How To Turn Your Hobby Into A Profitable Online Business!

Do you have a hobby? Or maybe a subject you are really interested in and you know a lot about and you share a real passion for, Why not turn it into a profitable online business!

I'll give you the best tips and guidance on how I turned my life's hobby into a very profitable website in just under a year, which has doubled my overall income.

These days people search for absolutely anything online, so you might not think your hobby or subject is not very interesting and people will not be interested in knowing about it but I guarantee when you make it a theme for a website and put it live on the net for the whole world to see 24/7 you will be amazed at how many people share that same interest.

How I turned my hobby of card games, into a profitable online business

The idea of an online business

I was really board with the job I was in at the time and I was looking for a change of career. I researched on the net about job and business opportunities but still nothing really appealed to me. I never thought in a million years about creating an online website and it was only through a friend of mine the idea of owning an online business came about. We were talking one time and he asked if I had thought about business online and if I had looked into making money from websites. At the time I thought he was mad because I had absolutely no idea about making money online, marketing online or web design.

Any things possible with a bit of research and guidance

It was a few days later after a really boarding day a work that the idea popped into my head again, so I though "what the hell", turned on my computer and began researching how people had created theme based websites into real online businesses. After some serious thought and research I realised "this is it, this is what I'm going to do". I must admit I was being a bit naive because I still had absolutely no idea about, building and monetizing a theme based website and my computer skills were (and still are) very limited.

How I obtained the software that helped me create my site.

After researching for many hours on the internet I came across a company called SBI. SBI are a company that offer tutoring about creating a website, build and promote your website. I decided to take them up on their offer and although it has cost me about $4 a week for their guidance and software to build my website, it has come to be one of the best investments I have I made in years.

Tips and guidance on themes and website content

As I specified at the beginning of the article, people search for absolutely anything on the net, so any theme/subject you choose to write about is bound to be searched all over the world at some time or another. In fact the less popular your theme the better because it means less competition from other sites that might share the same theme.

My real interest lies in card games, I play them all the time and have done since my granddad tort me how to play a number of them at a very young age and they have been my life's hobby ever since. After some really good tutoring from SBI I came to the conclusion that the best theme to base my website on was something I already knew about and was interested in (hence the name of my website). If you share a real passion for something and know a lot about the subject already then writing the content is so much easier and quicker for you to do.

If you are thinking of creating a successful website that gets large amounts of traffic then quality content is everything. The popularity of a website is based on how well the website ranks in search engines (Google, yahoo, bing, ask.com...) . There are lots of different ways to rank well with search engines but by far the most effective is by writing quality content. The way to do this is by involving "key words" into your content. Your Key words are words or phrases that are most popular searched within your theme; a great way to find out your themes key words is by using Google adwords. Google adwords is very simple to use and provides good quality key words for your theme in seconds.

Turning your theme based website into a profitable online business!.

Ranking well with search engines

With my theme, quality content + "key words" and the software to create my site, I was ready to make my site go live on the net. Again this process for me is done by SBI, there software would place my content live on the net all I had to do was copy and paste my content into the write boxes in their software program. There are also other programs you can use to create HTML code or web hosts that will display your website for you, I do however recommend you take a look at SBI first, I will leave a link to my site at the end of this article where you can find out a lot more about SBI and their tutoring if you wish to do so.

When your site first goes live on the net, it will bring in very little, if any traffic at all and a successful website is based on getting lots of traffic daily. There is still a lot of work to be done if you are to rank well with the search engines (remember ranking high with the search engines will bring lots of traffic to your site).

Two things you should do to rank well with the search engines

• Quality content – keep adding quality content to your site using adding "key words"  

• Link popularity – out going links are URL (www.com) links within your sites content that sends visitors to other site. For example you might have a link that takes your visitors to you tube, eBay or Amazon.

An Inbound link is where visitors are sent directly to your site from another website. Placing your sites URL in web directories is the most efficient way of obtaining quality inbound links. If you type in "Top web directories" in Google then a list should appear fairly quickly (you may have to pay to get accepted into some web directories).

Turning your theme based website into a profitable online business.

As soon as I built up my quality content and link popularity I needed to monetize and spread the word about my website. To spread the word about your website I highly recommend you look at article directories. You can write articles about anything, offer tips and guidance, help and advice, share knowledge, share secrets on success anything!

I stated writing articles on my "card game" theme based website about 2 months ago and my traffic went through the roof, it took a bit of time to summit all my articles but by offering help, tips and advice about my theme through written articles has really boosted my business. Always bear in mind that high daily traffic brings profits.

Monetizing my site was a bit tricky, I look around at the best affiliate programs and a lot of sites use a program called Google absence which is a proven way of making money from high traffic. Google absence declined my application, they said it was because my sites theme was too gambling related, I could see their point but still I was a bit annoyed because my sites theme is not to get people addicted it's simply there to offer the rules, tips and strategies and guidance, if people choose to stupidly spent all their money on one game then that's their decision and my site does not encourage people to do this at all. Anyways if you are accepted by Google absence then depending on the amount of traffic your site is getting at the time you could make a very healthy wage that month. However if like me your application is denied do not despair there are other programs just like Google absence that offer the same affiliate program if you type in "alternatives to Google absence" on the net you will sites that list highly recommend alternatives.

Other effective ways to make your website a business is to promote or sell items on your site based on your theme. Amazon has a fantastic affiliate program (called aStore) where you can set up a store with Amazon on your website and earn commission on every item you sell. Again there are many affiliate programs that offer the same service. 

THE FINAL OUTCOME

When the idea of a profitable online business becomes reality

After working with the SBI program, choosing a theme, building quality content, working on my link popularity, article writing, spreading the word about my site and of course monetizing it into a profitable website I now bring home an extra $800 a month, and even though I still have more quality content to add and work on the look of my site as well as other things I am earning enough where I have been able to quit the boring job I was in and pursue other career opportunities. I hope by the end the year my site will be earning me well over $1000+ a month, which will give me the freedom to do more with my online business and also my life.

The great thing about a website is that if you keep it up to date the traffic doubles monthly and the more traffic your site receives the higher ranking your site becomes with the search engines, and yes the higher ranking your site is with the search engines the more traffic your site will generate it truly is like one big snow ball as SBI puts it.

If your still not convinced with my article take a look at my website http://www.poker-play-to-win.com/index.html , you will see it's the most basic of websites; it's not flashy or extreme it's just built around good quality content. I owe much to the tutoring of SBI and if you have been fascinated by my story and are keen to find more about the tutoring I got on building a theme based website or a bit more about me and my website please visit my sites about section at http://www.poker-play-to-win.com/about-us.html it has a link to SBI plus other useful sites that help me discover the potential of an online business plus a little bio on my site.

A really big "THANK YOU" to everyone who has taken the time to read my article and whether you decide to go for an online business or anything else for that matter I wish you all the very best!

Matthew owner of www.poker-play-to-win.com