It is very common that a great number of people worldwide, especially beginners to the Internet don’t ever make money with their sites, and the reason is simple: picking topics that nobody is interested in.

At the beginning of our Internet journey, we are excited about the fact that the Internet provides us the opportunity to do so many things, including writing or blogging about different topics under the sun and be able to make money.

Indeed, some self acclaimed Internet gurus even tell us we can choose any topic to address our sites on and still make a truckload of money. So we dash out to register any name that fascinates us and set up our sites to address and promotes every kind of product that comes our way, hoping that somehow the money will start rolling in.

But that is not true of the way the money makers are making their money online – not all topics make money online!

The fact is that however way you will want to monetize your site, people have to visit it before you will be able to make any money from their visit. And for them to come it must mean there is something about your site that they are interested in, something valuable, which has to do with the topic your site is addressing..

Therefore, to be on the right way to make money online, you will need to ask yourself this question before registering a domain: what topics are profitable?

Yes, that’s an important question you have to first find answer to before committing yourself into months of serious work in building your site only to discover nobody really cares about visiting it, let alone spending any money there. It can be really painful, and many newbies to the Internet usually fall into this pit.

To avoid such pains, and to put yourself in the path of making money with your site from the beginning, you have to carry out a little research to find out which topics can make money online and which ones to run away from.

One great way to do such research is to visit some market places, like ClickBank Marketplace, PayDotCom, The 2nd Tier, Commission Junction, Hydra Media, Max Bounty, AzoogleAds, Joe Bucks, MoreNiche, FreeIQ, Affiliate Directory, 5 Star Affiliate Program.

These are websites where companies register their products for interested marketers to sign up and promote as affiliates. You will usually find statistics revealing how the products are been accepted in the market place. For instance, data showing percentage commission payable to affiliates, number, percentage or degree of affiliates promoting a given products, percentage or ratio of returns, and average monthly sales, can give you a strong insight into how lucrative an industry could be.

But don’t run away yet to register a domain to promote an industry you saw with the most favourable statistics for money making. Such move may be as fatal, in terms of making money, as choosing a topic which people are not interested in. this is why that is so.

If you choose to operate in an industry with a great potential to make money from, the chance is that you will be facing a neck breaking competition. Your site may just happen to be behind the 100 millionth site in that category. As a beginner you may never be able to easily compete with the established professionally run sites, and you may never be able to make money from it.

What you have to do with the insight you get from the market place statistics is to find an industry with not so huge potential to make money and then look for a profitable niche in that industry to concentrate on.

Here is how you research your niche. Use any of the following free keyword research tools to research and settle for your money making site: Google Adwords Keyword Tool, WordTracker FREE Keyword Tool, Webmaster Toolkit Keyword Research Tool, SEO 2020, Digital Point, Nichebot Classic, DomainCountry Keyword Tool, NicheTaxi, WordPot, and Freeaddlink.

Let say you have decided to settle for the chocolate industry and you want to find a profitable niche in it. Into Google Adwords Keyword Tool for instance, type in the word chocolate. It will show many related keywords to chocolate, including the number of searches done on each of them and how much people are bidding on them. Know that the higher the number of searches done on any of them, the greater the possible competition.

To check the possible level of competition, take the keyword of your interest to Google search engine and see the number of websites that come up for the keyword. Check the first five to ten sites to see their page ranking and how sophisticated they are.

If they are not so many [not in the millions], not so sophisticated, and not so high in page ranking [not above 5], then it means competition is not stiff and you can settle for the keyword. Otherwise you have to dig further.

Take the keyword back into Google keyword tool and see the new related keywords to it that come up. From these, you can choose any as long as it shows a good number of searches made on it. To confirm how competitive it is, again go to Google search engine and see the number of websites that come up, the sophistication and page ranking of the first five to ten sites.

The information you get from these kind of keyword research is profound and worth thousands of dollars online [actually what the gurus don't want you to know]. This process is extremely needed to be done first if you will ever be able to make real money online.

You can use the information you get from it as the foundation of your Internet business, such as knowing which way to go on Adword, Adsense, SEO, Affiliate marketing, etc to be able to make real money. Now you don’t only know what makes money online, you also know how to find a less competitive and profitable niche to settle for.

After you have settled on a profitable keyword to build your site on, you can then register your domain name with the keyword being part of it [this is important for the search engine easily indexing your site].

With that done, you have started your website well on the path to making money. And as you begin to flesh it up with contents and products, ensure you keep focused on what the site is about, which is expressed in your keyword.

For instance, if your keyword is chocolate wrappers, then your site contents and the products you are promoting should be related to chocolate wrappers, and not cars, books, software, or any other thing that doesn’t have to do with chocolate wrappers.

The ability to make money from this kind of sites is enormous, and it comes about because: 1) there is little competition 2) search engines can easily recognize your site on what exactly you do 3) visitors to your site are people looking for something to do with chocolate wrappers, not just anybody – therefore, your site is strongly targeting, meaning your visitors will more likely spend money on your site.