In this article, I’m going to show you the best techniques to make money online that have little or no cost and produce fast results. So first off, here’s one that does not involve any cost at all.

Let’s get back to those keywords I talked about in an earlier article, “This Is How You Spot The Best Affiliate Opportunities“. Remember the information keywords? Here we’ll use the buzz factor to cash in on viral publicity. It is as simple as setting up a blog and putting AdSense ads on it. We’ll then use the information keywords to drive unpaid traffic to it.

The crucial factor here is the keyword’s buzz factor. Is it hot enough for people to spread the word? Usually, celebrity news, politics, sports, etc. are the kind of news bits that will work here.

After you have picked the buzz worthy keywords, set up your blog and add your AdSense code to it. You need to get your adsense ad as much exposure as possible - so that you get a great click through rate on your ads, thereby exploding your income. You must now add a blog post about the keyword you’ve chosen. Don’t worry, you can copy and paste the news item itself for the blog post. Add a small article that is informative, with complete details of the news item.

Now you need traffic - and lots of it. How will you get it? Use the power of social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc. These sites get awesome traffic that you want to cash in and that too without paying a dime. Create an account at these sites and submit your story as per the instructions.

Rather than do this manually, you have the option of using automation tools that can achieve this for you. We are talking about thirty minutes to AdSense income here, remember? Use these tools to submit your news items to plenty of social bookmarking sites and almost right away you will see floods of traffic targeted to your keywords. Make sure you read the site’s policy to avoid getting your item banned.

While you can create a new blog for each news item, it is better to post on one blog as it not only saves time but is also beneficial in terms of search engine optimization. Why lose search engine traffic?

To summarize, you can use high buzz high demand keywords to increase your AdSense income while leveraging the power of social bookmarking sites. You need to do this quickly and on time. If you delay, then you lose the power of the buzz factor of these keywords. Finding these keywords must be a continuous process and thanks to Google’s Hot trends it will be a matter of minutes before you zero in on your list.

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If you have heard of the Internet marketing business for quite some time, then you already know that niche marketing is one of the most popular methods of making money online. Best of all, this market is nowhere near saturation because of the ever-increasing demand for quality information.

So let us quickly look at how you can select a niche that pays.

Choosing THE right product from a hot list of products is probably the most difficult thing for a marketer. Coming up with an idea that sells is something that gives jitters even to the experts. Here are a few things you can do to improve your chances.

Keep your eyes open: The first thing to do is to spend some time surfing the net. Look at ads on websites. What products are they selling? Visit blogs and look at the “paid sponsors” section. Watch the news and read papers. See what products are being offered on the market right now. Search for a keyword and see what comes up in the search engines. Visit websites like google.com/trends or wordtracker.com and look up the demand for keywords you like. Watch TV and find what products are selling hot. Market research is vital to finding the right niche.

Look inwards: What ideas do you have in your head? Are your ideas already on sale? Explore new ideas and new angles of old ideas. Can you come up with a better idea and beat your competition?

Turn to ClickBank: Just as their tag suggests, ClickBank is the world’s biggest marketplace. So, they have a finger on the pulse of the market. If it is selling hot, it will be on ClickBank. Visit their website and click on “Buy products”. This will open up a large category of products. Clicking on any of these categories will take you to the sub-categories of that category. Click on any of the sub-categories and see what kinds of products are selling in that niche. Read through the sales pages of these products and discover their USP. This will give you a good idea of what you should select.

Once you have identified your niche, half of your business structure is in place. But you need to build the other half too.

The power of niche marketing comes from the fact that the market consists of consumers looking for a particular product. Even if you develop a product, you can’t succeed till you shine a torch on the fact that you are the best in your field. You need to reach out to people.

For this, it is essential that you know your target audience. Knowing who you are marketing to, makes it easy for you to channel your energy and marketing $$ only on that section of people.

For example, take a car dealership. The first thing you have to decide is where the dealership is located. If it is in New York, chances of consumers coming from Seattle to buy from you are less. So, narrow your focus to people within a 50-mile radius. This increases your chances of clinching a sale.

Defining your target audience helps you to:

• Maximize your profit by targeting a defined market. Your efforts will no longer be like a shot in the dark.
• You can optimize your search engine accordingly, so your customers can easily find you.
• You can offer solutions specific to your niche.
• This makes it easy for you to develop new ideas for supporting products.
• It is easier for you to dominate the market if you know the dynamics of your niche.

This should give you a good idea of how to develop a niche and become the expert of your field.

Now that you have the product, it is time to market it. Niche marketing can be done in two ways: Membership websites and websites with no up front charges.

Membership websites obviously ask for a fee upfront, before they give members access to their site. This is a recurring income business model where members keep renewing their subscriptions if they are happy with the product you offer.

Websites without an up front charge are a little different. They offer the cake free of cost and tell members to pay up for the icing. If you like the cake well enough, you will pay for the icing.

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Like web optimization, you have to be careful with the methods you use to generate traffic to your site. You surely wouldn’t want people to ignore or dismiss you as spam or just another advertiser. Here are some traffic-generating tips that will get you lots of traffic without letting you get blacklisted.

• Writing articles on your AdSense keywords is probably one of the best ways to generate traffic for your site. Make sure the content is clear, informative and to the point. At the end of the article, encourage readers to visit your site. There they can learn more about your product or access more articles. Remember to add your name and website’s details at the end of your articles.
• Submit these articles to ezines and article directories. Encourage people to use your articles and share them with others. The more your articles get spread around, the more traffic they generate.
• Start a blog. Blogs attract a lot of visitors, often more than ordinary websites. You don’t have to post every single day- just a couple of times a week is enough. In fact, you can use your articles as posts itself. Remember to provide a link to your site on your blog.
• Swap links with other websites. This can greatly increase your traffic. If you exchange links with a site that generates a lot of traffic, you automatically get that traffic coming your way as well.
• Join networking sites, forums and groups that are related to your niche market. Interact with others and take a pro-active part in the community. Try and get involved in projects that are mutually beneficial- for example, you could showcase a person and their product on your blog. They could do the same for you in return.
• Give people an incentive to visit your site. Getting access to useful information is a good lure. But let’s face it, people love getting things for free. That doesn’t mean you have to hand out free samples every time- offering items like discount coupons or eBooks attracts lots of traffic as well and that often translates into AdSense clicks.

Remember that a good portion of the traffic you generate needs to translate into clicks and sales. In order to do that, you need to constantly think of new tactics to attract customers and encourage them to click on the ads. You also have to keep your website in optimum order. This is probably the most time-consuming part of keeping your online business going.

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