PROFESSIONAL PASSION A passion for providing something of value to others that can only be offered in the business world. A passion that provides a service to others that you have the skills, experience and knowledge to provide, and you enjoy doing so. A professional "calling", if you will. Such an example would be my professional passion for training. Teaching people and sharing knowledge with others about topics I know and love. So for me, choosing a niche based on my passion and considering my personal areas of knowledge and experience, eliminated the niche blogging roadblock that you may very well be facing right now. I hope I have offered you some helpful "food for thought" and will make your own personal niche blogging decisions easier.

Blogs have come a long way since the late nineties, but most people still don’t really know much about them. The terminology confuses them. They have absolutely no desire to leave comments, and don’t know why anyone would. All the widgets in the blog sidebar are incomprehensible. There are millions of people online who barely know what they’re doing on the internet. Can you blog for them? Oh, YEAH. You absolutely can! How? Well, I’ll get to that in a minute, but to set the stage, let’s put ourselves in the mind of a person who isn’t tech-savvy. We’ll call him Jeff. Portrait of a Low-Tech Surfer Jeff knows how to use the back button of Internet Explorer (not Firefox) and uses Outlook Express for his ISP-given email address. He doesn’t know how to set the home page of his browser. He doesn’t know how to use Favorites (he’s managed to add a couple, but he doesn’t know how to open them). When Jeff wants to go to a website, he does it by “search navigation.” In other words, he types in whatever.com in the search box at MSN (or Google, but only after doing the same thing at MSN to get to Google). Then he clicks on the most promising search result. That’s how he navigates the internet. Jeff’s (and many others’) searches might land them on your blog. If you know what you’re doing, you can deliberately target Jeff and others like him. Being less net and tech savvy, Jeff is more likely to click on ads or affiliate links. Jeff is less likely to be skeptical of the source of the information he’s reading. Jeff is less likely to suspect he might be reading a paid review. Jeff is NOT stupid. He’s just at an earlier stage of learning the ways of of the web. We are all at some point along this path, and some of us are farther along than others. All that blog bling and weird blog terms like trackback and permalink are going to make Jeff uncomfortable, and that makes him less likely to convert (do what you want him to on your site). Traits of a Blog for a Low-Tech Audience If you want to create a blog for a low-tech audience, try the these tips: * Use a blog theme or template with a left sidebar and left or horizontal navigation * Use Feedburner to host your RSS feeds, because it has email subscription capability, and then create a prominent email subscription area on your blog * Don’t create a prominent RSS subscription block with a big RSS icon or a feed count–you will scare off your low-tech audience * Get rid of comment links, use a contact page instead–low-tech people are far more comfortable with email * Don’t use the word “permalink” anywhere–they don’t know what it means * Don’t put any JavaScript widgets in your sidebar unless it’s some kind of regular news link list that anybody could understand * Don’t use blog or tech jargon in your posts * Design the blog’s hyperlinks so that they are blue and underlined * Use a theme or design that’s compatible with Internet Explorer 6 This entry was written by Michael Martine

MARKET DEMAND When I chose a niche based on market demand, and kept my passions out of the equation, I had a life. I focused on my niche during working hours, then I had my passions to enjoy and relax with during off-hours. Generally, our passions are our hobbies. Our hobbies are things we do to relax and immerse ourselves in something we thoroughly enjoy. It’s our downtime, away from work and the chaos of our lives; our sanctuary. When you start to monetize and market your passions, they tend to lose their tranquil effect and before long there is no distinction between what we do for work and what we do for fun. You know the old saying…."all work and no play….". When you choose a niche based on business reasons, and you go to your computer to start your business day, it’s all business. It’s the part of your day where you are focused on providing products or services in exchange for financial compensation, and that’s that. Of course you do so with integrity and compassion for your customers, but at the end of the day, you can leave the work and "go home" to your life and your passions. It sounds very black and white. And for most folks it will be. But there’s also a gray area to consider.

You may have heard of the term blog, but do you really know what a blog is? Do you know whether a blog will be useful for your website. This article will help you to understand what a blog is and how you can use a blog for your own web pages. This will help you decide whether or not to waste time creating a blog.

Another name for a blog is a weblog. Notice the word blog in the term. At first blogs were reserved for sites of a more personal nature, but they are now being used for every sort of website you can imagine.

This is how they work. Generally the most recent information in the blog is put at the top of the page. There is usually a dated log that will show the visitor when the blog entry was made. There is often a way for the visitor to make a comment on the blog. This is a great way to add additional content to your website with out doing anything.

The general consensus is that the first weblog was created back in 1993 and was the Mosaic. The bloggers were essentially exchanging links and information with each other.

Then, the blog started to pick up pace and the result was powerful. In 1999 the public really started to get excited about blogs. This is when blog software became available to the general public. Once the software for blogging became available the general public was now capable of creating a blog.

Check out how fast the concept of creating blogs grew. By the year 2000 people were making about 300 – 350 new blogs daily. Now there are over 750,000 blog users. This shows you that this isn’t just a trend but a phenomenon.

Can you make money with a blog? You better believe it. Now the software to create a blog is super simple. There are many open source applications to create blogs and many web hosting companies that have a software installer that you can install a blog for yourself at the click of a button.

Affiliate marketers are making a fortune from blogs. What they do is they post content on their blog that is specifically related to the niche product that they are promoting. When someone clicks on the link in the blog and makes a purchase at the affiliate site, they marketer makes an income.

The search engines love blogs that regularly update with content. Find a niche, create content or purchase it, post the content on your blog, and insert affiliate links into the blog, and post the blog to the search engines This is a brief summary. There is a lot more to do to make your blog successful, but you will find that you can make a fortune if you use blogs the right way. I recommend learning everything that you can about blogging.

Take time to seriously look into creating your own blog. You will be blown away by how easy it is to set up a blog and how easy it is to make money from your very own blog. God bless you.

About the Author
Jeff Flow is a blog article writer. Learn “How A Work Shy College Dropout Cracked The Secret Code To Become A Super Affiliate Earning Up To $516.53 Per Day On Autopilot Using Free Blogs!” http://blogbank.jeff-flow.com