How do I know if a niche is high traffic and/or profitable

Just run a cheap PPC campaign to see if it's profitable. See if people are subscribing and becoming leads, and see if you can get them to buy something once they're on your list. I would go with the authority site.

You should see what other websites are out there already. Take note of any ones that seem like they are making money. Take note of how exactly your competition is making their money. If you don't have considerable competition, then you've either fooled yourself, or found a goldmine

Also, just because the KW competition is "low" doesn't mean that those KW's aren't junk. Also, take note of how you did your keyword research. Low competition with the Broad setting in Google's tool is junk. You need to narrow that sucker down.*[exact] hint hint*

Proper monetization depends on the market or niche you're in. So unless you tell us what it is, we can't really tell you what the best way is to monetize it.

Also note, if you plan on monetizing your site with AdSense, then go for "High" competition keywords on AdWords' keyword tool. Never go for "Low," as this means you will only get irrelevant ads on your niche site (the keyword tool, including the "Competition" column, is for advertisers.)

You can tell if your niche is good using these ways as well.
1. Look at the number of ads on the google search listing pages for your keyword. If you find some ads that means the niche is profitable.
2. For checking on global and local competition, repeat the above process for both the global and local google search.

You have to first do your research - regardless of the campaign you will use to advertise. Online thats through keywords associated with that niche. If the keywords are high search low competition you are good to go. Of course you could also just do some free ads such as classifieds for the your products and see the responses you get.

1. Check competition in Google Keyword Tool and look for "Medium" or "High"

2. At least 4,000+ searches IMO

3. Go to Google and search "Your keyword like this" and see how many results come up.
"Make Money Online with eBay Fast" has 43,600 results, which is not too many and definitely a keyword that you could rank for (although idk how profitable it would really be).

4. Look at the top results and see if you think you can rank. For example, when I search "hair loss" into Google, I do NOT think I would rank without an EMD.

5. Check if people are advertising when you search your term.

6. Think "Would I buy this offer online?" People like to try certain things before they buy them, especially if they cost a lot of money.


Also I like the idea of running an inexpensive ad campaign using ppc and seeing if you can get people to your offer.

An alternative to finding a 4,000 searches/mo keyword with low competition might be to find 3 good keywords with 1,500 searches/mo each and low competition. That way you are easily ranking for terms that together draw 4,500 searches/mo.

An aside from the obvious importance of keyword research, you must also take into account what problems people are currently having, and what you can do to solve them.

Helping people solve their specific problems is very important, especially in niches like health and fitness.

Jake

If you know the niche you may already know if a product is profitable.

Instead of looking at vague high / competition values for Adwords, you can look at eBay, Amazon, and possibly some sites in the niche, to see if what products actually sell. Nothing is better than actual sales data.

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If you can find google ads featuring for the keyword you are searching. It probably is a profitable niche. But i also recommend you to find a niche in which you are naturally interested.

I go by my thumb rule of a minimum of 1000 local searches per month - which means there is decent demand and usually might still be 'low' competition as per Google, with a maximum of 3000 searches per month. I don't usually go for anything more than that - just a personal choice to look for as yet uncrowded, but promising niches.

Yes it mostly is. But I would like to just check for either of these, preferably the first: a) upward trends in the searches recently over past few months - to land on something that is small today, but growing. Or b) steady search volumes over a longer period of time, which can suggest a consistent demand, even if not growing.

You might also want to check on the number of selling products on the niche in Clickbank, or a more cheesy way - check on Flippa - you have lot of guys doing KW research looking for the current hot new niches, that can save you time. Ofcouse neither of these, nor even Google KW tool can help you identify virgin niches - those you have to look beyond available data.

Authority site needs an year long commitment at the very minimum - make sure you are prepared for that. You won't make much in the immediate near future, but if you build it up over time with good value - an aged authority site can more than compensate for the relatively poorer beginnings. You can sell it for a massive price, run a membership content if you have earned good audience who appreciate your content, or run ads if you have good traffic which might get you a good consistent income. Passive, sleeper income - if you want to call it that - is the biggest luxury As long as there was decent demand, the possiblity of you not making a dime out of this approach is almost nil : if nothing else you can sell your aged domain for still a good enough price later on.

CPA offer - This is what I would do. Less strenuous, but not necessarily requiring less effort or less diligence. It could cost you more money to run, so you need to be smart and promote well, else you might burn more than you make (atleast the possibility of that is less with building up an authority site). The upside is you can expect to make immediate good returns, and if you do it really well, pull all the tricks, may be even make high figures.

Good luck! They say success comes to action takers, may it be yours!

Doing keyword research is definitely important when building a site, however, so many people set different standards so its hard to give you exactly what you are looking for. My question to you though is aside from these keywords how do you plan on marketing your site? keywords are useless if you can't get traffic to your site. Do you intend on building a blog or selling your own product/service.

My advice about keywords would simply pick keywords that not only have traffic, but also have amazing content. I like to write my own articles and use syndicated content so if I feel like all the articles about my keyword are crap then I'm not going to focus on that keyword. Content is key, build your site for the reader/viewer and income will be a reward vs building a site for income and hoping to keep traffic