There’s been a lot of talk of niches in recent years.  You throw up a quick site, get it to the point where it makes around $3 - $5 per day - then move on and do it again. The theory is, a hundred or so of these sites will make you a decent amount of money each day.

Sound good? Well, yes this strategy could certainly work - but you would absolutely have to know what you were doing. It’s actually not easy to make even $1 per day in passive income from a site. A look at the discouraged-sounding posts in the affiliate and pay-per-click forums on the Digital Point discussion board will show you that.

The headaches involved with doing the necessary SEO on all these sites, gaining them links, and continually checking them all to ensure they keep their place in the search engines - it’s starting not to sound so much like passive income as damned hard work.

Create something real

Why not instead build just one site - and throw all your hard work and resources into that? Create something worthwhile, something real and permanent.  Create something you enjoy in area you have expertise or good knowledge in. Find your niche and stick to it.

You’ll find that advertisers come to you after a while, and you can also create multiple income streams from this one site.

This isn’t to discourage those who love to gamble, and love the idea of their very own niche empire. All power to you if that’s what you want to do. But for those who want something more, building one or two great and profitable websites might just be the better option.

If it was painful to write essays when you were at school, then you might struggle when it comes to adding written content to your website.

These days, everyone has heard that ‘content is king’ - content brings your site up in search engine results, and content keeps people on your site when they get there.

But finding the right words, and putting enough words together to make even one 300 word article can seem like too much time and effort.

What can you do?

1. Forget the kind of essays you wrote at school. Write directly to the reader - as though you’re having a conversation with them. Before you know it, you’re done.

2. If you struggle with punctuation, grammar and writing style - why not do a free writing course - and get visitors to your website into the bargain. How? try Ezine Articles ( http://EzineArticles.com/ ) Sign up and and they’ll take you through a free article-writing course via email. You’ll also learn what you need to know to write professional articles for the web. I learned a lot of what I know about applying my writing skills to the internet the hard way - over years of practice and dogged research! But the Ezine tuition is very, very good and will get you there a lot quicker. And - the articles you send them allow linkbacks to your website. You can’t lose!

3. Put a blog on a subdomain of your site. Write a post or two everyday. It doesn’t have to be 500 words - it can be any amount you want and can be very informal. Fresh content will bring you visitors. And guess what? You’ve just escaped having to write articles!

4. Steal articles. Legally. That’s what article websites are for. You browse for what you want - find amazing articles and snatch them. You must leave the article author’s details and links in place.  The downside is that having these free articles gives your website duplicate content - search engines know that the same content is on another hundred or so sites.

5. Hire someone to write your stuff. There are a truckload of freelance sites around where you can have this done at a reasonable price.  Don’t settle for the cheapest though. You need to ensure that you see samples of the person’s work, and you need to ensure that the material they write for you will be completely original.

You can think of a website as being like an investment property.

If you were to renovate a property, what would you do to make it more appealing?

Clear the clutter?
Every pixel on your website is ‘real estate’. Use it to promote a clean, professional image. Clear off the clutter and replace it with well-thought-out spaces. And perhaps even clean up the code while you’re at it!

Give your site a repaint?
Your site’s homepage is like the front of a house - the yard and facade give a certain image about the owner. Peeling paintwork, cracked concrete and leggy lawns are never a good look - and neither are shabby, outdated elements on your homepage. If the colors are looking jaded, modernizing the colors will give your site a new look. Replace the header and menu to match the new colours.

Complete knockdown and rebuild?
If your entire site is sagging, and desperately needs updating, it might be time to throw out it out and start again. If you have a large site, this is can be a huge task. But the results can pay for themselves as new web users are attracted to your website.

Thinking of buying a property?
What do you weigh up when you’re thinking of buying a house as an investment?

If you’re considering buying someone else’s website - look at each site through the eyes of a property investor.

