4 Ways to Come up with Blog Ideas That Make Money

Many of us get into blogging thinking that just by publishing lots of content, we will be making big bucks in no time. But what we soon realize is that it’s actually not as easy as we thought, not easy at all.

We then can’t help thinking, how are the big guys doing it? We know that there are plenty of successful bloggers out there, but what is their secret? Well, as it turns out to be, there is no secret. It’s simply the combination of hard work, being creative and finding blog ideas that make money.

Below are the 4 things you should be looking for if you want to start making money blogging. It’s not rocket science, fortunately, but it does involve a good, long-lasting strategy on your part.

1. Long tail keywords

To be completely honest, when I first started to blog, long tail keywords were not something I focused on at all. It was always the short tail keywords.

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I do talk in depth about long tail keywords here. But to put it in a nutshell, as you can see from the name, long tail keywords simply are longer keywords. They are made up of more words and are more specific in meaning than the short tail keywords.

For example, a typical weight-loss related keyword you see a lot in Google’s search engine results would be: “how to lose weight”. A long tail keyword, on the other hand, could be something like this: “how many calories should I eat to lose weight”.

According to the statistics taken below from the SEMrush keyword tool, “how to lose weight” is searched around 165,000 times per month. “How many calories should I eat to lose weight” is searched only around 18,100 times a month.

Previously, the search volume of a keyword was the only thing I cared about – the more, the better. If a keyword had the monthly search volume of only 1,000, I would not even consider it.

I created a lot of blog posts using short tail keywords, almost none of which ever ranked well in the search results of Google. After some time I got discouraged and annoyed, and began to experiment with longer keywords instead, putting my attention on things like keyword difficulty and trend (see screenshot above).

The pattern was obvious – the longer the keyword is, the less keyword difficulty it has. Despite having less search volume, I received more traffic from longer keywords due to the smaller amount of competition.

Also, apart from gaining more traffic, it finally hit me that by making the keywords longer, and therefore more specific, I can better target the topic of choice.

Taking the weight loss example again, if I were to use the “how to lose weight” keyword, I could potentially receive a lot of traffic, but most of it would be made up of people not exactly knowing what they are searching for. On the other hand, if I use a keyword, such as “how to lose weight in one day with water” (strangely a thing people search for), I get a smaller search volume of only 390 searches per month, but nevertheless a very targeted one.

In other words, those 390 people know what they want – weight loss in one day using only water. Because I know what they want and they know what they want, I can give it to them by either sharing with them as an affiliate some kind of water fasting course or a book on Amazon. Chances that the reader will purchase one of those items are high.

2. Commercial intent

The second way to come up with blog ideas that make money is through the intent.

Think about it this way, who is more likely to buy from you, a person that is searching for a list of “free” mobile time management games, or someone that is looking for the “best”, or even better, “best paid” mobile time management games? Yep, that’s right, the people that are searching for the latter option.

The analysis of whether a person is going to buy from you or not based on the text and keywords that you use is called commercial intent.

Blogging is a hobby, a passion that can become your sustainable source of income.

On the most basic level, you can probably guess that words, such as “free” or “cheapest” have no or very little commercial intent, while keywords like the ones above – “paid” and “best” – have a much higher commercial intent. Therefore, it’s better to stick with those.

Note! Even though blog ideas, such as “top 100 self-development quotes”, will most likely not generate any income, it’s important to not just throw them away from your overall list of blog topics ideas that make money. Sometimes including such posts in your blog can be very beneficial, as they can attract a large audience that might be interested in your other content as well.

3. Google Trends

If you are in search of blog ideas that make money, but you don’t really have anything specific in mind, you can always use Google Trends.

Inside of Google Trends, you can look for what is trending in the world at the moment that you could potentially write about and promote.

The formula is pretty simple. If the search term is rising in trend and has a positive commercial intent, then it could be one of your blogs ideas that make money. If the trend is falling, then I wouldn’t personally go for it.

In the below example, I searched for “coffee”. One of the results for this search term is “keto coffee reviews”, something I would have never thought of. As you can see, the trend for this keyword, although not by much, is rising. Why not find keto coffee products to compare and promote?

On the other hand, a “fidget spinner” would not be something to write about because of its decreasing trend.

As visible in the image of tip #1, SEMrush also shows the trend of a given keyword.

4. Competitor analysis

The last but not least way to come up with blog ideas that make money is by studying your competitors. I do this in two very simple ways.

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The most basic approach is to go to some of the most popular blogs in your niche and to look for ideas there. Go through their blog posts, but also the products and books that these blogs promote. This approach helps a lot when you’re stuck and can’t figure out what to write about next.

If you want to take it one step further and be more sophisticated about the process of searching for blog ideas that make money, try SimilarWeb.

When you are at SimliarWeb, type in the domain name of your competitor and study the “Top 5 Organic keywords” section. Those are the keywords that the domain ranks for best. You can then decide whether those keywords are suitable for your blog or not.

This was it for today, and I truly hope you found this post useful. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to leave it down below in the comment section. I appreciate your input!

Thank you for stopping by and good luck!

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