Choosing a niche without knowledge of that niche

I would proceed, but I would definitely be ready to research the heck out of it. The more information you have about a niche the easier it will be to market so be prepared to do your due diligence.

go with the keywords,hire a freelancer and get you products written.
so,simple and easy!

Of course you do! Just make sure to hire a good writer because, if you don't know anything about that niche, then someone on your team must! Remember, you only have to know more than the general population to be considered an "expert"!

I found 2 writers on Elance that have saved me a massive amount of time and money. I pay them well and I make so much more than when I used to hire "cheap" writers!

Keep that in mind!!

Go with stuff you know first. It's hard building a business when you have little or no knowledge or passion for what you're promoting. Once you've had success with one or more models you're familiar with then branch out into unfamiliar markets.

Most people won't agree with this but that's okay. You'll naturally and easily learn the mechanics of marketing by doing something you know about and like. Only then does it make sense to venture into unfamiliar territory.

The voice of experience...

Thanks everyone for the info. My initial goal is to build out a total of 10 adsense sites to reach $100 a day. Just dont know if I have the time to dive into 10 different niches in a short amount of time. Right now only have one website, the second just launched last night. The first one I launched a little over a month ago is averaging $20 a day and going up, yesterday it made me almost $50. Hopefully it will keep going up and I can duplicate this with 9 other sites to reach my first goal.

Sillysoft, this is great news! Any examples of the sites you are starting with? Are you using an adsense theme like CTR?

How long did it take you to get into a good position?

I recently bought some URL's for some niche sites myself but am just now getting them up and putting content on them.

It seems like to me that starting successful sites is hard enough as it is without trying to start one that you don't know much about. You have to add lots of research to everything else. I guess if you feel the niche is good enough it might be worth it though.

You'll hear both sides of the story on this one. Those who say "go with what you're passionate about" and those who say "go with what's making money, forget about passion".

IMHO, either way is fine. But, if you're going to go into a niche which you know nothing about, make sure you either do the research yourself, or pay someone good to write the content. Someone who knows what they're talking about with that niche (or at least comes across as such in their writing). Ever come across a site about a certain topic, and the site only seemed to be there for the purpose of serving ads and didn't know what it was talking about? Happens fairly often with me and people I know... and those are the type of people who give IM a bad name (the ones who just plaster sites left and right and use garbage as content).

As long as you're not trying to be one of those people serving garbage content, and rather being an entrepreneur who is taking advantage of being able to market to different niches by providing real value, it's all good!

By the way, nice job with getting your one site to make $20+/day with AdSense. Keep it up.

I think passion is a bit overrated. Millions of people have jobs at which they excel, despite a lack of true passion concerning the subject/task. I think passion comes into play when you need to frequently update content while waiting for income to start/increase. A subject you are passionate about will help with the daily grind of plugging away while seeing no initial financial gain, IMO.

If you outsource to folks willing to write for $1.00/100 words, keep in mind they are going to know as little about the niche as you do. Further, they have much, much less on the line to compel them to properly research the niche. If you outsource to a professional writer, it will certainly cost more, however, that is what professional writers do. They have a knack, in addition to wordsmithing, of being able to research and grasp many different subjects and write intelligently about them.

The benefit of not outsourcing would be that you would quickly become much more educated about your niche, providing your research and comprehension are up to snuff.

Make this your passion: creating a successful online business. And voila! You are now going after your passion, regardless of niche/business model.

Everything depends on the complexity of the subject. If this is not a passion that is always more complicated, but you can disseminate information with a real work.

Getting content relevant enough to produce the big clicks can be a hard to outsource. Just a couple of ill placed words can take your click value from $3 to $.03