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I believe it was Robert Allen who once said that the easiest way to make money was to find a school of hungry fish and feed them.  The idea being to find a need amongst the public that isn’t being satisfied. Fill that need to the best of your ability and you will have customers for life.

It can be hard to find those hungry fish with a top-down approach.  Traditional wisdom is to list subjects of interest then drill down and find niches.  For example, you might list your hobbies as:

Fishing
Golf
Reading

You then got to your favorite keyword tool and type in Fishing.  The tool will return a list of keywords and their estimates as to the number of searches per month.  Maybe it returns the following keywords and number of searches:

Fishing             183445
Fly Fishing          56325
Fishing Boat       35399
Fishing Report    21338
Bass Fishing       20101

Still too many searches for a niche subject, so you drill down further with Bass Fishing and it returns:

Florida Bass fishing    2988
Striped Bass Fishing  1727
Bass Fishing Game    1582

If you have decided that around 1500 searches a month on Overture is enough then you check the competition of Google for Bass Fishing Game. 27,000 results returned.  A bit high but it’s good enough and you launch your blog of bass fishing game reviews.  Maybe enough people are interested in your blog, maybe not.  You would probably have to look hard for an affiliate program.

Here’s another approach to choosing a blog subject.

Start by looking for people with problems before you look for the topic.  Go to the same keyword tool and type in “get rid of”.  When I tried this, it returned:

how to get rid of mouse
how to get rid of acne
how to get rid of flea
how to get rid of stretch marks
how to get rid of acne scar
how to get rid of fruit flies
how to get rid of pimples
how to get rid of spyware
how to get rid of cellulite
how to get rid of a hickey
how to get rid of love handles
how to get rid of blackhead
how to get rid of rats
how to get rid of puffy eyes

All with 1500 to 5000 searches a month.  Suddenly you have a list of people with problems.  A school of hungry fish.

“How to get rid of love handles” had 1635 searches on Overture.  The searches from Google will be much higher.  Maybe 20 times as high.  Maybe more, I don’t know.  Google competition was 13,500 results using quotes in the search. 

Thousand of people, I assume mostly women, looking for the solution to a specific problem.  Getting rid of love handles.  This can only increase with new year resolutions.  Maybe you have an interest in weight loss and can research and suggest solutions.  Solve their problem and then send them to a weight loss site with an affiliate program.

Here are some more “problem” words you can use:

How to
How can I
Advice
Review
Best
Eliminate
Fix
Guide
Make 

A few minutes brainstorming and I’m sure you can find dozens more.

I realize this whole choosing a subject thing may be confusing.  A couple of posts ago I was saying that you should only write about your passion.  Now I’m pointing you to making a quick buck by looking for problems.  I guess I see two types of blogs.  One long term, which is your passion, and one short-term to promote an affiliate program.  Or maybe I just need to pay the bills while I write about stuff that really interests me.