What should I get into? (Mentor would help?)

Im somewhat new to the online money making game, although I have been researching it for almost 2 years, I havent been able to focus hard on it (due to working normal jobs, other commitments etc) but now I find myself out of a job, and I figured its a good time to at least try this thing before I search for another boring dayjob.

From what I have researched before; I believe something blog based or writing based would be the best option for me, as I do write quite abit and have some good unpopulated niche's that I know could net me at least 10,000 unique visitors a month or so just by my word of mouth (not great, but ok to start out)

The thing is, I have a pretty big conscious. Im not going to do the whole "bait and switch" websites where you go to my site for info and its just full of ads and spam, or anything that forces people to answer a survey in order to get the info/files/etc they want. I don't really want to deal with selling products/services either.. I rather just find something that I can just work at all day by myself, writing or data entry or something along those lines..

Is writing and blogging profitable if you do it on something other than the auto-blogs and typical "make money online, get rich now" or "health" spammed-sites that are just full of backlinks and ads??


So what are my options when it comes to completely white-hat business ventures?? Like I said, I have TONS of time to work and I actually enjoy working long hours online if its a writing/blogging/dataentry type job, so I could dedicate at minimum 5 hours a day to something.

Is there any good forums/sites to find a mentor to help out?? Im talking pure english, canadian or USA born, person who legitimately wants to help and not just use me for their next big gain.. I kinda think it sounds extremely unlikely to find that around here or similar forums..

I think im gonna work on 3 blogs in different niches..

is it REALLY important to get a keyword or EMD in the domain?? Remember, I want these to be legit, good blogs (all unique content, detailed and no-spam at all) - so in that sense a "keyword" or EMD domain doesnt really work without sounding spammy (esp since its in a niche thats small, but big enough that keywords have been farmed pretty extensively)

Snowfall,

I can't really help you find a mentor (maybe someone else here can point you in the right direction) but, to answer your question, Yes. It is entirely possible to make purely white-hat cash within a niche that you personally enjoy. I know plenty of people that I wouldn't really call "Internet Marketers" that are making a good living from their websites/blogs. The key is to become an authority in your chosen niche. Write good, compelling articles, generate a ton of traffic and make your money via AdSense, paid advertising, memberships, etc; it all depends on your niche.

The problem with your plan, unfortunately, is that this takes a great deal of time and patience...or pure luck. This is why a lot of us turn to things like autoblogging and such; the turnaround is a lot faster and you can see $$$ coming in quicker. It kinda sucks, to be honest. The promise of getting rich quick inevitably brings in a truckload of newbs who assume writing nonsense articles full of keywords is going to make them rich overnight...and they therefore populate the web with shit websites and blogs; not actual, useful content. If you can do the autoblog thing right, it doesn't have to be crap. It's just that more often than not it is. If you were to visit the autoblogs ran by many of the senior members here, I can guarantee you that you'd have a hard time realizing that they were on auto-pilot...because they were done right. But, I digress...

I think it's commendable that you don't want to bait and switch and rip anyone off. I think you'll find that most of us here don't do that. Well, OK...a lot of us here might have dipped our foot in the pool but despite this site's reputation, we're not all scammers.

My point is, the reason you see so many of these "get rich quick" sites is that most of them are run by people who don't know what they're doing. The REAL money making sites/blogs are well done.

I'd recommend that you check out the AdSense forum here and read, read, read. Also, look into affiliate programs that will interest your target and build good relationships with them. Finally, don't let CPA scare you away completely. Like everything else, it doesn't have to be spammy; it just often is.

So, there's lots of ways to make money online.

Also, don't sweat about having your keyword in your site name. It certainly helps for a fast ranking but if your chosen keywords are already taken...just make a great site/blog and you'll rise up the ranks based on your credibility over time. Look at Pandora, for example. WTF does Pandora have to do with listening to music online? YouTube didn't make any sense for a domain name at first. Of course, now it's synonymous with "video sharing" (I bet the guys at YouTube originally wanted www.shareyourvideos.com or something but it was already taken). You get the idea.

Good luck, man and keep us posted!

thanks padlock.

To be honest, the reason I am starting to post here instead of other sites like DP is because I actually find this one to be the LEAST spammy/junk, even though its based around blackhat methods.. But Im just sick of DP's members, who PM you nonstop and can't even speak english. Maybe im slightly racist; as I worked for a telemarketing company (just about the biggest in Canada, take a guess lol) and at least 80% overseas operation were TOTALLY scamming customers; adding crap to their account even if they wanted to delete their account, just to make a quick $1 incentive off each customer. It was sickening, and I ended up quitting the job because I didnt want to deal with customers who were totally irate (rightfully so) and having to explain to them someone from india added $500 of crap to their phone bill without their permission.. But I digress.

BHW seems to be generally english speaking, intelligent people. I understand why most will take advantage of certain methods to make money faster, its reasonable (from that standpoint) but morally I couldnt do it. Its more the things like I saw another thread recently which people put CPA lead URLs on flyers putting on peoples cars saying "free ipad here", which is so wrong to me.. but anyways, Just making it clear I want to stay whitehat.

The thing that confuses me is when you get into legit forms of moneymaking outside of Adsense.. maybe im just having a hard time understanding because its obvious Adsense is run by Google, a trusted company, while the others are not and therefor only time you hear about them is when someone is content-locking torrents or something; but I'll have to research more. I've made acouple dollars off Adsense, but it was spanned over months.. That was with very little effort, but least I know it "works".. Going past adsense though, is the scary part, wondering if you will get paid by said companies and such, or even worse sandboxed due to using them.

My question for now though; Is it better to have multiple sites across different niches or would one site per niche work better?? Say I want to write about sports, gaming and music (example), they are similar in the sense they are all entertainment, but obviously not super close. Would one super site be better (since all backlinks/work could be piled into one site) or would it be better off as 3 seperate sites??