Is the website undervalued? Can you spot hidden potential?
Does the website look neglected and ugly? Would a quick renovation give it new life?
Is the website underutilized? Could you easily add some features that will interest web users?
Is the website practically heritage-listed (a golden oldie)? On the net, prime real estate can be thought of in terms of the amount of years that a website has been on the online. The older it is, the more respected it is by search engines. Older websites have proved the test of time.

Does your blog feel like it’s this huge thing that you don’t really know what to do with?

Are you scratching your head wondering what on earth you’re going to write about every day?

Fear not, you just need to feed your blog, and give it some love and kindness.

The big empty blog

No longer are people worried about their bums looking big their latest outfit - it’s all about the blog and social networking in 2008. At least Twitter is just a quick line here and there about what you happen to be doing at the time, no matter how banal. And at least in Facebook, everyone is entertained by your thowing sheep at them, and sending them hatching eggs and pretty fish.

Not so in the blog. In a blog you are rattling around in a big empty space, with all kinds of categories to fill up. It’s not enough to write about your cat vomiting under your bed that morning and the fact that your car insurance is due.  No one cares. (Unless you’re writing a personal blog - in that case, tell it all.  Even if no one else is interested, at least your friends will read it.)

People want to find value in your blog

The thing is, people want to be able to take something of value away from your blog. It could be something to help improve their lives, something that gives them information, something that make them laugh, something that shows them a new perspective.

Got it?  Good

It’s not about you. It’s about your reader.

Find your authentic voice

Here’s where the fine line comes in. You can’t be always writing what you think your readers want. You can’t please everyone.  Repeat, you can’t please everyone.  Write on a subject you are passionate about. Write about what you know, and about what you want to know. Write what you want to write, and let your personality come through. It’s the only way to sustain a long-term blog.

You don’t want to get bored before breakfast!

How to write volume posts

Think of a subject you want to write about - then sit down and brainstorm 10 or so points that you would make if you were going to explain the subject. Take each of these 10 points and make each one of them an article.

It’s not spreading the butter too thinly on your toast to do that - done right it’s actually better. You can talk on each point in some depth, making the information more valuable.

As thoughts come to you during the day, think, ‘Is this bloggable?’ 

Make notes of your bloggable thoughts - you’ll build a stock of topics you can write about.

How to set up your categories

Are you the type of person who ends up cramming every drawer and cupboard in the house full of stuff, no matter how much storage space you have? If you are, then you might be comfortable with a good range of categories from the start - because you know you’re bound to fill them.

Are you the type of person who fills their drawers and shelves with exactly what you need, and no more? You might be better off starting with just two or three blog categories, and add more later on.

Whichever option you choose, remember that you don’t want to be moving posts around in the future. If other blogs and websites have linked to the posts that you move, those links will be broken. Plus it’s better for search engine optimization not to change your page URLs. (you can do redirects if needed - but far easier to put your posts in the correct categories from the start.)

Don’t hide your (blog) love away…

If your site is meant to be all about the blog, don’t hide it away in a subdomain or subcategory - If you think your site will look more respectable if the main site is a conventional website - think again. There are many blogs on the net which command the respect and attention of web users - they are websites in their own right.

So if a blog is the purpose for having your site - make it loud and proud - have your site open on your blog.

We’ve all seen blogs tucked away on someone’s website, with a few straggly posts decorating its empty bloggie rooms. These blogs look very much like an afterthought - "Oh, I guess I should have a blog. Everyone else does."

Don’t have a blog just because ‘everyone has one’.   Blogs like this look tacked-on and useless - and they detract from your site.

If you want to keep your blog but it’s looking like a ghost town, consider putting it on a separate site - Give it room to take on a life and personality of its own. You’ll treat it more seriously - and just as importantly, other people will take it more seriously.

Blogs do have their place in a subdomain or category if they fall naturally into place there and bounce off content in the rest of the site.

Yahoo buzz was introduced by Yahoo earlier this year. It’s a digg-style most-popular stories and tidbits kind of thing. Or, it’s digg with difference. It only pulls in material from its own publisher network, and it doesn’t have all the additional functionalities that digg sports.

