I was spending some time over the weekend going through my Google reader, catching up on some reading, when I came across a post from a blog called Life Reboot, which really hit a nerve with me. The post itself was titled “Getting Things Done: Screw Perfection, Nix Distractions and Don’t Break The Chain”. Essentially, the article discusses how we all have these great ideas – whether it be for creating niche websites or writing articles or whatever – but that we strive for perfection in everything that we do. Wanting everything to be perfect causes us to waste time getting to the end goal and that in the end, we don’t do anything at all.

This is me in a nutshell. I want my sites to be perfect – have the most awesome website design, the coolest logo, great content, etc. In fact, I can spend days designing the right logo or picking the right colour theme. I enjoy it, I have a very creative mind and designing the site is the best part! BUT like I said, I can spend days doing this. In the past I would do this then weeks would pass and the site just always wasn’t quite finished, there were still some finishing touches I needed to do – I would tell myself – then it’d be done. I would then come across another great website idea and would get started on designing that one, weeks would pass – you get the idea. It was a circle that left me with a bunch of unfinished sites.

The good thing is that I know this about myself and it is something I’m working on. So back to the post, “screw perfection, if you aim for it, you will fail”, it reads. In the pursuit of wanting to do things right, we stall, because there is always something that prevents us from getting it right. We all don’t know everything and the thing that prevents us from getting it right could be not knowing web design, not having the best writing skills, not understanding how to alter the wordpress code to get the site looking exactly right.

The article talks about a Singer/Songwriter called Jonathan Coulton who, in 2005, started a “Thing A Week” series. His goal was to write and record one song per week for the period of a year. Every week he did this, uploaded them to his website for his fans to listen to even when he didn’t think the songs were that good. Of course, not all of the songs were good but he fulfilled his goal and in the process of screwing perfection, actually did something to get himself to the place he wanted to be. Out of the 52 songs he wrote one or two became very popular and he now makes $500,000 per year from his music.

I felt so inspired by this story I have decided to take on my own challenge – The 52 Website Challenge. For the next year I will make one niche website per week (or more if that’s even possible) with the goal of having at least 52 sites by this time next year. They may not all turn out to be winners but I have to come across a couple of goldmines in the process. I actually like deadlines, I work better with a little pressure, so I’m hoping that by giving myself this goal, I can get rid myself of the never ending cycle I have previously found myself in of never finishing a site because it’s just not quite perfect yet. If I can build 52 decent sites with decent content rather than having an almost perfect work in progress, this has to be a step in the right direction. Right?

Of course I will be documenting my progress here, I think it will give me even more motivation if I know that people might see it if I fail. I would love it if anyone else was interested in doing this challenge with me and keep me updated each week. It might not even have to be a website a week challenge, it could be one per month or something else altogether that you want to complete each week.

One of the hardest parts of starting a niche website is to find something to start a niche website about. It’s easy to think of general topics such as insurance or travel but these are not niche topics and you have to drill a lot deeper to find a specific product or service to promote successfully.

There are lots of ways to get the creative juices flowing and I encourage anyone to use as many methods as possible when trying to come up with ideas for a niche website. Some people get ideas just from watching TV or reading magazines, some gets their ideas from trying to find a solution to a problem they have and can’t find one.

Ideas can come to you in all sorts of ways but the five methods below are the ways I have used so far to find ideas to start a niche website. This post does not include the actual research to see if a keyword is going to be profitable, as I will do a totally separate post about that, only the method to first find a keyword.

1. Google Keyword Tool

You will see this tool mentioned everywhere in the Internet Marketing world and pretty much everybody uses it to perform keyword and competition analysis. I find it can also be a very effective way to find niche keywords and help get ideas flowing. Normally, when you read about Google’s Keyword Tool, you will most likely be told to use the exact keyword match feature as this is for determining how much traffic a keyword is going to receive. In the case of using it to get keyword ideas, leave the “Broad” checkbox checked and enter a general or non-longtail (is that even a word?!) keyword. Also leave the “Only show results related to my search term” unchecked and hit search.

