I’m not an online marketing expert.

Through hard work and focus, I’ve built up another blog that did over one million visits last year. I’ve also grown a forum to more than 5,000 users.

I now earn my entire income online. I went full-time when I was 23.

When I look back, I really wish I had documented my journey more. It’s only recently that I’ve begun to put out vlogs on my side YouTube channel.

I’m continually learning, growing, and improving. I want to share my findings with you.

That’s where this blog post came from.

I’m going to show you some of the tools that you can use to set up a niche website and earn passive income.

1. Google’s Keyword Planner

This is by far the most useful tool out there. You can use the google Keyword Planner to gain insight into searching data. You can see how many hits certain key words are getting.

For example, let’s say that I was going to create a niche site that features funny socks that you can wear. I put that into the Keyword Planner and it comes up with the result below.

This data shows me that there are an average of 10 – 100k searches for funny socks and that the competition for this keyword is high. Competition could mean that it is a profitable keyword.

2. Keyword Tool.io

This is another software tool that you can use to identify profitable keywords. There is a free and a premium version.

Once I’ve identified the subject of my niche site, I’ll use this tool to generate a list of keywords and phrases that I can begin to target. I’m also beginning to do this with search engines beyond Google, like YouTube and Amazon.

Let’s put in “funny socks” and see what comes up for Amazon. You can see the results below.

If I upgraded to the pro version, I’d be able to see volume data for the key words, along with CPC (cost per click) and adwords competition.

Pretty cool, huh?

This info would guide my marketing around the niche site, as well as the products or articles that I choose to list.

3. SEMRush

I can’t overstate how important SEMRush can be to your SEO marketing. Seriously!

SEMRush lets you plug in a specific URL and you can see the organic and paid search traffic that that website is getting. It’s free up until 3-4 searches, and then you’ll have to pay for it.

The reason that I like SEMRush is that is ensures I don’t waste my time while building a new website. I can focus on certain profitable traffic. I can quickly see which niches are doing well.

4. WordPress Hosting

When you’re ready to set up your niche site, you’re going to need a trusted hosting provider. If you’re using WordPress, I recommend looking into Bluehost. They have a really cool one-click WordPress install feature. You can also get a free domain/site builder when you sign up.

The reason that so many bloggers use WordPress is that it’s super simple to customize. You can easily install plugins and premium-looking themes. It makes your website look very professional.

Once you set up a WordPress website, you can then install Google Analytics to begin getting scarily accurate data about your site visitors.

5. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a must for any marketer. Think of it as WordPress stats on steroids. You’ll be able to quickly see which pages are performing well, where the traffic is coming from, and how long people are staying on your website.

Once you get the hang of the software, you can then set up conversion goals to really perfect your marketing. Soon enough, you’ll be optimizing for certain key targets, whether it’s a purchase or an email opt-in.

6. Google Trends

Funny how so many of these tools are related to Google, right?

The reason is that most niche sites get their traffic from Google. There are some that rely more heavily on social traffic, but for the most part, it’s Google traffic (YouTube included).

Google Trends is another software tool that was put out by Google to help its users understand searching patterns online.

I put a few terms into the database. These include, “cool socks,” “funny socks,” and “sock gift.” You can see the results below.

When looking at this chart, the first thing that I notice are the spikes in interest. They tend to occur around November each year. I can conclude that many people are buying funny socks as presents for a loved one.

Still, there is strong interest throughout the entire year, with the term “cool socks” having the most interest. Let’s hone in on the term “cool socks.” We’ll take a look at some related terms.

You might not be able to draw any direct conclusions by looking at this data, but the fact that Etsy is a related query stood out to me. I could look into that more in-depth and see what types of socks are offered on Etsy. I would pay special attention to the copywriting and titling behind the most popular products in that category.

7. Editorial Calendar

You know what used to make me REALLY REALLY mad?

When I’d share a tip or a useful tool that I know would get a reader results, and they wouldn’t use it. Or, they’d use it and then forget to keep using it.

It was maddening.

Then, I realized something… I do the same thing.

I think there is a natural tendency towards laziness.

When we start something new, we’re all excited. We have lots of passion, energy, and enthusiasm. Over time, our dedication wanes and we move on because of boredom, lack of early results, or frustration.

One way to prevent burnout is to pre-schedule the content for your niche site. You can use a WordPress plugin like Editorial Calendar to do this.

Let’s say that you’re going to put out one comprehensive article every week that targets certain keywords. You can write these articles over the course of two weeks and then pre-schedule them to go out over the next 4 months.

Then, you don’t need to worry about creating content for a very, very long time.

This is another reason that WordPress is so useful, and there are a lot more powerful features. I highly recommend looking into this tool to set up your niche site. I am even one of their affiliates.

Conclusion

There are three things that matter in the online marketing game: time, effort, and money.

Most of my techniques are meant to minimize the time and effort that you must spend on a new venture. That’s because I had no money when I got started.

Once you learn these skills and set up the systems, you can spend your time as you’d like.

You could spend that time on the beach sipping pina coladas or building new products and making more money.

It’s up to you!

Hope the article has been helpful. If it has, let me know in the comments below!