Plenty of bloggers like to write about their thoughts, their day or the crazy thing that happened to them on the way to the zoo. But this type of blogging is generally more for fun than for profit. To make significant money with your blog, you’ll want to focus on keyword phrases and questions your target audience is actively searching for at this time.

When you help people solve problems through free and valuable content that is relevant to your business, you reach larger audiences and build trust. The best part is you get the opportunity to show people how your products and services can help them solve their problems and fulfill their desires and needs.

Let’s say that you’re a real estate agent. Your potential clients aren’t looking for your recipe for apple pie, the award you won last week or even the number of houses you sold this month. What they do want is their questions answered:

→ “How do you buy a house?”
→ “What credit score is needed to get financing for a house?”
→ “What is the best way to invest in real estate with 10% down?”
→ “How do I know I’m buying in a good neighborhood?”
→ “What are the easiest ways to increase the selling price of my home?”

Find out what real estate prospects want to know, and then use those exact questions for your titles. Give helpful info in the blog posts and then refer them to your squeeze page to get your lead magnet, or suggest they give you a call to further answer their questions.

These types of posts can rank high in search engines without tricks because they are exactly what searchers are looking for. And once you rank, you’ll be getting free, consistent traffic from Google.

This works in just about any and every niche you can think of and it’s an easy way to demonstrate your authority while building an audience that is super receptive to your offers and services.

Here’s how you can take this knowledge and double the impact: Use the same approach for your YouTube videos. YouTube is simply a search engine for videos, which is why ranking on YouTube is similar to ranking on Google.

Choose keyword phrases and questions that match what people are looking for on YouTube. Create videos with those titles that are packed with great info. And invite your viewers to visit your website, subscribe to your list or take the action you seek.

Using this method and being consistent will yield powerful results: Free targeted traffic, building your authority with your new viewers and readers, along with gaining a steady stream of new subscribers and customers.

In the online marketing world, programs typically are promoted hard for a few days or weeks once they launch. After that, marketers and affiliates alike tend to move on to the next hot thing. This opens up a huge opportunity for anyone willing to do a little leg work. And this can work in multiple niches – not just online marketing.

One gal I know (I’ll call her Betsy for our purposes) watches her favorite marketers to see what products they create. She knows the products are high quality because she knows these particular product creators and is familiar with their work.

Once a product seller is no longer actively promoting a product – which can generally take 1 to 6 months – Betsy contacts them and asks if they can do a deal. Sometimes she buys the rights to the product and thus gets to sell it for any price she chooses and keep 100% of her sales.

Other times she negotiates a deal for her customers – a steep discount they can only get by purchasing through her.

And third, Betsy will sometimes put together a package deal of 2 or more products, either from the same or different product creators, and these package deals tend to do really well.

She builds her list by advertising that she offers steep discounts on popular programs as well as many freebies, too.

And that’s a good point… she is highly generous with ‘one problem – one solution reports’, generating about one per week and giving them away to her list. Of course, each report also promotes a discounted program, so there is a method to her generosity. I don’t know how much she’s earning doing this, but I suspect it is far, far in excess of the $5,000 a month I mentioned above.

This model could also work with anything that can be discounted, including services, tangible products and so forth. It’s a nice little business and I’d estimate she only spends about 2 hours a day on it. I think anyone can use this income strategy. How about you?

Let me ask you a question… “As an online marketer, how much should you earn?” It’s like asking how long a piece of string is. But here’s the rub: When I asked that question, I’ll bet you had an answer. And I’ll also bet that answer isn’t all that far away from what you’re used to making.

We get a job, go to work and earn $40,000. That means on some level we perceive that we are worth $40,000 a year. Your colleagues also make about $40,000 which is further ‘evidence’ that this amount is what you ‘should’ be getting paid.

How then, are you going to shift your mindset to earning $40,000 a MONTH?

Imagine going to work tomorrow and your coworker says they just got a raise from $40,000 a year to $40,000 a month. Your mind would be blown, right?

But in online marketing there are no rules for what you can and cannot earn. The only limits to how successful you can become are the ones you impose on yourself, and a surprisingly big factor is how much you think you are worth.

If you’ve earned a small sum of money all your life and now you intend to earn a big sum, you’re going to have to change your thinking and decide that you are indeed WORTH that larger sum of money.

You hold your own income potential in your hands, and it doesn’t matter what ANY other marketer is earning.

A friend of mine who does quite well (high six figures) in online marketing took a newcomer to lunch one day to give him a few tips. Three years later that newcomer was out-earning my friend by 10:1.

Somehow you’ve got to get your mind around the fact that there is no one in the same position as you in online marketing. There is no pay scale or ladder to climb. You don’t need to get seniority or even master the intricacies (you can use outsourcers for that).

Anything is possible. You can write your own paycheck by using smarter thinking and doing the work necessary.

Find that little voice in your head that says you’re not worth $X amount of dollars and tell that little guy or gal to shut up.

You decide what you’re worth and what you are capable of. Because in online marketing, anything is possible.