At this point we are not looking at number of searches or amount of competition, as this will be done later in the research phase. If you scroll down you will be given a list of related searches which are more longtail and specific in nature. As an example I have searched for the term “digital camera” to see what other topics will come up to give me ideas. Scrolling through I can see search terms such as “waterproof digital cameras”, “compact digital camera reviews”, “digital camera reviews 2011″, “memory cards for digital cameras” and so on. These are all potential ideas which are worth researching to see if there’s a possibility they could be profitable sites. This method is probably one of my favourites as it gives you ideas for keywords that you know people are searching for, that you would never have thought of yourself.

2. Offervault

I can’t remember where I heard about Offervault, so unfortunately I can’t give credit, but I was introduced to this tool a couple of months ago. It is a site which collects all affiliate programs and offers on the internet so you can see them all in one place. It is a free site and you don’t need to be a member to use it, but I recommend you do sign up as you get invitations to free webinars that they hold regularly. I have already “attended” two since signing up and have been able to get a lot of quality information about niche websites from them. I sometimes find it hard to be at the webinar when it’s actually live due to the time difference here in Australia, but a tip is to sign up for the webinar anyway, as you get emailed a link to the recording of the webinar after it’s done. I have found this the case for all webinars, not just Offervaults.

There are a couple of ways to use Offervault. You can search for a particular product if you already have a keyword in mind. If not, you can just scroll through all the offers that are listed on their homepage. Alternatively you can search through New Offers Only, which is good for finding new products on the market which may have little competition right now. When doing these types of search, you can select to sort the offers by Payout so you can search through the biggest payouts first, if this is what you are looking for.

One more way that you can use Offervault to find potential niche site ideas is by using the scrolling Live Searches feature. This features is exactly what you’d think – it shows you terms which are currently being searched for right now, which shows there is a demand for that particular product.

3. Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are good because they have huge lists of products and services, all with affiliate programs, ready for you to promote. I use Commission Junction a lot and I read that they have something like over 2 million products in their database. All you do is pick an advertiser and view their products to see if they have any potentials. In the example below I was browsing through the Sports category and came across an advertiser called Sea Eagle Inflatable Boats. I decided to click on them to see what products they had available. I would be interested to research their products further as I can see their inflatable boats are selling for prices in the hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars and they are paying out 10-15% in commissions.

4. Ebay Pulse

Ebay Pulse is a division of the Ebay site which shows what products are being searched for, what the most watched items are and what the most popular stores are. You can scroll through these features as well as browsing through their categories to find potential ideas for your niche site.

5. Amazon

This is very similar to using Ebay Pulse – use Amazon to browse through their categories to find ideas. Amazon also provides best seller lists and lists of what customers are looking at right now.

In my opinion, finding an actual keyword to perform further research on can be the longest part of the whole process but if you take the time to really drill down into companies and what products and services they have to offer, you will find some real gems, which is what we are all looking for.

Do you use a totally different or unconventional method to find your keywords? I’d love to hear about it.

Buying your first domain name can be a little daunting. Not only are you taking the first big step in actually doing this – creating a website for yourself – is seems so technical at first and what do all those terms mean. DNS. Nameservers. cPanel. FTP. Once you get your head around the lingo, it’s actually a fairly simple system to master.

I buy a mixture of .com and .com.au domains and there are a couple of difference between buying the two. Australia has a couple of conditions that you have to adhere by that you don’t have to when buying .com domains. In Australia, to purchase a .com.au (or .net.au) domain name you need to have an ABN. This doesn’t mean to need to have a business or be trading as a business. You can easily go get yourself an ABN at the Australian Business Register website. By doing this it doesn’t mean you have to register business names, register for GST or any of that, it just means you will be allocated an ABN and it’s up to you whether you ever use it for business purposes. As a side note, you’ll also find that when signing up for affilate programs, you are sometimes required to provide your ABN. When purchasing .com domains outside of Australia, you are not required to provide any kind of business information to register. Aussie domain names also have to be registered for a minimun of 2 years. I have done a little research on this but can’t find out why we have to register them for 2 years – if anyone knows, please let me know!

Where To Buy Domains

I buy all my .com domains from Go Daddy, which are extremely competitive in price. You’ll find most internet marketers use Go Daddy to buy their domains. Go Daddy is not only cheap, there are always coupons available online that give even more discounts. And I just love coupons! For example, I purchased 6 domain names the other day and after the coupon I used the total cost was AUD$43.

