Once you have a good list of ideas of topics that will make money on the internet, it's time to sort out the ones that will work. The easiest place to start is at inventory.overture.com

When you click on this link you will be taken to Overture's Keyword Selector Tool. This is a really handy tool that lets you find out how many people, every month, search on the search engine called Overture for any term. The reason this is handy is you can find out very quickly if there are a lot of people looking for information on the topic you are investigating, or if there is only you and a few other people, who are remotely interested in your topic. If there are not enough people interested in your niche, then your idea is not going to make money. There needs to be a demand.

This tool will also give you a list of related keywords, and how many people have searched on them. This will give you ideas on how to niche your idea even further.

Here's an Example

Here's an example of the results I got when I searched on the keyword chocolate (a passion of mine). The number on the left, is the number of searches for that keyword last month.

• 150843 chocolate
• 65407 gourmet chocolate
• 34389 hot chocolate
• 31281 chocolate lg
• 31230 charlie and the chocolate factory
• 26829 chocolate candy
• 20895 chocolate chip cookie recipe
• 18970 chocolate fountain
• 18702 chocolate phone
• 15980 chocolate chip cookie
• 13115 chocolate cake
• 12503 chocolate cd
• 11889 chocolate lab
• 11571 willy wonka and the chocolate factory
• 11261 chocolate fondue fountain
• 10467 chocolate cake recipe
• 9861 chocolate factory
• 8595 pumpkin chocolate chip cookie
• 8194 white chocolate
• 7027 chocolate verizon
• 7010 godiva chocolate
• 6979 chocolate cell phone
• 6392 dark chocolate

How much is enough?

The big question, once you have the results from this search on Overture, is how many people do you need to have searching for information on your niche, to be able to make a profit?

Well there is debate on this one. Overture gets around 10% of the searches that are done worldwide. The other 90% search using Google or other Search Engines. So if you have 10,000 people searching for a term on Overture, this will mean about 100,000 people are actually searching worldwide, every month for information on that topic. Whenever I go to an internet marketing conference, I ask every "guru" there the same question: "How many searches do you consider to be the best amount to run with a niche?" Without fail, the answers vary greatly. A good rule of thumb is around 30,000 searches using Overture Keyword Selector Tool. If there are more, then you need to narrow your niche down further as the searches will be too broad. For example, Chocolate, with 150843 searches per month is way too broad. However, Hot Chocolate, with 34389 searches per month may be better to explore.

I have also been told by Tom Hua, an excellent Australian on-line marketer, that he is happy with 30,000 searches though they can be made up from other related words that combined reach this total. So for example, chocolate chip cookie, pumpkin chocolate chip cookie, and chocolate chip cookie recipes could be a goer.

So, there's no definite number but this should give you something to start with.