Making money online is something most bloggers want to do. Unfortunately, as many bloggers are finding out, earning money from your website is much more than simply taking an existing blog and slapping on Adsense.

You will hear time and time again about the failure of bloggers to make money on the internet. Yes, it’s true, most bloggers won’t earn cash online.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t. While it's very hard to make money as a blogger, it's fairly easy to make money as an internet marketer. But this requires you to shelve your dreams of writing high quality content for an audience. Internet marketers don't write for an audience, they write for buyers.

Making money through blogging is not that difficult. However, the problem is that in the Make Money Online World there are a lot of scammers who have muddied clear waters with all sorts of crap: ebooks full off the wrong information, magic, get-rich-quick formulas, special software that will make you rich with a click of the button, etc.

Working at home while making money online is one of those pipe dreams that scammers love to hawk to desperate people looking for a quick fix. And looking at the prevailing amount of ads for this type of crap shows that there are a lot of people who fall for this crap.

Making money on the internet really just comes down to a simple formula. And for a cheap $9.99, I will provide this secret formula to making money online.

Just kidding!

However, you will see this type of quickly get rich promise quite often in the world of internet marketing. Many so called "gurus" will promise instant wealth with minimal amount of work for the poor sucker who falls for their BS. Other Make Money Online "experts" (John Chow, et all) try and sell you the fact that they are experts on making money online, yet they don't actually know anything about making money online -- other than to lure in newbies into thinking they are experts and hawk them useless affiliate products.

So, I guess they do know how to make money online -- but off the backs of the poor people who buy the products they hawk and from advertisers hoping to capitalize off their social traffic (which doen't convert to sales).Their so called teachings will only make them money -- not you.

You don't have to create a super-looking make money blog and get 100k people a day to make money, folks. You can make money with a fraction of that traffic if you do the right things. Most of the people who actually know how to make money online (as opposed to selling crap to people who are looking to make money online) don't go about advertising the fact that they are experts. Nor do they give away their methods. They simply MAKE MONEY.

Folks, I want to tell you right now: If you are looking at a quick fix to making money online, go find one of the millions of “making-money-online” sites and buy their products. You will at least feel like you will make money online. You won’t unfortunately, but you’ll feel good.

Making money online takes a hell of a lot of work. You have to be prepared to treat this like a part time job at least. You simply can’t make a couple half-hearted websites and expect to yield instant wealth. Nope, it aint happening like that. Those sales pitches that promise this type of thing are simple that: only sales pitches.

If you want to generate actual money through blogging/websites, etc, then be prepared to spend hours every day working at this. If you can stand working for a six months, a year, two years, maybe three years, each and every day without making a dime, then you WILL make a lot of money online – eventually. How fast depends on how hard you work and how good you get at this. But as a rule of thumb, expect that when you first start out, it will take a while before you see some tangible money. However, keep working and it will come. You have to have the patience.

Now time for the secret make money online formula. Here it is:

Make lots of niche websites + get lots of backlinks = making money online.

There we go. Now start sending me those checks ;)

“What,” you say. “It can’t be that simple.” Yes, it is that simple. You simply make a as many small websites as possible that target money making niches and then get backlinks to them. This model of making money on the internet is not a big secret, but for some reason not that many people talk about it. You certainly won't hear any of the "A lister" bloggers talking about it. But, there are many people who make some serious coin doing just this.

Now, those two things really simply a humungous amount of work. Yes there are other things to consider like how to find money making niches, how to do your keyword research, how to get backlinks, etc. But in essence, generating an online income, at least through niche marketing, always follow that formula.

So in this hub, I’m going to expand on that basic formula and give you the basic steps to follow so that you can start working your way towards an online income. But for those of you who are lazy, please don’t waste your time. This is going to take some work.

Basic Steps to Make Money Online

So here is the niche marketing model in a nutshell:

1. Find a money making keyword phrase people type into Google

2. Make a website completely geared around that keyword

3. Get that website to the top page of Google for that keyword.

4. Monotonize the website (Google Adsense or Affiliate product links).

That's it folks. That's all you have to do. Now, here is a tutorial about how to do it. This is a formula that ANYONE can follow. However, you just have to put in the work -- and this is what separate the men from the boys (or the ladies from the women?).

