One of the best and quickest ways to make money online is a strategy that has been around for a number of years, but very few people seem to implement. In fact, it is a method that I ignored until the last year. And the primary reason is that it's very tedious to implement.

What is this method of making money online?

It's called niche websites.

There are a variety of "gurus" out there in cyberspace who teach how to do this, and many of them even offer to build mini-sites for you that are supposedly optimized and ready for you to rake in the cash. They usually leave out the most important part of this strategy however. Where's the traffic?

Sometimes they will bundle a traffic report or two with their training as an afterthought, but in reality, that's all they are...just an afterthought. Yet, getting traffic should be the first thing one thinks about before even building their first niche website.

It's often advantageous to join an affiliate network link Clickbank or Commission Junction and research some of the niches and products being offered. Clickbank products, for example, have a characteristic called "gravity" which indicates how well products are currently selling. They also show other stats like what the average commission is that is being earned. This can be very helpful when trying to determine what products to market.

Based on the product you want to market you can then do some keyword research to see what keywords are getting the proper search volume to promote effectively and be lucrative enough to be worthwhile spending the time to build a niche website. One mistake people make is looking for keywords that have very high search volumes. But in a particular niche, that isn't necessary. A keyword with around 10,000 searches a month should be sufficient to generate some nice revenue.

Once you establish your niche and your keywords, then it's time to select your domain name.

One of the primary ways of generating traffic is a process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is the technique of showing a website or a web page with a search engine using the "natural" or free search results." In other words, it's free traffic generated when a user types in a search phrase into a search engine and the results are returned. If your result shows up on page 1 of the search engine then it's likely you will receive some traffic to your web site.

An easy way to jumpstart seo for your web site is to make sure you choose a domain name that contains your primary keyword. For example, if you are promoting a dog training' product, you would want "dog training" in your domain name somewhere.

Once you've settled on your domain, go to a domain registrar like Godaddy and purchase the domain. You can either use Godaddy's web hosting, or any other web hosting service that offers cPanel. Then by logging into cPanel, go to Fantastico and install a Wordpress blog.

To monetize your new Wordpress blog, it's advisable to check the offers related to your keywords and position some ads, banners, or links for those products strategically throughout. If people click on them and order then you will earn the commission. Also, it's a good idea to sign up for Google Adsense, if you haven't already, and place it on your blog as well. If people click on your Adsense ads then you will earn commissions.

Then start adding relevant content (posts) to your blog. This is where a lot of people stumble. They don't think they can create good content or just don't know how to go about it. One way is to do a search on various articles related to your keyword. Once you find one then you can rewrite it to make it your own original content. Make it seo optimized by using some simple seo techniques like using the H1, H2, and H3 tags. Also use the keyword in the title of the post. For more information on seo techniques, just do a search online to learn more.

Another great technique is to use an RSS feed for your blog. RSS (most commonly referred to as Really Simple Syndication) is a group of web feed formats utilized to publish often updated material. Web feeds assist publishers by helping them syndicate content automatically. This is a quick and easy way to distribute your content over the internet which will lead to more traffic and consequently, more conversions.

And then the last thing that needs to be done is to set up a pinging service so that various ping servers are notified of any updates you make to your blog.

All of these steps will help you set up a traffic-generating niche website that will generate sales and make money online.

Now maybe you can understand why so many people have avoided this strategy when trying to make money online. It is very tedious and time consuming.

However, over the last year, automated software tools have become available that reduce the time to develop these websites. What used to take hours, if not days, now can be done in under an hour.

These tools can do the following:

• Help choose a domain name
• Build a wordpress blog based on a keyword
• Select ads to display on the website
• Add content to the website
• Build backlinks to the website
• Create an RSS feed
• Ping all the content

Because these automated software tools allow one to build niche websites so quickly, it's easy to build multiple websites in a variety of niches, all pulling in commissions from the various monetization methods employed on the websites.

If you had 50 websites, each pulling in only a dollar a day, that's $50. For a month those sites are generating $1,500. Who couldn't use an extra $1,500 a month? And those sites are likely to pull in a lot more than that.

So take a serious look at building niche websites as a way to make money online. There's a reason so many people are discussing this strategy.