You have to purchase .com.au domain names from an Australia Registrar. Though I’m not 100% on this but I’m pretty sure that no one outside of Australia can sell .com.au domains. I buy my aussie domains from Netregistry or Crazy Domains. I like Netregistry as they are a very reputable, solid company but they tend to be more expensive  than others. Netregistry sometimes have sales and if I see them having one I will always buy domains from them. Australian sites are a little sneaky in the way they advertise their rates for domain names. You will often see ”Register .com.au domains for only $12″. You automatically assume this is the price for the two years but it is not – it’s the price per year even though you have to buy two years – so just keep an eye out for that.

How Much They Should Cost

When buying .com domains the market is very competitive but the average price usually ranges between $7-$10. As mentioned before, Go Daddy have lots of coupons and if you purchase your hosting with Go Daddy then buy your domain name after you usually get a .com domain for under $2. When buying .com domains just do a little reasearch to see where you’ll get the best deal.

In regards to aussie domains, Netregistry usually charge around $34-$36 to register a domain for two years while Crazy Domains charge $24 for two years. The only thing I don’t like about Crazy Domains is that if you have your hosting with another registrar, which you most likely will, they make you buy a DNS package to enable you to change your email settings to be able to get your emails through your host provider. It’s only around $5 per year but it’s just a little annoying that it’s something else you have to to sign up for. On the other hand, Netregistry don’t charge for this.

Now For Your Hosting

Up until this week I put all my hosting through Go Daddy. It’s cheap, especially compared to aussie host providers, and costs around AUD$6-7 per month (per site). So I’m currently paying around $70 per month for my hosting. This week though, I found out that hosting providers have plans which allow you to have unlimited websites registered for the one price. I don’t know how I didn’t know about this earlier! I have started hosting with Hostgator, which I have heard good things about over at the Warrior Forums. The sites I have currently hosted with Go Daddy I will leave there for now as I have never had a problem with Go Daddy hosting. So why would I change? Well Hostgator have a hosting plan which costs AUD$8 per month for unlimited domains and unlimited disk space. To get the same plan on Go Daddy costs AUD$15. I also did a search online for a Hostgator coupon and found one which gives me my first month of hosting for $0.01. Yes, that’s one cent. At one point, I thought with the aussie exchange rate it would eventaully be charged at $0.00 but it still cost me a cent. I am going to trial Hostgator for the month and see how it goes, then will make a decision on who to go with.

You Have A Domain & Hosting, Now What?

Once you have purchased your domain and hosting you may have to make some adjustments to the settings - mainly the nameservers. A nameserver tells your domain host where your actual website content is being hosted. When you buy a domain it is by default, pointed at where you bought the domain from. If you are buying your domain and hosting at the same place, there is no need to change anything. Below, I have provided some directions on how to change your nameservers if you do buy domains and hosting separetely.

Go Daddy Domain with External Hosting

When you purchase your hosting, Hostgator will email you details of what your nameservers are. Log into your Go Daddy account and head over to Domain Management and then into DNS Manager. This should bring you to a list of your domains. Select Edit Zones to change.

You then scroll right down to the bottom of the page where you’ll see the current Nameservers. Here you can select Quick Add and enter the correct Nameserver. You will need to do this twice as you need to enter two different Nameservers. Once entered Save Zone Files.

You then need to delete the default Nameservers otherwise the correct ones won’t work. To do this, just select the checkboxes next to the Nameservers you want to delete, then scroll back to the top of the page and select Delete.

Crazy Domain Domain with External Hosting

To change your Nameservers in Crazy Domains you need to log into your Domain Name Manager Account and navigate to Manage Domains. This will bring up a list of your domains. Select the one you want to change. On the next screen scroll down until you see Update Nameservers and this is where you enter the correct Nameservers and delete the default ones.

Netregistry Domain with External Hosting

To change your Nameservers at Netregistry you will need to log into your account where you will be taken to an Account Summary page. At the section named Administer/Upgrade Domain, select the appropriate domain from the list and Administer. From here you can select Domain Name. At the bottom of this page, it gives you the option to update your Nameservers.

