Under: Business, Career, Programmers/By: Will Veic

The easiest and most overlooked way to make money is through a blog. As a programmer, you don’t need another job, which is why any form of social media is not recommended. Since blog gives you the biggest flexibility and freedom.

The most important thing to remember: web traffic is everything! Whatever you’re selling, the more people see your offer, the more sales you make. More traffic = more money. It’s the simplest math formula in the world.

And the blog is the most flexible and least time intensive way to generate traffic to your site. You keep full control over your content and you can post whenever you want.

Compare that with social media where you constantly need to post new content. It really often seems like having another full time job. Especially if you’re going into video content. Then you have to handle video editing which is also time consuming.

Plus, the content on social media starts to depreciate almost immediately.

On the other hand, your blog content actually increases in value as the time goes by. Because the number of blog post visitors tends to increase over time.

So let’s talk about:

What To Sell

If you don’t have your own product, you can always make money by referring people to someone else’s products. This is also known as affiliate marketing.

Basically, you get a special link from the product owner and put it on your website. When people click on your link, got to the product website and buy, you get paid.

Simple.

You can also create your own courses. And since you’re a programmer that shouldn’t be that difficult because you have enough knowledge.

However, with affiliate marketing, you are not limited to your own knowledge. You can make money selling almost any product in the world.

And what you sell is going to depend on your website visitors.

What To Write

There are plenty of ideas here:

  • keyboard, laptop, monitor reviews
  • software reviews
  • new technologies
  • programming languages
  • etc.

You already know in which areas you’re most knowledgeable, so write about that.

Only Topics With Interest

You can write about anything you already know, and this can work very well.

BUT

You cannot write without any constraint. Because that will lead you to nearly certain failure.

Only write about the specific subjects people are interested in. And the best way to find those subjects are the keywords tools like ahrefs. (you can use this for free)

This tool can show you what exactly people are searching for and if you can just give it to them you will make money.

The simplest example is people searching “how to program in javascript”. If they come to your website and you either sell them your course, or refer them someone else’s course – you will make money.

So definitely check out that tool, because it will give you bunch of ideas.

How To Get Customers

In short: write blog posts on subjects you already know about, using the exact keywords I’m going to show you, and you will get traffic. And the more traffic you get, the more sales you’ll make.

The keywords will allow you position your content on search results pages. People will be able to find you. And you will get a completely free traffic source to your website.

Popular Keywords

The problem is, you cannot use popular keywords.

Why?

Because they are popular and everyone uses them.

This means you are competing with millions of other bloggers and you will certainly fail. The competition is too big and your new blog cannot compete with them.

Instead, you need to use the keywords that are less competitive.

Low Competition Keywords

With these keywords, you can expect to be able to rank the content. You can also find these keywords using the keyword tool ahrefs I mentioned before.

BUT

This is probably not going to work.

And don’t get me wrong, this tool is excellent. But the problem is many people are using it. And they use it for the same reason you will try to use it: to find easy keyword.

So what happens when bunch of people find an “easy” keyword and they all try to position/rank their content for that keyword?

This keywords suddenly gets a lot of competitors and it stops being low competition.

Which means you will struggle again to get the traffic.

Secret Keywords

However, there are certain keywords even a professional keyword tools cannot find (some of them costing up to $400 per month).

This means not very many people know about them and they are truly low competition and easy to rank keywords. And with them your website traffic is nearly guaranteed.

And if you’re reading this, it means you probably found this post on search results, and this secret keywords strategy definitely works.

So if you want to use the same strategy and find the secret keywords that will generate traffic for you, then check out this SEO book.