As you write content for your site, keep in mind related products or services you have found. If you provide good and solid content, the link will be seen as a recommendation instead of trying to hard sell the readers.

If you write a review, provide an affiliate link especially for programs that you highly recommend.

You can always link to an affiliate merchant site for more information or let readers purchase the products. There are many ways to sprinkle affiliate links throughout your content without raising alerts in visitors’ mind.

Learn how to do it right, and people are more likely to click on the link.

As an online publisher, you need to concentrate on content instead of selling directly.

If you are using a blog, it is time to add AdSense code into the template. If you are building a site using a web template, find suitable places for AdSense ads and try to at least modify the color and format so they blend in with the whole layout of your site.

Changing AdSense codes in a blog template is easy, but not in a traditional website, where you need to modify the code in every page the code resides.

If you ever consider to take it one step further, try offering information products. Don’t recommend something lousy, because you risk reputation. You want the product to be really good and consists of premium content not available anywhere else or at least hard to find and assemble.

Other ideas to for content monetization include creating your own info products, re-purpose your content and add more personality by podcasting, and starting your own email newsletter.

For every keyword you have in hand, you want a page that is keyword-focused and at the same time provide useful information.

If you are passionate about the topic, that is not hard to do.

Alternatively, you can hire ghostwriter to write for you. Elance and RentACoder are just two marketplaces where you can post projects and let project takers bid for them.

Care should be taken when hiring authors. You want them to write interesting content. Notify them up front that you need the articles to be keyword rich. Not in a way that you stuff keywords all over the place, but enough to let search engine spiders know that the page is about a keyword or keyphrase.

I recommend against an exact keyword density. Just write naturally while keep in mind about your primary keyword. Don’t forget to insert some synonyms or related keywords as secondary keywords.

Basically, just focus on your readers. Search engine crawlers will adapt. We begin to see that happening now.

Content writing is a huge topic. Don’t limit yourself but keep exploring. There are private label content that you can based your content idea on (not copy and paste!). Other sources of content include public domain materials, free articles, viral content, and so on.

You can’t build a site in a day. Not a useful site.

Take all the time you need.

But remember, you can also proceed to the next day while still building your site. For instance, if your plan includes building a 200-page site, you can start your link campaign soon before you reach that number.

You also can start inserting some affiliate links or AdSense code on your pages.

Back to planning and building a site.

What kind of site do you want to build? That which you want to come back and wish you had found in the first place back then when you wanted to find information about the topic.

Many website publishers fail because they think building any site will do. Far from it, you want a useful, interesting and unique website that will add value to the topic you are publishing in. Remember, search engines want something unique, not just another site that is just a duplicate of other site’s content.

Nowadays, you can build traffic through many ways. Having people link to you and talk about your site or content is also key.

While you can build a traditional site with articles and other information, consider starting a blog.

You can get your readers interact with you through a blog and build a community that way. You can also establish yourself as an authority in that topic by writing directly in a more interactive way than through article writing.

A blog also allows readers to subscribe to your content through web feed (RSS feed) so you can hook them with your engaging content and drive them back again and again.

As a blogger myself, I can’t stress how much time a blog has saved me over the years. Not only that you can publish and manage your content easily, but also you benefit from the consistency of layout across pages on your site or blog. Tinkering a bit with the software, you should be able to get exactly the structure you want as with a conventional site, but with lots of features like content management, automatic archive, commenting, pinging and so on.

Focus on the content instead of how to build a site properly. A blog helps you with that.

Today, you have done enough work to make sure the niches you brainstorm are indeed profitable. Although cashing in on advertising networks is not the only way to profit from a site, it is the easiest way available for almost any online publisher, even if you are quite inexperienced.

There are more you can do with your site though. Because it is yours, you can find out what people in the niche want and give them exactly that. This is when you can offer related products or services directly instead of just selling ads.

Do a research to see if there are suitable affiliate products for your topic. Again, if you are passionate about the topic, you already know what products and services people want. It turns the process into fun things to do.

You can start in affiliate networks like Commission Junction, LinkShare, and potentially others. For digital products — most of them information products — use ClickBank.

Make notes on ideas and bookmark interesting sites while researching so you keep track on them.

In this step, if you still have more than one profitable niche, it’s time to decide on just one you are going to carry on and proceed to the next step.

Don’t worry though, you can just grab the second niche and run with it after you build a successful site with the first. Just that we want to concentrate on one topic at a time. It will keep you sane and achieve results faster.

This is by far the most important step in the entire road map. Not only does you need to come up with some niche ideas but you want to make sure the final niche topic for your site is indeed profitable and not one of the most competitive niches out there.

Please don’t rush because you are planning a business.

It is important that you don’t fall into one of these traps:

1. Rush through to get started. I’ve seen people do it all the time. They impatiently want to start building their first website. As the result, they unscrupulously choose a niche that they think was either cool, or just follow the crowd.
2. Choose an overcrowded and competitive niche. Given enough resources in time, budget and people, you can possibly dominate any niche. But, if you are to start a business doing it mostly by yourself on a shoestring, you want to choose a topic that is not only less competitive but also easy to write about. Don’t get me wrong. Competition is good, just you don’t want an overly competitive niche when you start.
3. Not something you are passionate or interested in. Some might argue that you can start an online publishing business in any kind of niche. I somewhat disagree. Often in the process you are going to be very tempted to stop what you are doing and quit. There could be a new opportunity waiting that you can not resist. If what you are doing right now is not something you like to do, chances are slim you will persist in this business. Consider yourself warned. Follow your passion, with the right keyword research and a bit of luck, you might be able to do it while chasing the money at the same time. On the other hand, other people have succeed pursuing niches they have no passion in. Just the process is not so exciting. Given the choices, I would go for the former any time.
4. Not something profitable. You might be passionate about smoking. The thing is if you plan to sell your website space by joining advertising network like Google AdSense, you will not be able to place AdSense ads on your site because some topics are against Google AdSense policies. You also want a niche where people in it are regularly buy stuff online. There should be some lucrative affiliate program that could fit in your site’s theme.

A free tool to check keywords and valuable keywords or key phrases is Overture. As a guideline, you want keywords that advertisers are paying at least 30 cents per click for the top position. Of course, the higher the better.

Getting into the right niche often takes you on the right path, if not guarantees your success online. It is the difference between success and otherwise. So, take your time to ponder and do some actual research before deciding.