In my first venture into making money online, I made a BIG mistake. I tried to sell “math game ideas”.

I thought it was a great idea. Games were fun for children, and they learn the fastest when they have fun. And my keyword research had shown that there were people looking for “math games”.

So I got a ghostwriter to write an ebook on math game ideas and tried to sell it, thinking there would be a market for it.

It failed, miserably. I ended up giving it away for free.

While my research showed that people were looking for math games for their children, I realized that they wanted it in the format of online flash games, not game instructions like my ebook. And they wanted it for free, which spelled more doom for my math games ebook.

But my experience taught me a valuable lesson -

Not all ideas are ideas that people want.

I mentioned in a previous article that ideas are fundamental to a blogger’s success. While many bloggers do the right thing of giving their ideas and opinions, they make the mistake of doing so on topics that nobody or few people want to read about.

The other day, I came across a blog about Facebook game reviews. Writing reviews is a good way of expressing your ideas and opinions. And this blog had well-written articles and a really nice design. But I doubt the blogger is going to make any money from her blog, simply because I know people will not check out game reviews for FREE games!

Game reviews work for expensive paid games like those for PS3 or Xbox, but with free Facebook games, people would simply try out the games for themselves since they don’t have to pay for it first.

Another common mistake by novice bloggers is…

… publishing their ideas and experiences like how they would write on their journal. Their blogs become something like their memoirs.

The problem is, unless you are a popular celebrity or outstanding person worthy of a biography on Wikipedia, nobody wants to know what you had for supper last night!

The exception is if you belong to a group of celebrity bloggers who blog about their life as entertainment for others, but few are able to pull it off.

Information that People Want

People want to read information that benefits them. Writing about your life experiences only works when you relate them to relevant topics that people benefit from reading.

Topics that benefit people are basically those that help people solve their pain or problems, or help them gain pleasure by accomplishing something or meeting an irrational desire.

In this Attention Age, this applies more than ever before. People can only afford to give their time and attention to information that benefits them.

The standard “what’s in it for me” applies to blog readers as much as people who buy information.

Let me put it this way…

If you write topics that are only interesting, people will read it
if they have time.

But if you write information that readers benefit from, people will make time to read it.

And so, here’s a simple checklist…

• If you intend to have an audience for your blog, you need to write about topics that people want to read.
• If you intend to make money from advertisements on your blog, you need to write about topics that LOTS of people want to read.
• And if you intend to sell products with your blog, you need to write about information that people want to BUY.

Through my experiences and what I have observed from others, I have come up with a simple list of topics that people want.

This list is by no means exhaustive, but if you have not chosen a blog topic, here are some ideas for you to start. If you are going to use your blog to sell affiliate products, it will also help you to know which kind of products to sell and which kind to ignore.

Since most of the topics that people want to read are topics that people want to BUY, I’ll focus on proven money-making ideas and categorize them to health, wealth, relationships, and passion hobbies. I call them the Big Four.

The Big Four Categories of Proven Money-Making Ideas

1. Health

How to live healthy or solve health problems

• Health - Natural Cures to Ailments, Natural Preventions, Healthy diets, Healthy lifestyles, Skin care
• Fitness - Weight Loss, Muscle Gain, Physical Beauty
• Spirituality - Inner Peace, Yoga, Zen

2. Wealth

How to make more money or solve money problems

• Intenet business – Internet-marketing, Blogging, Ebay, Online Stores
• Investments – Stocks, Forex, Options
• Real Estate – Rental, Flipping
• Personal Finance - Debt clearance, Money-saving
• Success - Success mindsets, Wealth psychology, Time-management, Personal coaching

3. Relationships

How to develop relationships or solve relationship problems

• Family - Lovemaking, Parenting, Keeping the Romance, Saving marriage break-ups
• Relationships - Dating, Romance, Dealing with break-ups, Making up with ex.
• Social – Leadership, Persuasion, Winning Friends

4. Passion Hobbies

How to become better at their hobbies, or information about their passions

• Sports and Recreation – Golf, Fishing, Cycling, Wrestling, Football, Dancing, Poker, Video Gaming, Computers (Mac!), Models & Crafts, etc…
• Other Passions - Cars, Motorcycles, Dog-training, Photography, Magic, Fashion, Celebrities, etc…

A word about passion hobbies…

I call it passion hobbies because the participants of some hobbies are not passionate or enthusiastic enough to want to read or buy more information. This means that NOT all hobbies are good topics to blog about.

If you intend to make money from blogging about a hobby, your chosen hobby should be one where the participants are so (irrationally) passionate that no matter how much information they have, they just can’t get enough of it. They will keep reading and buying information to try to satisfy their unquenchable thirst for more information.

Good examples are like cars or golf. Bad Example – math games.

Two Simple Tests

To know whether there will be an audience for your chosen blog topic, here are two simple tests.

Firstly, test it on yourself – are you so passionate about your topic that you are already actively searching and reading more information about it?

Secondly, when you search for information about your topic, are there many blogs and websites that are already selling information about your topic? If there are, it usually means that there is an audience for it.

Did I miss out anything?

Once again I must state that my list is by no means exhaustive. Any topics you think I’ve missed out? Any thoughts on this?