Just take note that it can sometimes take up to 24 hours for the changes to take effective so give it a day. If it’s still not working then investigate what the problem could be or contact the helpdesk of the domain host. That’s basically all there is to taking the first steps in setting up your website. Done once, it becomes a breeze and you should be up and running within a couple of hours of purchasing your domain and hosting.

A little background…

I was first exposed to affiliate marketing back in 2006 while working for a major newspaper within their “digital” department. Our department looked after their website, which was brand new at the time. While still trying to book advertisers, they filled their ad spots with affiliate ads. I thought I had found my golden ticket. All I had to do was set up a couple of websites, pop on some of these ads and away I go to make my millions. Boy was I wrong. Firstly, I was wrong for thinking I could get the kind of traffic that site was getting. Secondly, I realise now, that I knew nothing back then and my idea that all I had to do was build a site and people would just miraculously find it, was wrong.

So, I did a little research – mainly of what affiliate products I could promote rather than what a good niche to set a site up in would be – and found the highest paying offers. Travel. Insurance. Etc. One of my first sites was a travel booking site. I signed up with an affiliate – IAN I think it was – who paid out 20% commission for any hotel and travel bookings made through my site. Imagine how much people spend on travel, so dollar signs were going off in my eyes thinking of the commission I would make. At the time I hadn’t heard of wordpress so I put together a website myself, which is actually my favourite part of this whole process. At the time I thought it looked great but now that I know a whole lot more it probably didn’t.

Everyday for months I checked my stats waiting for the traffic and money to roll in. As most of you probably guessed, it never did. I knew nothing about SEO or how to generate traffic. Also, I had chosen an area so saturated with competition, not just little competition but legitimate, hard core competition. I didn’t realise it at the time but I was competing against Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline just to name a few. I probably didn’t make it onto the 100th page of Google!

So I got frustrated, left it and started a new website. I did this a few times until I ended up with maybe 6 or 7 unfinished websites promoting products in categories that I just could never compete in. I guess at the time I looked at how much search there was for a keyword such as travel or hotel bookings – and there is millions – and thought “all I need is 1% of that traffic to come to my site…” I never thought about how anyone was going to get to my site though. A couple of years passed where I put it on the back burner because I was frustrated. All the while I did keep learning about making money online because I have a genuine passion for the internet and want it to be my source of income.

What are niche websites…

Basically niche websites are exactly what the term means - a special area of demand for a product or service. Or a recess in a wall for holding and statue or urn…..Rather than building websites around subjects that have so much traffic but also massive amounts of competition, build something specialised for a smaller but more dedicated audience. If you choose a popular subject you have to realise the amount of time and money you will have to put into it before you can even hope to beat your competition. Imagine how much time and money I would have had to spend to beat Expedia to the top of Google.

How do niche sites work…

Building a niche website takes a lot of research and planning before even getting started on the building phase. Research is where you do not want to get it wrong. I will basically research topics which have a low amount of traffic – over 1,000 search per month but under say 50,000 – and a low amount of competition. When I get to that stage I will go through in detail the way I have learnt so far to do this. When you target low traffic, low competition niches, it is easier and quicker to get to the front page of Google which is where you want to be if you want people to visit your site.

Why have I chosen this…

There are an unlimited amount of ways that you can make money online. Just go over to the War Room at Warrior Forums and you will find hundreds of people with their own way of how they have made money online. Unfortunately, it is also all contradictory. For example, you will find many people who say niche websites are THE way to make a living online. I then read a report yesterday about the fact niche websites are not the way to go because you can’t cross sell. At the end of the day you have to pick one otherwise you will never make a move. I have chosen niche websites because the method makes sense to me and I feel like it’s something I could be successful at. There are other ways to make money online that I just don’t feel I have the knowledge, time or money to try. Perhaps in the future, but for right now it’s niche websites.

I also recently purchased access to the Unstoppable Affiliate by Andrew Hansen – an Australian internet marketer. While I think this course is aimed at people who has experience, as they don’t start from the very beginning or include the basics and I already knew most of the topics they talked about, I feel like it was a good validation that I am on the right path. There’s nothing worse when you are trying to give something a go, than feeling like you just don’t know if what you are doing is correct.

