My first attempts at making money will be focused around two of my many interests: fishing and obesity. I love to fly fish and work in health care in the field of obesity management.  After reading hours and hours of material on how to make money online I came up with a plan. In a nutshell here was my strategy:

1. Use google adwords keyword tool to figure out what people were searching for in my area of interest and see search volumes. I started searching on the keyword ‘obesity’.  As you can imagine, a lot of different keywords came up related to it.

2. Narrow down the keyword list and check for availability of domain name via GoDaddy. I had two browsers open – one on the Google Keyword Tool and the other on GoDaddy. I took a list of keywords from Google that interested me and then checked to see if that exact keyword was available as a domain. I found that one keyword – ‘measure waist’ was available as a .com site. So now I had my own domain – measurewaist.com.

3. Find a host – I ended up comparing a bunch of hosts and found that HostGator worked best for me. Their prices were very competitive and I ended up purchasing a

4. Decide on a platform to build a site – Ended up using Wordpress . It is free and has many different templates to choose from. A plus if you host  with HostGator is that Wordpress is a one-button installation – saving you from pulling your hair out. Wordpress also has many great plug-ins that help with managing your website. I added two plug-ins that I believe helped me out: Google XML Site Map Generator and All in One SEO Pack. The site map generator automatically creates a site map that Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask use to track your website. Every time you make a change, the search engines are notified. All in One SEO Pack is also a must have plug-in. Basically, it makes your blog search engine friendly. You have to have these two plugs!

5. Developed Content – I searched the web for content and simply re-wrote it to suit me needs. I also have a couple of blog entries that I wrote. The interesting thing about using Wordpress is that you can write a bunch of articles and schedule them for future publication. This saves time and also Google likes it when the content is slowly dribbled out.

So what happened?

I’m astonished that within two weeks measurewaist.com is on the first page on Google if you search for the keywords ‘measure waist’. Not bad for a first site! I think I did a couple of things that worked really well:

1. choose a domain name that was keyword specific.

2. Choose a ‘.com’ ending. I’ve read a lot about the extension doesn’t matter, but I have a feeling that it does. Plus, if I ever want to sell the site, the ‘.com’ extension is worth more.

3. Content – I included targetted content that corresponded with the key words.

4. Monetization – I didn’t include any links to affiliate programs or adsense. I read that Google doesn’t like to find brand-new sites covered with ads. Remember, Google is trying to find quality content not sites promoting this, that or the next greatest offer.

5. Plug-ins – I used the two above mentioned Wordpress plug-ins.

My next move with this site is to increase the rankings (can I get to #1?) and therefore  increase the traffic. I will use content creation as the first step and then move to link building. My overall strategy with this niche is to have a few of these keyword targeted sites that drive traffic to a monetized site that will have an obesity management/weightloss program that I want people to sign up for.

Fingers crossed! So far, so good!

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