enter our keyword into the system.  Where it says Match Type, we again want exact match.   We also want to display the column Show Estimated Avg CPC (cost per click) that advertisers are willing to pay for clicks funneling visitors to their site.  While previously we looked at the competition we want to beat, we are now trying to see if the competition is worth our time to beat.  If there isn’t any money involved nor the search traffic to make it worthwhile, I’d carefully consider if it is worth my time setting up a niche site.  However, let me also say that these numbers can be deceptive as Google might not be giving you the true numbers.  Also, note that the estimated average CPC is just an estimate.  The ads showing up on your site through the Google Adsense program might not be as high paying.  However, Adsense is not the only game in town and you don’t have to give your clicks to Google and their sponsors.  You can find another affiliate program to give you commissions better paying than Adsense or you can sell the product/service yourself and keep the proceeds.  How you want to translate your business idea into online income is up to you.  If you set up enough of these niche sites that make one or two dollars a day it can be quite lucrative if you own a few hundred of them.

Throughout this post, you might have noted that I refer to online business ideas and niche sites as different things.  The easiest way to explain this is that an idea could be to sell a diet book aimed at teens but perhaps the competition is too fierce or it does not generate enough traffic.  However, perhaps the market for “cute pink prom dresses” fits all my criteria for a buying keyword and I can stick an ad on the site for the diet book hoping that visitors will also be interested in buying the book for their prom. (BTW, I’m totally making this up as an example to differentiate between an online business idea and converting it to a niche site).

So there you have how to gauge competition and create niche sites for your online business idea.  The concept might seem simple but finding the home run business idea along with the proper niche market is deceptively hard.

There are many ways to make money online but the ideas that I’m going to share with you involve making web sites.  And quite frankly, while I’m not insanely rich, I am able to generate online income consistently.  The same probably cannot be said for a lot of scammers out there whose only business plan is to cheat people out of money because they cannot generate any online business ideas themselves that will work.  I don’t want to be one of those people and I hope you don’t want to be one either.

As long as I’m establishing an honest way to do business, let me just say that many of you aren’t going to be cut out for the online business world even if you have a wonderful business idea.  It takes patience, it has it has ups and downs, and it’s tedious.  If you still want to sign up for this, then keep on reading.

You might be wondering right now, who is this person talking a “big game” about the expected failure of many potential online business entrepreneurs?  I am a webmaster in my day job (yes, I still have one) and at night, I work on my online Internet businesses.  Like I said, I do okay but not enough to retire on.  For me, I would have to make at least 5x my current income online in order for me to stop being a wage slave as I have good healthy and benefits package, pension, and good yearly allotted vacation time.  I would also have to save up a considerable amount first and see consistency in multiple online income streams for that to happen.  I count myself extremely fortunate to be in the situation that I am (in terms of working the 9 to 5) as I know that other people are not as secure in their jobs.  Still, if you want to jump in head first and try to be an online entrepreneur, I’d recommend putting the breaks on it and instead tread slowly.  Creating an online business is generally a slow process.  I wouldn’t expect anyone to make money online right away so just make sure you have saved enough for an emergency fund to live on.

As mentioned, I have a technical/programming background due to my day time job, but frankly, that doesn’t mean squat on the Internet when it comes to starting an online web site business.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t useful.  Heck, you wouldn’t imagine the number of times that I had to tutor people on basic web concepts that got me to thinking, wow, not only do you have a lot to learn about the Internet marketing aspects of the game, you just have to learn about the Internet, period.  Needless to say, it can be a huge mountain to climb if you don’t have the most basic of technical skills.

In order to be successful online, I’ve implored you to create a legitimate home based business web sites and I’ve also established that you need some technical skills or at least be willing to learn them through hours of frustration.  You also need to have an online business idea that hasn’t been overly saturated.  You see, it takes a blend of the three components in order for you to generate a consistent online passive income.  So let me repeat: 1) You need to have a trustworthy, authority business site because you want to be around for a long time.  2) You also need to have some technical skills in order to set up the site and test in order to try different monetization streams.  3) You also need to have a business idea that isn’t overly competitive so your online presence in the search engine ranks you number one for your keyword online business idea.

Got all that?  Let me expound on the third point because this site is about smart business opportunities and online business ideas.  When we are talking about starting a business on the Internet, it can mean a variety of things.  It can mean you have your own product to sell, you’re selling someone else’s product, or you’re selling Internet traffic.  For an example, you can be selling your sure fire ebook to lose weight fast.  Or, you can be selling someone else’s lose weight regimen while getting a commission out of it.  Or, you can be redirecting traffic from your web site to another site for them to close the deal.  Those are some of the ways in which you can make money on the Internet if you have the right online business idea in the proper “niche”.

Now, in the above example, I gave a very competitive niche which is weight loss.  Good luck with that one if you are starting out.  Pro Internet marketers dominate this niche and what is required to overtake them in the search engines is a lot of resources – i.e. time and money or just money to buy your way into that market outright.

When trying to come up with an online business idea, I’d highly recommend starting with less competitive niches.  How would you do that?   That’s a topic for a different post.