Time and time again, I read make money online gurus state that the make money online niche is a terrible niche and that people should not waste their time creating make money online blogs.  In many ways these make money online gurus are right.  But, they are not telling you the complete truth.

The first thing that the gurus complain about is the number of people you have to compete with.  This is very true.  There are currently over 12 million competing pages indexed by google for “make money online.”

The second biggest complaint is that the market is not that big.  Well, this is half true.  The market is pretty big.  According to Wordtracker, 953 searches are done a day for “make money online”.  953 searches a day is nothing to shake a stick at.

The third complaint is that those who are competing in this niche are all really good at SEO.  This too is true.  If you want to rank for “make money online” you will need to compete with a lot of great Internet marketers who know a lot about search engine optimization.

But, does the make money online niche suck?

If making money online is a terrible niche, why do so many Internet marketers try to rank for the “make money online” keyword?

Hungry buyers is the answer!!

While the market is not huge, people who are looking to make money online are hungry buyers.  They are the best type of traffic that you want to your site.  They are desperate to learn how to make money online.  And, they are willing to pay a lot to learn how to do it.

That is the secret that the make money online gurus are not telling you about.  While it is a difficult niche to compete in, the make money online niche is great.  So if you want to make money online, find a micro niche within the make money online market and you might be able to tap into a less competitive market and still make lots of money.

If you are not promoting your blog offline, you are wasting a huge opportunity to grow your blog.  Each day you are with people that you have a personal connection with.  These offline relationships are very powerful.  Therefore, you need to tell people about your blog.  One of the best ways to tell people about your blog is by handing them a business card featuring your blog.  Today, I found an offer for free online business cards.

Clicking the link above will get you 250 free online business cards.  Think about this, if only half of those people visit your blog that is 125 new visitors to your blog.  This is an excellent, but overlooked way to do blog promotion.

Why don’t people focus more on offline blog promotion?  I believe that the biggest thing that keeps people from promoting their blogs to friends, family and acquaintances is shyness.  Bloggers are more comfortable promoting themselves in the secluded online world.  There is a distance that you can maintain in the online world that is non-threatening.  Bloggers are embarrassed to tell others that they have a blog.  You need to get over that right now.

Don’t miss this opportunity to get your 250 free online business cards.  Start marketing your blog offline today.

Adding photos to you WordPress blog has just been revolutionized.  It has been a long time since I has discovered a plugin that truly changes the way I blog.  But, the Photo Dropper Flickr WordPress Plugin has just done that.

After installing this plugin, you can easily add Flickr photos to you blog posts.  This plugin allows you to search for Flickr photos right from you WordPress Post Writing dashboard.  It is so simple.  Watch this, I am going to search for photos of American Idol contestants

Photo of American Idol Season 7 Contestants

photo credit: Project M·A·R·C

Or, photos of Kellie Pickler

photo credit: minds-eye

photo credit: caswell_tom

This plugin really makes it easy to put photos into your WordPress articles.  I only wish that you could crop them and target your specific Flickr albums.

I am sure that a lot of you have been wondering where I have been. Well, I have been recharging my batteries. I have been very busy at work and have also been focusing on some Internet marketing.

While I know that taking a few weeks of holiday is not good for a blog, it was necessary in this case. I needed to determine where I wanted to take Newest on the Net. Sometimes every blogger needs to ask themselves, what is this blog’s purpose?

Don’t get me wrong, this blogs focus is not changing dramatically. No, I think that these areas have always been the focus here.

• Blogging
• Internet Marketing
• Social Media
• Internet and Web Application News

Ok, so what has changed? Well, with respect to blogging, I am going to try to maintain my focus on helping beginner bloggers. Now for us intermediate bloggers, don’t panic, I will still talk about more advanced topics, but I really feel that my bread and butter is with new bloggers.

For those of you who like to hear about how the Internet is changing, Newest on the Net is not really changing very much. I will continue to provide news and commentary about cool new Internet sites and web applications.  I really like this part of Newest on the Net.  Do you?

Hey Fred, what about social media?  I will still provide lots of information about social media.  The focus here will be how can bloggers use social media to promote their blogs.

This leads me to Internet marketing.  I do not want to fool you into thinking that I am a make money online guru.  So let’s just state this right up front.  I AM NOT VERY GOOD AT MAKING MONEY ONLINE.  However, I have been focusing a lot of my free time on it.  I have been focusing on niche blogging, squidoo, BANS and affiliate marketing.  I am definitely going to be sharing more of my journeys in these areas.  I hope that you will like my tales.  I am also getting quite good at creating squidoo lenses that make money too.

S, I am sorry about long holiday that I took here.  But, as I said, it was very much needed and now I am back in the saddle.

Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone had a great Christmas morning. It was great seeing my kids so excited.  Having young children makes Christmas a new experience again.  I love it.