I am starting to think that the hardest part about starting a new website is finding the topic/niche.  Like I mentioned before I am going to be smarter about my online business.  I am going to make a business model for all of my websites, and therefore when starting new ones I have to be sure that I have a possibility of making money off of them even before I start.  That means that I have to do a lot of research on every topic that I come up with.

My problem right now is that every topic that I can think of, well the ones that I am interested in actually building a site around, aren’t getting through the initial weeding phase.  Basically my ratio target for sites/searches is still WAY off, and this is getting frustrating.  I have all of this energy to start something but I can’t figure out what to start.  It is like a writer staring at a blank piece of paper or an artist staring at a canvas.  I need some inspiration.

If anyone out there has an idea, and wants to help a guy out send me a note.  If I make millions with it I will give you a cut.  Or if you have a “process” that you use for brainstorming for ideas send me a link.  I am running out of options.

It was soo much easier when I was just jumping on any bandwagon and spending money on sites thinking that it would just happen.  Sure I usually broken even, but that was before I started keeping track of the time that I am spending on any one project.

Not much to say, other than Niche researching is not fun.  That is all that I did today (I didn’t have a lot of work at the day job) and I have come up with only a couple of ideas.  In case you are interested I am only using two tools at the moment, and they are both Google.

One is the Google Adwords KeywordTool, and the other is Froogle.

Froogle is great for getting ideas on what may be a good niche, you just refresh the home page often and see what the recently found items were.  The good thing about this for a starting point is that you know that at least someone is interested in these items.

Then from there I use the Adwords Keyword tool to find out if the topics that I picked out are already saturated, or is there room for one more :)  This is the part that gets sticky.

Right now I am looking for a topic that I am going to build a site around, and the other I am looking for topics/products that I can use for PPC arbritage.

Anyway, have a great weekend.

Ecommerce sites are one of the most popular types of sites to sell a variety of different products.  Ecommerce sites are much different in style and focus than many informational or multimedia web sites.  Here are some tips on how ecommerce sites can work for you.

Most ecommerce sites are created for one purpose and that is usually to sell products on the web.  Usually an ecommerce site sells either one item or focuses on a set category of items such as Cell phone accessories or mp3 players.  Ecommerce sites are different than most sites because they don’t necessarily have content or useful information only information based on the products they sell.  Unfortunately, search engines don’t see much value in these sites and they are forced to advertise on their own without the help of search engines.

Many people try to advertise their ecommerce sites through banners, Google Adwords and opt in emails, which is a far different style of increasing your web site awareness than typical informative web sites.

Ecommerce web sites usually sell their products using a back end database platform as well as a shopping cart program, that can easily tally up all items selected and process your order quickly and easy.  It is also important to sign up for a payment processor such as Paypal or a credit card processing agent.  There is tons of money to be made with an ecommerce site, however creating one is far different than designing an informative or multimedia web site.

Blogs are quickly becoming one of the best advertising tools for businesses as well as personal web sites.  If you have a business, it is no longer important just to have a web site up and running, many search engine optimizers are now telling businesses to also put blogs up as well.  Here are some tips on blogs.

Blogs are a great way to have an active conversation with your customer base.  Blogs are a quick and easy way to constantly communicate to visitors about new products that are coming out, explain current products, bring up articles of interest and other on topic content that can lead to customers learning more about your business and participate on your blog.

Blogs are extremely easy to set up.  Many people put blogs on their web site with the help of Wordpress.  Wordpress is a free open source program that can help you reach millions of people that may be interested in your products or industry. Blogs can also help you raise the importance of your web site and have a great affect on its page rankings in the search engine index.  You can see your web site take off with the proper blog in place.  If you are looking to have a successful business web site or presence on the web, look into creating a business blog.

If you have an auction site business or ecommerce web site, you are probably dealing with many items each day that need to be shipped.  Shipping items can take a lot of hard work and can be very time consuming.  If you want to save valuable time each day while increasing your businesses organization, you should look into shipping software.

There are several types of shipping software available and most software is very easy to use and affordable.  Many people love the convenience of shipping software.  Most shipping software integrates with payment processors such as Paypal and can automatically print out shipping labels for items that were sold.

Another great shipping software feature is that you can buy postage online and print out shipping labels which include the postage fee.  These shipping software options allow you to print out professional labels with postage already paid for the item.  Many shipping software programs can even mask the amount of postage you pay on the label, so the sender doesn’t know exactly how much you paid for shipping.  This is a great feature for Ebay sellers that charge for handling and other services in their shipping fee.  So if you are looking to automate your ecommerce or auction site business, use shipping software to save time and money.