Today’s blogging tip is a logical extension of doing an offline affiliate venture in my last post. When you start a new niche blog, you’ll need to keep focused. In this case, you want to see the trees– not the forest. The same way that good keyword research can open your eyes to new niches– the details can be signposts that open opportunities for you.

Your competition is great for doing your market research for you. Check out the top blogs in your new niche. It’s likely you will find a myriad of offers on their pages. Smart business people (including you) don’t put all their eggs in one basket.

Adsense used to be an easy way to make money–Adwords was a breeze before the Google slap. Then, many people saw their businesses go poof overnight. Ideally, you want to take advantage of all the various ways to monetize your blog. This gives you a solid foundation.

If one product goes off the market or stops converting, you have other income streams in place. You can take clues from the top blogs’ ads, products, and affiliate offers–then, go out there and find them, or something similar.

It’s never too soon to begin making contacts in your new niche. If your competition has a opt in list, sign up for it. You can see their marketing strategy. You can look for holes in it that you can fill. Believe it or not, you can even get some copywriting strategies from these emails.

Pay attention to the subject lines, you can use those ideas yourself when you progress to the point you have your own list to email for an ezine or offers. The subject lines and the email text can also give you valuable insight into what content makes it through the spam filters.

One of the most important results of signing up to their list is you now have an additional connection to the blogger. When you contact them, you’re not just a competing blogger: you’re a member of their list. This fact can go a long way towards furthering your budding relationship.

Why would you want to build a relationship with your competition?

Because, as long as, you’re not covering exactly the same content in your niche, you have an opportunity to joint venture with this blogger after you’ve got a relationship going.

Puzzled?

Let’s say, you see the blogger has a product, but no bonuses. Hmmm….Remember how we talked about an ebook not being just an ebook?

It can be many, many things…like reports… audio… video. So, propose this: the blogger offers your teaser report…your audio or video as a bonus with their product. This has the effect of giving you an audience with their customers. Your quality content adds value to their offering, but it’s just a tease. For the full story, their readers need to come check out your blog. They might even buy your ebook as a result.

Basically, you can get the same opportunity when you have built a relationship to the point where you can be invited to do a guest post. This is a JV opportunity at it’s most basic level. Your content is provided to their *list* or in this case, their readers. The other blogger hopes that your readers will check out his/her blog. You hope their readers will be enticed by your high quality content to become a reader of your blog.

The relationship between you and your competition could even develop to the point where you create a joint product together. Is it going to work out this way every time? Of course not. You just have to keep working at it. If one says no, move on and ask another.

Now, imagine if you had two, three, or five of these relationships going on in several niches? Do you begin to see the possibilities in the details?

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