From the Yahoo site:

The Web’s most remarkable stories, determined by people like you. Stories are ranked based on your votes, emails, and searches.

If you like a story, you can click it to ‘buzz up’ - increasing its popularity ranking. Yahoo also uses statistics from user searches and stories sent via email. You can grab yourself a widget to display the stories, according to the category you choose. I got me one - and there it is, up yonder.

So far so good. Yahoo is already huge. They have hundreds of millions of users. A ready-made audience.

People tend to buzz off pretty quickly if they don’t like what they see - So what can you do to sweeten the deal?

Build your site to be fast and good-looking

Your site design should look professional. That doesn’t mean you have to have graphics of smiling business people and ‘reflected graphics’ plastered everywhere. It means it should look ordered and seamless, with modern aesthetic design.

Your site should load in fast. Web users are used to clicking in and out of sites across the net. The majority won’t wait for your 263 graphics to load in, no matter how beautiful. And those on dial-up possibly won’t even have the choice of waiting - your site might hang their machine altogether.

Deliver like your local pizzeria

Your local pizza parlor probably knows how you like your pizza.  Lots of garlic, hold the onion…

And it gives you what you want. Once your website has built up a following, you can fine-tune to better suit the needs of your users.

But what if your website is new? 

Start checking your site statistics to see how users arrived at your site (either with Google Analytics, your sites own control panel statistics, or another good site statistic program.) Research your product or service. Work out who your target groups are - then try to meet the needs and expectations of those groups.

Offer something tasty

Competitions, free downloads, free e-books and interaction with other users are all tasty things you can serve up.

Say it like you mean it

Have opinions. Speak them. Often.

This strategy suits a certain type of blog.  If you know your subject down to the ground and have a personality that comes across on ‘paper’ you might have a shoe-in.  Shoemoney (Jeremy Schoemaker of shoemoney.com) has this nailed. When he talks about how he made money on the internet, people listen - because he knows his stuff.

Don’t add water

Watering down your efforts by having more projects going than you can cope with is dumb. Your websites will suffer.

Build something useful, and of lasting value. Once that one thing is working well, then it’s time to expand, diversify - or time to go off and learn what you need to learn in order to take the next step.

Having many sites, or an unwieldy business idea, is going to quickly drown you. Go hard, but go strong.

Make your content compelling

Content is everything your visitors can see on your pages - written content, videos, graphics, photos, shopping items, written content and everything else. Whatever your content is - ask yourself what a user subconsciously asks themselves when they enter your site.

Why should I buy your products? Why should I engage your services? Why should I read your articles?

It’s your job to make your products must-see and must-buy, to make your services must-use, to make your written content must-read.

Don’t forget your success stories and testimonials

People love to know what others thought of a product or service.

Imagine your business is roof restorations - If you can show a before-and-after shot of a restored roof, with a happy customer smiling in the foreground - that’s a pretty strong testimonial. You have a visual representation of what you can achieve, plus a real-life customer telling others they think you did a wonderful job.

For a discussion forum,  lots of active members tells visitors they might find value here. Similarly, a blog with a few thousand subscribers tells visitors that this is a popular blog.

Be kind

Well, kindness is sweet, so it must therefore be sticky…

Give freely, share the love, help others in their internet endeavours whenever you can

It could be something new, something unique or something that is done better than similar websites.

Get this part right and traffic is guaranteed.

Personality
The hook could be something as simple as personality. There are webmasters who exude personality which engages readers. Steve Pavlina is good example of this. His site and blog are dead ordinary to look at - not looking too much different to the default Wordpress blog - and his writing flies in the face of conventional wisdom which has it that people on the net won’t read long passages. But people love to read his self-development site - and they keep coming back for more.
His website states that it is “currently the most popular personal development web site in the world, receiving over 1.8 million visitors per month”http://www.stevepavlina.com

Community
Creating a sense of community, a place on the net where people feel they belong is not easy. Sites like Facebook and Myspace allow people to create their own little communities - a formula which works wonderfully well. These sites provide the simplicity of use, robust functionality and more gimmicks than you can throw a sheep at. They also take away the awkwardness of connecting to others online - and that is a huge factor in their favour.

