Guest post by Locke from Yourblogismoney.com.

The make money online niche is an internet marketing playground that is so competitive that very few are able to make it to the first couple pages of the Google SERP’s (i.e. search engine ranking places). The reason that seems to be the case is fairly obvious and can be attributed to the fact that when people learn about search engine optimization they typically tend to stumble across the information when searching for the term, “make money online.”

In addition, because it is such a competitive niche, it becomes sort of a challenge in itself to rank and maintain ranking in the arena to prove themselves to other bloggers and webmasters. The funny thing is that if those people spent their energy targeting alternate niches like cosmetic surgery, dieting and health and even saltwater aquarium keeping, they would be able to make money online at a much quicker pace then those that are struggling to make it to the top in more competitive niches…

People that have made it to the top for a highly desired search term are regarded as experts and rightly so because of the extreme level of competition. There are a few methods that I use on a daily basis in order to track the growth and progress of my websites. The following tools are free and can be used immediately and they include:

Statcounter

This is a tool that you can use to track statistics such as visitor search terms, daily traffic, unique ip addresses and even the locations of your visitors. It is an extremely valuable tool that I use on all of my websites. It can be found at: www.statcounter.com

Rank Checker by SEO Tools

This is a fantastic Firefox plugin that lets you input keyword terms and your website to track the progress and ranking places of your targeted phrases. It will save the results so you can perform your searches on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This tool is amazing and I don’t know what I would do without it!

Some of the additional tools I use and would highly recommend although they will need to be purchased include: SEO Elite and Webcomp Analyzer.

The “how to make money online” niche is extremely challenging to break into and receive a large amount of organic search traffic. It is my recommendation to start with something a bit easier if you are hoping to make a living from internet marketing in the near future. At bare minimum I would recommend targeting a few other niches at the same time. More information about how to make money online and internet marketing techniques can be obtained on my website entitled Your Blog Is Money.

I’d like to thank Alan from MoneyMakerInfo for giving me the opportunity to write for his readers and I look forward to collaborating on future projects.