The next step…

So the next step is doing some research and purchasing domains and hosting. The next post will go into detail of the kind of research that needs to be done and where I buy my domains and hosting for both .com domain names and Australian .com.au domain name

In my first couple of posts to this blog, I talked about how I was planning on eventually leaving my day job to be self employed full time, only to be made redundant. It was sort of a surprise and I just wasn’t ready for it. I say it was ‘sort of’ a surprise because the business wasn’t doing well and the work was running out but I definitely thought there would be others to be made redundant before I was.

I had just returned from 5 weeks travelling around the U.S. so my plans were to continue working there for at least 6 months and save some money up. During this time I was also going to get some work freelancing in web and graphic design to keep some money coming in while I build up my “passive income”. Redundancy two weeks after returning from holiday with no money wasn’t part of my plan!

So, after spending the past month going through days of feeling okay about things, that it’ll all work out to almost having panic attacks thinking about how I’m going to go broke and not being able to pay my mortgage – on these days I furiously apply for as many jobs as I can find only to spend the next day hoping they don’t call me because I don’t really want the job – I have now come up with a plan of attack.

This new plan has allowed me to calm down a little and get to work. The plan isn’t much different from before, I’m just going to have to work quicker and harder to get the results I want. Although the plan is a lot more detailed than this and I’ll get into more detail later, my ultimate goal is to make living full time from building websites that are monetised by Google Adsense and/or affiliate links and products. I want to use this blog as a way to journal and keep track of what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. If anyone comes across this blog and finds it useful, then great!

I read a lot of blogs and they are usually from people who are already making money online and they then start a blog to teach other people how to do it. While these blogs are great and I have learned everything I know to date from them, I find they are quite advanced in what they teach and forget the basics. I often read a post then I’ll have to search around to get more information to understand exactly what they are talking about. Hopefully, reporting on my progress as I’m actually doing it will give a totally different perspective on making money online than what is currently available online.

So, my hopes for this blog is to show how to make money – or a least try to make money – from the very beginning, as well as showing my success and failures. If you should stumble across my blog, I hope you can get something out of it too.

I was made redundant on Monday. I was working for someone who used to be a friend. And I say used to be friends but not because she was my boss or because she made me redundant. As a mid-30′s woman running a very successful business, my boss was a very good friend of mine. She was positive, ambitious and funny and I looked up to her. She was the kind of person who made you feel good after spending time with her.

It was getting increasingly harder to find time to spend with her though – we’d make plans, she’d cancel. We’d make more plans, she’d cancel them. She screened calls and never called back. She’s busy running a multi million dollar company, it’s ok, I understand! I then started working for her and got to see a very different side of her. She was stressed, snappy and in a shitty mood ALL THE TIME. I wondered where the person who I knew had gone. I don’t know if I just never really knew her at all, or whether the stress of running a business changed her for the worse.

It got increasingly worse over the past year and she has now turned from the person who I wanted to be, to the person I want to be the opposite of. Although she was my boss and hired me, she didn’t tell me about my redundancy – our office manager did. She didn’t come in to see me. She hasn’t called me to explain. She hasn’t even sent a text – as a friend – to check I’m okay. I’m not mad or bitter that I have been made redundant, I’m pissed off that she’s losing friend after friend after friend…and for what? My experience over the past year though, has taught a few things about the person I don’t want to become.

So what now for me? I’m going to take some time, get some work for myself and hopefully be able to make a living being self employed. I’ll keep you updated with how it goes.

Reaching your long-term destination might feel impossible today as you try to sort out where you are in your life. But there is no time for self-pity; you have important work to do now. Don’t waste precious time because this small window of opportunity won’t remain open too long. Acknowledge anything that isn’t working and make changes as needed to get back on track.