Sites where people share common aspirations are the other type of communities. Whether the shared aspiration is to debate world issues, talk about technology or meet other parents, there are communities to meet those needs.
Some of these sites meet very specific needs. A discussion forum site for enthusiasts of the Panasonic 3CCD camcorder range has under 10,000 members. But for such a narrow subject range, with all the forums being visited daily, this can certainly be described as a successful community.
http://www.pana3ccduser.com

Information
Providing people with the information they are seeking is meeting a need.

In Australia in 1998, there was one broadband provider. The provider was perceived as expensive and not always responsive to users, and there was no competition. Australians were searching for alternatives. A website started up in 1998 to meet this need. Named http://whirlpool.net.au, its founder did not realise that what he was starting would snowball into the monster site that it is today. Simon Wright unknowingly plugged into a groundswell of discontent - but he possessed the enthusiasm and ability to lead the site forward as it grew. With over 233,000 members today the site has added job boards and a knowledge base. The site has stayed out of the mainstream and remains a grassroots resource for its members and visitors.

Gimmickery
All of the sites mentioned above could be described as unique. They all have aspects not found anywhere else. But every so often, a site comes along that simply has a gimmick strong enough to carry it to success.

In the case of the site icanhascheezburger.com - the gimmick is a meme - named “lolspeak”. The site, started by Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami gets over 2 million page views every day, and makes thousands of dollars per week.
People visit the site to view photos of cats and other animals that have funny captions added - the captions being in ‘lolspeak’ which is mix between texting lingo and babytalk. People also upload their own photos, complete with captions.
This kind of concept has the capacity to go viral - which it has. Lolcat pictures are sent via email, and turn up in social networking sites everywhere. Going viral quickly builds momentum and ongoing publicity.

If you don’t have the advertising budgets and the “name” that big companies have - you need a hook for your website. This article has listed a few of the hooks that can gain you the web audience you’re seeking.

Many people starting their first WordPress blog become frustrated when they realise that word wrapping is not a built-in feature. 

If you look on a search engine, more than likely you’ll come across lots of instructions for HTML code that you can add each and every time you write a post.

I can’t think of anything more annoying than having to add this finicky code with each post in which I want to have an image.

So if you want your words to wrap, here are three ways you can go:

How to wrap text around images

This lesson, from wordpress.org gives you clear instructions on permanently changing the code in your CSS of your blog.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Wrapping_Text_Around_Images

Image Caption plugin

This nifty plugin places a neat little caption of your choosing under each image, and allows word wrapping at the same time. You simply upload it to your plugins folder, and enable it.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/image-caption/

Windows Live Writer

If you don’t mind using Microsoft products - this is a little program that lets you write posts similar to the Windows Word program. It also comes with the capability to add WLW plugins, insert headings, tags, video, hyperlinks, images and so on. You enter the name and password to your blog - and hey presto, your post is automatically published to the category of your choice.

http://get.live.com/writer/overview

When you are experiencing a problem with a program, a picture can be worth a thousand words - especially when trying to explain your problem to support staff.

Screen capture of: www.make-website.com

Some people don’t realise they can easily take a shot of their screen with the Print Screen key on their keyboard. You should find a key that says prt scr (Print Screen) on the upper right-hand side of your keyboard, inbetween the F12 and scroll lock key.

• Press the Print Screen key (which copies a shot of your screen to the clipboard)
• Paste the shot into an image processing program, such as Photoshop. (in Photoshop, click ‘New’, then ‘Paste’)
• Crop the image and save it.

That’s it!

There are many reasons why you might want a capture of your screen, and the very nifty Print Screen key does it quickly and easily.

(The capture won’t be sent to your printer, unless you are using DOS. DOS stands for Disk Operating System - which all of us used to use in the dark old days before Windows came along!)