Why am I telling you this? Why would I want more competition? Because I know that 90 percent of you won't have what it takes to put in the effort. Most of you will get fired up, create a couple websites, then when you don't see any progress or don't see instant wealth, will give up.

You will only make money doing this if you put in work and treat this like the job that it actually is. But the end results are worth it. Once you start to make money through nice websites -- you will reap the benefits for years to come. Day and night you will have traffic coming to your website, traffic which will make you money. It's the ultimate passive income.

So, here's is how to go about getting the online passive income.

1. Pick a keyword

This is the crucial step. This is the foundation that you’ll build your money making blog/website on. If you get the keyword wrong, you won’t make very much money. But don’t sweat it, it takes a lot of lemons to make lemonade so don’t worry too much about picking the wrong keyword.

The key is to do some research. So first you need to find a keyword that has some potential. The keyword has to be something that advertisers will pay for – in other words, there has to be a potential money making market. Some of the big ones are “hair loss, skin care, loans, insurance, credit cards, etc.”

Don't worry, you don't have to just "guess" at what keywords bring in money or traffic. Google supplies a very good tool to help you navigate this world. Go here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. It's free and it's essential to use if you want to make money online

Now there key here is to get very specific. You don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Sure, going after the keyword “credit cards” is lucrative, but there is no way you will ever be able to dominate the search engines for that term. In general, generic “one term” keywords are out of most people’s league – or at least until you know what you are doing have a large support blog.

Surprisingly, the more specific you are with your search string, the more money you can make with that term. In general, the longer your keyword phrase, the less traffic you will get, but the traffic is laser targeted traffic – i.e. they are looking for something specific.

For example, “Credit Cards” is a generic term. People who type this into Google are looking for something general. It could be they want to find information about credit cards, it could be they are looking to write a school essay about credit cards, it could be they are trying to find out how to renew an expired credit card. It could be that they want to apply for a new credit card. It's a general term that captures the entire picture.

However, such general terms are usually out of reach for most people -- especially newbies to this game like yourself. So what you need to do is make the keyword more specific. For example, something more specific like “student credit cards", or something even more targeting like “no interest student credit cards.”

With niche marketing, the more targeted your search, the more money making the term. Targeted keywords capture search engine traffic looking to buy something or looking to find a solution. If your website is ready to receive this type of searcher (by receive, I mean by at the top of the search results for that term), you can sell them something or get ad clicks.

Let's use this Google keyword tool to do some research. "Credit cards" get about 11 million American searches a month. “Student Credit Cards” gets about 90k searches a month. Wow, what a reduction in traffic. But someone typing in “student credit cards” is looking for something more specific and probably looking to spend money. “No interest student credit cards” gets about 110 searches a month – too low to be of interest. “Best student credit cards gets close to 3k search a month.

They key here is traffic. You want enough traffic to make you money. Now there is no firm line here. You can make money with as few as a couple hundred searches a month. It all depends on the niche and the money advertisers are paying per click.

As a rule of thumb, look for a niche that can bring in about 30k people a month in search traffic. Note this can be a combination of multiple long tail keywords, but you want about 30k people a month. However, picking a target that get’s 3k a month can still make you some money. For first time projects, I do suggest something around 3k a month – it will be easier.

So let's do a bit of an example. I'm going to target the "hair loss" niche. This is an established money making niche. It's crazy to start off going for "hair loss" though, as this term is dominated by the experts internet markets. Go after the low hanging fruit first. Take a look at the pictures below, I show a serial list of pictures of how I use the tool to do research. I started from "hair loss" and then worked my way down to "best hair loss shampoo."

Now, i've taken some images of google keyword tool for this process. If you are confused, that should help you.

2. Make a website

You can either register a new domain, get a web server, and put a self-hosted wordpress blog on your site. However, this is a bit technical. If you want the easy way, go to blogger.com and register a free blog. It takes 3 minutes – less if you already have a Gmail account.