That’s my horoscope for today. They have been like this for the past year, telling me things are changing, that my life is coming to the point where I want it to be etc. On my igoogle homepage I have a widget which displays a Daily Horoscope. Horoscopes are funny to me – when they are good I believe them, if they are bad I don’t. I do like to believe in “the universe” and astrology and horoscopes but I also believe that you make decisions based on what they say. For example, someone goes to a psychic and the psychic tells them they are going to change jobs. Prior to seeing the psychic they never thought about changing jobs but after seeing the psychic they start to notice job advertisements and since they are going to change jobs they might as well start applying and before they know if they have a new career path. Would they have done that if they hadn’t been told by a psychic it was in their future?

I saw a psychic several years ago at the Every Woman Expo. I was a bit sceptical because of the environment but I had always wanted to give it a try. I chose a lady who read tarot cards. I was determined not to give anything away, to not encourage her to take my answers to her questions to make up a story. She asked me if I was moving overseas. I said no. She asked me if I was moving to another state. I said no. She asked me if I was changing jobs. I said no. She started to realise what I was doing and said “Okay, well I’m not sure how this fits into your life so hopefully you know, but I can just see change all around you. Something major is going to change – your job, where you live or your relationship. Things are going to be different.” Of course, my boyfriend told me I had wasted my money.

I loved my job, I was going to stay there as long as I could. Honestly, I have always wanted to move overseas but I wasn’t seriously thinking about it at the time and my relationship was fine. I forgot all about the psychic and got on with life. About six months later I was made redundant. And this started a whole shift in my life. I was forced to think about my future and what I wanted out of life, what I really wanted to do. I was in a job that was quite unique and knew it would be nearly impossible to do the same thing. It made me look at what skills I had and how I could use them. Before this I didn’t think I had too many valuable skills, but when you are forced to look at yourself you see the things you are actually good at. It also brought out things that I forgot I enjoyed doing.

But, going back in time for a minute….one thing I do believe in is that things happen for a reason. Prior to being made redundant at that job, for some reason I was moved away from my whole department and was sitting near another department I had nothing to do with. It was a group of girls who worked on a life and style magazine and, honestly, I had pre-conceived notions of them, their personalities and how much better they thought they were than everyone because they worked on a glossy magazine. Of course, I was wrong (and have learnt to never judge anyone without knowing them!). I sat near a girl and we got to know each other. It turns out we are the same age, went to school in the same area (which was over 50km away), even had the same group of friends at school, now worked at the same company and even lived in the same suburb – and we had never met till now! At the time I had a hobby blog where I wrote about beauty products and she took a look at it one day. She commented on how good my writing was and that I should try writing some articles and submitting them to publications. I hadn’t thought about it until then but all of a sudden I remembered how much I loved writing and that I was good at it.

In high school, English was my favourite subject as we got to write so many creative stories and I did really well in it. It was when I got into Year 11 and had to do my TEE that I stopped liking writing. You are forced to write essays, which are just boring to me and I missed the creative side of English. Over those two years it was kind of drummed out of me and over the next ten years I totally forgot about it. It’s a bit unfortunate that this sort of thing happens at school – your talents should be encouraged instead of being pushed aside for the “academic” side of school.

Anyway, the psychic turned out to be right, things have changed and it’s for the better. If those small events of that year hadn’t happened I would still be plodding along in a job I thought I loved but didn’t satisfy me or challenge me. I now write regularly and would love to make that my “real” job. I just have to make it happen!

I could have sat for days trying to decide what to write. In fact I did. I didn’t want my first post to seem too new…like “Hi, this blog will talk about blah blah”. Then I wondered if I should start writing about a topic as though this blog had been around for a while, no introductions.

I was browsing through my blog reader today and came across a post by a blog that I didn’t even realise I was subscribed to, Office Buddha, about choices and which is the right to make. The post resonated with me as it’s sort of how my life is at the moment.

The right choice, and the one that scares the hell out of you are usually the same.

At this point in my life I have a few things going on, things that I’m trying to make happen and I’m on the brink of making them happen. I’m at that scary point where you are pretty sure you are going in the right direction but, what if……I’m on the edge and I just need to make the leap off to be where I want to be.

Which one is your heart pulling you towards? Why are you denying it? Logic can sometimes be the enemy. Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.

So, I’m not going to agonise over how to introduce my first post to the world any longer. I’m taking a leap and just going for it. Hopefully it’s the first of many I hope to take in the near future and I hope you’ll be there with me.