Before you think of starting your article writing campaign, there are some very important preparations that you need to research and discover. For a successful online business to germinate, promoted through writing articles (meaning an income generating machine working on auto pilot), key issues need to be addressed. What are these key secrets?

Before we touch on this, lets get back to basics and look at how a hot dog stand would profit selling to the public. What do you think would make a hot dog stand successful? Colourful display, banners, music, open flame grill with lots of aroma, good position? Well these all could contribute to the success, but the overall key ingredient needed is a "hungry or starving crowed". Hungry due to appetite for hot dogs or staving due to limited available food (competition).

Before taking up article writing you need to establish if there is a hungry market online, ready to be marketed to. Establish how much demand is there for what you have to offer? Can you change your offer? Are there enough people willing to pay for what you want to market and promote? How much competition is there already supplying that market?

How do you go about finding these answers?

Search the internet for a key word tool that can give you the number of searches made for a word term in your possible niche, that surfers are making. This will immediately show which search terms are most used for your planned niche. Popular is good but not always profitable. There are niches where little money is spent or is already well catered for.

One way to find out if the market is worth pursuing is to type your key word into your search browser and do a search for it. At the top of your screen will give the total of the search results: "Results 1 - 10 of about 184,000,000 for dogs". This gives you an idea of how much information is already out there.

What are your chances of you being found amongst that lot? "Remote" I would say. But "Don't give up just yet..." Obviously there is a good demand for this niche and there must be a profit to be made here, or else there would not be this much competition. So how do you get through it?

Ask your self, "From what angle can I attack this competition that will give me the edge?" Asking questions is the first step to opening the door to this multi million dollar online business. Look for a more specific search term, go from "dogs" to "Black Portuguese Water Dogs". to see how the results fall away. (Web1-10 of 15 resultsAdvanced for "Black Portuguese Water Dogs"..)

When you find a bright idea then you can run with it, start writing articles for your income and online success.