Read KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays for Free Online

anyone can build. Darren isn’t a professional photographer. He’s not even an expert photographer. There are plenty of people on the Web with much deeper photographic knowledge and much better pictures. Today, Darren writes very little of the content that appears on Digital Photography School, offering space instead to photographers who contribute their own articles in return for the kind of visibility that only a successful blog can deliver.
     
    But it’s a subject that Darren is passionate about, one he knows a lot about, and one he enjoys publishing about. That passion comes across clearly in the quality of the content on the site, and it’s that devotion that brings in other equally dedicated readers.
     
    Darren is now a professional blogger. In addition to running Digital Photography School, he is also a cofounder of b5media, a stable of around 300 blogs on a range of different subjects. That’s given him a huge amount of valuable knowledge about what it takes to create a successful web site. He makes that information available on www.ProBlogger.com and again earns money from ads and affiliate links on those pages.
     
    Whereas Digital Photography School is a blog about Darren’s passion, ProBlogger is a blog about his profession. Both earn money.
     

The Value of Your Niche—How Keywording Can Boost the Price of Your Passion
     
    While web sites about either your profession or your passion can earn money, they won’t necessarily make the same amount of money. The most important factors that determine the value of a web site are:
    • Content
    • Traffic
    • Revenue systems
     
    Content includes quality and quantity (the more frequently you post, the more views you’ll win), but it also covers topic. Some topics simply pay more than others. You might be able to get a KaChing by publishing a web site on any subject at all, but the sound alone won’t tell you how much money is going into the cash register until you count it.
     
    That was something that Darren Rowse discovered very quickly. His first blog, which was mostly about spirituality, built an audience. But because it’s a topic with little commercial value, it didn’t generate much money.
     
    A site about the Bible, for example, will largely attract ads offering Bible study courses. These might be supplied by nonprofit or religious organizations that have few funds to pay for ad clicks and little to gain when they do pick up a lead. The amount the publisher will pay for a click will be relatively low.
     
    However, when Darren began writing camera reviews, he didn’t just pick up lots of additional readers, he also picked up higher-paying ads. Someone reading camera reviews is exactly the sort of person that camera stores most want to attract. Those stores will happily compete to put their name—and a link to their online store—in front of those readers. The result will be much higher payments each time a reader clicks an on ad, because there’s a reasonable chance that a percentage of those readers will pay an advertiser hundreds of dollars for a new camera.
     
    This is where things can start to become a little dangerous. There’s no shortage of companies on the Web offering lists of the highest-paying AdSense keywords. They certainly look useful. At a glance, you’ll be able to see that a web site about “purchase structured settlements,” for example, can generate $53.48 for every click on an AdSense ad. A page about a “Phoenix DUI attorney” can bring up ads worth $50, and “California mesothelioma doctors” are worth $46.14 per click.
     
    Compared to the usual dollar or two per click, those look like giant KaChings. Generate just three or four clicks on ads like that every day and you could be making a cool $6,000 a month in additional income.
     
    If only it were that easy. It might work, at least for a while. You could create a web site that focused on structured settlements—whatever they are—and put in the AdSense