Make sure you have the keyword in the domain. Since we’ve selected a keyword already, we will use “hair loss shampoo” in our domain.

3. Add SEO content.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization -- essential, a fancy way of saying “creating your website in such a way that it get's the best search engine results).

Now you should write three to five, 300-500 words posts about hair loss shampoo. Where to get your content? ezinearticles.com is the best source. Simple type in “hair loss shampoo” into the search field and select the top 3-5 results that fit the topic of your website.

Now you need to be come an expert on the topic. Simply take the information and rewrite it. Is this ethical? Probably not – but as long as your rewrite the information in your own words, you should be fine. I agree it’s a bit smarmy, but this is how you will get most of your content.

Now some things to note. Our website is about “hair loss shampoo.” You want to use the keyword term about 5 times in your 300-500 word article. Try having it in the opening paragraph, the body, and the conclusion.

You can make 5 posts on your new blog (or 10) then really get backlinks to the site. You don't need a zillion pages to rank well. 5 or so blog posts with proper keyword use gives the search engines enough fodder to rank. The main thing is to get backlinks to the site.

4. Get Backlinks

Now, here is how you get your website to the top of Google: backlinks. This is the part that stumps most people and it's the part that requires the most work. In general, you should spend 90% of your time making getting backlinks and only 10% getting/writing content.

Now, I know the thought going through your head: “how the heck can I get backlinks??” Don’t sweat it now. Focus on getting 3-5 posts up on your new blog. Once you have the content, there are a few things you can do.

Go to EzineArticles.com and register an account. Rewrite your post (again) making sure you have your target keywords in the post. Now, in the content of your blog post, make sure you have a LINK to you’re your blog. This link is what’s we are calling a “backlink.” Google ranks your blog/website according to how many backlinks you have. Now, because I am such a good teacher, I even went out and created a new hub about hair loss shampoo just to show you want I am talking about. Link to that new hub, rate it, and post commments to help it out!

So here is the HTML that will generate the backlink from this article to my new blog as a demonstration. “<a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Best-Hair-Loss-Shampoos">best hair loss shampoo</a>"

Now, since I have this as HTML code, hubpages won't show the actual link. But here is what it will look like: Best Hair Loss Shampoo

Magic! Notice “best hair loss shampoo” is highlighted blue? That’s a link to the blog. The more websites that have “best hair loss shampoo” as the anchor text (i.e. the part that is in blue), the higher the site will rank for “best hair loss shampoo.” If you have the most backlinks, you will ranks #1 on google for that keyword. Folks, when you rank for number one for that term, expect about 40-50% of the traffic that the google keyword tells you. Each position from #1 to #3, you will lose about 10-20% of the traffic. To really even get a decent amount of traffic, you need to be on the FIRST PAGE OF GOOGLE. if you are on page 2 or 3, you might get a trickle amount of traffic -- any furthur and you won't get traffic at all. So the difference between #10 on the search results and #1 is pretty large.

So submit your article containing the backlink to your website to ezinearticles. Go to GoArticles.com and rewrite the article again. Make sure you include a link to your website with the same anchor text. Now rewrite the article and use it to create a hubpage. Do the same thing and create a squidoo page (www.squidoo.com).

There you go, you now have 4 different backlinks to your new blog. You can get more blacklinks by getting other website to link as an link exchange. I’ll write another hub about getting backlinks.

You can also hunt down people and ask for link exchanges. I suggest you do a Google search and type your “keyword + blog” into Google to find some link partners. Send them an email explaining that you want to exchange links. You can submit your article to directories, use your website in the signature if you participate in forums (make sure they are DO FOLLOW though, otherwise Google won't count) and comment boards.

So my friends, this is the basics of making money online through niche marketing. If you follow the simple formula of making niche websites and getting backlinks to them, you will make money. It's a lot of work and you will have to put in a lot of time, but if you can get a couple hundred niche websites out there, all which rank high in the search engines, you will have a substantial income.